Sorry seems to be the hardest word

I've been discommunicated from blogworld for the last two weeks (not that anybody will have noticed) THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN other than, to quote the words of the Buzzcocks, by having fallen in love with someone I shouldn't've fallen in love in love with someone ever fallen in love in love with someone I shouldn't've fallen in love with. Which is quite appropriate somehow as the object of my MISPLACED love (if that's what it was) happens to have a compulsive repetitive speech disorder, and this is pretty much the way she actually talks. But that and the Tourette's were always going to make kissing an unpredictable experience.

This is just one aspect of a very complex spectrum of learning difficulties she has actually, now I've mentioned it. OK, I know what you're thinking. When we first met at the youth club (it's a day centre actually, but I only go in the evenings) I thought we'd got a lot in common (my spectrum's probably less colourful than hers). The main things we have in common are 1) that we both dislike authority (I'm often thought the Tourette's is never half as bad as she makes out), and 2) for some reason we've both found it quite difficult to get a girlfriend/boyfriend up to now. So for at least two reasons and probably more if I could be bothered to think about them, which I can't because the whole thing is still just too PAINFUL, we seemed made for each other. I'm sure a lot of people who go through difficult SEPARATIONS look back and think the same. How wrong they are!

Anyway, when she read the blog I wrote, about the night I'd suspected her of cheating on me and meeting someone else outside the cinema and I'd gone to check up on her and run into Robbie Williams in the Co-op instead, she had a fit. I don't mean she was mad with me, I mean she had a fit, full on, thrashing about on the floor eye-rolling pissing herself fit. This was in the library of all places, because she's not allowed to use the computer at home. They had to call the ambulance. While she was in the hospital waiting for her mum to pick her up she sent me a horrible threatening text which I'm not going to repeat. But then you don't take threats to injure you all that seriously when they come from a self-harmer, do you? Like if she'd said I hate you so much I'm going to carve your name in my arm with a compass point I'd have thought she meant it. She'd got as far as the E in Jed last time, after all. As it was I just went to bed.

The next afternoon, I'd just got home from school and she showed up just as I was about to start doing my geography project. I'd got my laptop open and it was all just loading up. Mum had let her in and she'd come up to my room, and the first thing I knew she was standing behind me. She hadn't said anything, and when I realised there was someone there it made me jump. I was just turning round when her left hand came round my face and I felt her smear all this stickiness in my eyes. Next thing I heard a noise like a wet fart and all this cold wetness spread over the back of my hands, which were still on the keyboard of my laptop. And then she laughed, this mad, out of control inhuman laugh, like Stacey Solomon when she gets voted through to the next round on X factor. Next thing I knew, mum was in the room and my mad ex-girlfriend was sitting on the bed, shaking. I couldn't open my eyes, they didn't hurt, but I physically couldn't prise them open, and as I rubbed my hands together bits of skin seemed to be coming off them like a badly made up extra in the Thriller video. It all lasted a split second, and then the panic and her laughing then crying and my mum shouting what's going on, what's going on?

As if I knew. I thought I'd been blinded. But after a few seconds I realised I wasn't in pain, it wasn't burning and whatever it was she'd smeared all over me wasn't life threatening. Far from being burned and disfigured for life, it wasn't even going to clear up my eczema. The familiar smell was the first clue, a strong Salt and Vinegar crisp smell, and then the tackiness and the way the skin on the backs of my hands and my face began to tighten and go shiny and wrinkly like an old man's. It was PVA glue, not the sort of glue you sniff and get hooked on but the sort you spread on your hands and let dry and then peel off when you've nothing better to do. She'd got it all over my face, my hands and down my front, and now as she sat on my bed, her head in her hands and shaking uncontrollably, all matted in her hair as well. All she could say was ss-orr ss-orr ssss-orr, which wasn't even a proper apology. My mum stayed with her while I went to wash it out of my eyes and my dad phoned her mum to come and get her.

While I could wash it out of my eyes and peel it off my hands, I couldn't get it off the keyboard. It had gone right through the gaps between the keys and into the works, and the laptop was totally wrecked. Mum tried to encourage me by saying that we could get it replaced on the insurance, but I could tell by my dad's face that the insurance people had probably never even heard of us, let alone be prepared to pay out. I didn't even ask him. So that was my Fatal Attraction moment, and why it has taken three weeks for me to get a new (well I say new, secondhand out of The Cornishman, £120) laptop.

So next, having posted this blog, I'm going to change my status on facebook to single. But cautious.

I'm loving Angel Delight instead

Facebook was going MENTAL last night with rumours that Robbie Williams was in St Ives. Between about 7 when the news first broke that he was in the Hub and about 11 when he was allegedly spotted buying some chips in the Balancing Eel, the hourly rate for babysitters went through the roof as all the thirtysomething 'rents in town tried to get somebody in at the last minute so they could go out and check out the rumour for themselves. Which was a bit of a pisser for me, actually, because I came within twenty minutes of having my first ever proper date. It was with a girl who doesn't go to our school, but who's mum teaches her at home because she's a bit disruptive. We were supposed to be going to the cinema together, but just as I was in the bathroom wondering whether she'd notice my nervous eczema, she rang up to say that somebody had asked her to babysit up Belyars right at the last minute, and because she didn't know them very well, or really know me very well come to that, she thought it best if I didn't ask if I could go with her.

Fair enough, I've never seen the point in all those teen slasher movies why lads want to go babysitting with girls, I mean I can't think of anything worse than having to sit there watching telly just waiting for the slasher to ring or some six year old to wander downstairs demanding a drink of water. But it just seemed like an excuse to me, and I got the impression she was winding me up, so I wandered over to our appointed meeting place anyway, the Co-op opposite the cinema, just on the off chance that she'd had a better offer and was meeting someone else instead. I'm not sure what I'd do if she was.

Well, I got there about five minutes before the time we'd agreed to meet, and hung about in a doorway where I could keep an eye on the Co-op and the cinema as well, but there was no sign of her. I gave it until ten minutes after the film had started before I gave up. I wasn't going to have to face her at school today, and nobody else knew, so at least this humiliation was just a private matter between me and my eczema. And not being funny or anything, but 'a bit disruptive' in this case means borderline special needs, so as a first date, actually I think I can probably do better.

Anyway, when I got fed up and cold with waiting, I go in the Co-op and there's this little guy in a long leather coat with a wooly scarf wrapped round his face and a furry trapper hat, hanging around in the instant desserts aisle. You couldn't see much of his face, but what you could see was quite tanned and a bit rodenty. I thought he was behaving a bit furtively at first, as if he was hiding, probably nicking stuff I thought, but then I decided that he wasn't used to shopping and didn't know what he wanted. My favourite is butterscotch angel delight, but there was only one packet of it, and he didn't seem as if he could make his mind up whether to buy it or not. Do you want this? he says, pointing at the angel delight. No, I said, I'm going to have this, and picked up a chocolate one. But if I were you I'd take that, it's the best decision you'll ever make. And I gave him the packet of butterscotch angel delight. He looked me straight in the face and smiled at me with these incredibly white teeth and really twinkly eyes. Do you think so? he said. I'll do that then. Yes, I will. Thanks for your advice, son.

I've never taken much notice of Robbie Williams, so it never crossed my mind that's who I'd just met in the Co-op, until I got home and facebook was going MENTAL about the rumours of him being in town, and then it all clicked into place. So when he announces he's rejoining Take That, I for one won't be surprised. I'd like to think that the story of how he made his mind up with the help of a spurned teenager with eczema and a packet of butterscotch angel delight in a Co-op in St Ives would become the stuff of legend. Mind you, he'll probably think it was a close encounter of the third kind and give all the credit to extra-terrestrials.

OMG! JEDMANIA! It's official.

I knew it was only a matter of time, but no matter how much you believe in yourself, the world has a way of bludgeoning your self-esteem and self-confidence in a million little ways on a daily basis. Believe me, coming home every day not knowing whether you're going to find all your stuff in a bin bag on the landing because some GUESTS are in your bedroom, and having to sleep in the attic, is not good for your self-esteem. Anne Frank is not a good teenage role model.

My school once did a production of The Diary of Anne Frank for the school play. The head of English (who was a complete lovey tosser) directed it, and didn't he just love ordering all these kids in Nazi uniforms around? Anyway on the opening night, I swear, I was in the audience (Mr Cox has begged me to be Anne's brother, but I'd refused to be in it, basically because I'd got it mixed up with The Sound of Music, and I didn't want to sing) and when the Nazis first come on the stage somebody at the back shouted She's in the attic! which spoiled the tension a bit.

Anyway, enough of Anne Frank (no disrespect to the victims of the Holocaust). But you would think they'd have heard her through the floor banging away on that typewriter wouldn't you? Today of course she'd be blogging or on facebook, but whether it would have had the same impact on generations of school kids reading The Blog of Anne Frank I don't know, and a typical facebook entry might have read: 'Nzis R sURchng 4 me dwnsrs. Ditnt fnd me. Not goin out 2nite. lol'

I mention this because I not only have a blog, but a facebook page as well now. I set it up a few weeks ago to try to get more people reading my blog. I've got more than 400 friends already, but the comment I get most often is Who the hell is jednbreakfast? It's weird what people ask you. Like someone asked if I was Nigerian, because my name was Jed Nbreakfast. Another one asked if my face was disfigured and that was why I didn't have it on my profile photo. Mind you, my profile photo's not that revealing to be fair, for obvious reasons. I'm sticking my neck out more than a bit with this blog, cos if my mum and dad ever found out I was writing it they'd be well pissed off with me dissing their B&B. And obviously if any of their GUESTS found their way to it they might recognise themselves and not be very happy either. I've had a few people ask me what my mum and dad's B&B's called, as if I'm going to tell them. I can't understand why, I mean, do they think it might be a good place to stay? I imagine not.

Anyway, this morning before school I went to the Co-op, which was pretty quiet this morning given that all of the emmets have gone home and the rain was bouncing down like javelins, and I had a hole in my shoe, not that that had any effect on why the Co-op was quiet. Just inside the door on the right they keep all the papers and magazines, and I usually have a quick look at the front of the papers as I go in, but avoid the magazines because mostly they all have photos of Jordan or Cheryl Cole on the front and I can't stand either of them. But check out the cover of Heat! this week - JEDMANIA is official, apparently. OK, turns out that the JED that is the focus of this MANIA is a pair of tintin-haired geeks who can't sing and can't dance, from some telly X-thing with Cheryl Cole in it, but WTH, as we say in facebookland, JEDMANIA is here. If it says so in Heat! it must be true. How good was that for my self-esteem? What did I care that my shoe squelched like Squidward Tentacles with every step all the way down to the milk aisle and back to the checkout? I stepped outside bathed in the spotlight of JEDMANIA. The absence of paparazzi could only be due to the heavy rain.

Bedtime Story

This time of year, when it gets dark before it gets light, when the Cornish rain fizzles in the street lights and soaks you through before it even touches you, when all the visitors have gone home and only the locals are left behind, this one night of the year we lock our doors and close our curtains and wait for the dawn that one of us will not live to see.

For on the night of Halloween, every year he comes and takes one of our kind with him to that place from which no one but he returns.

On a high tide when the wind moans and rocks the boats tied up in the harbour, and flecks the black water white under a full moon, he emerges from the sea on the final stroke of twelve. The steps he climbs from the harbour to the Wharf have been no more than a memory for two hundred years. He is tall and stooped under the weight of the water that streams from his salt-caked oilskins and the long boat hook he carries over this shoulder. Wrapped around his body and trailing behind him as he begins his terrible walk is the tangle of netting they say dragged him to his death.

He walks with slow, heavy steps, the water pouring from his laden seaboots. The few who have seen him have described a discoloured face bloated by the sea, the eye sockets empty holes beneath a mildewed seaman's cap, the lower jaw and lips completely gone. No one knows what this sightless face searches for, as he makes his slow deliberate way up one of the steep, narrow streets that lead up from the harbour. Those who lie awake in terror behind locked doors for his passing hear the scrape of his boots, the tapping of his boathook on the cobbles and the heavy, rotting net dragging behind him.

A couple of years ago the old woman who lived next door to us was found dead in her bed the morning after Halloween. They say that when they went into the house the carpets downstairs were soaked, and there was a trail of water all the way up the stairs and across the bare floorboards of her bedroom. The room was filled with the stench of rotting fish and mildew, and her bedclothes were stiff and white with salt and seawater. The old woman lay in bed, her grey hair wet and matted across her face, her mouth wide open in a soundless scream. Her papery hands were held up in front of her as if clawing at the air. And you know what, says my dad, who swears he was one of the men who found her, her face and neck were covered in criss cross marks as if she'd been caught in a fishing net.

What to Do in St Ives on a Pissy Wet October Half Term Week

First day of October half term, town's heaving as usual with emmets despite the fact that it's been raining all day. Here is my guide to What to Do in St Ives on a Pissy Wet October Half Term Week.

1. Wear shorts just like it was the summer - you're on holiday after all!
2. Don't forget the crocs, ideal for walking the slippery wet granite pavements.
3. Of course you can go crabbing in October.
4. Dogs are allowed on the beaches now, but make sure when they shit you cover it up, especially if there are surfers on the beach who are likely to stand in it.
5. Don't miss the Damien Hirst pickled unicorn at the Tate, and ask about their free admission to people wearing wetsuits
6. There's nothing incongruous about drinking hot chocolate whilst sitting out on the terrace of the Porthmeor beach cafe in a Hawaiian shirt.
7. Why not light a driftwood fire on the beach to keep yourself warm?
8. Is John Dory in season? Well, you could ask.
9. Visit one of St Ives' two specialist chocolate shops and ask Why?
10. Remember, Fore Street is now open to traffic from both directions.
11. Why not have your own Soggy the Bear bonfire?

Hayle is other people

Just when I thought things couldn't get much worse, this morning I found myself gazing across the Sargasso Sea of drifting humanity that is the Hayle Car Boot Sale. A car boot sale is where the dispossessed, repossessed and terminally sad go to trade rubbish between each other. Imagine a refugee camp stripped of its shanties and basic amenities like toilets, and replaced by transit vans and N-registered estate cars with open tailgates surrounded by wallpapering tables, and you have some idea. Basically it makes the market in Eastenders look as exotic as a souk. Compared to the average stallholder at Hayle Car Boot Sale, Stacy Branning, no, even Stacey Branning's daft mum looks as unapproachably glamorous as the perfume counter lady at Leddra's. The more enterprising stallholders rig up improvised rails, from which secondhand clothes hang dejectedly, like scarecrows round-shouldered with poverty. A lot of them just spread out out the flotsam and jetsam of their impoverished lives on candlewick bedspreads laid on the muddy grass. The customers who drift dead eyed between the stalls are straight from the mad, bad and dangerous to know catalogue of whatever casting agency has offices in Krakow and Tallin as well as Camborne. My mum and dad dragged me along because among other things they were selling my old clothes, fake surfing brand T shirts with embarrassing slogans on the front that I would never wear. Mum said that if people saw me there they'd be more likely to buy my old stuff than if it was just her. Some of them spent ages fingering everything on the rail and holding it up against their kids to check the size, and then they'd hold up two or three things and ask mum the prices, and then spend ages deciding which of them to buy, and finally haggle over the price of just one thing. Dad was getting really annoyed, you could see that, like first he was watching really suspiciously in case they were nicking stuff, and then he'd say things like do you want that then or not? and then he insisted with one woman on 50p for a hoodie that said I Surf Overhead on the front, when she wanted to pay 30p, so she walked off without buying anything after wasting at least twenty minutes deciding what she wanted. In the end dad got bored and went off, and to be honest we did a lot better after that, although I did get spotted by a couple of girls from school who no doubt would have spent most of next week ripping the piss out of me if it wasn't half term. Anyway, after about four hours, we'd made £24.60, minus the £6 it had cost us to get in, so that was £18.60 profit.

Dad turned up again just as we were packing up the car. He'd got a carrier bag and a slightly sly look on his face. Look what I got, he said, proper bargain these were. He'd only gone and bought a pair of secondhand binoculars and a boxed set of Wycliffe videos. Videos, not even DVDs. How much did you pay for those? mum asked him. £5 for the binoculars and £18 for the videos, he said. The bloke wanted £20 for them but I bargained him down.

The Many Heads of God or whoever

Great. The GUESTS who were in my room for the last two days (two old people at that) have gone off this morning and when I went in to check everything was OK I discovered that one of them had broken the head off my laughing buddha. When I asked my mum she said she didn't know what I was talking about, and no they hadn't said anything to her about it.

I had got very fond of my laughing buddha. Since I bought him we'd gone through a lot together, what with the whole Trev thing and so on. I could talk to him like I couldn't talk to my mum or dad. I've searched all over my room but there's no sign of his head either, so I can't even try to stick it back on with UHU.

Without a head, a laughing buddha loses his identity. Whatever he was before, without his head he's just a headless fat bloke. Where he was friendly, and I felt safe talking to him, now he's gross and well, a bit pervy to be honest, what with his man boobs hanging out and everything.

So what I've done is cut the head off of an old Action Man and I've glued that on instead. It's just about the right size, so doesn't look too bad, except obviously it's not a laughing buddha anymore as Action Man's face is a bit scowly and he's got this big scar on his cheek and he isn't bald like buddha either. I'm going to spray him gold all over so that at least his body and his head are the same colour.

Will that turn him back into buddha? That got me thinking, because obviously buddha didn't laugh all the time, so just the fact that he isn't laughing any more shouldn't be a problem. In some ways I think I'll prefer confiding in a buddha with a bit more gravitas than one who looked as if he was pissing himself at my worst fears. Or will he just look like an Action Man who's let himself go a bit, paralysed by drink, self-doubt and post traumatic stress?

When I think back, I remember it was a toss up between buying the laughing buddha and a little Ganesh, who I liked because he's got an elephant's head and a name that reminds me of Dennis the Menance's dog. I'm glad I got the buddha now, because if the Ganesh had got his head broken off, I think it would have been a lot harder to replace. If the worst comes to the worst with buddha once I've sprayed him gold, I can always turn him into a Christmas decoration.