For most people, the month of May is a time of great optimism - the weather's getting warmer, April showers have been and gone and the calendar gods bless us with not one but two bank holiday weekends. But for me, May 2009 was a complete blur because May was the month when the little cart containing my sanity went completely off the rails.
I approach this review of May, as a police detective might approach a crime, trying to piece together the truth from various bits of evidence. The process is doubly surreal when you find yourself in the dual role of both investigator and victim.
After the Mum-shaped bombshell dropped at the end of the previous month, I can only imagine that the increasingly frayed bit of string connecting me to reality finally snapped, and like a rabbit momentarily released from the glare of the headlights, I went into some kind of primitive flight mode.
But even this is guesswork. The only thing that's clear is that I disappeared off the surface of Planet Debt Monkey. So much so that Debt Monkey HQ released the following appeal for information relating to my disappearance:
Were they genuinely worried, or just protecting their investment? I'll never know, but if my total meltdown gave them a reason to stop and consider their part in it all, then maybe it wasn't entirely in vain.
Another week passed and still no sign off yours truly and so Debt Monkey - perhaps driven by a simple need to generate some content in the absence of their video-laying Golden Goose-Monkey - released this heart-warming appeal song:
Okay, it's not quite Feed The World, and I'm sure the Michael Jackson estate would have something to say about the choice of backing track, but watching it now even I can't help getting a little nostalgic about being a monkey. Ah, the power of song.
To this day, I can't remember where I was or what I did for the two weeks that I went AWOL, but in mid-May I was spotted by a member of the public on Worthing Beach, and Rob the cameraman was sent to find me and bring me home. It was like Saving Private Ryan on a shoestring budget, with Worthing standing in for Omaha, and my sanity playing the part of all the people that got blown up:
Now, I'm no expert on the inner workings of the human mind, but even I can see that I'd gone stark raving, nut-nut bonkers.
And given my obviously fragile state, the Debt Monkey producers did what any responsible, professional production would do in that situation - they forced me into a series of intensive therapy sessions with a crackpot head-shrinker and filmed every invasive minute:
One doesn't have to spend very much time in Rubina's company before realising it's a textbook case of the inmates running the asylum, but by fluke or design, come the end of May my marbles were definitely starting to return one by one, albeit with the occasional terrifying relapse into madness.
So, that was May. It's all a bit of a black hole for me which is probably a good thing all things considered. If you can shed any light on those missing two weeks then please do get in touch. Mind you, if all you've got is a photo of me shouting at traffic, eating out of a bin, or smearing myself with my own do-dos, then I'd be grateful if you keep that to yourself.
See you in June!
