WRITTEN into the DNA of every man and woman is a profound restlessness.
This is not necessarily a bad thing.
At best, this restlessness feeds the questing human spirit, which in turn nourishes the creative impulses that have produced such great art and science down through the centuries.
Sometimes I wonder if our entire global civilisation isn’t built upon restlessness.

I fancy there might well be a more intelligent and vastly more chilled-out race of extra-terrestrials out there, watching us from a distance with fascination and amusement as we humans scurry around, frantically building, destroying, designing, consuming, laughing, loving and fighting.
Doubtless those aliens think we are governed by some sort of crazy hive mentality, just like a young boy might quite correctly surmise of ants after peering down on a colony of those dizzyingly busy insects.
If boys still do that sort of thing, that is. I know I did when I was a kid, when I wasn’t otherwise engaged playing (unsupervised) football in the street or giving lip to grown-ups outside the chippy.
Yes, I used to spend many an hour observing the lives of insects in the field at the back of our house.
Course, everything’s a bit different these days. Kids hardly ever experience fresh air and mud, climb a tree, build a hut or graze a knee in some madcap stunt.
From what I can tell, youngsters get driven to school, then are driven home, eat some turkey twizzlers washed down with a fizzy drink then it’s straight upstairs to get stuck into playing evil shoot-‘em-up games on their PCs.
But I’m digressing from my big subject of restlessness in the human heart. I have been feeling incredibly restless recently and it has tipped me into a mild depression. Restlessness can easily lead to depression.
Even a trip to Hell’s Waiting Room on Saturday night failed to cheer me up.
At first I couldn’t decide where to sit in the music lounge. I can be such a fidget-arse when I’ve got a mood on, believe me.
In the end I sat at a table with Jack and Jools.
Jools, like many women, thinks I look a bit sad and has taken it upon herself to cheer me up.
She thinks I need a girlfriend, and she’s probably right about that, though women have always done treat me cruel in the past so the long-term prognosis isn’t good.
Jools has a bevy of beauties lined up for me to meet, apparently. She assures me that they are all good-looking and good fun. Hmmm…
As she was telling me all this, her partner Jack was rolling his eyes, blowing air out of his cheeks and shaking his head. Does he know something I don’t know?
I told Jools that the women don’t have to be especially good-looking for me to like them, though I
would draw the line at absolute mingers.
Borderline mingers, I’d consider as they have one good thing going for them – they are grateful if any man takes an interest in them.
I also told Jools that I’m not really looking for a girlfriend, though if a putative one did present
herself … well, hello! Dong-dong!!
For me, the key indicators of attractiveness in a woman are intelligence and a sense of humour.
Some women look absolutely stunning but are as thick as bricks – as you can tell as soon as they open their mouths to speak.
Also, if a woman dresses with style and a certain restraint she will earn my admiration. The trouble is that so many of today’s women think it appropriate to dress as sex industry workers, even to go about their daily functions.
You see all ages and sizes of women spilling out of cheap boob tubes they’ve bought at Asda and wearing those slaggy jeans that are cut to reveal the pubic bone.
Now, I’m a big fan of Britney videos, but I don’t think women are doing themselves any favours by so slavishly following the current trailer park trash fashions.
And girls, while I’m giving make-over advice, please stop the chemical torture of your hair before the United Nations has to step in and stop it for you. Remember, blonde is not the only colour.
And … Memo to the Maidens of Merseyside especially …can’t you see that tanning salons and sunbeds are a total waste of time and effort?
If you must go for the pouting, dusky maiden look, try mixing a little Bisto power with water. You’ll save yourself a fortune.

OK, I’m digressing again. So, the question is: Is my restlessness and current mild depression connected to me being single and living alone?
Well, I don’t think so. I have lived with women in the past, and still I’ve felt restless and mildly depressed for substantial periods.
Also, I have experienced – as have many men – domestic violence from a female partner.
Abuse of a man by his girlfriend is a particularly difficult problem for a fellow to cope with because most decent men would never lift a finger to hit a woman. Even when she decides it is perfectly reasonable to rain down blows on his head.

BUT will Jools introduce me to some well-behaved, classy birds?
You know what I mean ... intelligent, articulate women who like a laugh but don’t drink themselves into emotional volcanoes every time they go out to the pub.
Well, we’ll see. I have only three hard and fast rules about a potential new girlfriend.
1. She must be, biologically speaking, a woman (you can never really tell in New Brighton and I am definitely not up for any sort of ladyboy adventure).
2. She must be solvent.
3. She must not be on solvents.
So, old Steve Regan might be climbing on board the Romance Express once more.
Well, I do feel in the mood for an adventure.
On Saturday night / Sunday morning, after I stumbled out of Hell’s Waiting Room, I cut down a side street (mainly because I wanted to give the swerve to someone I knew who was walking in the direction of my flat) but also because it was vaguely in the direction of the late bars on the seafront and I was half-minded to have more wine and to check out the eye candy in those bars.
Anyhow, I walked on past the bars on the front, but I just couldn’t face going in. They were so noisy and lairy and playing crap modern dance music.
Not my scene at all. And I knew that at any moment Merseyside Police would arrive in their mobile CCTV Anti-Fun Unit just to put the tin lid on an unsatisfying, restless night.
So I went home and hit the sack. Didn’t go straight to sleep, though.
I had a mug of ice-cold milk and two slices of parkin then finished reading Paul Gallico’s fantastic, beautiful, and politically unfashionable novel, Love, Let Me Not Hunger.
Eventually I fell asleep, troubled only by a brief nightmare about an encounter with a ladyboy and some dwarf acrobats in a Rhyl discotheque.

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