10. May 2026

A Bit Much

There Were Probably Signs

by P A Mills

I am not everyone’s cup of tea.

That is because I am not tea. I am black coffee in a chipped mug beside a legal complaint.

Some men bring calm into a room. Some bring warmth. Some bring that easy, well-adjusted quality people admire in Labradors and men who say “supper” without irony.

I bring weather.

Not always bad weather. Sometimes just pressure. Sometimes the strange silence before a shed roof leaves its marriage.

I am not emotionally unavailable. I am emotionally available in the way a thunderstorm is available: technically present, but everyone nearby should check their gutters.

This has not made me a simple companion.

I do not enter life casually. I arrive tired, over-read, under-slept, and already disappointed by the sentence structure of the world.

Other people have moods.

I have committee findings.

A normal man sees a problem and thinks, That’s annoying.

I see a problem and think, This is how Rome fell.

A badly worded email is not a badly worded email. It is evidence. A laughing emoji is not a laughing emoji. It is cave painting from someone who has been allowed near electricity without supervision.

A minor act of poor behaviour is never minor. It is a loose thread, and I am exactly the sort of idiot who will pull it until Western civilisation is standing there in its pants.

I do not overthink.

That is an insult to the scale of the operation.

I build a cathedral of thought, set fire to it, photograph the ashes, rate the composition 8.7, then ask whether the title should be colder.

This is what I am like.

I would apologise, but I have already considered the apology from seven angles and found it structurally unsound.

My mind is not one of those cheerful modern minds with tabs open. My mind is a Victorian archive, three murder investigations, a Norse weather system, a drawer full of old grudges, and one unpaid intern called Rage.

Rage is not senior management. Rage is not popular in the pub. But he does make a lot of suggestions.

I struggle with the modern world because the modern world wants you agreeable, frictionless, emotionally incontinent when useful, silent when inconvenient, and stupid in a way that photographs well.

It wants everyone to clap, nod, share, like, react, and post quotes about kindness while behaving like a lightly upholstered bastard.

I have never fully adapted to this.

I am too serious for nonsense and too comic for solemnity, which is a rotten combination. It means I can see the wound and the ridiculous hat at the same time.

At funerals, I notice shoes.

At moments of public sincerity, I notice who is performing grief like amateur theatre.

During arguments, I hear not only what someone says, but the cowardly little machinery underneath it. The dodge. The flourish. The missing fact. The emotional invoice. The part where they expect you to pay for damage they caused.

This makes me difficult.

Not mysterious. Not romantic. Not misunderstood in the cinematic sense, with rain on the window and a nice coat.

Difficult.

Like flat-pack furniture during a power cut while being judged by a raven.

I have the emotional regulation of a Viking trapped in WHSmith while someone explains mindfulness with a tote bag.

I want peace. Genuinely. I want books, coffee, the dog, the light through trees, and the honourable silence of people not talking absolute shit.

But then someone says, “Everyone has their truth,” and suddenly I am back in the arena, oiling the hinges on a formal complaint.

My instinct is not to let things go. Letting things go sounds pleasant. Mature. Graceful. It also sounds like something invented by people who benefit from you forgetting where the knife went in.

I dwell.

I examine.

I return to the scene.

I cross-reference.

By the time a balanced person has moved on, I have created a three-part essay, two subtitles, a cover image, and a closing line that makes the guilty feel spiritually inconvenienced.

This is not always healthy.

But it is at least literate.

I have often wondered what I look like from the outside.

Probably alarming.

Sometimes beautiful eyes. Sometimes eyes that look as though they are planning to sack Paris.

A man standing perfectly still while internally cross-examining God, the council, Facebook, the medical system, three relatives, Western civilisation, and a badly behaved pigeon, all before lunch.

People mistake silence for peace.

In my case, silence may simply mean the prosecution is organising its notes.

I can be kind. This should be said, otherwise the portrait becomes too convenient. I can be loyal. I can be tender. I can be absurdly moved by small decencies: a hand on a hand, a dog leaning against your leg, a cup placed down without fuss, someone understanding without turning it into a speech.

But I do not trust decorative kindness.

Kindness as branding. Kindness as costume. Kindness as a laminated badge worn by people who would watch you drown and then post about water safety.

Real kindness has weight.

It does not announce itself every five minutes like a toddler with a tambourine.

This is where I become unpleasant.

Once I smell performance, I do not merely dislike it. I want it named, skinned, labelled, and put in a jar.

Some people tolerate bullshit as social grease. I cannot. Bullshit gets into my nervous system like grit. My jaw tightens. My eye twitches. Somewhere in the weather system, a raven takes off.

Then comes the sentence.

There is always a sentence.

Sometimes it stays in my head, which is best for community relations. Sometimes it escapes, and then everyone has to pretend they wanted honesty.

This is the trouble with me. I do not always say what is useful. I say what has been pacing up and down with a knife.

And yet I am not cruel by nature.

Cruelty is too lazy. Cruelty is what thick people use when wit does not arrive.

What I am is severe.

There is a difference.

Cruelty enjoys the wound. Severity points at the infection and says, “That. Stop decorating that.”

I am severe because life has not been soft, and because softness, when faked, disgusts me.

I have no patience left for adults who behave like abandoned toddlers with ring lights. I have no patience for people who call themselves empathic while leaving dents in everyone around them. I have no patience for moral cowards dressed as victims, or loud halfwits performing courage in comment sections from behind a profile picture of a dog.

This is why Facebook is dangerous for me.

Not because I cannot handle disagreement.

Because I can handle it too well.

A man should not be able to construct a closing argument from a laughing emoji. It suggests something has gone wrong in his development. Somewhere, a normal stage was missed and replaced with Hitchens, trauma, and a working knowledge of contempt.

Still, one must use what one has.

I am not stupid, though I regularly ask whether I am, because the exhausted mind likes to file abuse under enquiry.

Stupid men do not do this.

Stupid men are at peace. They buy terrible outdoor furniture, say “it is what it is,” and sleep like thieves.

I do not sleep like a thief.

I sleep like a witness.

This is also why I am not relaxing company at parties, though to be fair, parties have done very little to earn my support. I can enjoy people in small doses, especially if they are honest, funny, wounded but not theatrical, and do not use the word “journey” unless discussing a train.

But give me a room full of smug adults, cheese, wine, and phrases like “reaching out,” and I begin to understand why monks lived on rocks.

I am not antisocial.

I am socially allergic.

There is a difference.

The truth is, I became this way honestly. Not nobly. Not heroically. Honestly.

Too many years of watching people confuse noise with depth. Too many years of being misread by people who skimmed the cover and reviewed the book. Too many years of being told to soften the sentence so the guilty could sit more comfortably.

No.

Some sentences are not cushions.

Some sentences are furniture with corners.

That is what I make.

Cornered furniture.

I also know I am ridiculous. This may be my saving feature.

I know there is something absurd about a man walking the dog while internally delivering a speech that would make a corrupt minister resign. I know there is something comic about turning a minor slight into a philosophical inquiry with weather imagery. I know I can sound like a haunted professor, a tired boxer, and a man who has seen too much at the garden centre.

Fine.

Let the record show I am aware of the charge.

But let the record also show that the garden centre had it coming.

I am not claiming to be easy. Easy is overrated. Easy often means empty, well-trained, or too frightened to have edges.

I have edges.

Some are useful. Some catch on things. Some probably require sanding.

But they are mine.

And at least I know where they are.

That is more than can be said for the cheerful idiots of the world, drifting about with inspirational quotes and emotional support water bottles, leaving little trails of damage behind them like glitter from a cheap birthday card.

So this is the portrait.

A difficult man in reasonable lighting.

A tired man with a working bullshit detector and poor tolerance for applause signs.

A man who loves deeply, suspects quickly, laughs darkly, writes severely, and occasionally behaves as though one more stupid sentence may require parliamentary investigation.

All within a purple haze.

Not everyone’s cup of tea.

No.

Black coffee.

Chipped mug.

Legal complaint.

Thunder in the distance.

Without supervision.

And, regrettably for everyone involved, often right