This ain't something else
Me: That bit of work we were going to do? We’re not going to get time.
Colleague 1: Why not?
Me: Too busy. Sorry.
Colleague 1: I understand. It’s OK. We’re all fighting fires.
Me: And some of us are getting burned.
Colleague 2: I’m throwing petrol on mine.
Colleague 1: Hello
Colleague 2: It’s the fin thing. You know the fin thing? The fin. Fin. We need to know about um ?
Colleague 1: You know it would help us a lot if you spoke English when you came over.
Colleague 2: The fin.
Me: I think he wants us to follow him.
Surrey County Show today. I love the chair in the background, like he’s chucked down indignantly a copy of the Mail on Sunday to come over and challenge me.
It was Katy - she made me do it, because…
I am weak and powerless against the attraction of memes.
I want things that make my life easier, or until then the realisation that my life is already very easy.
I wish I could turn invisible at will, could fly and I never have to sleep. And put on about 40 pounds, but I eat like a horse and remain a spritely wisp.
I hate reality tv and humidity.
I love rivers and many things besides. (New York, Asus2, Maseratis, pannacotta, the smell before it rains, tigers, November, dawn)
I miss the deep snows they had when I was growing up.
I fear cockroaches.
I hear harmonies in stupid things. I used to work in an office where my phone’s busy signal produced the most amazing harmony with the dialtone of colleague’s phone across the room which was always on speaker. This was made better by the fact that is was often infrequent and seldom expected. It used to give me goosebumps - but it was incredible. I never mentioned this to anyonein the office, of course, for fear of looking wierd; preferring instead for boffins to invent the internet where I would share it with millions of people some years later.
I wonder what will happen to church attendances over the next 50 years.
I regret often following up sincerity with a swift footnote of cynicism. It doesn’t offset the fact that can be honest and kind and I should just let the good vibes linger out there. But…
I am not the happy outgoing sort. I am generally a melancholy fellow who laughs a lot because I’m looking for the bright side.
I dance like Fred Flintstone. And given that, rarely.
I sing OK, but not great. I write songs, but I don’t have the time to do the whole band thing as much as I would like, so what the hell. I can write a decent tune and I have a good ear.
I cry sometimes when other people do. It never helps.
I am not always paying attention. I can wander off in thought.
I make with my hands pumpkin, ricotta and walnut ravioli that would make you doubt whether you have lived.
I write lots and easily. I find it hard not to write. It is the easiest thing in the world for me to do. Keeping a blog isn’t a commitment to me any more than walking.
I confuse dishwashers with washing machines when I’m talking about domestic things.
I should sleep more, but I seem to operate fine on 6 hours a night tops. I should also throw away my cigars.
I start the day with a cold steely gaze, square off to fate and say “right, what have you got?” Only joking, same as everyone else, I guess, one foot in front of the other.
I finish with a whiskey, usually.
—
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Right - new webstie. Hello. Looks like the old webstie. Yeah, I know, I’m working on it. If changing web hosting domains was like moving house, right now I’d be unpacking the kettle and dialling for the pizza man, so bear with me. Pull up a box.
It needs a little TLC, but it’s in a good neighbourhood. It’s roomy, plus I can redecorate. I want to put some decent navigation over there (points left), maybe add catagories. I might even put in some subsections, just like proper websties. Oh, and I get my own email.
Anyway, leave comments just like before and if you could update your links that would be cool too.
I have always lived near rivers and they have always held some mystery for me. I don’t know why, but I really like them and the path to my heart is lined with steep muddy banks.
When I was eleven or twelve, I started collecting stones from rivers. It’s a weird time in anyone’s life - I didn’t get the idea from anywhere, but I gather a bunch from the places I had been or from people I knew who went somewhere. I had pebbles from the Hudson, the Volga, Seine, Liffey, Danube and the Mississippi - each had its own story I would never know.
There was a whole shelf in my room full of rocks that had sat at the bottom of rivers that in time ran through the cities built around them. Who had once skimmed them across the surface before they sank? What lovers wooed as they floated over in boats, oblivious? From which hillside tributary had this stone rolled and tumbled and grew worn and small before coming to rest in my bedroom?
It was a thinking point for me, and a project. I don’t think I ever said to any friends “Hey look - stones.” I just think it was something I enjoyed having that meant more than the thing I had. I liked that there was a personal and worldly connection with a common theme.
The idea fizzled out of course, because of lots of reasons:
1. I discovered girls and computers, at mutually exclusive intervals
2. In most cities, it’s actually hard to get down to the river’s edge and when you do there’s normally building rubble and silt between you and the ground.
3. I forgot to label them, so they got all mixed up, which kind of ruined (or maybe proved) the point of doing something like this.
So one day they I just threw them out and forgot about them.
Some years later, and I’m writing in this blog that families are like rivers and there are at least ten excellent songs about rivers and it made me remember the stones. So I wrote about them and you ended up here reading this.
The stones themselves have gone full circle. They sat around wherever for thousands of years until I came along with an idea. They were picked up and put on a shelf in my room for a bit. They were thrown out, went back to being an idea and the stones will go back to sitting around wherever for thousands of years after I go.
Maybe they had no business being out of the river in the first place.
Ah well, don’t let it spoil your weekend or pay it more mind than you have to spare. Have a good one.
OK, you got me - the Hudson is not a river. It’s a fjord, because the bed of land was ground out by glaciers which melted, leaving the rising sea level to flood the land with water. Technically, it’s arm of the Atlantic Ocean which rises and falls with the salty tide, so it’s not a river.
I also think remembering this is a signal to trigger the next thing I’m going to do online. Think of a few rivers running in their own course and a connection between them and then you’re getting close. Watch this space - June 19.
In next week: a new song, an update on my surprise return to print media and eleven handy tips to help you brighten up dark corners of your home. Plus - “Does your dog blog?” - pets who dish the dirt online. Ok, two of those are lies. I’m seriously going now. Bye. What? No, bye. Really. Stop messing about! No, you hang up first. No, you hang up. Come on hang up. Hello? Hell-ooooo-ooooo? Hello? Oh.
1. Many Rivers To Cross - Jimmy Cliff
Jimmy Cliff is overlooked as a great songwriter because he’s in a niche. It’s more a groove than a rut, though which I’ve always said is a fine line. This is a great tune. It’s a sad song that sounds happy.
2. The Theme From Easy Rider - The Byrds
Not just because of Roger McGuinn’s laconic, somnambulant voice, but because the lyrics are so plain that right before you can say “hang on, that’s stupid”, you think: “Oh. Yeah.” “The river flows. It flows to the sea. Wherever that river flows, that’s where I want to be.”
3. Moon River - Henry Mancini, lyrics Johnny Mercer
I saw my friend’s mother sing this at a school band assembly when I was a kid and I was entranced. It was everything and not too much - just enough sentimentality, sadness, pride. It’s got that ambling pace - it even sounds like a river. And the words “Huckleberry friend”??? Sheer brilliance by Johnny Mercer. Look at the lyrics for Something’s Got To Give. The man had a gift.
4. River Man - Nick Drake
It’s the dissonant strings that do it for me. The arrangement is so good with the mysterious vocals. “Betty said she prayed today - for the sky to blow away. Or maybe stay. She wasn’t sure.”
5. Up On Cripple Creek - The Band
Levon Helm has a great voice, not just because of his deep south drawl and it sounds like he doesn’t know how good he is. Plus, every man who doesn’t deserve it wants a woman like the one in this boozer’s lament. Levon is the greatest singing drummer ever, although that is in a category which includes Don Henley and Phil Collins. (Music fans NB - I do not include Karen Carpenter or Dave Grohl because they didn’t usually play drums and sing at the same time)
6. River - Joni Mitchell
I always thought Joni Mitchell piano songs were better and they get seldom more so than in this bittersweet Christmas song. Listen to it - it’s a soul song. It ain’t folk. You get the embroided embellishing Maria parts on the long vowels. And the lyrics are like Nasty Joni. “He tried hard to help me, you know he put me at ease - and he loved me so naughty, made me weak in the knees.” Damn girl. Anyway, I wish I had a river I could skate away on sometimes. Although a luge run would carry more style: “Whatever, you know. You guys do what you want. I’m off.” (Snaps down visor, whooshhhhh!!)
7. Take Me To The River - Talking Heads
Quirky intellimentals with understated syncopation and their own sound. I like the Heads, but to me they always seemed better than they sounded, hence the low rating. Sorry - I know you’re a cool band, I just don’t love you. It’s not you, it’s me.
8. Cry Me A River - Arthur Hamilton, sung by Julie London
Sweet scorned sarcasm. “Now you say you’re sorry for bein’ so untrue. Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river - I cried a river over you.”
9. The River - Bruce Springsteen
It took me all day to think of this one. The work I put in to this site.
10. River Deep, Mountain High - Ike and Tina Turner
Last place for shouting. Yeah, I noticed you. If it’s good enough, I’ll hear it just fine. Now, there are people who shout really well when they sing: Kurt Cobain, James Brown, Paul McCartney, Mary J. Blige, James Dean Bradfield, Aretha Franklin. But Tina Turner: no. It didn’t work for Shirley Bassey, it didn’t work for Harry Secombe and it’s not working for you.
When I was a kid, I thought it would be cool to be older, because I’d know how it felt to be an adult like my parents. Then I could think like they did and see the world from their perspective.
Not that I didn’t like being a kid, or lived for the future, I just wanted to see the world like they did. I think that’s why I became a journalist, because I was always interested in seeing how other people saw things, or seeing things in a new way.
Then when I did grow up (eventually), my folks older and I had left home. I moved away when I was fourteen, but every time I went back, I knew I still didn’t really see things like them, because their view of the world had changed.
“When I have kids,” I thought, “I’ll understand what they know about the world.”
But mum died before the kids were born and I kind of got how my dad felt when he became a dad, but not what he was feeling, because he had an adult son in me and I had this new baby. Also, the mother of his kids had died, so I didn’t understand life the way he did.
And I grew to I realise that I could never see the world the way my parents did because all our lives were in a constant state of change. I could never catch up with my mum and dad because they had moved on, through different times, through family situations of which I was a part, just like my son is right now. And they could never see things the way I could while my life was different from theirs.
And there’s the understanding - that we will never see things the same because we can never be the same. Trying to experience things exactly like your parents is like trying to cross the same river twice. Families move on just the same - they have their patterns, but they are in a constant state of flux. Even if they seem familiar, they only follow a plotted course, and the contents are ever-changing.
It’s also comforting to know that your kids will never totally understand you. I’m bearing that in mind for when they become teenagers.
Tell you what was weird. Living at home in my early twenties after having lived away for so many years. My parents and I had a pretty normal and healthy relationship but despite that, it was weird suddenly being adults in the same house as people. It took some adjustment, but I’d rather have to deal with adjusting my relationships with my parents than to have lived a sheltered life and have to suddenly adjust to dealing with the world.
But yeah. You absolutely can not ever go home again any more than you can climb the same tree.
More reasons why families are like rivers:
1. They usually take the path of least resistance
2. The bigger they become, the more scary they get
3. You wouldn’t want to walk into an unfamiliar one without a big stick
4. Given enough time, they can wear down anything
5. They make excellent settings for novels
Over the last three days I:
1. I wrote an article for a magazine, which is considering publishing it
then
2. Went for a walk in Burnham Beeches with the kids while Wife was busy
where I
3. Met a nice lady just back from Tibet (she mentioned it, I didn’t say anything, I swear!)
so I
4. Decided I should be nicer to strangers
and on the way to work the next day
5. Saw a woman who dropped a twenty pound note and walked away while it blew down the road
so I
6. Walked after it, chased her and gave her the money
she looked for a second, then said thanks, so I
7. I smiled and I said “Have a really good day.”
which would have seemed insincere but when someone give you twenty quid and says something, they probably mean it.
I also put up a shed in the rain, but there’s no connection there.
But “Have a really good day“??? I never say that.
I think I’m beginning to talk and act like everything is a blog entry. Can any other long-time bloggers confirm this? It seems to sit ok, though.
Son, 6, is playing with his Transformers and Star Wars Lego, off in a world of his own. His Tranformers were doing a stand-up routine, telling knock-knock jokes featuring bums and poo.
But the Star Wars Lego had more pressing business.
Him (matter of factly, in a Star Wars Lego voice): “Can you help me please? Somebody shot my baby.”
Me: “Son! Please play nice!”
Him: “It’s just a game they’re playing.”
Them. The toys. Like it has nothing to do with him and bottom gags and Tranformicide are sweeping the nation’s playgrounds.
—
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The best Eurovision song ever was Soldiers of Love, the Belgian entry from 1987. During the chorus, which went “soldiers of love… soldiers of love“, two guys in combat fatigues raised their guitars above their heads and then lowered them to thrust them downwards in stabbing bayonet movements while dollybirds danced around them in dramatic self-abandon.
It came eleventh, in front of a disappointed home crowd, beaten (of course) by Ireland’s Hold Me Now in first, just ahead of runner-up Germany’s Lass die Sonne in Dein Herz (trans: “I left my child in your rental car”).
I inject this levity to ease into the startling and embarrassing revelation that Boathouse Row was entered to be a contender for this year’s competition. It’s a long story, but I heard it on the grapevine (little songwriter’s joke there - ha ha!) that Malta was looking for a tune, so I sent it in.
They rejected it.
So when you hear the Maltese entry, spare a thought that someone could have been up there singing a bittersweet nostalgic song about me moving home instead of the The Maltese Falco or The Bozo From Gozo singing Bong Banga Bong Bingo or whatever it is they chose instead.
Familiarity is a weird thing - you don’t pick up on things around you until you notice them.
What I mean is this:
You meet someone with a wonderful name, and then suddenly you start hearing and seeing that name around, but you know it’s always been there, you’ve just had no reason to notice it before.
Another example is that someone tells you they’ve bought one a certain make of car. “Yeah,” you say, “I think I’ve seen those around.” You recall spotting one, but you’re not sure where or how long ago it was. Then on the way home, you see three of them.
I think there’s more at work here than market forces. Your friend may have bought the car under the same influence as the other people snapping them up, like advertising and fashion, but I think it’s your own mindfulness changing your perception of the world around you. By paying attention to the things you make an emotional connection with, your experience of the world changes.
The next time you have pancakes, really notice them. Or the smell of wet grass, - ooooh: the wheels on your car - make a link between yourself, what’s going on and stuff out there. You’re changing the world.
Speaking of quirks, I’ve always wondered (and will probably never know) why people like different landscapes. Me, I like stillness. Tundra, preferably, but I’ll take anything simple. I like the mystery or it, throw in some fog and I’m in heaven. Swamps are ok, too. Don’t get me started on Spanish moss. Deserts are OK, but I don’t really like the heat. Rolling hills have stillness and are good, like Wiltshire or the Wye Valley.
My friend Chris and Iain - they’re mountain nuts. Or my mate Ali and the sea. I like mountains as much as the next guy, but being surrounded by water? I’m not feeling it, unless you mean an island. Islanders are generally very nice people. But then so are people who live in swamps and tundra.
My neighbours are crazy about jungles and searing heat. Brazil, Belize: places like that and they are welcome to them. And some folks just like cities. I got to admit cities are cool. New York, Paris. London.
There’s no explanation for any of it. It makes you think about past lives or something. Why should I, a bloke not raised near any of these landscapes, want to spend time in them?
Also, what the fuck am I talking about? Dinosaurs, Buddhism, musical spoonerisms, the best high hat playing (Walking on the Moon, hands down) - and I’m getting more traffic on this site than ever before. Maybe these are quirks. Me for writing this and you for reading.
I promise you more than this. In the next few weeks I’m going to start something that’s going to run for a few weeks, beginning on June 19 and I hope you’ll find it fun to follow. More later, but I’ve started roping in some writers, the likes of whom rock.
Reading back the last two paragraphs, you know, it’s important to have self-doubt and belief in healthy measures. If you have too little of either, then you start getting into trouble.
But yeah. More later. Big things.
Speaking of which, update your bookmarks to http://www.thisisthis.org while flashes turn into plans.*
(…and Jimmy James by The Beastie Boys pops up on from shuffle as I end this, and the bus pulls up, leaving me with nothing more to do than walk to work like I’m ten feet tall.)
Also, on the way here, every pedestrian crossing light turned green as soon as I walked up. That’s six lights, y’all, in all. Big things, I’m telling you.
*Also, it’s best to go when you start quoting The Waterboys.
Millions of years ago, the ornithocheirus flew across the Atlantic Ocean to mate before it died. It was a pterosaur, and a big one, with a wingspan of 12 metres. Heavy, too. Although the ocean was only a few hundred miles across in those days, it was a long way for him - unlike feathered birds today who can flap their wings, this dinosaur sort of glid.
In order for him to make the journey safely, he would wait until the summer and fly low, catching the warm summer thermals just above the waves, just like a glider uses updrafts on a warm and still day. Without this warm air, the ornithocheirus would not have made the journey and they would not have mated or made their way back to the embryonic European continent.
The ornithocheirus knew nothing of updrafts and thermals, they didn’t exactly work out the physics of the best time to set out to mate.
And they didn’t see others fail and drown in the icy winter ocean just over the horizon, so they didn’t learn by observation.
They must have just thought simply, “I don’t like the cold, I’ll fly now because it’s warm” and by coincidence they survived. Natural selection’s good like that. There may have been other flying dinosaurs that loved the cold weather, but every time they set out on the waves they were never seen again.
So by some quirk of behaviour, or a dislike of flying in cold weather, they set out in the summer, made it to the other shore and mated where the climate was mild enough and food was plentiful enough for their offspring to survive. Offspring which, as luck would also have it, found their wings just as it became warm enough for them to make their maiden flight back across the ocean in the following summer.
And so they survived, all because of a quirk.
Vive la difference, literally.
Maybe that’s why lots of people have weird things about them, that they behave in certain different ways and do things without rhyme or reason. Or at least we don’t see a reason until it emerges as their saving grace and then it fits with hindsight.
Of course, I’m still waiting to see what the use is in the things I do or say that don’t make sense, but I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with thermals.
There’s a guy on my bus who lets women go first. All the time. He’s a Yorkshireman: dry Northern wit, always says hello, got a million jokes about the rain - nice guy.
If there are any women behind him waiting for the bus, he lets them go first. Nice guy, like I said. But. I have mixed feelings because he actually gets to the bus stop really early. And by that I mean before me.
So, if you get to my stop late and you are female, you’ll get a seat (and probably a spare) to yourself. If you get there early and you are male, you’ll be sitting next to someone, cramped up, possible hitting them with you left elbow as you write a blog entry on it on the way to work.
There is nothing I can do or say about it though without looking bad. But lately some women shelter in their husband’s cars across the street from the bus stop and get out when the bus arrives, and breeze through in front of Sir Waits A Lot.
What do you do when other people’s kindness is disrespectful to you. Does respect matter? Should I wait in the rain and be thankful for his kindness?
I spoke at my daughter’s school this morning. I’m sitting here writing this in a garage (new laptop, go me, new laptop, how you doin’) while they put new tires on my car. I thought I would get them changed while I had a day off. Kill two birds with one stone. Not literally - that would be wrong. Unless they were tofu birds, maybe. Actually - bean-curd animals? That’s not right.
“So who here has a pet?” I ask.
The room bristles with little arms. I’ve been asked to talk about Buddhism to my daughter’s class or five and six year olds. It’s Vesak, the day Buddhists celebrate the birth, enlightenment and passing of Buddha.
They talk a little bit about their pets, except for one little man who wants to tell me about his Power Rangers.
“And what do you do to look after your pets?” I ask.
“I stroke my cat. He’s called Jet,” says a girl with pigtails.
“I have four pets and I sometimes feed them,” says the boy, who is also wearing a Power Rangers t-shirt.
Me: “And when you’re kind to them, they’re nice back to you, aren’t they?”
Nods and shuffles.
“And say you’ve had a bad day and you’re grumpy and it’s raining outside and you’re stuck in the house and your bored and there’s nothing on Ceebeebies. And you’re so grumpy that your pet comes up to you and you push him away. How does your pet feel?”
“Grumpy,” says one.
“Sad,” says another forlornly.
“Well, that’s karma,” I say and explain a bit about how kindness brings good things and being harmful brings sadness.
“I was walking my friend’s dog and I was being nice and it bit me,” says Pigtails.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, a little stumped.
There’s a brief silence before it hits me: “When the dog did something mean, that hurt you and you didn’t want to play with it any more.”
She nods.
“And that made both of you sad. Your friend’s dog has to remember to be kind to you, too. ”
She smiles.
You know some days where you just keep rolling sixes? I swear today is one of those.
“So is it better to be happy or sad?” I ask.
There’s a chorus of “HAPPY!!!!!”
“And it’s hard to be kind all the time, but on Vesak we remember to be nice because for all living things, everything we do, everything we say and everything we think can make other people sad or happy.”
A gleam of perfect and gappy smiles is my cue to dive for the props and show them pictures of temples and monks. The kids pass around the prayer flags and mala beads while I talk about kindness and fumble them during their turns on the meditation stool.
The teacher asks my daughter and me about the flags and where they go in our house. “By the window,” she says.
I’m halfway between my (probably annoying) informative voice and the one I use to talk to my daughter. It’s hard to find a tone when a grown up asks both you and your little kid something, but I say: “You have to set them up where they can blow in the wind.”
Daughter and teacher nod at each other in slightly different ways.
It’s gone well, including the story of Buddha’s life. Prince meets girl, prince gets married, prince sees sad/sick people, prince leaves girl, prince finds a way to end human suffering. (Actually, it’s about the acceptance of suffering, but, hey - they’re five.)
I didn’t know it until this morning, but being applauded by a group of five year olds while your kid beams at you is one of the best feelings you can have.
The teacher asks the class what they could do to be kind and the kids suggest sharing sweets with people who don’t have them, helping mum and dad with washing up and keeping their rooms clean.
“And that will make your mums and dads happy and they will be nicer to you,” I say.
Wife banned me from telling the ice-cream impermanence story (eat the ice-cream, nothing lasts but you can enjoy it). “Keep it light,” she said, and she was right, so after the talk they colour in thankas (wall-hangs with Buddhas and symbols like eternal knots on them)
While they were drawing I walked around the classroom and they kept running up to show me their drawings.
The boy from before asks me: “Is playing Power Rangers a kind thing to do?”
He had mentioned that he was going round his friend’s house that night. He looks worried that he might not be able to play because I’ve been talking about how today is a day we have to be kind.
Me: “Hmmm - Space Patrol Delta or Dinothunder?”
Boy: “Dinothunder.”
Me: “No, you’re fine there.” I screw up nose and nod at him. I do the ruffly hair thing that dads do. “So long as you play kindly.”
He smiles and goes back to colouring.
Afterwards, the teacher, her assistants and I clean up and put the chairs away while the kids put their drawings in their bags and head out to play.
I’m putting my stuff in the box when teacher picks up the wooden statue of Buddha. “Where do you keep this in your house?”
Me: “Oh, that goes by the back window.”
Teacher: “And is there a significance to that?”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “It looks good there.”
She smiles and I smile back.
And that’s it. Lots of nods and smiles. A happy day.
—
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A reality TV show in which B-List celebrities guide a panel of pop star plane crash survivors across an island, answering music questions while being chased by a polar bear.
Stolen from Bonnie. Put your i-pod on shuffle, ask some random questions and hit play. It’s kind of a Magic 8 Ball divination thing, but it fits in your pocket. And NO, you can’t just pick cool songs, you have to accept whatever come up. The questions are up to you, but no cheating.
What’s holding me back, right now?
Song: The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin
Lyrics:
I felt the coldness of my winter. I never thought it would ever go.
I cursed the gloom that set upon us. But I know that I love you so.
Meaning:
I know I don’t always do things that make everyone happy, but life’s not easy and you have to do difficult things sometimes. Doesn’t mean you don’t card. Do hard things kindly and for the greater good.
How has the last year been?
Song: Lithium Sunset - Sting
Lyrics:
I’ve been scattered,
I’ve been shattered,
I’ve been knocked out the race, but I’ll get better.
I feel your light upon my face.
Meaning: Optimism. A bit of bloody-mindedness, but you can’t have one without the other.
How would others describe me?
Song: Some Might Say - Oasis
Lyrics:
Some might say we will find a brighter day.
Some might say we will find a brighter day.
Meaning: Don’t know. Ask them.
But nearer the truth, it’s��
Song: Riding On A Railroad - James Taylor
Lyrics:
From time to time I tire of the life that I’ve been leading town to town, day by day.
There’s a man up here who claims to have his hand upon the reigns but there are chains upon his hands and he’s riding upon a train.
Meaning: I’m afraid that means exactly what it says.
What’s in store for the rest of the year?
Song: Would Not Be Denied - Buffalo Tom
Lyrics:
If not for innocence, my guilt would stop right here.
I’m living all my life in the span of just one year.
My mouth’s a hurricane and something inside just died.
I’d always just assumed my evil would subside.
Could I have been mislead? Could you have misread?
Please don’t punish me for things I have not said.
Meaning: Plenty of blogging mishaps.
What’s the one thing I need to do most?
Song: 4:41 (Sexual Revolution) - Roger Water
Lyrics:
So please hold my hand as we stumble through the maze
And remember girl, nothing can grow without rain.
Meaning: See Led Zeppelin.
MEANING: The thing that’s holding me back is also thing I most need to do.
Finally, how would you like to be remembered?
Song: Let Me Hear You Call My Name - Ray Charles
Lyrics:
Baby, let me hear you call my name.
Baby, let me hear you call my name.
Well if you keep that up pretty baby,
Well you’ll drive your brain insane.
Meaning: No idea. Interesting that it picked a guy who recently died though.
On this very same topic, I’m going to propose a Ringtone Magna Carta, which will proclaim “one ringtone for all mobiles throughout the whole realm.”
For more of this and better, visit English Ranter.
These days, everyone is different. Actually, wants something different for everyone one. Actually, these days, everyone is the same.
When I was a kid, you walked into someone’s house and the TV was over there and the stereo was over there. I’m talking 25 years ago, not ages. Twenty five years before that, if you walked into someone’s house, the TV was there and the stereo was - ok no stereos but you played your records over there.
But now you walk into someone’s house and you need a lesson from the occupant about how everything works.
“The TV is hooked up the DVD player through this box. If you want to watch a video, just turn in on and hit that button. Oh, and put it on channel ten. If you want to record anything it goes through the red box unless you’re taping satellite in which case come off channel ten and hit this button.”
“The TV and everything goes through the sound system. You can’t listen to the stereo and watch TV at the same time. If you want to listen to actual CDs, you have to turn the TV off. Except we don’t have CDs. Dock the i-pod into the TV and run that through the stereo.”
“The computer controls everything. Except the phone. If you want to use the phone you have to put the TV on channel ten and talk through that. Apart from long distance calls - they all go through the computer using this headset and instant messenger.”
Who would want to be a babysitter any more?
It used to be: “TV’s there, here’s the name of the restaurant, we’ll be back by ten.”
The amount of options and customisation makes me really anxious. It used to be that if your TV didn’t work, then it meant your TV needed fixing. Right now my TV is flickering when I play DVDs. It could be one of the two scart leads, or the scart splitter, or the DVD player, or any of the five sockets that the signal goes through to get to the TV. Or it could be that my TV needs fixing. But in order to establish if my TV needs fixing, I have to check if any of the leads are faulty and that means bypassing everything bit by bit, because the TV repair guy will tell me: “It could be your lead or your splitter.”
I feel like sending everything back, every component and appliance and giving them all each other’s numbers and writing a stern letter to each, saying: “Well, something’s fucked. You guys sort it out and get back to me.”
Last weekend my dad’s broadband connection went on the fritz. It could have been a phone line problem, an ISP problem, a computer problem, a cable problem, a modem problem or a wireless router problem. So again with the bypassing diagnosis, which took nearly an hour of calls and uninstalls and bypasses and reinstalls to discover that, yep, it was a phone line problem.
Life’s not easier, it’s just that there is more choice.
Do less. Look at your day.
1. Make breakfast with radio on. Five Live (AM News station) because am reception is better in the kitchen on the portable radio, which I have to keep close and quiet so as not to wake up the family.
2. Take breakfast into living room, watch Sky News (24 hour channel) and GMTV (middle England human interest).
3. Write on the bus on the way to work (normally this) and listen to podcast (France Inter’s Humeur Vagabonde)
4. At work, glance through 7 newspapers while watching TV and checking headlines on wires and news websites.
5. Meetings meetings meetings.
6. News on TV in the evening, then possibly phone calls.
It’s a buttload of media.
It takes some doing, believe me. You have to be smart enough to understand the flow of information but stupid enough to think it’s important.
But plenty of rain, and as one colleague stands around in a raincoat at lunch time, Bored Colleague walks up to my desk.
Bored Colleague: “Are you going out for lunch at all today?”
Me: “I’m not sure I am. I’m dead busy now. I might in a bit, though, yeah.”
I glance over at colleague lingering behind him in the raincoat.
Bored Colleague: “Great - can I borrow your coat?”
Me: “Um.”
Bored Colleague: “Thanks man, mine got absolutely soaked this morning. You’re a lifesaver.”
He puts of my coat and walks off with the other guy.
Tibetans believe that luck is definite quality. Like strength or skill, everyone has it - to varying degrees. You can improve upon what luck you possess by altering your circumstances, but basically you’ve got a “luck count” and you go from there.
I don’t know about me, but I get the coincidences, as regular readers may know. While I was on holiday last month I was thinking, of all things, about Anne of Green Gables. It was a childhood favourite of Wife. I hasten to add that this was a long time ago and she is no a child bride, though her age is of little import. The term “little import” does not have anything to do with how we met.
“Is Anne of Green Gables,” I was wondering, “available on DVD? That would win me some Brownie points.”
I hasten to add that is has been many years since Wife was in the Brownies, and I use this term purely figuratively.
Anyway, the next (fucking) morning I turn on the TV and Anne of Green Gables is on in Spanish. I don’t know, Jaunita de los Gablas Verdes or something, but you have to admit that’s another coincidence.
Not a conversaton involving ice creams, but one which took place this weekend when ice creams were being had.
Father in law (over ice creams bought by me from the ice cream van man): “One pound for a Flake 99 - that’s not bad.”
Me: “Sure, they start out cheap, but it’s early Spring.”
Brother in law: “Yeah, the first one’s always cheap.”
Me: “He’s right, before you know if you’re on the Fabs.”
Brother in law: “Sure it starts out as a bit of fun - Twisters, maybe a Solero, but then you’re going, ‘Got any Zooms man?’ ”
Me: “And by mid-summer you’re forking out twenty quid for a Funny Feet, pretending like you don’t have a problem.”
or:
Musical Spoonerisms than Still Make Sense (If You Change The Spellings A Bit)
Mob Barley
Jesus and Chair Remain
Mob Bold
Vans Vision Tramp
When at Merc
Blue T and the Ho Fish
Firth Wind and Ire
The Gay Giles Band
Lay Ming Flips
Dials Mavis
Ja Led Ones
WeBitched
Spruce Brings Teen
Cleric Apton
The Crack Blows
Fucks Bizz
And Ones That Don’t But Are Still Funny
Rhianne Limes
Ronnie Bait
Sheargal Farkey
Lianne Rhymes
Style Council
Posh Spice
Happy Mondays
Randy Newman
Joan Armstrading
Bob Marley and the Whalers
(Third) World Party
(Paramilitary) Wings
Rehab Sprout
Ali Fuck A Tory
Nude Model Army
Sultans of Ping CFC
Heard the one about the dyslexic Native American?
They buried his knee at Wounded Heart.
Sorry.
Both my kids have normal colour vision. They think it’s funny that I don’t, and I think it’s funny that they do, and they totally understand that red and green, to me, are a concept.
In spiritual terms, I’m a colour agnostic. Red and green may exist and I’m sure that other people are certain that they do, but I couldn’t swear on it.
If I were a colour atheist, and you said: “Don’t be stupid, you have your red, you have your green - I can see it, it’s right there!” then I would say “No it’s not. You can’t prove it, so I’m telling you that you can’t see it.” But that’s not good.
Or, if I were a true colourist believer, I might say, “I am certain that red and green exist, because that is what we are taught and that is what millions of people believe, and so be it.” And I’m not sure that’s the right thing either.
But really, whether or not I believe in a distinction between red or green makes no difference to the possibility that they may not exist or not. Things will still continue to be how they are.
Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with a mystery. Ignorance is bliss and there is a certain wisdom in not knowing - and comfort in the acceptance of insecurity.
Sometimes, just sometimes I surprise myself.
A woman in the office helping me to understand the colour coded charts. I am colourblind. Hello.
I explained this, and after the initial questions (”Oooh what colour is this then?”) followed by slow-blinking, deadpan, incredulous and silent response from me, she started explaining what each colour meant, like it would help me actually see them.
“Red - ” she said, “that means you are not hitting the targets.”
I swear she was slowing down her speech.
“Green, right?” she explained thoughtfully, “That means that you are hitting your targets. That’s what green means.”
You can’t explain green to someone who doesn’t know what it is. It’s not like a language you can teach someone.
“You realise you’re explaining sunflowers to an Eskimo,” I said. Every so often I can say things which do more than I meant them to do.
She smiled out of character, like a kid this time, where the eyebrows go up and the mouth stays closed. It’s a delightful, restrained, grateful, desert-menu smile.
