"Here's the first problem, though. If you want to start your life over, you need to move more than fifty miles away. Fifty miles is not far enough to get away from your old life, or to avoid having everyone you meet still know you as the person you were. It's not nearly far enough if you've already become famous for something you want to forget forever"
Steve Hamilton, "The Lock Artist"
Christmas time. "Mistletoe and wine" as the great Cliff Richard sang, although he went and bolloxed that up by rhyming it with, "Christian rhyme". A time for families and remembering better people and better times. I'd like to remember Ricardo Wilson and Henrik Gresdal, both sadly gone and sorely missed. I'd like to remember RCB but can't without getting knotted up inside and wondering what all that was about. Some sleepings dogs should lie, particularly when you find out they lied. I'd like to remember the moments of extreme kindness and warmth that will help make 2011 start better than 2010 finished. I'd like to remember the Enduro Boys. If better adventures were had then they weren't (yet) had by us. Cool.
Phil Mully has a DVD called Extreme Animation which includes a short film called The Conformist. A man is prepared to kill a beautiful horse and turn it into a toy on wheels just to be approved of. We all conform a bit.
A Keith Richards moment.
Politicians = People who do not answer questions but wave their arms about and make mouth noises.
At Christmas dinner today (at the rather impressive Carriage Works), traditional beef and oyster pie, I found a pearl. Fingers crossed this is a portentious sign of great success, wealth, peace, and happiness to come. Or it could be a pearl.
Life ain't always beautiful, but it's a beautiful ride.
A chance to wear said green tie, graduation on Wednesday, along with robes. I expect I will look like something either out of Underworld or Goodbye Mr Chips.
The RSM on Wimpole Street is very impressive, quite cheap to stay, has a great library, and is close enough to the heart of London that it is quite groovy. Sadly they only had green ties on this occasion.
For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me.
And what I dreaded has happened to me.
I am not at ease; nor am I quiet;
I have no rest,
For trouble comes
Job 3:25, 26
There's not medicine for everything but sometimes good advice can be as remarkable. It comes from all kinds of strange places, not just country singers, although Gary Alan is a man to turn to in hard times. Just like capture is a slow process, so is release and it's better heading gingerly off into the unknown than spinning uncontrollably, no matter how good it might feel at the time. Spinning to Cee-Lo Green, on the other hand, is to be recommended.
The slightly heavier and rounder of the comedy duo who makes up a significant portion of my convalescence does card tricks, but he works mind magic with his business cards. People seem to want to be taller and slimmer but when you have witnessed a small, myopic beachball demonstrate The Game you can safely sod the diet, the platforms, and the coloured contacts and get some cards printed. It's like Jedi mind shit without the Jedi or the mind.
Does this mean that I have become a noun, or just an acronym?
Kind of speaks for itself...keyboards do get really dirty. Do not pick your nose after pressing F6.
How relieved am I that someone else, notably a journalist at The Times, finds this way of ending an email completely ridiculous and meaningless. Now all we need is for people to stop doing it and all will be well.
How long does it take for feelings of emptiness to go, and when they do, what are you left with? Maybe John Lee Hooker has got the answer. Or maybe T.J. Hooker. Or just A. Hooker.
It's time to erase everyone's name and number from your telephone when, faced with this;
not only do you drink it, you then start sending pictures of yourself having drunk it to people on your 'phone.
If it were possible to summon up a hole in the ground that was in the business of swallowing people completely, that would have been a good time to do it. There have been a few recently, so, sorry for that.
The string of disasters, like sausages hanging from a butcher's display, keep on coming, a smile on each of their faces. My car insurance has been withdrawn because some documents seem to have got lost in the post, documents that I now need to get car insurance. I sit happily between two positions that are at odds with one another, but both keep me similarly unappointable anywhere I would rather be - too academic-not clinical enough vs not acedemic enough-too clinical. In a previous life, and probably quite often in this one, I have obviously been something of a knob-jockey and the great karmic wheel has turned, like Chuck Woolery's Wheel of Fortune, and the rubber arrow is pointing down on me. 2010 has, at the final analysis, been utter shit. If 2011 can start with amnesia that would be good.
NB The above is a mean where individual events are given a shit quotient, rather than every event having been shit. It is within us all to minimise the shittines of events that we encounter, but we cannot be responsible for the shittiness of individuals or their actions.
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands and hopes we've learnt something from yesterday.
John Wayne
"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away, know when to run."
Kenny Rogers, The Gambler.
"If there is a way for us to prevent someone from hurting both us and himself, then certainly we should do so. However, the question here is, 'What should I do with my mind once I have already been harmed?' "
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
People and places, things that once were mine,
They made me, sometimes shake me,
Are with me all the time,
You'll always be a part of me,
No matter where I am,
Learning from my history,
The boy bcomes a man.
Cheetos are probably the turkey twizzler of the crisp world but if you can find them they are fine.
"Humans are not made to be mere shadows and echoes and residues." John Piper.
Outside my window there is a new statue. One might wonder if the money for the statue might really have been better spent paying for a student or someone's promotion. Pretty is good, but as we're just about to bin the Ark Royal and receive a rumoured 70% less financial support for higher education teaching we might be sending the wrong message. Interestingly it is of a naked man running away. I know how he feels.
Despite what the nice lady at the checkout said this morning, Asda's Cherries and Berries drink is not really nice, it's just ok. That is, however, simply my opinion, there are no plans to start a religion.
In a cruel twist of fate I get homesick when I come home. No idea where that leaves me. Probably with an ulcer.
Saying yes more often hasn't yet led to enormous wealth in £s but certainly in experiences. Standing on the pit wall at Donnington whilst Ginettas roar by is amazingly powerful. Thank you Reflex Racing.
My view of someone pulling out of their right-hand lane into my left-hand lane and twatting me seems to be equally understood as a whiplash-provoking case of me undertaking when they're in the left lane turning left. At least by the people making an insurance claim against me for them hitting me. It's so completely true that it depends on your perspective.
You can listen as carefully as you want but if people aren't saying what they mean is it worth the effort?
Everything does not happen for a reason from the point of view of there being a grand plan, so it might be best not to go looking for explanations that make any sense and accept that there's chaos, stupidity, cruelty along with beauty, love, and light. It's a journey. It's not where we go.
Sometimes things change for you faster than your mind can manage. Or they seem to. You just didn't know that they were changing, in the background, all along. It could be that you didn't notice, but equally perhaps the signs were hidden and as you've carried on, never aware that there was a fork in the road and you went one way and something else went the other. Maybe it was a wheel and when it became apparent that your journey was becoming unsteady you'd gone so far, with the wheel running parallel and then who knows, disappearing on its own journey, that it was too far to go back and get it. You still tried because it's good to have all your wheels. Eventually you're faced with having to accept that your MGBGT has to become a Robin.