“For well you know that it's a fool, Who plays it cool, By making his world, A little colder”

"No le gusta caminar. No puede montar a caballo
Como se puede bailar? Es un escandolo"



That's it!
A rite de passage - I've had to finally put on the central heating!
Tonight's plan - a bottle of wine, listen to a lot of music and.... er that's about it really (oh, probably a tad wallowing, a soupçon of soul searching, and a hint of "where did it all go wrong?").

Oh later I expect to be miserable but toasty warm - plus I expect my gas meter to be spinning faster than the large hadron collider (but since that is currently off line , that won't be hard, but you get the joke I imagine, you pedantic sods! - I haven't had that drink yet, by the way)

Kirsty MacColl - incredibly only 41 when she was killed! I love her music !

“Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame.” - William Shakespeare

I am very sad (in all senses).

(much later - Idiot, whilst slicing a bagel, I forgot to stop and went right through my finger - ouch! That was my mouse hand too! - this sentence took a long time to type)

“I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.”

"In a manner of speaking
Semantics won't do
In this life that we live
We only make do"

Last night I went to bed early which for me, as I'm sure you know, is very atypical. It was cold , I felt a little under the weather, I was actually tired from a quite busy Sunday tending to the sick, plus I was struck by a dreadful immobilising funk.
Sadly Barbaras energising influence on me is long gone, she really could keep me feeling good, not only about myself but pretty much everything.
I'd hoped that I would awaken today with a new perspective, and renewed optimism! What do you think?
I'm actually on holiday too, but I think I enjoy looking forward to it almost as much as taking it (or should that be wasting it?) tangentially I cannot believe the drop in temperature just over the past 24 hours, it's only 17 degrees in here at the moment, it was only a week ago that it was 21 !

Look at me, how cliched can you get - the world sees the English as obsessing over the weather and feeling miserable - Join our club!

Why be prejudiced against anyone because of their race or nationality or creed... when there're so many real reasons to hate others? - Emo Philips

"Conscience keeps more people awake than coffee"

"We came down from the north
Blue hands and a torch
Red wine and food for free
A possibility"

This is the first Saturday I've had off in ages. I thought I'd try a car boot sale, I drove out to where I thought it was but simply couldn't find it! So I instead went to the town centre - as you may remember, I've made this mistake before!

Saturday afternoon in this place is a nightmare, a human ooze, moving around primarily by osmosis, and strangely almost all dressed the same, or at least in several distinct sub castes (er no, caste implies an hierarchy, maybe species would be a better term?).

We are having, a last, a touch of an Indian Summer, and although not hot, it is very pleasant. That of course gives everyone one last excuse to get the summer clothes out and about. Shorts , vest tops, shorts (it's nearly October! what are you thinking?). Oh well they all seemed happy (but I suspect like most of us were completely miserable underneath).

Oh, did I mention we got our very own Starbucks? (what? only one you say? there were at least 50 in downtown Vancouver alone, well maybe 20). This city is very much a backwater, we look up to Mos Eisley, and that Starbucks looks so out of place, tucked away between the sportswear and pound shops. The strange thing is it's always full. The place is not exactly cheap, lets be honest. The "type" occupying it's strangely ready worn sofas, are the usual suspects I'm afraid, Students from the local University (silly thing to say really of course they are from the local University, what other university would they be from? - rambling). and the dreaded teenagers, usually with those rather silly floppy hats that make them look like a french revolutionary in skinny jeans and a Ramones T-Shirt. Interestingly Starbucks has placed itself right next door (it's all indoors so you can literally lean around and look in) to an established Coffee Shop that serves a less poncey clientele. That says a lot about Starbucks I suppose , it's less refreshment (at least here) and more about making that £5 cup of coffee last all afternoon, and hopefully getting spotted by that goth girl you fancy.

“When I wake up in the morning, I just can't get started until I've had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Oh, I've tried other enemas...” - Emo Philips

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery”

"Imagine me and you I do
I think about you day and night
It's only right
To think about the girl you love
And hold her tight"

I'm not really looking forward to my holiday next week (that time off work, other than the overnight in Glasgow, I have nothing planned except some vigorous housework). It just reminds me of other times, and other places.

Remember the pre-digital music age? When I was a boy, you bought an LP and listened to it. Then you listened to it again, and again and again and again . You had to make a choice how to spend your hard earn cash, pick an album and go to an actual shop (imagine that youngsters!) and buy it !
At home you listened to side one, you turned it over after 5 or 6 songs (how quaint) and listened to side two. You did this until the music was ingrained into your Psyche, so much so that even 20 years later my subconscious can predict the opening of the next track , Pavlovian style, without being actually mindful of what it actually is. Artists planned the order of the tracks, and the sum of the parts was often greater than the whole. Often the album was intended to be listened to in an holistic manner, not as a series of individual songs.
This process started to erode with the greatest hits albums, the coming of CD (with it's titchy artwork - remember the visual splendour of a 12" lp with a gatefold sleeve eh?) and finally the ipod shuffle feature. When I buy a new CD (and I still do) I rip the tracks, and sometime later one will pop up on my ipod. sometime after that another one might.
The album as "a whole" has been lost, reduced to individual displaced songs.

I don't seem to have a real point save venting some middle aged ramblings.

Must go to bed now, though hopefully no nightmares tonight!

“In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in the dark wood where the true way was wholly lost” - Dante Alighieri (again)

"I will let you down, I will make you hurt "

“It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books”*

"You should see me when you're not around,
I'm a genius in this town"


It's bloody freezing!

Post number 399 I notice. Never has so little been said to so few, for so long (oh it started well, but lost it's way a little - hang on, that's my adult life isn't it?).

A totally unremarkable day, which makes me commenting on it all the more strange. Nevertheless.

I maybe should have mentioned, I had a bit of physiotherapy last week. For the past month or so, since an incident at work actually, my left arm has been going numb, sort of like a "dead leg" if you know what I mean. It's associated with movements away from the body, like reaching up. or to the side, and can lead to hilarious consequences! (especially when driving - ha ha!). Nothing serious I'm told, but very annoying, and perhaps another sign of the wear and tear of middle age (oh woe is me!)

I really, really like Shakespear's Sister (sic), Siobhan Fahey seemed/seems like a total fruitcake, and still releasing excellent dance music I believe.

“It is only the wisest and the stupidest that cannot change.” - Confucius

*Voltaire

“If I had a rose for every time I thought of you, I'd be picking roses for a lifetime.” - Swedish Proverb

"So don't ask me if I think it's true,
That communication can bring hope to those,
Who have gone their separate ways,
It hardly touched me when it should have then,
But memories are uncertain friends,
When recalled by messages"


I spent way too much on eBay today! I have been buying up all my favourite music, and missing divorce albums for the past few months. In fact I've hardly bought a DVD, my usual passion. Back to eBay, I always set myself a limit, but this one album , (which is really hard to find outside of Japan, or maybe specialist shops, and then again only for big bucks!!) I had to have. By the standards of you regular folk, who think nothing of slapping down ten of your pounds for a new release in one of those shop places, it was nowt, but to Scrooge McDuck here, well it was a momentary guilt trip , which I'm clearly not over!

I finally bit the bullet and booked myself a little break. I have two weeks off soon, which originally I'd planned on spending happily in Canada (oh no! that's got me feeling rather sad again... by which I mean VERY sad...)
It's hardly Alan Whicker I know, only one night in Glasgow, and completely alone, but by my standards, that practically makes me an international playboy!
I've always wanted to go to Glasgow, but I could never quite persuade my ex-wife.
I love Scotland, well at least the notion of it (in fact if Scotland ever declares independence from the UK I hope it can take us with it! I'm physically much closer to Edinburgh here than much of the Highlands are!!
I simply want to see the Glaswegian Architecture, experience some of it's fine art history and culture, and look at things in shops I can't afford (that's the things not the shops, although obviously both are technically unaffordable to me). I had a good friend a very long time ago, who hailed from there, I think that's where it started!

Plus I can finally wander the streets of Glasgow listening to The Blue Nile on my iPod, as Paul Buchanan surely intended.

I hope I can get organised and plan an itinerary for the all too short time I'm there. I'm actually staying in a four star hotel! I suspect the fact it has free wireless, will mean I sit in bed bemoaning the exact same woes I express here so often, let's see eh?

“He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart” - C.S. Lewis

“It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious.”

"From a late night train
Reflected in the water
When all the rainy pavement
Lead to you
It's over now
I know it's over
But I can't let go"

Oh joy! Walking out of work tonight, into the cold dark north-east night, and it's raining. The insidious, don't know how wet you are 'till you get home, type of rain. Plus what shuffles it's way onto my ipod but the Blue Nile at their depressing best, still it all fits my current mood, a kind of resigned melancholy. I've concluded that my solitary existence is probably for the best, as I'm almost certainly not a very nice person, and probably too idiosyncratic for most (although I'm sure to have a new opinion very soon).

[I'm wearing my extremely dilapidated slippers, that Barbara bought me in Vancouver (in fact they were waiting for me on my arrival, how's that for a perfect welcome?), I'm loathed to chuck them, for sentimentality - I can afford a new pair, but sadly there is more slipper in the bin than currently wrapped around my dainty feet. This isn't some gloriously obscure metaphor by the way.]

“Those that dislike cats will be carried to the cemetery in the rain” - Dutch Proverb

“Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.”

"Stranger things have been,
stranger things have gone,
I find it hard right now to name you one"

I feel quite desolate today, nothing has changed, not really. Strange how moods can change eh? I had that brief atypical episode of upbeat last week, but it's been downhill since. Work today was extremely quiet, very much so . Even the corridors of the hospital were empty, the whole day was like a half remembered dream, with it's own internal logic, that defies examination later.

Maybe the downturn in the weather has something to do with it? It is relentlessly wet and cold, the longed for Indian Summer has failed to materialise. I know I've joked about the central heating before , but with the recent 30% or so rise in energy prices here I'm genuinely worried about the winter, and keeping warm!

For some reason tonight I was looking through my Cds and realised I couldn't find any Prefab Sprout. It suddenly occurred to me that I haven't seen them for years! Then it dawned on me, my ex-wife probably has them, along with all the "everything but the girl" ones I couldn't find a few months ago! Hardly earth shattering but annoying, and like a bad comedy skit. Well this means only one thing! eBay here I come!

My favourite shop - Home Bargains, has started stocking Dark chocolate M&Ms. Remarkable for two reasons, they are imported from New Zealand (eh???) and they remind me of Barbara, although technically that was dark mini eggs, but it's all the same to a mixed up mind! (they are delicious by the way)

Anyone who doesn't love this song, especially this version, well I despair for them!

“I feel that life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable” - Woody Allen

“The first half of life is spent in longing for the second - the second half in regretting the first”

"Tired like the beggar with the cold inside his bones
Looking for the pleasure that he knew was so far gone
So far gone
I took a turn to myself
And I was surprised, cause I saw everyone who ever I had loved
I felt a whole lot better after that"

Well that's a relief, sort of.
My Sickness interview was, like most worries, not as bad as I had expected. My "accidental" (ahem) insulting of a colleague had, thankfully, gone unheard, and that other problem at work, that I can't really discuss, turned out to be nothing! Silly me!

[In a much more serious tone, I really, really miss Barbara, but, of course, I have no one to blame but myself for that. You don't get too many chances like that in life, or meet many Women as genuinely wonderful as her, something I realised far too late! This comment seems out of place in my throwaway blog, but I want to remember how much of my thoughts were dominated by her, even after the months since I last heard from her]

and in totally superfluous news, I watched the "Sarah Connor Chronicles" (silly name) Season Two opener. I had only watched the first Season, when I read that Shirley Manson would be in the second (fancy!). I was expecting her to be terrible as she has never acted before, let me say I was only partially correct. In some scenes (which I assume were shot first) she was very nervous and shaky. However the (spoiler!) revelation that she is in fact a T-1000, sort of partially explained away the stilted acting. In perhaps the most unlikely scene I've seen in a long while , I witnessed Shirley Manson morphing from a urinal into herself and "spiking" an irritating throwaway character through the head. (Yes a urinal! complete with dreadful "Arnold" style pun)

“For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment” - Mark Twain

“The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by often falling”

"Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on."

blah blah blah. It's Friday afternoon. It's also pouring down with rain and frankly quite chilly. However I'm feeling strangely upbeat! (as in strange to me, not upbeat in a new and previously unknown* way, if you see, maybe not). I have, well my little house has anyway, a second potentially leaky area of my (house) roof, but even this potential disaster is leaving me uncharacteristically undisturbed (I would usually fret endlessly over such matters, all the time doing nothing to resolve them - remember I'm an ostrich when it comes to problems, I ignore them and hope they go away, at least until the inevitable denouement) Where was I? Oh yes, strangely unperturbed (and how many of us can say that?). I'm sure it's just my close brush with doom, is enabling me , TV movie style, to appreciate all the good things in my life (I would name them, but I don't have a particle accelerator handy - it makes the infinitesimal visible see, see?) don't fret though, I'm sure it will wear off soon.
Even I need to eat (who'd have guessed?) , so that's my immediate plan... (goes off to look in his Mother Hubbard style kitchen)

*(can anything be unknown in any other way? it can't become unknown again can it , well I suppose a fall of civilisation and a loss of thousands of years of human knowledge as we fall back into primitive ways, struggling for our next meal, resorting to violence to procure a partner, [hang on, that's life in my street right now!]
On a similar not I also get annoyed when people say "see you later", without a flux capacitor when else will they be seeing me?)

at this point the line went dead...

“We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket” - George Carlin

(Shirley Manson will return...)

“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.”

"At the age of thirty-seven she realized she'd never ride
Through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair"

Well after my brief foray into "interesting" I seem to have settled back into my usual patterns again :
music , time wasting, worrying, music, fitful sleep.

All's well that ends well eh?

It's late, and I had intended to ramble just a little longer, but I am actually very tired,
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!

“The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.” - Woody Allen

"William, it was really Nothing"

"SOME IS RICH, AND SOME IS POOR
THAT'S THE WAY THE WORLD IS
BUT I DON'T BELIEVE IN LYING BACK
SAYlN' HOW BAD YOUR LUCK IS"

(except that I do...)

Maybe I was being a little melodramatic, but yesterday brought back the suicidal (honestly) depressive days of 2004 ( and to a lesser extent all the time since EXCEPT July 2007 - May 2008, i.e. I feel pretty rubbish most of the time - I'm rambling...)
Anyhow, I checked my bank account yesterday, and somehow I was nearly £90,000 overdrawn!!!!
(WTF!)
I'd bought an item for £90 last week and a random security check, plus a slightly distracted shop assistant, meant that your beloved author was debited £90,000 instead. Obviously when I discovered this yesterday afternoon, I was a little upset (by which I mean I was VERY upset).
To cut a long story short - the end - but seriously (and thanks Kevin Turvey for that "joke" 1982 I think) it was not until business started at the bank today that the "missing" money was returned to my account, after one sleepless (literally) night and much contemplating. Money doesn't bring happiness, but it sure makes being miserable more tolerable.

In a lighter mood, last week I was in charge of the ward when a surprise cleanliness inspection took place (believe me , NOTHING is more important in the NHS right now! - go get me a big box of nothing!), I was alone on the the ward with one other Nurse, when four of the biggest wigs (as in big wigs) including the head of Nursing, turn up. I hadn't had any lunch that day, and had terrible heartburn, plus for the past couple of weeks, I have been experiencing pain and subsequent numbness in my left arm , due to what I assume is a trapped nerve. I also have a tendency to ramble around "authority" figures (i.e. anyone who is not me). Where is this going ? you may ask, and that is a very reasonable question, I might add! The upshot is that epigastric pain and numbness in the left arm was interpreted by one of the group ( a Consultant Surgeon) as me having a heart attack! Oh how we laughed (we didn't). I heard from my Charge Nurse the other day that the Head of Nursing had been asking if I was Okay , me , Mr nobody! until last week she didn't even know I existed, now apparently we are on first name terms ! (well at least she is!)

Anyway at least I am solvent again, although I still have to await the penalties of being £90,000 overdrawn.

(by the way my car passed it's MOT after £130 of work, which my bank kindly lent me for the day - thanks bank!)

“I saw a bank that said "24 Hour Banking", but I don't have that much time” - Stephen Wright

"But heaven knows I'm miserable now "

"And you leave on your own
And you go home, and you cry
And you want to die"

A disaster of a day - with one particular and totally unexpected anti-highlight. I won't go into details until it is all resolved.
Let's just say that I am going to bed very early tonight, it's one of those days you simply want to put behind you.

I feel a "Blue Nile" marathon coming on.

(The author would like it noted that behind the glib flippancy of this post he is very upset, and actually extremely worried).

“We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world” - Rene Magritte