zhisou

The Spanish like to celebrate.  They like fireworks.  They like lots of fireworks, lots of celebrating and lots and lots and lots of noise.  They like hooting car horns and banging drums and shouting very loudly.

Now I´m no killjoy.  I supported the exciting Spanish team as they beat all opposition with their attractive positive football and jolly nice red tops.  I wanted them to win, I really did, I just didn´t want them to celebrate.

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I feel melancholy. I made the wrong choice and let my family go off to the beach without me so I could stay home and study in peace. I am behind in my MBA. Now I feel dreadful and really want to be on the beach with them. I can´t get there, there are no buses or trains that go near and a taxi would be silly money.

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If Nostradamus was so fucking clever, why did he talk in incomprehensible riddles?  What´s the point of working it out backwards, after the event, that that was what he´d been talking about all along?  Where´s the logic in that?

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I slept okay last night but woke up more tired than when I´d gone to bed, about 11 o´clock, half-an-hour of Juno still to watch.  I must have been more worried than I thought.   One of my first jobs of the day was to take the appropriate actions necessary in order to take a sample to the lab to check that I was clean (ahem).

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The concept album I am destined to compose and perform is called “Wrong Sized Shoes“.  It is a description I stumbled across when discussing the nature of life to a hippy fellow.  I said that I thought that we went through life, doing what we had to do, but that something wasn´t quite right.  It wasn´t entirely wrong exactly, but there was always tension between what we had to do and what our instincts were often asking us to do.  I said it was like going through life wearing the wrong sized shoes.

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Oftentimes these days, I am a busy fellow. It´s rare I have time to sit and blog, or when I do it´s rarer still that I have the energy and motivation to do so. I have lots of ideas, most of which get lost, but am getting worse at converting those ideas into blogprose.

This last couple of weeks, however, were busier than most …

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I have been flying about - spending a week in Bilbao, walking the streets of this smart little city, squashed between the green Basque hills. Spanish airports are all the same. They have the same operator and the same few franchises and slim selection of very little. You can get nice Rioja and finger baguettes of ham and cheese - which is really nice - but then you´re snookered. Dry wedges of Spanish omelette, plastic donuts and tastleless crusty sandwiches of stuff that´s been on display too long.
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I am tired. Really really tired. The other day I went to Madrid on the train. It took over five hours because the damn thing was trundling along really slowly like it had nowhere in particular to go and no particular time to get there. It kept stopping too, but not at stations, at red signals. An integrated speaker system gruffly whispered that the train would be stuck at one of these random spots of nothingness for twenty minutes. We all groaned. Going slow is shit, but it´s better than being stopped. Then the train moved anyway. The single piece of information about the slowcoach lazybones progress turned out to be untrue.

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Funny how things from our childhood take on a fond fuzzy glow of nostalgic charm.  As seen through the spectacles of jaded middle-age, the simplest of our youthful jinx and nonsense become elevated into something special and poignant.

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Easter makes me feel foreign. Easter in Spain is solemn processions of hooded churchy people and widows dressed in black marching behind huge wooden floats carried on the shoulders of serious gum-chewing men.

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Hitler designed the DVD, I´m sure of it.

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There´s a paper sign on the wall by my garage exit, it says “Por Favor Por Su Seguridad Cierren La Puerta” (Please for your security close the door). Underneath is a second sign, same A4 paper, same font - it says “Por Favor Por Su Seguridad Cierren La Puerta” (Please for your security close the door).

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So much effort looking for meaning and reason and trying to explain something that simply just is.

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My mobile is so badly designed that I can´t answer it without accidentally taking a photo of the inside of my pocket. I can´t work out how to delete photos either, so I now have quite a large collection of pictures of bits of fluff and coins.

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The choice will be simple - as I predicted some time ago in this very blog - it will be between the grizzled veteran and the spunky young upstart. The voice of experience or the voice of change. Safety or hope. Old or young - white or black … or, perhaps, the choice between staying or going …

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Okay, so I don´t like vegetables, which is a bit sad for a man of my years and breeding - but I can´t help it. They make me gag. I can eat spinach and parsnip and some others, but when I get that veggie taste in my mouth my stomach turns and I can feel the bile rise. People say it´s all in my head - well I know that. The whole world is in my head - IN MY HEAD IS ALL I´VE GOT.

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A few months ago I broke my glasses. It was the frame, just above the left lens, and I survived with sellotape for a few days before that became untenable. I only wear my specs in the house, so tape, whilst awkward, was a viable stopgap solution.

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When I walk about, struggling over car-clogged zebra crossings, dodging traffic as I squeeze past roadworks blocking shattered pavements, I wonder why no one bothers to obey the law.  If I were the mayor of my town, I´d fine every last motorist who parked at 45 degrees on a corner blocking two pedestrian crossings.  I´d tow the bastards away.  Every construction company destroying pavements and failing to provide a safe alternative would be fined till the pips squeak.

I´d be so unpopular I´d never get voted back in.

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I was told yesterday that the price of seafood has fallen 200% since Christmas. I thought about this for a second and said “Are you sure?” and they said “Yes, I read it in the newspaper”. Well it must be true then.

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It´s just not as simple as that though is it? It´s not really a direct choice between making love and making war. George W Bush can be rightly criticised for waging war with Iraq, but had he taken the alternative, and given Saddam one up the back passage, he would have found himself on the business end of a few harsh words - though the colateral damage would have been less. Fewer car bombs.

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When other people stay in your house, they put things back in cupboards in a slightly different way.
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I was a teenage lyricist.  I was startlingly terrible at it - rubbish rhymes and trite topics, all far too self-conscious and deliberate.  I never gave anything of myself, you see - I always held back and kept pretty much everything private.  My lyrics were either silly or issue-laden - urgh, how I cringe now.   However, in the name of high art, I have decided to share and shed a little light on the z …

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Music´s a funny thing.  I have a desire to buy an electric guitar and an accoustic bass.  I can play neither, but I really really want to own them.   I can play them a bit, I am not entirely clueless - I kind of understand how to do it, but can´t quite fumble around to make the right noises.  No matter, I need to own an electric guitar.

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So Mike Huckabee believes in intelligent design and wants to get rid of income tax.  That doesn´t seem like a good recipe for a successful nation.

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There are moments in life that stand out like emotional mileposts. Sometimes stuff happens that acts as a reference point, you peg an event by whether or not it was before or after you broke your leg, or had a baby or moved house. Yesterday was one of those days for me. Yesterday I had my cock cut off.

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This is the start of something special.

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