Spare Rib

This isn’t a dog

While my ribs were all messed up I did realise I was being far more solitary than is usual for me but it was tough to find the energy to rise above the pain and despondency and do much about it. As a consequence my mind spent months in neutral at best, reverse gear at worst. My ribs have finally stopped being such an issue over the past few weeks which has enabled me to socialise more regularly and to do the sort of normal, everyday things you take for granted when you’re not all despondent and in reverse.

I like people, especially my friends. The human race as a species is an arse but there are plenty of good individual examples of humans for me to not want to destroy the earth with a massive flood. Also, I’m not allowed to do this sort of thing because I didn’t pass my god exam. You’re only allowed to purge populations when you’ve created them in the first place and you only get to do that if you graduate from god academy. Them’s the rules, folks, nothing you can do about it.

Today I ate a wonderful lunch and spent the afternoon with one of my favourite families in all the world. They have a little puppy now, a twelve week old bundle of lovely who liked licking my hands and face and also nibbling my fingers. It must be awesome to be a puppy, even when your humans are training you to be less finger-nibbly. Puppies don’t have to go out and earn money and people find them very nice to cuddle. I might turn into a puppy if I can work out how. Although thinking about it, with my levels of laziness and contempt for the majority of other beings, I’d probably make a much better cat.

Hey Arnolds

White-grey clouds have dappled across the sky, allowing a sense of light, if not heat, to filter down and through to the creatures who skitter around on the surface of our miraculously unlikely planet. As I am one of those very creatures I give thanks for the light although I would be similarly grateful for actual sunshine, for an endless supply of cake and for Wonder Woman to kick any and all of my mortal enemies in the cock.

I have decided that we should call this day ‘Saturday’ unless English is not our native tongue, in which case we can call it different things. Not ‘Arnold’. There is no language in existence which imposes the name ‘Arnold’ on the first day of the weekend. Seriously, you can trust me on this because I’ve checked. I’ve asked Jeeves to Yahoo it for me and he didn’t turn up any Arnolds being deployed as names for days. Not anywhere. So now you can sleep a little more easily.

At the beginning of the international internet of things everybody was connected to everybody like a digitally curated ecosystem and nobody hated anyone else, nobody shitposted, nobody wondered if the devil truly was in the details of coding and WiFi. Then, on the second day of the international internet of things, everyone became a hideous bastard posting bigotry and bile which enriched nobody’s existence as well as making Lady Godiva sigh with relief that she’d lived in a time when there was no danger of endless ‘up-horse’ shots of her anti-taxation protest in Coventry being stuck up all over Instagram.

Adult humans seem no better than brutish child thugs, the sort who have to be reminded every five minutes that punching our friends so we can have a turn with the toy we like ‘isn’t nice’. We just punch them with Twitting now. We should watch out, though, because Wonder Woman is going to kick all of us in the cock. Even the females.

Sergeant Rock Cake

In the future all entertainments will be interactive and interchangeable. Mr Bean will be able to come in like a wrecking ball dressed as Miles Cypress Hill if that’s what you’d like. The Beatles can be John, Paul, George and Joey from Friends. Politicians will still be mostly fascist arseholes, I’m afraid, because they don’t think they’re in the entertainment business so we won’t have any more control over them than we do now, here in the not future.

I’ve just realised, we will be able to control Back To The Future so he doesn’t go back or to the future if we wish. Ultimate power, mwahahaha.

Oh god, what if someone changes Terminator 2 so that he doesn’t come back? It doesn’t bear thinking about, right?

As you might have guessed, I’ve given my mind the day off today. Friday is practically Saturday, especially if you’re a slacker do-nothing such as I am. So I’ve turned myself off and not on again and I’ll only check my emails in bed. I’ve had two breakfasts already, even though it’s barely gone midday, and I’m hankering for a third. And I don’t mean a shoddy undergraduate degree (I’ve got several far from shoddy ones already, thanks for asking). I mean MORE FOOD.

Wanting to eat all the food in the world is a good thing if you’re me. The combination of busted ribs, Crohn’s and crappy lungs meant I lost weight I don’t have to lose over the winter so I’m super happy about the fact that this week I would eat the universe if it were only possible. Instead of a universe, I’m eating as many breakfasts as I can before it’s time to start eating lunches which fill in the time before dinners which are a gateway to suppers. 

And it’s one, two, three, four, five, breakfasts working overtime…

All Of Me

I am pleased to report that, despite not feeling especially hunky-dory in terms of health, I have spent this week managing to socialise a fair bit. From Sunday lunch with Si to an almost four hour ‘quick coffee’ on Monday evening, to today’s town centre caffeine fix, there has been good company and inspirational conversation.

Yesterday brought both of these commodities too along with a happy wave of nostalgia as I sat down to lunch with three chaps I have much musical history with. Back in the late 80s I joined Niall and Giles in their fledgling new band which we eventually called Dead Men Don’t. We exhausted several drummers, split up and reconvened with Rob behind the drum kit – my favourite line-up of the band and a period in which I felt more certain of my own capabilities as a songwriter and front man than I did at any stage before or afterwards. So for us to all be in the same room together for the first time in almost thirty years was a huge treat for me and brought me much happy.

In my head I’m still in this band even though I’m too frail to be a singer and find myself far less creative than I was in the old days. Together we were able to shape music I continue to be proud of and we did so more organically than any other band I worked with (and I’ve worked with some astonishingly talented and dedicated people besides these three). Sitting around catching up over lunch, reminiscing but also discovering bits about each other’s lives now and from the intervening years; it was very good for my soul.

Tomorrow I may need to sleep round the clock to recover from my busier than usual social life of late but that’s a small price to pay for the connection I’ve felt to friends this week, and for the reaffirmation that before infirmity, before most of my deepest regrets, there was a wilder, more daring, very creative and no doubt much more irritating version of me that certain people put up with at the time and are still prepared to risk reanimating for the sake of our shared histories.

Bagism

I have a gigantic bag of exhausted I would like to donate to somebody other than myself. And some wobbling. They’re yours for free. I’ll even deliver. Once I stop wobbling and being exhausted.

I also have a cup of coffee which is my first attempt at placing anything other than plain water liquid in my wee body. Wee as in the Celtic way of saying ‘small’, not as in ‘totally made from urine’. A percentage of my body is made up of urine, as is yours, but it’s a very, very small percentage. A wee wee percentage, if you like.

Can you tell I’m trying to distract myself from how meh I feel?

The coffee tastes acrid, like they’ve invented a new form of coffee called FAR TOO STRONG COFFEE overnight and popped it in my kitchen. Really it’s just the same coffee I had in the kitchen yesterday but my taste buds have gone haywire and are sending my brain the message that nice things taste of horrid.

Seriously, doesn’t anyone want this bag of exhausted? You don’t have to take the wobbling on too if you don’t want to.

Didn’t We Just Get Rid Of A Storm?

You’ve reached the UK Weather Ordering Service. For rain, press 1. For more rain, press 2. For sideways rain, press 3. For rain right in your face, press 4. For hard rain, press 5. For cold rain, press 6. For drizzle, press 7. For cats and dogs, press 8. For monsoons, press 9. For any other weather, move to a different country.

Soooo, Storm Dennis is here. I had an uncle called Dennis and he didn’t rain all over the country for two days, threatening to flood entire communities and requiring the army to be on standby in several locations. He was a nice, kindly chap with good hair. They shouldn’t sully his memory by calling this latest storm Dennis, they should call it Jimmy after everyone’s TV ‘uncle’ who turned out to be a disgusting, psychopathic pervert.

Or they shouldn’t name storms at all. What is the actual point of it beyond news media being able to make some awful puns? Having a name is a stupid waste of time for a storm. Has the massive red spot on Jupiter got a name? It’s a gigantic storm but clearly doesn’t need to be called ‘Arnold’ or ‘Jemima’ or anything else. Its essence is complete in and of itself because a storm is a storm is a storm. Even on distant planets.

What next? Are we going to name our farts? News just coming in, Fart Barney is causing tearful eyes and light gagging in an elevator in Stoke Newington’s branch of Debenham’s.

NewTral

As proud as I sometimes am of my ability to be (moderately) clever, I like my mind best when it is in neutral. It’s a relaxed and relaxing state which leaves the door ajar to allow free access to creative stuff. You know, stuff: similar to ‘things and’ only more stuff-like.

This morning, one sock off and one sock on, half way to the bathroom to soap and water myself clean of the night, I absent-mindedly picked up a guitar. My mind was more neutral than a Swiss bank account, the same sort of state it was in half an hour later when I put the guitar back down again. In the intervening minutes I’d roamed freely across the frets and strings and made a whole bunch of new-to-me sounds.

First thing anyone said to me when I reached town later was that I am beginning to look much more like myself lately. That’ll be because of my neutral brain. And being able to get around again with my new car. And my Swiss bank account. Oh yeah, and because my ribs aren’t all busted up now.