So it’s wet. It shouldn’t be, it’s august, but what are you gonna do? it’s not like the met office has a complaints department. you don’t really mind, it’s kind of refreshing in it’s own way. but you wish your feet weren’t quite so wet. there’s another bus. full to bursting. commuter sardines, poor bastards. you were like that till you realised. for a long time you didn’t really know what it was. just that it wasn’t right anymore.
slowly you realise that it’s not the claustrophobia that drove you to this. that was all you could think of at first. the cold body rush of panic. the walls moving in. people getting closer, breathing in your air. but that’s not what it was. awareness was the key. in your vacuum-packed transport you were only ever aware of being a suffocated part of the commuter cattle-wagon.
now, here in the air, in the cold, beautiful rain, you still see the cattle-wagons, but you are amazed by the numbers. you can’t comprehend that there are so many people. thousands everyday. and you never see anyone you know. a city this size and you don’t talk to anyone. everyone is the enemy. every single person holds the potential to steal your seat. to ask you for a light. or worse, for money. a thousand other lives, each ticking away without you. lives you’ll never touch.
but you needed to see it. infinity is a concept scientists say the layman can’t comprehend. but you see it every day. every day for six years you walked the same road. different people everyday. each one has their own story. out of the crush you get to see them pass you by. a glimpse, a sideways glance. as they pass, you try and imagine each one’s story. what makes them laugh? who is important to them?
So in a way you do touch them. you acknowledge each one out of the thousands. we could be good friends, we just haven’t crossed paths yet. then you realise it’s not so lonely out here after all. you are among friends. and in the end it’s worth having damp feet for.
Rufus is painfully unfit. Actual pain comes with every step. The constant, dull ache of heaving weight his poor weak muscles were never intended to carry. The sting of overburdened lungs, vainly pushing against the folds of flesh, trying to eke just a tiny bit more oxygen from the paltry amount of air his bulbous form allows in. when he walks, Rufus projects a sound like an old neglected bellows. each step accompanied by an almost mechanical wheeze, as though he is an ill-designed automaton whose parts are too old to replace and whose ancient iron lung is partly fused and lacks the freedom of movement it once enjoyed.
Rufus is in love with Penelope in the sandwich shop. he loves the way her face isn’t quite symmetrical and that far from try and hide the fact, she purposely accentuates it with a diagonal fringe – to her, a stubborn refusal to conform, to cut her own, asymmetrical path – to him, a bold and ornate frame around a work of fine art. Some of Penelope’s customers would agree, though the harsher ones might say she is, if anything, a Picasso. Penelope is not her real name. The Lovely Baps sandwich shop, whose clientele come as much for the postcard sauciness as they do for the food, does not have a policy on name badges so most of the staff don’t wear them. Most of them are called Janet anyway, so there would be confusion in either case, compounded no doubt by the fact that Deidre, the one member of staff who does wear a badge, chooses to wear one that proudly declares her name to be Janet. Perhaps we all just need to belong.
In the absence of a name badge, Rufus chose Penelope – a nice old Greek name, which he feels lends their unspoken love a sense of gravity and myth. it is also perversely appropriate, given the epic nature of the forty-nine shambling steps Rufus daily makes from his desk to Penelope’s counter. every day the same sandwich: Italian ham and Dutch cheese with a pickle, of unknown origin, on rye bread, lightly buttered and cut into two rectangles just how he likes it, rather than the standard triangle given to other customers. it has been 11 months since Rufus ate one of the sandwiches, as his doctor has him on a strict calorie-controlled diet and bar the pickle with the mysterious past, none of the contents are permitted to Rufus, but nevertheless he continues to make his daily pilgrimage for this well-earned but never devoured treasure, which he then carries the full forty-nine steps back to his desk. there it sits for the rest of the afternoon as Rufus eyes it wistfully through the bottom of a glass, newly drained of nutritious and tasteless low-calorie shake, it slumps, gradually, reluctantly, in a sorry heap as the life of the once-fresh ingredients ebbs away and Rufus slides it off the edge of the desk, in to the bin. he pauses as though half-remembering something, then turns out the light above his desk and heads home. Sixty-six steps bring Rufus to his front door, and a further nine to the sofa where he will spend the majority of the evening, pondering whether tomorrow will be the day that he musters the courage to say something to Penelope, beyond the pathetic "thanks… er, bye" that he manages to splutter each lunchtime. Rufus picks up the newspaper and as he catches up on the events of the day his head spins at news of the millions of lives going on all around him.
Janet has never been entirely comfortable in her awkward frame. sometimes she has disquieting dreams where her limbs are made of wire coat hangers, roughly twisted together, so when she tries to put on pretty dresses she just sticks out all angular and pointy, and the clothes don’t hang right, and her shoulder is too small and angled down, so her bag strap keeps falling off and making her look ill-at-ease and clumsy. Janet has always dealt with the oddities in her appearance by complementing them, drawing attention to them, in a yeah-I-know-I-look-funny-and-I’m-totally-cool-with-it way. But each time she does it, each time she puts on the costume of the confident non-conformist, she feels a pang of longing. Longing to just be normal, to just blend in. To be Conventionally Beautiful. To belong.
Janet slides the rye from the brown paper and just as on other such days, the sound brings to mind the rustle of a present emerging from its wrappings on a birthday morning. Janet sets down the loaf on the ancient battle-scarred breadboard and meticulously cuts two slices. in the shop they have a slicer and Janet tries her best to emulate the smooth even slices of the German, precision-engineered behemoth she is Not Allowed to Use at work. Any food that isn’t sold during the day is fair game for the staff, though they run a tight ship so leftovers are not to be relied upon. sometimes, when the weather turns, customers go for chips, shunning the lovely baps in favour of something hot to wrap themselves round and so on days like today Janet gets to take home enough to make Arthur’s Sandwich, Just How He Likes It. Italian ham, Dutch cheese, and a pickle from Weston-super-Mare, though Arthur probably doesn’t know that as Deidre opted not to list the humble origins of the pickle on the menu. She spreads so that the butter fully covers one side and then folds the slices of ham over themselves. The cheese lays on top and keeps the ham flat, then finally the nomad pickle and the top slice. She neatly cuts the sandwich into two rectangles and puts it on a plate. Usually in the shop they do two triangles, but Janet suspects that Arthur is more of a down-to-earth, rectangles man and so always does his that way. Deidre says it’s not polite to ask customers their names because then you forget them and get them wrong and insult people, but Janet thinks he looks like an Arthur.
Placing the plate on the table in the kitchen, Janet fetches today’s newspaper from the bag that keeps falling off her shoulder, and lays the paper alongside the plate. She walks towards the lounge calling after her "I made your favourite, love, it’s on the table with your newspaper" then she sits in front of a stream of dumbed-down programming, acutely aware that she does not fit any of the demographics. The sandwich will stay there, uneaten, its gradual sagging decline mirroring Janet’s resigned slump as she realises another day has passed with her managing no more than "two pounds thirty-five please, sir". Janet’s eyes glaze over as talent show blends into soap and documentary blends into chat show, and her spins at the fervour and pace of the millions of lives going on all around her.
May 10th,2011
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Here are some random pictures from my phone
Lies
More confusing Tesco offers
A very well sealed parcel
My awesome Italian sandwich
I can’t resist a good discoiunt, me
End of the road
Guilty looking geese, and a discarded ale can. Joyriding mystery solved?
Algebraic bargains at the co-op
My view at the Radiohead gig, thanks to this arrogant dickwad
Ninjas have to eat too you know
Dixie. 10 oz. Perfect Touch. Nuff said.
The Rebel Alliance was hit hard by the recession
wow?
O RLY?
One week later. I didn’t change this by the way, just enjoyed it.
One leads, inexorably, to the other.
Who says the Alliance is dumbing down the entrance exam?
Mikey, your cowabunga’s showing dude.
“Self-respect is not a prerequisite for this role”.
Pony Pride
Shit Identikit Jesus Loves You
Pablo: 1 – Wasps: 0
Yummy Cramel
What could be better than free knorks?
April 28th,2011
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Here are some pictures. In no particular order and with comments where appropriate.
not sure why, but my colleague here one day decided just to put a box on his head, while on the phone to a customer. then he took it off again.
I love a bargain
the unintentionally prejudiced sign in the window of the local chippy. it’s called the new oriental, so i’m guessing *that’s* what they men by oriental customers.
after we realise only one side of the PA is working, Daddy Beats quickly haxxorz togther an extra long lead to connect the two speakers
These next three demonstrate quite well why i don’t trust PC World
nice
nicely worded, sainsbury’s. i imagine this aisle leads to quite a few disappointed nonces
cornish icicles
Boscastle
a just question i feel
eden project
baby bananas
a hermit crab at blue reef aquarium
so that’s what he’s doing now
an unholy mess
blinds. fitted by The Blind Man, presumably
Smurf Time Error. Nuff said
Mr Tickle, who high-fived me on my birthday
and one of his tentacles up close
What an ace place to build a house
hope springs eternal in newquay. in december no less.
Some dogs made of wellies.
my new colleague (he moved while i was trying to catch him, he’s not deformed)
ducks and canada geese congregate around the bit of the canal that isn’t frozen
for chavs who can’t spell. oh, wait.
L-33 (he’s just a head) balancing on a wall
karting for L-33’s stag do.
And the trophy
canada geese
a herd of chairs, in the wild
December 14th,2010
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I’ve been uploading songs to YouTube again over the last couple of weeks, and have had some surprisingly pleasant comments. In order to allow me to embed one of them on my stumble blog i had to give it a thumbs-up – something i generally avoid doing with my own work as it smacks of shameless self-promotion. However, on this occasion it seems to have worked out ok – no one seems to mind and it’s brought some people to my page who would otherwise not have seen it, and who have been saying very nice things about what is essentially a clumsily and hurriedly rendered version of one of my old songs, played on piano as an experiment. In any case, I’m happy that the outcome has been so positive and may try doing it again sometime as, not only has it fuelled interest in this particular video, but a few people have obviously clicked through to my other stuff and have left nice comments there too. The most bizarre thing about it all though is that a few of the people who’ve commented have remarked on it being “better than the original” and “a good cover” which, while extremely flattering, is also completely baffling as it’s one of my songs. The only other version on the internet that I’m aware of is my own guitar version which is also on YouTube. I look fairly similar in both vids, which added to the fact that both were uploaded using the same username it strikes me as unlikely that anyone would think this is a cover of the other one – they are both quite obviously me. So the question is, where does this notion come from that it’s a cover? are these people just poking fun? or is there a song out there that sounds the same? I certainly didn’t consciously plagiarise anything, and haven’t come across anything that sounds similar enough for me to think “oh dear, best scrap that one then”, or even anywhere close. Granted, the chord sequence isn’t uncommon, but neither is it particularly common, and given that there are only 7 chords in any given key, all songs inevitably sound a bit like something else. But, close enough for people to thinks it’s a cover? that’s another thing altogether. So, if you know what song it is people think I’ve ripped off, I’d love to hear from you – I’m completely intrigued and not a little concerned. Anyway, enough of my rambling, here’s the song. I hope you enjoy it (at least as much as the original). As ever, comment and feedback are welcome.
Well, new versions of old songs. Been playing a lot of keyboard recently to try and level up a bit so am tackling old songs and trying to work out better arrangements of them. They’re still rough as balls at the moment because I am a sloppy pianist at the best of times and I still stumble over the notes and it’s a bit of a lottery as to what chord comes out and whether it enhances or detracts from what I’m playing. That said, I’m fairly happy with how Sleepyhead came out. It’s still a bit clumsy, but presentable, so here it is. Comments welcome, as ever.
I have had an odd couple of weeks. Because of various things going on at the moment I have for some time been feeling a bit stressed and increasingly lethargic. I have a history of depression but am generally able to recognise the symptoms early enough to take the necessary action to prevent slipping from detached and lethargic to actual depression. There have only been a few instances, usually for a period of a couple of months, where I’ve found it too much to cope with on my own and have had to get additional help. About a week and a half ago I started getting various symptoms of a bug or virus – headache, nausea, aches and pains – and initially thought it might be swine flu, as a few people at work have had it, or have relatives who have. The one thing that made me doubt it though was that I had no fever.
Having had a couple of days off at the beginning of the week because of having worked the weekend, I went back to work last Wednesday (12th) and felt completely wretched all day. That night I barely slept and woke up the next morning with a headache, and feeling dizzy and disorientated. I called in sick and got some bed rest. The next day I felt just as bad, so called in again. By the weekend I still had the same symptoms which showed no sign of abating, but still no fever, so I began to wonder if it was in fact a bug, or if it was something else. I follow NHS Direct on twitter and over the weekend they posted a link to a new part of the NHS Direct site which is a mental health symptom checker, so I figured as I had been getting on towards depression for a while I’d run through it and see if anything tied in. All the symptoms I was experiencing, it turns out, are symptoms of depression. Most of them I knew, but wasn’t aware that it can cause headache and nausea, so hadn’t initially made the connection. The advice at the end of the questionnaire was to go see my GP, which I figured was probably for the best.
The problem was that at that point I didn’t actually have a GP. I have a phobia of medical practitioners and establishments, partly due to a completely irrational fear, and partly due to bad experience with incompetent or indifferent practitioners. It is fair to point out that the vast majority of medical staff I have encountered have been superb and I have every faith in the health service and its staff, but the ones who were bad, were quite horrible. Anyway this phobia works in such a way that upon entering a medical establishment, I immediately get a sense of dread about all the things that can go wrong. My brain imagines horrific things no matter how hard I try to quash the images, and I start to feel faint, then invariably have a panic attack and pass out.
Part of the reason that the fear has become worse over the years, is that passing out is a truly horrific experience, and it is partly the apprehension about that which makes me feel worse, in essence making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lots of people talk about passing out after a heavy night out, which the majority of cases is just falling asleep, or losing consciousness. Actual passing out is very different. You start by losing coherence and focus, then start to get tunnel vision. When you are about to pass out, if you’ve done it before you know it’s happening, and that only makes it worse because you try to fight it and end up panicking. There comes a point where your brain is simply overloaded and you lose consciousness. Your entire body goes limp and you just fall where you are. If you are stood up, you just fall over and hit the ground hard.
Next comes the dream. This is usually, but not always, vaguely related to the situation which has made you pass out, and is generally like watching a short reel of film of about 3 or 4 seconds, over and over again. In one dream I was being hit by a bus, over and over for what I’m told was about 2 minutes – I think this stemmed from the fact that I had fallen heavily on one side, so had pain all the way down that side of my body, which my brain was trying to rationalise. While this is going on, it is not uncommon to seize, similar to an epileptic seizure, which although unpleasant is actually beneficial because it doesn’t have any detrimental effects (bar, occasionally, friction burn on one side for your face) but it does make people take notice.
The next stage is regaining consciousness. This can be very unpleasant indeed as on awaking you initially have no idea where you are, how you got there or what has just happened. You invariably wake to find lots of people crouching down next to you looking concerned, but you have no idea why, or in most cases, who they are (this is also the case even if you know them). Sound and vision are both very hazy at this point and you have a ringing in your ears similar to tinnitus, usually accompanied by pins & needles and often sharp pain in whichever part of your body has taken the brunt of the fall. For this reason it is advisable to lie down when you realise you are going to pass out. Over a period of maybe 30 seconds, you gradually take stock of your surroundings, and on realising you have passed out, what usually follows is a brief period of calm, where you realise you are over the worst and that the feelings of nausea will pass. within about 5 to 10 minutes you are ready to sit up, and start talking coherently. Within about half an hour, the nausea usually passes, and you are left simply feeling drained and very fragile.
Needless to say, knowing all this, and knowing that any trip to a doctor is liable to cause this to happen, I eventually tired of it and simply stopped going to the doctor. It can be quite restricting and leads to taking as few risks as possible with anything which may entail a trip to the doctor’s. Something which is a simple and mundane part of life for everyone else, becomes something which is virtually impossible, and it takes a hell of a lot to get me to go to see one. For this reason, after I stopped going to my old doctor, I simply never bothered registering with a new one when I moved house. By Monday of this week it became apparent that my options were either to try and get through this with no medication, and having to go back to work on Thursday, so I decided to bite the bullet and get registered.
So on Thursday morning, for the first time in about 8 years, I saw a doctor. I had been eating very little for the past few days and so was already quite weakened by the time I got there, and in the waiting room was on the verge of passing out. Fortunately I wasn’t waiting long, and the doctor immediately put me at ease. He was compassionate and helpful, and did not dismiss any of my worries or symptoms, simply took it all on board, asked for my opinion on things, and then discussed with me his prognosis and suggested course of action.
I have only once been on medication for depression, which was Seroxat. I did not have a particularly good time on it – it switched off all the negative emotions, which helped me get a hold on things and look at things objectively, but in so doing it also muted all the positive emotions so I really didn’t care enough to do anything. I essentially became an emotionless drone, incapable of much more than lying in bed waiting for each day to pass. This was obviously an experience I was keen not to repeat, but I knew that anti-depressant medication is quite varied, and was open to the possibility that the right medication may be what I needed. The doctor signed me off work for two weeks and prescribed Venlafaxine, with a view to reviewing both after the two weeks to see if the time off is sufficient, and if the medication is right for me.
He advised that there may be some nausea as a side effect and suggested taking the medication immediately before bedtime so that the majority of the nausea would be while I am asleep so I wouldn’t suffer too much from it. I have been taking the medication for two days now, tonight will be my third dose, and I had held off on reading about other side effects, in case reading about them made me project and psychologically cause effects which I would otherwise not have had. Since the first morning I woke up after starting on the medication I have felt groggy and nauseous more or less constantly, and have had a headache on and off. I have had a decreased appetite for days anyway, so this is likely a contributory factor, though it has definitely got worse over the last couple of days, and feeling constantly nauseated does not make you feel very enthusiastic about food, so I have now been living off one meal a day, with the odd cereal bar thrown in, for about 5 days. It is something of a vicious circle, but one which I hope to be able to beat by basically forcing myself to have food first thing for the next couple of days.
Tonight, having experienced a few things which I thought might be side effects, I decided to look up Venlafaxine to see if anything else could be attributed to the medication. This is what I found:
Common side effects
NOTE: The percentage of occurrences for each side effect listed comes from clinical trial data provided by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc. The percentages indicate the percentage of people that experienced the side effect in clinical trials.[4]
Less common to rare side-effects
Note ‘Rare’ adverse effects occur in fewer than 1 in 1000 patients.
Quite a list isn’t it? I’m happy to say that I have never in my life been suicidal, and have never really had suicidal thoughts, so am not too worried about that, however an awful lot of the side effects seem to match up exactly to symptoms of depression, and I have already had an alarming number of the side effects. Most I had put down to ongoing increasing symptoms of depression, but as the majority have only started in the last two days, I am now not so convinced. My hope is that most or all will be temporary and that as the drugs start to take effect it will all be worthwhile. I remain open-minded and positive am not going to draw conclusions until my body has had time to adjust, but all the same, it is an alarmingly large list. I just hope the positive effects make up for the negative ones.
One of the biggest problems I face as a sufferer of depression, is that it is so widely misunderstood and dismissed as a cop out. Depression is an actual chemical imbalance in the brain, it is not just feeling down or sad. On the contrary, I don’t feel particularly down or sad at all, it is more a lack of emotions, than it is an onslaught of negative ones. It affects different people in different ways and I know some people do feel absolutely miserable as a result, but from speaking to other sufferers, it seems that the one unifying symptom seems to be lethargy. It is like actually physically being depressed, in the way that you depress a button on a keyboard – being pushed down, like your whole body feels to weigh far more than it should, and *everything* takes far more effort than normal, while bringing far fewer returns in terms of feeling satisfaction and accomplishment. One of the most important things to do to remedy depression is to keep busy, doing things you enjoy, and getting exercise, but getting exercise is a hundred times harder than normal – you have absolutely no motivation whatsoever, and are physically drained, making it that much more effort, both psychologically and physically. Doing things you enjoy is also relatively moot, as it is very hard to get joy out of anything – even things which would normally make you laugh or smile, or which would satisfy you now seem mundane and futile.
A lot of people, who have been lucky enough to never have suffered from depression, have the idea that it is simply that the person feels a bit down, and often dismiss it simply as laziness. Until you have been through the sheer mind-numbing futility of it all, it is impossible to fully grasp just how all-encompassing it is, and how hard it makes even the simplest of tasks. Trying to explain it someone who has never been depressed is like describing purple to someone who has only ever seen red and blue. It’s a mixture of both, but is also it’s own distinct colour, and without being familiar with the concept of purple, it is virtually impossible to envisage it.
Whether you are aware of it or not, several people you know have, or have had depression, and have been through exactly what I’ve described here, and it’s likely that among the primary feelings they have had have been guilt, brought about by the general opinion of society that they are just wasting everyone’s time and being lazy, and frustration at feeling so unbearably disconnected from everything and yet still expected to function as normal.
If you have, or have had depression, I’d love to hear from you, either in the comments, or by email, to discuss your experiences, and how you have coped with it.
It’s rare that you can pinpoint a specific day in your life which changed everything thereafter. In August 1994 a series of events took place that would catapult my life on a whole new trajectory, and my friend Oli’s birthday will as a result always be a special day for me. The reason I play guitar, is because Oli doesn’t. And because, of the three friends he chose to take to Center Parcs to celebrate his coming of age, I was one of them. And because shortly after that trip, my younger brother was due to start at the school both Oli and I attended and had chosen to learn to play guitar. He needed an instrument to learn on. Oli had one such instrument gathering dust, which needed a new home. With the frequent discussions taking place between Me, Oli, and our respective mums (who were all but interchangeable at the time as both had pretty much adopted her counterpart’s offspring) to plan the upcoming trip, the subject came up of my brother’s need for a guitar, and so an arrangement was made whereby the not-quite-full-size classical guitar would change hands for the very reasonable sum of twenty-five pounds, and that the transaction would take place upon our return from Center Parcs. We set sail to Nottingham on the 19th July and returned on the 26th. The remarkable events that took place at Center Parcs, most notably Gaz Bunt’s propensity for the entire trip to re-enact the events of the film Backdraft, with alarming realism and frequency, are a whole other story.
I played the hell out of that guitar. My brother lost interest after a few months (though did pick it up again some years later) but to me it was a key to a larger world, inhabited by heroes, masters of an elusive craft I had long yearned to share. Granted, at the time my main hero was the legendary Per Gessle of Roxette rather than Jimi, or Prince, or Satch, but he set me in the right direction. I couldn’t afford lessons, but wouldn’t have been interested anyway – I learned the flute at school via lessons and always ended up learning whatever the teacher wanted me to learn – with the guitar I chose what to study – something I soon realised makes all the difference. Armed with a chordbook, a rudimentary understanding of music theory from doing music GCSE, and two books full of songs by the Beatles and the BeeGees, I realised that as long as you knew the songs, you didn’t need to be shown how to play them, it was all there in the books. The chord shapes matched the strings and frets and it was all perfectly logical. Just hold these strings down here, then move to those ones over there, and before you know it you’re playing New York Mining Disaster 1941. And the best thing was, it was free!
This was to be a key factor in my advancement – After that particular set of Summer hols Oli and I parted ways, academically at least, as he went to college while I stayed on at school, and most of my other school friends were busy discovering alcohol and night clubs. the fact that I still looked far too young to get served, coupled with the fact that I had barely any money, meant that while my school friends were out revelling in the wild world of glow-in-the-dark plastic palm trees, my options were limited to staying home and playing Oli’s guitar. I didn’t mind one bit. By the end of my A-Level year I had reached a point where I had the confidence to get on stage and play songs to other people, even including my first, naive attempts at writing my own songs. I was in a band called Skarph and we somehow sold out a 150-seat theatre for a one-off gig, where we did three sets of about 45 minutes each, with costume changes between each. Where the drummer fell asleep mid song and carried on playing, and none of us had guitar amps. I was the only one who could get any kind of distortion as the electro-acoustic I had finally got round to getting with my inheritance money could go loud enough to distort the signal into the mixing desk. One rehearsal Oli came down to the theatre where we rehearsed and did some promo shots, the most memorable one being where he did multiple exposures on the same shot, so that we were simultaneously on stage, in the rafters, in the audience and dramatically exiting stage left, all in the same shot. This determination to do things a little differently is what makes Oli such a brilliant photographer to this day. Good times.
At the end of the year there was a school concert, and as was the tradition with our school, at the Summer concert any student who was leaving that year was allowed to get up and do their turn. I got up with My friend Jonty (who, due to one very drunken night and some disagreements on the class structure in Britain, I am sadly no longer in touch with) and did a version of Message In A Bottle, and my own newly written song (Tell Me) How To Live. I was very into brackets back then – it seemed very high-brow and deep. Most of my contemporaries had little to show for the past two years’ evenings of debauchery, save a few hangovers, but I had received this beautiful gift of freedom of expression that allowed me to play my own songs to crowded hall of my peers and mentors. I was addicted.
Since then, playing songs has been a constant source of relaxation, catharsis, excitement and discovery. It has found me playing at a festival in Germany, on a year out where I had thought I would be doomed to have little more than fresian cows for company. It has allowed me to meet and share ideas with some of the coolest and nicest people I have ever known. It has seen me play pretty much every venue in Manchester city centre, had me drunkenly bellowing out La Bamba at the top of my lungs from the top of a canal boat in Wales, appear dressed only in a sock, for a bet (I won – ten pounds if you’re wondering. Times were hard). It has led to me learning the bass, ukulele and mandolin. I even once got to jam with a (completely unknown) hero of mine, Joe Roberts, in a very dingy Roadhouse in Manchester. I have countless recordings made over the years with countless other musicians and singers, some of which make me smile, some of which make me cringe. A few make me do a little happy dance, that I could have been involved in making something which makes me feel so utterly full of joy. When I look back over the past 15 years, it’s great to have such a vast record of what I’ve done, what I’ve achieved, and who with. And all of this stems back to Oli’s birthday.
So, thanks Oli, for not playing guitar, and for taking photographs instead (he’s very very good at that by the way). Thanks for being one of my longest standing and most interesting friends, and for not getting cross when I consistently fail to keep in touch, or to find school photos that you asked for so long ago it’s embarrassing. For being efficient and sending me things in the post that cheer me up immensely. For not giving me a hard time about the fact that although your birthday is such an important date in my calendar I never quite mange to get my arse in gear enough to send you a card. For making me laugh when I need a lift, and sharing in so many happy memories, and just generally being very very cool.
Happy Birthday, Oli. Here’s to many more (oh, and say hello to Mum for me)
Pablo, 19th August 2009
August 19th,2009
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I haven’t been much in the mood for blogging lately, or writing or for being creative at all really. The family shit that has been going on (which has actually led to some progress, which was a pleasant surprise), coupled with the work shit that has been going on at the same time, have meant that motivating myself to do anything at all has been hard. I have a history of depression, or more accurately tendencies towards depression, and though I mostly manage to keep it in check, when everything seemingly conspires against me, I sometimes feel overwhelmed and see myself slipping back into the old mindset – the first phase of which is usually lethargy (well, after the mood swings). As long as I’m aware of it I can usually force myself to keep moving, keep busy, to stop me slipping into the rut of not being bothered or motivated to move or do anything much at all. But sometimes it gets too much and I just settle for going through the motions and basically vegitating, and once that starts it’s hard to get out of the cycle. It’s like being in a pit that just about shallow enough to climb out of, with interesting things all round the edges, but you’re sat in a really comfy chair in really heavy wet clothes and as much as you want to go do interesting things, it’s just too much effort. Once in this pit, anything is a chore, be it getting up to make food, performing some random task you’ve agreed to do to help someone out, or even just moving at all. People think of depression as feeing down, or sad, and while there’s certainly an element of that – I have felt fucking miserable lately – I always (thanks to David Baddiel’s brilliant description in whatever love means) think of the literal meaning of depression, as in to press something down – to depress a switch. That’s what it feels like, having an actual physical weight on you.
So this week I booked some days of work and went to Newmarket to do a gig with an old friend and colleague, who I used to regularly play guitar with until he moved down south. We generally meet up every year or so, either up here or down there, and whenever we do we try and squeeze in a gig somewhere. We have a short set of mostly covers, that we just like playing and which need little rehearsing, so we can usually just pick up where we left off. Having spent a couple of hours on Wednesday night going through the existing songs, Thursday was then spent expanding the set – working out new arrangements and deciding what we could and couldn’t pull off. Thursday night was the gig, and in spite of there being a small crowd and some sound issues (I have lost my pickup for my acoustic guitar so had to play into a mic – I am never doing that again), the set went down well and we had a good night. The videos from the gig didn’t come out particularly well though, because of the noise of the pub and unbalanced sound due to my immense crapness at remembering to find one of the most fundamental parts of our required equipment. So that evening, full of JD, we decided to get up the following morning and bash through the set one more time, and video it for posterity. Thus with fingertips so battered and painful from playing far harder and longer than either of us usually does, we sat down and went through the set one last time.
The quality still isn’t brilliant as it was recorded on a camera phone, and the two of us were tired, slightly hungover, lethargic and in no small amount of finger pain, but excuses aside, it’s nice to have a record of what we did. And the act of creating, of bouncing ideas off each other and of spending quality time with a good friend – doing what we both love – has definitely recharged my batteries a bit, and although I’m already dreading going back to work tomorrow, the weight that has been depressing me over the last few weeks feels a little lighter for the knowledge of having achieved something, and of having enjoyed it. So, here are a couple of videos. I’ve uploaded the whole lot to youtube, and you can watch them in order as a playlist here, but don’t expect great things, and don’t feel obliged to sit through them all. That said, if you like these two, then I certainly wouldn’t object to a few more hits on youtube, if you want to check out the rest. And before anyone points it out, I’m aware that the fact we are wearing almost identical clothes (this was unplanned), kind of makes it look like I am doing a set with my future self. I assure you this is not the case. Had I managed to achieve time travel I wouldn’t be posting low-grade films on youtube and future self wouldn’t be playing guitar with me, he would be telling me the outcomes of upcoming popular sports events. Thanks for listening, and apologies for whining.
A conversation with Lee and Dean today inspired me to write my first proper work of fiction. Although I love sci-fi, I had pretty much decided against trying to write any as I don’t have enough of a scientific background to do it properly, but this idea seemed basic enough for me to have a go. It’s just shy of 2000 words, which is the longest I’ve written so far, and I’m fairly happy with how it’s come out. I’ll no doubt do some editing over the next few days, but here’s the first draft anyway.
Survival
The worst thing about the job was the realisation that we’d never know whether it worked. If nothing happened it might mean we’d succeeded, or it could equally mean we were wrong, and the changes we made – the little atrocities we daily committed – were as unnecessary as they were inhumane. The thing was, if we were right, if we really were preventing catastrophe, the only way to prove it would be to stop, and then we’d…well, that line of thinking never got us anywhere. Even if it failed and the very effects we were striving to prevent were too far in motion to be stopped, we’d never see the realisation within our lifetime. Quite a conscience tester though, doing a thankless, controversial job; hated by near everyone whether religious or not and never knowing whether you were a hero or a terrorist.
Getting the equipment was easy enough, I worked with it every day. Sometimes your round would leave you closer to home than to the recharge bay, and you just went straight home and recharged the pod in your own garage. The company paid for the power anyway so it didn’t matter to you, just saved you a trip. It was one of the perks of the job that all energy consumption bills were covered by the state, I guess as an incentive to take the job. With fuel prices so high people would do pretty much anything if you gave them it for free. So yeah, the equipment was no problem. Getting it in the house without her knowing, and using it in secret was going to be the tricky part. I’d told her she’d passed. She didn’t have to have the procedure. She didn’t have to bear the shame of being unfit for purpose. The knowledge would crush her. The damage done by the buffer serum would pale in comparison to the psychological damage of knowing she wasn’t good enough, that there was something wrong with her that couldn’t be fixed. They called it a buffer to make it sound like a kind of protection, and I suppose in perverse way it was. But to me, buffer had only ever really meant one thing – end of the line.
"Bad day?" she asked
"No", I smiled, realising how sullen I must have looked as I came in, "today I was a hero"
"You always are to me"
The glint of love in her eye was as a sliver of lead through my stomach as the guilt hit me. She meant it, there was no irony yet if she only knew the macabre task that lay ahead of me she’d understand why I didn’t feel a hero tonight. Some days you felt the shame of a murderer, other days you realised how essential you were to every man, woman and child the world over. Today had been a good day: I’d seen it all for the best. "I am making a brighter future with each candle I snuff out" I would tell myself, "The prophylactic nature of my job is just and honourable", just like I’d been trained, and today I believed it. Right up until I got back to the office and picked up her results. They usually sent them out by post, but because the lab was in the same building as my department, I’d arranged to pick them up myself. It was still a relatively new procedure at this point, so the protocols and processes weren’t yet so rigid that everything had to be done by the book. It wasn’t yet so hated that everything had to be done to the letter for fear of the consequences, so it hadn’t been seen as untoward, that I was picking up my wife’s results rather than have her receive them at home, on her own, while I was out performing the very service she feared she would soon be the unwilling customer of.
I already had a faked success report, in preparation for the worst – whatever the outcome, she had to always believe that she passed. I’d seen and delivered enough of the damn forms to undeserving, arrogant pricks, to have had chance to scan and amend one. The facsimile was good, convincing. It wouldn’t convince anyone working in the department, or a judge, but it would be enough for her. It looked completely different to the form I pulled out of the envelope though. The simple, plain form – so plain it almost mocked the cruelty of the news it delivered. she had failed the test. Mentally she was fine; aptitude tests quite a mark above average. She was no Olympian but was in sufficient physical shape to be allowed to carry. The problem was a single dormant gene. She was a carrier of some pretty much unheard-of degenerative disease. She might contract the affliction herself at any time, but had just been lucky so far. So much has happened since I read it I don’t even remember what the disease was, now I wish I’d paid more attention – it plagues me every night, trying to remember what it was. Back then it didn’t seem important what she had, the only important thing was that she would never be allowed children, and that not only would I be the one to have to tell her, but that I would be the one to perform the procedure.
Some years ago the governments of the world realised that simply being greener wasn’t enough. cleaner, more sustainable fuel sources did not change the fact that there were simply too many people. We were not affecting the climate just by our actions or inactions anymore, we were affecting it by our very presence. Scientists had known for years that this was the case and had eventually pressured the governments into encouraging vegetarianism and self sufficiency, hoping against hope that they could reduce the number of other animals, to prevent having to reduce the numbers of the animals causing the most damage. Humans. For a time things looked positive: with fewer livestock everywhere, with food being grown locally and delivered to people’s houses to save them all having individual transport, a visible change had taken place, things were improving. But it wasn’t long before the governments realised the change was too slow. We had only postponed, not prevented our fate. Action needed to be taken, drastic action, but without causing a panic. A delicately balanced amount of information was systematically introduced into the public domain, pressure applied to the press and the broadcasters to encourage more careful family planning and make smaller families more desirable, more socially acceptable. It was subtly done – TV shows started having fewer people in each family. In children’s programming protagonists were rarely shown to have more than one sibling, and often they would antagonise and make the idea of a brother or sister almost repulsive. Planting the seed to prepare people for the next phase. Giving them the subconscious feeling that large families are bad and wasteful. The one real benefit that reducing the animals had had was showing that reducing numbers could have a positive effect. However bitter the pill would be to swallow, it would be difficult to deny that it was probably going to work and as long as the majority of the speculation held hope for a favourable outcome, that should be enough to carry the legislation through with little public resistance.
The end result was that by the time they introduced means-tested sterilisation, a large proportion of the populace was relatively easily convinced that it was for the best and some even volunteered for the procedure before being tested. Debates had raged for months between parliaments to determine how the selection process would be decided. Some had suggested a lottery, arguing that means testing, though more beneficial for the species as a whole, was in itself a genetic lottery – someone who was intelligent, healthy and strong would be more likely to provide intelligent, healthy offspring, but how did that make them more worthy or deserving than someone who had contributed to society’s greater good for years, yet carried a dormant defective gene? Others had said that each nation should have to sterilise a percentage of their population and they would each be responsible for making the decision themselves how best to choose. Inevitably different faiths argued different standpoints, according to their own specific dogma, and what was acceptable according to their teachings, but they were eventually shouted down by the scientific community who argued that enough of their rules were already being regularly broken as to render meaningless any opposition to the process on religious grounds. Eventually the squabbling had gone on long enough and the tests were decided upon. As the whole point of the exercise was the survival of the species, it seemed most logical to the majority of debaters, that the process should be a kind of orchestrated natural selection – survival of the potentially fittest. If someone was up to certain standard against a list of desirable criteria, they were allowed to reproduce, if they failed any one of the tests, they would be the end of their line. Knowing how difficult it would be to police and control such a decision, the buffer serum was developed, to painlessly render the subject infertile and unable to reproduce. At least, in terms of the physical it was painless.
As long as we had known each other there had been no question of us growing old without bringing new lives into the world. Unswerved by the negative light society now shone on large families, we still had dreams of nurseries and playrooms, and small voices filling the air with laughter. We both wanted children, lots of them, but had slowly resigned ourselves to the idea that one or two would be all we were allowed. Not being able to have any would be too heartbreaking to bear, and I knew that the guilt of having been the one to prevent it could prove be too much for either one of us to bear. Despite this, I knew that telling her would seem like an accusation, an open declaration of failure, it would be too big a thing for us to have between us, so quite simply, she could never know. I could never tell her the truth. I would tell her she had passed the test. The only flaw in my plan was that just telling her was not enough, she had to believe she was ok, and in the clear, yet never conceive a child, lest the company find out that I had failed in my duty. She still had to undergo the procedure or our offspring would end up orphaned, as both parents spent the rest of their days incarcerated for violating the mandatory sterilisation act. I knew what I had to do, and the night I gave her the results I brought the pod home to charge. We celebrated and although heavy with the weight of the lie, my heart soared to see her so happy and relieved. She was tired before me, as always happens when she drinks, so I tucked her into bed, content and at peace with the world. As I sat in the garage some minutes later, administering the buffer serum to myself, the smile on her face ran through my head and made me glad it was me making the sacrifice instead of her.
June 21st,2009
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