You've got to sin to be saved

Blast from the past phones from the blue. Make sense? Hope not. It's the second time the same from blast from the past has phoned in a week. This is an important sign. It shows she's either drunk or expecting our friendship to kick off again. And weirdly, as good as the first call was (and long), the shorter second call was more fulfilling because we were able to talk rather than simply exhange news of the last few years.
Red sky at night. And it is a kind of red, either that or my contact lenses are playing up. A stormy sky tonight. And yes, the title is current best song for the next fifteen minutes.
I'm pleased my blast from the past is in the present again. I've been catching up with some of the blasts from the past I let slip recently for reasons hinted at in the multitude of self-conscious posts below. But this is one of the two blast I most wanted to update tense for.
So welcome back. And the next call will be mine. And then, my blast, we will be well and truly on the way to the future. (Pretentious ending arrived at, shall now publish and give myself a group hug)

Weight a second

In order to kill time whilst low clouds trundle up the Thames blurring everything and rain thumps on the windows I've been looking at some old photographs. I dug out some pictures from the sponsored walk I did in support of Leukaemia Research (as briefly alluded to in the Geoff Thomas post a couple of days ago).
Now, I'm not exactly slim. And I have lost 9.5 kilos (one and a half stones) since 1st February. But looking at the pictures makes me think that I was ill for a long time before I finally fell ill (if you see what I mean). I look unhealthy.
The pictures were taken a year ago and I may post them up at a later date (or when I've lost even more weight, another two stones will do). It makes me wonder how much excess fluid I was carrying around even then.
You know that when you look for the signs with hindsight you can see too many. But everything I see and remember screams at me that I've been killing myself for too long now. I was ill before the walk. The walk didn't help. Then moving and the curse of flat pack furniture (why didn't I buy the divan!) and the stress of a new job. Blah, blah, blah, self-pity, voyage of discovery, self-help and so on and so forth.
I'll now dig out some photos from 2002 and the Australia/New Zealand trip and compare me to the 2005 version.
Ah, vanity at the age of 33.

And as if to prove the point...

My brain is now full of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and their classic Twenty Four Minutes From Tulse Hill. Didn't put a timer on it though.
This is why pop is so great (he he he). It's the pick, consume, dispose invention that rules the world. Now if only modern day pop "stars" could earn enough money to buy some clothes to wear then the whole thing could move slowly ever onwards once more. I'd better go to bed before I start thinking about Sarah Cracknell.
Too late.

And for those of you listening in black and white...

I feel obliged to point out that the previous post is not a poem in any way, shape or form. It's just late night ramblings. And I also feel obliged to point out that for the next fifteen minutes, the best pop song ever written is Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough. You know, the single from the very early 1980s with the black and white photograph of the cute little cat on the cover. But that's beside the point. Fifteen minutes should be about right as it's the same length of time that I was convinced that This Is Not A Song by the Frank and Walters was the greatest ever. Before that Michael Caine by Madness. Fifteen minutes is about long enough for pop music. Then you can return to it fifteen or twenty or twenty five years later and suddenly it's the greatest song all over again.