Let There Be No Doubt

Who knows, who knows / I might never have found you / Touching your toes / in the alpine section of the garden centre / where anything grows

From time to time it's hard to avoid this sounding like the Wonder Years, a drippy voice over about things we learnt that weren't previously aware of. It's also annoyingly tough to actually write something here sometimes because I want to be specific but feel uncomfortable without hte backup of being able to say "aha, it's only fiction." Fiction hides everything. It can be about you but also an extension of you, you are a starting point. And yet really it is you. Or at least the you you wanted to be. still want to be or were afraid that you had become.
So, it's not really a surprise that I'm finding it hard to write here about the genuinely brilliant situation that has developed over the last 7-10 days. Really genuinely fantastic. And I can't write about it. But I think I get it. It's because I want to live it first. The moment it turns into a piece of writing then it is an experience to be shared with all manner of other people. But in truth it's an experience that only two people ought to share. I'm not saying you don't deserve to know. Hang on, that might actually be what I'm saying. No, maybe, I'm not sure.
Not every moment of everyone's life needs to be shared as a mediated experience because then the experience is no longer your own, you no longer own it for yourself. So, I think I've got there, I want to own this experience for as long as possible. So, still with me? I'll make sure I waffle on here about any old crap because, for the moment, I'm keeping the good stuff to myself.
And I make no apologies for it.
And I'm sorry about that.

I lied, I lied, I lied, I lied, I lied, I lied

Tag mission no nearer completion.

Things I like this week:
New Mexico
Ticking boxes
Reorganistion
Change (and not the small kind)
The NFT (Maltese Falcon last Friday, Casablanca next, who needs new releases? Well, ok, I am going there to see a preview of Hot Fuzz in February so I guess I do - the level of excitement I'm feeling explains the small change gag)
And the rest.

Bear with me.

Oh labels. How exciting. Now, wait a second or two while I go through and label up the posts and then refine the labels. Ok, it may take me quite a while, not becuase of the number of posts but because of the shame of using the word nitwit in the previous post. I may never live that down.
The shame, the shame.

And now, with the time coming up to eight forty, it's thought for the day.

Institutional blogging must stop.
Whilst the BBC and the Guardian are two of the media institutions I hold dear (well, probably the only two really) their insistance on calling everything on their websites "a blog" to indicate it is an opinion piece is really an abuse of terminology. It's an editorial, it's a column, it seems it's whatever they want it to be. But in truth all they've become is an excuse for nitwits that while away a couple of hours at work by getting in to a slagging match at the end of said "blog".
This is not democracy guys, this is not an expression of your communicative rights. It's, oh what's the point.

Notes and queries

1) I really need to get up off the sofa now.
2) I guess Gabor's on his way back.
3) Good intentions can only last for so long.
4) Can we define what exactle constitutes "false idols" in the year 2007 because I swear there's a lot of worshipping going on.
5) We really ought to have a bash at "worshipping" as well. If it boils down to doing something for only an hour a week then I've got this West Wing thing going on. We should clear it up. Is it possible to worship without realising? If so we need to check back on that false idols thing again.
6) Is it possible to be a practising aethiest? And yes, I know I am asking a simple, naive blah blah question based upon a common misunderstanding.
7) I appear to have lost my mug. It was here a moment ago.
8) Yup, good intentions are gone (oom bop bop good intentions). She's giving me excitations.
9) Can I make ten?
10) I guess the answer to that is no.

With no particular axe to grind. Part Three.

Prendre vous vu se que ils faits à Dial Square?
C'est maintenant une parc de stationnement.
(I suspect this translation website I'm using is a dial of steaming manure but until my A level French comes back to me - I failed - I'll keep on using it)
I have no particular axe to grind against Arsenal. I'm a Palace fan. Four times I went to Highbury to see my team play (my team! Delusions) and we lost 4-0, 4-1, 4-0 and 5-1. Thanks. Highbury is now on the way to becoming a housing estate. But Dial Square is now a car park. For those of you who don't care enough to know/read on, Dial Square is the original name of Arsenal FC, it being the part of the Woolwich Arsenal where the players worked. Only one side of the square remains but as the whole site is being constantly developed (and it looks pretty good actually) more car parking space is required.
I think I think it's a shame (if you see what I mean) but I'm not sure. I suppose that everything changes at some stage but it seems a shame that when so much of the site is listed that this one relatively small area couldn't be set aside for, I don't a Square with a bit of grass and maybe even a couple of goals. Still, I wonder if any Arsenal fans care. Perhaps they'll all be clambouring for the spaces.
I don't really know if I'm trying to make a point about anything. The importance of football in our culture? Whether or not concrete is part of our culture? Preservation of historic sites and whether or not we sacrifice recent history in favour of the more glamourous past? Does history matte anyway? Is it anything other than a series of codes devised to impart a sense of an artificial national identity?
But maybe it's just a story about une parc de stationnement. But sometimes a cigar isn't just a cigar. Sometimes it's a smoke
Enough already

With no particular axe to grind. Part Two.

Répéter après moi.

Ça matinée J'ai acheté une paire de pantoufles.

Je m'appelle Andew.

Je suis soixante-dix ans.

Merde.

With no particular axe to grind. Part One.

Do you think it bothers the French that although the main language across the globe, culturally, economically, politically and diplomatically is English although we still use the expression lingua franca (which to the best of my knowledge isn't even french).
Answers sur une carte postale (or is it un carte postale? You see, that's where it all goes wrong).
Anyway, today nous celebrate the gloire de francais (except sans les accents if you know what I mean) until I get bored of it.
Cinque minutes peut-etre?

Of spice and zen

If you can discover that the same man wrote the screenplays of North by North West and The Sound of Music.
If you can stop this worrying trend of eating pickled onions straight from the jar.
If you can continue listening to Test Match Special even though you're 4-0 down and already behind on 1st innings score before lunch on the third day.
If you can still hope that maybe, just maybe your football team wont embarrass themselves against lower league opposition in the third round of the FA Cup on Saturday.
If you can ignore that twat in the pub who confused place of birth with the artificial construct of national identity and finish your IPA without stabbing in the eye with your Anti-Nazi League badge.
Then you'll be a slightly confused alpha male my son.

And so the conversation turned

Bloody Christmas opening hours at the gym. Nine o'clock, nine o'clock? How dare these people have lives? Don't they know I'm not sleeping well and looking for something to do at 7 each morning.
Although speaking as someone who has worked the Christmas rush (in my distant youth I must admit) I do have every sympathy. Funny how we can build a society in which someone must always be working, someone is always at our beck and call, to clean up our problems and make our lives easier, wet nurses to us all.
But I digress (and why shouldn't I? Haven't I earned that right? Or have I earnt that right?) Anyway Christmas is nearly through and even GMTV have started wishing their viewers a Happy New Year instead. Gosh. It's almost gone. We're nearly back to normal or whatever version of reality constitues normality in your eyes.
A few weeks back I started getting the same symptons that put me in hospital in 2005. For a while it was agony. Imagine not being able to sleep because every time you rest your head you start to choke. And then consider that the repeat visits of heart failure seem to be the ones that kill. How organised was I with the list of phone numbers I took into hospital? How scared did the very junior doctor look as she told me that it did indeed sound like the first stages of heart failure? She did have a startled bunny countenence to savour. But anyway the contradiction was that the tests were clear but the symptoms were not. My own doctor knew the problem and sorted it fairly quickly once I got to see him. And the situation has returned to normal (it appears it was merely a lung infection but I'm still not sleeping although the choking has gone, I guess it's a mental thing now). The funny thing was that for the second time in my life I was preparing myself to die. The first time I knew it was a distinct possibility. But the second time was worse. Imagine dedicating a year of your life to something and it still turns out shit. Try it. Go on. See what I mean. The funny thing was that when I came out of hospital I went back to my flat, got my gym "kit" and went to find an exercise bike. At four a.m. I thought I was going to die. At six a.m. I had heart failure. At eight a.m. I was on the bike. Perhaps I knew all along it wasn't as serious as the junior doctor thought. Perhaps. But perhaps I am so determined to put right the mistakes of my past that I am prepared to push myself to the limits. Perhaps I want to overcome the stupid, pathetic laziness that engulfed me and consequently if I do push myself too hard and unravel it all then at least I will be able to say that I tried. At least I will be able to say I did something rather than nothing, rather than wait and see.
The gym opens in twenty minutes. I'm off to do some stretching before the stroll along the river.
Better to die of something rather than nothing.
Useful Simpsons quote: "They say she died of a burst ventricle but I know she died of broken heart."

All present and correct

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Phew.
Shibboleth

When you walk with the animals, talk with the animals...

I feel smug. I should too, all Christmas presents bought and wrapped a week ago. They're pretty good as well and only one was bought over the Internet so at least I've given myself the gift of human interaction this year. Ahhh, bless.
I feel slightly vindicated. I have a season ticket to Crystal Palace Football Club. I have missed six home games this year including the last four before last night's fog fest. I can't say I missed much. For reference, two of the four I was on my "Gadding and Gallivanting Around Places I Used To Live Tour, 2006" and for the next two I was quite ill having not really been up to the gadding and gallivanting etc. But that's fine because last night I very nearly didn't go and having gone and suffered through a foggy one-nil win to find that my weakened circulation had virtually stopped I was able to claim some bizarre sort of moral superiority. I was right not to go to the other games because, face it, we're not that good so I didn't miss much. But having gone, I suffered badly. It's a funny old game.
I feel odd. One week ago I was having the best night of my life. And I know circumstances mean that we haven't been in touch since I was kind of hoping that circumstances could be overcome. It turns out they can’t. And I guess they never will.
I feel better. Well better than I did midweek when out with another potential person of additional interest. But she didn't really. The good news is that now that I'm dead* I feel a lot happier about letting people down rather than chugging along for fear of upsetting anyone. The fact that I haven't done it yet is neither here nor there although it probably is somewhere but I don't think I can get here from there right now.
I feel vindicated. So this is Christmas, what have you done? Well, John let me see, I think I've changed most of the negative elements of my personality, lost 6.69 stone, 42.50 kilos or 93.69 lbs depending upon your weapon of choice and hauled this old ship around so convincingly that I fully expect 2007 to be as brilliant as 2005 was bad (2006 doesn't really count due to it's nature as a repositioning year). So if I hear Mr Lennon on the radio asking the question and then informing me that war is over merely because I so desire it then I will be able to declare that I am nearly ready to consider the salvation of the world due to my new found ability to save myself.

* Refers to previous illness and fact that in Oct 2005 I was so ill I now regard the morning I woke up in hospital as the day I died. There is some scientific evidence to back this point up so it's not simple self-pity. In fact it's the opposite because now, whenever I'm stuck in a moment that has the potential to re-establish my previous ways (dull, dull, dull) then I ask myself this, "Now that you're dead what are you going to do with your life?"

Key Phrases For All Spies in London in December

This is London calling.
The fog has lifted.
Repeat.
The fog has lifted.
The ferries are running.
Repeat.
The ferries are running.

The magic formula

Lunchtime meeting with a friend in a pub near Victoria Station
+ My tendency to get to pub early
+ My wanting to have a drink to help oil the brains over the complications of Saturday night and Sunday morning
Multiplied by my friends ability to turn up thirty minutes late
= drunk by two o'clock and posting bollocks on blog when back home by half three.

Nice pun, shame about the face

Beta blogger? I geddit. Sounds a bit like... Arf arf arf. Yeah, ok. But apart from that what is the point? Speaking as someone who is on beta blockers, I don't know how it is meant to be anything other than a trite play on words. The similarities end with the name.
As cheap and as shoddy as a tabloid newspaper. And we love it for exactly the same reason. Still at least the "profile views" seem to count each time the profile is viewed (unlike before) however it doesn't appear to count unique views. Not that I care. If I have a really boring day I might be able to view my profile a couple of thousand times. Man, I'll never get tired of seeing that counter go up one at a time.

Ok, huddle up

Let's recap.
Words only have the meaning you give to them. Meanings change. One man meat is another man's murder. I know this and I know that the sentimental drivel that passes for 95% of pop music is simply a series of vaguely connected words hastily arranged into a form that scans and suits the not-so randomly written notes. I'm quite happy to admit that I probably like a reasonable percentage of the 95% of pop music that qualifies as sentimental drivel but I know that no one is speaking to me about my life, no one is speaking for me.
So why is it that I'm getting all misty when listening to "There is a light that never goes out" and "Let it be". It's not that they're deep and meaningful. I mean, "Let it be". Let it be what you blithering idiot. Let it be an unfinished sentence? And the thought of the world's least sexual man giving out romantic pearls of wisdom (I'm talking Morrisey here, not McCartney. Although now I come to think of it...) sends shivers.
I'm intelligent. I know these songs (sorry about this) say nothing to me about me life. It's just that at this sentimental time of the year I'm allowing myself to think that these songs are saying something to me about my life. Only I'm not quite sure what they're saying other than (sorry again) I want the one I can't have and it's driving me mad. Are the songs helping me to cope with this? No, but it wont stop me projecting.
But if words only have the meaning you give to them then I'm giving these words too important a meaning and I really should stop.

Let us not beat around the bush here

CAUTION: This posting may actually contain beating around bush and a distinctly high level of waffling and not getting to the point.

You get two people together who want to be together. But circumstances stand in the way. Life gets in the way and not in a "two houses divided" manner, not in an "already in another relationship" kind of way. In a "circumstances make things really complicated" kind of way because of where you live, what you do and where you're going. When you think you know that this is someone you really want to be with and you have a great time with them but you know you'll only ever get to see them once a month, twice a month at most, that work will always get in the way for all manner of reasons that you cannot possibly begin to imagine.
I may have said this before but life is shit. It's shit because it's linear. I guess I need more time. I'd like to have some time back please. I'd like to be in one of those crappy movies where minds or bodies switch. I'd like to have my current shape/weight/frame/state of mind in my mid twenties body. Maybe early. If anyone knows of a god/Hollywood studio who can do that for me, I'd like to be told. But then the circumstances would never have occurred and I think I like my life to be complicated after all.
You think you're confused, try it from where I'm sitting. All kinds of walls have been pulled down that should not have been pulled down and I am officially the most confused person in town.
Right, where were we?

Riding the Woolwich Express

I have a Freeview box. The gym to which I have recently been attending on a regular and dedicated basis has all of the Sky Sports channels. It is, therefore, no surprise that at 7am this morning I was in the gym preparing to saddle up on an exercise bike in front of Sky Sports One to watch the cricket. Seemed to be more productive than lying in bed listening to the radio, trying to work out if England were doing better when I was lying on my left or my right side.
Sadly, the gym opens at 8am tomorrow by which stage the match will either be over (and the Ashes with it) or Australia will have batted us out of the game so convincingly that watching will be unbearable.
On the upside, I managed an hour on the bike and twenty six kilometres. I don't know if that's good or bad but it seemed pretty decent to me.

Stare not at your navel lest the fluff stares back

Last effort at self-analysis before moving on:

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

Old Friedrich's got a bad reputation, gained from those who misused his work. But it seems to me that this quote says more about how I used to be.
Screw navel gazing.
Just get on with it.

It's not just weight you loose

it's money too. Think about it, with a whopping eight inches of the waist there's little I wear now that I was wearing three months ago, let alone twelve. And tonight I realised that I needed something "smart casual" in order to go out tomorrow night. Now the weight is stablising, it's time to spend, spend, spend. It'll be worth it, right? I'll find out tomorrow night.