Lockdown Diary - Wednesday 18th November 2020

Another day lived under the shadow of the accursed, angry gluteus medius and tensor fasciae latae.  Damn them all!

Work. Obvs.

Everywhere I go I am leaving the scent of tiger balm in my wake. I guess it could be a lot worse.  It does also seem to be working. I'm not sure the stripes suit me though. Perhaps they'll grow on me.

Somehow the time between finishing work and starting to make dinner evaporated, a liminal space that was neither one thing or another, and so it is that I find myself emptying the bins from across the house into the waste bag whilst son #2 starts to make dinner.

Whilst collecting the rubbish bins I pass my wife's TV and see Barack Obama is on. I'm stopped in my tracks and must listen. It's a shock.  It reminds me what being presidential means. The stark contrast with the current incumbent is apparent.  It makes me realise that however much I rail against Trump, I have become a little deadened to the petulance, the childishness and the plain ignorance of the man. Obama doesn't need to say anything to put Trump down, because Trump's imbecility and big-headedness are shouted out with every sentence he utters.

Despite missing the beginning of the interview we all sit and watch the Obama interview to the end before starting to watch 'The Queen's Gambit'. Obama is captivating when he speaks, he is thoughtful and considered.  Would that we had a Prime Minister with similar self-knowledge and thoughtfulness. I must take time to watch the interview in full.

I am let off lightly this bin night - the boys take the rubbish out on their own so I can rest my hip/back.  They are good lads and we are very lucky.

Róisín Murphy is an artist who consistently comes up with new ideas and is never happy to stick with a formula. She's been experimenting in the margins of dance music for some while now and some of her recent albums, for example 'Take Her Up To Monto', have put the emphasis on experiment rather than dance, all the while making her voice the anchor.  I do love her voice, both when she speaks and when she sings, though on her latest album, 'Róisín Machine', her voice has been treated on several of the tracks.  Nevertheless, it's her best album in a while, mostly because the balance of experiment and songs is at that perfect point of equilibrium. This is the title track, 'Murphy's Law'


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