Lockdown Diary - Monday 25th January 2021

There are still the remnants of yesterday's snow on the ground, though it is looking a bit sparse.  It was good to see snow and, anecdotally based on the few people I've spoken to who don't live here, it lifted many people's spirits, especially children's.

I have nothing planned for today (given yoga is off for me), so I'm intending to find time to read a chunk of 'All The Pretty Horses'  (I need to read roughly 30 pages a day if I'm to finish it in time for book club on Monday (1st February FFS!) and just generally imagine I no longer work for a living (even if only briefly).

One thing I have been putting off is sorting the paperwork in my office and filing it.  So what, you might reply. Unfortunately it is a big deal for me - it wouldn't be if it was just the usual bill stuff we all get (more and more of that entirely digital) - but it's all the documents I get regarding my wife's medical supplies, feed supplies, equipment servicing logs, NHS letters (often about things she can't participate in, like cancer screening programmes) and sundry social care documents.  To kill two birds and also to distract from the mind-numbing tedium of sorting and filing, I listen to the first hour or so of 'Freak Zone' while I'm doing it.

Before the sun starts setting, son #2 and I manage to find time to go for a brief walk (a little under 25 minutes), for both exercise, fresh air and the chance to chat.  By the end of the walk my old mate Hernia is getting angry, as she often does, and it appears that she's not happy if I'm vertical for much more than 20 minutes at a time and much prefers me horizontal or seated.  There are several answers to that.

Not one to intentionally aggravate a woman without cause, after walking I sit down and immerse myself in 'All The Pretty Horses', managing to read over 30 pages much of it gobbledegook about 'hackamores', 'bosaleas' and other things I've never heard of.

Satisfied with my reading progress for one day, I'm interrupted by a call from my older sister, who wants to catch up on my news as well as talking about my other sister's situation.  Of minor interest to you all, despite living in the frozen North, they didn't have snow yesterday, though they did have a fuck-ton earlier in the week. (N.B. My sister did not use the phrase 'a fuck-ton', this is my interpretation of the quantity of snow she described to me - more than a shitload, but probably less than a fucking blizzard)

Not feeling like starting dinner just yet, I decide to start watching a documentary film called 'Teenage Superstars' on Sky Arts.  It's about the Glasgow indie music scene between 1982 and 1992, featuring The Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream and others.  I didn't get to finish it as I had to put dinner on, but what I saw was ace!  One of the best things (so far) was that it re-acquainted me with an article from the NME, from way back when the NME still had some credibility, called 'Julian Cope's Tales From The Drug Attic', which has the by-line 'Few souls dare to wander the madcap landscape of the forgotten psychedelic relics of the 60's, that no person's land between sanity and oblivion. Julian Cope is one of those fearless few who knows that who dares, grins. This is his story.'  You have to read it to believe it, it is like a biblical proclamation on the subject of music, read it here.

Dinner on, then served to the team, and so on with 'Mr. Robot' which continues to challenge and intrigue in equal measure.

Another discovery courtesy of MÜ Magazine, this time Mungo's Hi Fi and Marina P with 'Troubles and Worries' from the album 'Soul Radio'

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