Love, Poetry and Revolution - Tuesday 30th January 2024

Despite some medical challenges (maybe more on that later), I'm enjoying life more and more as I get into the retirement state of mind.  There is much to do, though there are still things holding me back, things out of my control.

As I write this I am in Liverpool, having just returned from a trip to the City Centre earlier. This was primarily a recce, with a bit of shopping and a coffee (and pain au chocolat) in the Bold Street Coffee shop. No daytime trip to Bold Street can miss a visit to 'News From Nowhere', an independent bookshop that always contains something unexpected. Like me.  My being there is not that unexpected in reality, nor is the fact that I didn't leave empty-handed.

The primary reason for this visit was to begin to familiarise myself with the City. How the streets hang together.  I'm working on it still, but Google maps was essential to help me find one shop, which is a little tucked away, or seems to be.

Having made this introductory visit, I plan to go again soon, though with a more cultural purpose in mind.

One of the unexpected consequences of retirement is that somewhere deep in my brain it has unleashed a realisation that I am still both restricted by and mentally flattened, drained, and worn down by, my situation. Our situation (E and I). The situation (E and I).  I think the inherent mental exhaustion is the reason I can't seem to sleep properly.

Physically, I have also had some medical challenges, primarily one I've been trying to avoid, but which has caught up with me.  Right now I'm not happy to expand upon the above, other than to say that I am taking antibiotics to cure a consequence that resulted from this very thing, which I knew comes with a "slightly increased risk of infection". Not my words.  To be fair, the infection is the result of my not sticking to the rules and is thus self-inflicted. Enough.

Music continues to play a big part in my life, enhanced by an investment in Roon paired with Qobuz. Spotify be gone!

Tomorrow I should be in Dublin for the day, on a brief James Joyce homage, whilst Q is at a business meeting near the Botanical Gardens. More on that when time permits.

I'm getting a bee in my bonnet (I don't have a bonnet. It's not Easter yet.) about lactose-free milk, or the lack of availability of it in coffee shops across this land.  Trivial in the scheme of life and indeed some of the above, but...

Dana Gavanski /  'How To Feel Uncomfortable'  / 'LATE SLAP' (forthcoming)


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