Nine Feet Underground

Why me? A question we've all probably asked at some point in our lives. The answer, though not the one we'd like, is why not me? Life is random. We should take every day as a gift, but when life is flowing smoothly (whenever that's going to be!), it's hard not to squander your time.  I'll leave that until tomorrow.  We can go there another day. Let's do that next year instead.  We've all said and/or done it. It's hard not to. Trouble is, there might come a day when things deferred are in jeopardy.  Those future days might not be guaranteed, one way or another. I'm still making sense of what this means. I just know it to be true. The song I've chosen is 'Black Cat' by Gentle Giant.   This tune has been stuck in my head for a few weeks now, and was chosen in honour of two black cats who are no longer with us.  The metre of the song reminds me of a cat slinkily walking, in no hurry to get anywhere.

A life can be considered as a multitude of parallel streams, each of which feeds into the main flow of your river of life.  The streams represent paths not taken whenever choices arose. When you choose a path, you exclude another path.  Whichever route you choose, you don't know what would have happened if you'd chosen differently. You do have to believe, assuming you are happy with where you find yourself, that the other path wouldn't have been better. Sometimes a wrong decision can take you down a path you're not enjoying and still lead you back to happiness.  Either way, there will be joy on the path you chose, even amongst the weeds that choke the stream. The song I've chosen, '1000 Years' by The Coral, touches on these themes.

I'm not a big fan of nostalgia. Never have been.  I don't believe in the idea that things were much better in the past. A bad case of rose-tinted spectacles and all that.  I prefer to look forward. Despite the current state of the world, I believe there is better to come, both individually and globally. Clearly, this is a preamble for a volte face - almost but not quite.  I have gradually started to accept that good things in the here and now can come from roots in the past. My rejection of the past has been a bit extreme, and I've come to realise (I am a slow learner) that the past makes me who I am now. All of which is an excuse for a trip down memory lane.  Many years ago I worked in the IT department of a supermarket chain, a chain that is no more as it got gobbled up by bigger fish.  The team I worked in included two other men with the same Christian name as me. Up until then I don't think I'd met anyone with the same name. To distinguish each other we had ...

Carpe Diem There is much encouragement from society to make the most of every day. Identify the small things that bring pleasure. Be grateful for what you have, not what you lack or desire. This is all sensible advice, but we can't be exploring a new part of the world every day.  Jumping out of planes (with parachutes, ofc), flying at 500 knots through the Machynlleth loop in the backseat of an F15E at 250 feet above the ground. Gradually, day-to-day life imposes its mundane aspects on us and the possibility of living each day as if it will be our last soon fades away.  It would be too exhausting and become rather tedious.  We find pleasure in the people and activities we love, or go mad. Sometimes life intervenes and is determined to slap us around the face with a wet fish to remind us of our mortality. But there are escapes... Music is one of the things that keeps me energised, so I'm very grateful to still have some hearing (despite the loud concerts and fast jet noise...

As I begin this post, my expectation is that it will be about my TIDAL music listening stats for 2025. Let's start with a link to those stats: TIDAL Recap 2025   Just in case TIDAL take down these numbers, I've taken some screenshots which I'd like to write about. First up is top artist, which reads as follows: Toddly, Odd Rundgren held the top spot, probably because Q and I went to see him live in Birmingham. As Q is not familiar with the great man's oeuvre, I created a playlist which included the songs likely to be in his setlist.  I tried to bias this towards the songs I felt she'd find most palatable. In the event, the gig was so loud that the palatability of songs was a moot point. It was very much a gig for fans as well as being ruddy loud. Pardon? The gig opened with 'How About A Little Fanfare?' which segued into one of my favourite Todd songs, namely 'I Think You Know': Perhaps prophetically, it includes the line, " I can't explain ...

I implied there'd be another, and there is. This is it. I have been doing quite a lot, so there's probably a lot to write about. I'm uncertain how much I am in the mood to write, though. I'm going to list a lot of the things I could write about, then see what that sparks in the little grey cells. Of note: Bagheera being put to sleep Robyn Hitchcock John Bishop Suzanne Vega Todd Rundgren Slow Horses (Season 5) Celebrity Traitors MAFS UK (Have mercy on my soul) The Sandman Lots of Archaeology on TV Ancestors (Book) The Idler The White Lotus (Season 1 - Descent into Hell) Online Course at the James Joyce Cultural Centre in Dublin studying 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' (Next 6 weeks) The Reader at Calderstones Park Mansion House Back pain/Balance - Full Spine MRI scan (next week) The saddest thing has been the death of Q and φ's cat, Bagheera. She was a lovely black cat and is much missed. Q and I saw Robyn Hitchcock at Prohibition Studios in Liverpo...

Next week would have been E's birthday. Her first birthday since she died. Every day is the birthday of millions of people, living and dead. I'm wrestling with how to commemorate this day.  The date is still the day of her birth; however, she is not physically here to have her birthday celebrated. If someone is no longer here, should you celebrate their birthday? In remembering, we are commemorating.  It's not something that can be forgotten (not that I want to), not this close to her death, but perhaps it's about how I and our sons and her brother feel inside. For me, it feels wrong to celebrate the day, especially now. As her illness progressed, each birthday had less and less to celebrate. We always marked the day. More or less, even though it became impossible to do the things we would have done, since E couldn't leave the house. I have spoken to my sons about this upcoming date to see if they would like to do something special to mark the occasion.  So far, th...

I have been swimming deeply in the sea of life, often miles from land, and there hasn't been space to write. Have you ever tried writing whilst immersed in the sea? Much has been going on externally and internally. Getting engaged to Q in July has necessitated some early planning, starting with where and when we'll be getting married.  We have a date and a location.  Based on the date of the wedding we've booked a venue for the party.  These two dates being agreed upon, we've sent out initial invitations: this is especially important for most of Q's family as they will be travelling from a land down under, namely Australia. Most of August was taken up with this planning, mentally if not physically. As wedding-related activities have started to crystallise, I have begun to realise that everything has been leading towards the big day next year. Destiny. I've also found it hard to write here for a couple of different reasons. A bee flew into my bonnet and took up r...

A post before July ends! Amazing! July has been incredibly busy socially and has sown seeds for the remainder of my life, hopefully.  I have long harboured an ambition to become a writer.  Writing always comes second to living life, so I don't think I have what it takes. It's not an all-consuming passion.  It's never too late (?) Q and I spent ten days in Italy early in the month.  The original plan was a week's holiday split between Venice and Florence, returning to Bologna (where we started) for an NGO conference that Q had to attend for a week.  Sadly, Q's actual job needed her back at work earlier, so we left Bologna early on Wednesday morning of the second week. I had travelled to Italy intending to ask Q to marry me, to which end I had purchased a temporary ring to seal the deal.  Where and when to propose? I had Venice in mind as I love the city and think it's a romantic place to propose. On the assumption I would propose there, I had a few places in...

June is underway and my bonce is still not back to normal.  I'm getting there, but one of the current drawbacks is that I need a lot of sleep. Don't get me wrong, it's feeling way better, I'd just hoped it would be as before by now.  Apart from pain, which I'm ignoring from now on, my emotions are out of control.  Probably a combination of lack of suppression now I'm drug-free and the aftershocks of February's event. Naively, I had assumed that the years of loss and grieving for that loss, alongside the therapy and counselling, would have made the final process easier.  I now feel that that was unrealistic.  Grief is a powerful emotion, and there are no straightforward laws or rules that govern how an individual might experience it.  That'll learn ya. Never content to deal with one major problem at a time, I've also been experiencing worse back pain (with consequences for my stability/balance).  I have seen a physio about it.   On the one han...

I'm back again. My head is still not back to the state which I call normality.  I'm still getting headaches daily.  I'm not sure if it's the bang on my head or SSRI withdrawal or a toxic combination of both.  Next week, I may get a chance to be investigated by my GP, if nothing has changed. In the meantime, I am competing for the record of becoming the largest consumer of paracetamol and ibuprofen. It's not ideal, but there have to be positives. Life goes on, as it must and I've a few big topics on my mind, aside from the above.  Planning for the future and deciding what that will look like is one of these topics. Thankfully, this one takes two to plan and Q and I have had several conversations as we discern a plan emerging from the fog of possibilities. Working out the layout of my new library/music room is another consideration.  The sofa-bed has been delivered and looks good. Sofa-r, so good.  Having the sofa in place calls into question where every...

M'aider! m'aider! m'aider! (The above only fully makes sense on the 1st May, however, for reasons that will unfold below, a post on the first was not possible.) I was feeling positive and optimistic on the 30th April and in this euphoric state managed to hit my head very hard on a metal bar of my new shed.   I've hit my head on many occasions, so I never consider it to be a big deal.  This bit of headbanging was different.  I developed a powerful headache and started feeling nauseous.  Son #1 went through the checklist of things of serious concern, and I didn't really tick any of the boxes. Off to bed after taking some painkillers.  At 4am on May Day, I woke with a helluva headache and feeling distinctly unwell.  I woke son #1 up and we got a taxi to A&E.  Turns out I don't have any obvious signs of brain damage but do have a concussion.  The solution: painkillers and rest.  No caffeine. No alcohol.  No driving. No screen time. ...

T.S. Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' opens with the line 'April is the cruellest month...', a line with deep meaning in context, contrasting as it does, the renewal and rebirth associated with Spring set against new life emerging from grief and loss.  This seems very appropriate, and April has been a busy month full of change and joy. The month began with the scattering of E's ashes in North Wales.  This was both a sad and joyous occasion, which we all took part in. Since then, I have transformed the back garden into something that E would have loved and almost completed the transformation of the garage into a music room, library and guest bedroom.  As I write, it's being painted, and the final fix items are being done. I'm not sure what E would have made of it.  Moving my books out of the main house and separating my music listening from everyone else would have been popular.  Having yet another room to myself (I have an office too), less so. Life is for ...

After a long period of stasis, I have just completed the first step in changing our house and garden to meet the needs of us all.  The first step is converting our garden into a usable space for socialising and hosting gatherings (maybe with food if guests are lucky!) I'm on the verge of starting a project to convert our garage into a combined music room, library, and guest bedroom. It's long been a dream of mine to have a library and a music room, and this dream is now almost a reality.   You might ask why I didn't start this sooner? The overarching reason is that being E's carer, with all that entailed, it was almost impossible (for a long time) to muster the energy or positivity needed to make such big changes. Not only that, some of these changes would have been impossible whilst E was in her hospital bed. Getting to the point where I could even imagine there was a future for me was a very long process involving pain, upheaval, and a lot of counselling.  I need t...

Life has changed a lot since I last wrote here, but there's only one thing I can actually write about. About a month ago, E died after a long illness.  Although it had been expected for a long time, it still came as quite a shock.  There wasn't any warning, and the carers discovered her body in the morning. Although my three sons and I had been grieving for the loss of a mum and a wife for a long time, the finality of this was deeply upsetting. As one of my sons said, "I was just used to her being there all the time". Overall, it was a relief because E had suffered so much in the past few months. This was very unpleasant for her, obviously, but also very hard to watch and hear.  After E's death, there has been lots to do.  Last week, we had a wake/celebration of her life, which was attended by around 60 people from across her life, ranging from her childhood to friends she'd made amongst the mums who had children at school at the same time as our youngest. The...

Sometimes it's hard to know what is good and what is not.  Last night (technically very early this morning) we called out the out-of-hours nursing service to attend to E.  We've had to do this several times consecutively over the past week.   With any luck, this is a sign that things are changing, which would be in everyone's best interest, not least E's.  Either way, the positive thing is that we should be moving to a situation where E gets pain relief and calming medication via a continuous feed syringe driver.  There is no telling how long this could last, so we have to develop a plan B, for the sake of E, who would ideally have access to 24-hour nursing care and for the rest of us who find witnessing E in pain to be upsetting. (Stronger words are more appropriate, but those will do) The reality of the situation is unimaginable unless you are the one or ones experiencing it.  Things must change. On other occasions, it is easy to distinguish good and...