Nine Feet Underground

It may be Good Friday, but it's actually going to be like any other Friday without work.  You can take it as read that all the usual things happened.  Nothing out of the ordinary. At some point in the day I sat down and read a chunk more of  'Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground: Radical Escapism in the Age Of Paranoia'.  It only covers the hey-day of the band up until 1980's album 'Levitation' and I'm now in the final sections with only the period from late 1978 to 1980 left to read, which is about 100 pages.  I have so much I want to read that it would be good to finish it before starting the next book club book. After reading, I briefly listened to some Hawkwind from the Hawklords to 'Levitation' period as it's a period I don't know that well as I was heavily into punk and new wave at the time and didn't listen to it.  Whenever I have heard any of it I haven't been that impressed either.  On listening to it now I've discovered tha...

The hours of the day were consumed in a variety of ways, though the biggest chunk was taken up with a call to a friend in Berlin.  Sons 1 and 3 were both out meeting their girlfriends outdoors, one in Oxford the other in Guildford, leaving son #2, my wife and I in the house most of the day.  I will need to keep a little distance from sons 1 and 3 when they return, though son #3's girlfriend had a negative Covid test yesterday. The morning over, son #2 and I made lunch for ourselves. At 2 p.m. I began what turned out to be a marathon call with Berlin.  We are both fairly accomplished talkers and ended up chatting for over two hours: the conversation took in Covid, vaccine distribution, anti-vaxxers, Brexit, and music.  We are both big music fans though I think I probably take it up a level or three, both in terms of the number of albums I have and also the breadth of music that I listen to.  Nevertheless he and his wife's rediscovery of vinyl and high-resolution ...

The usual early morning carer is on leave this week and so I was somewhat surprised to have to wake up and get out of bed at twenty to seven in the morning. One of the other carers, who has never done the early round before and so started much earlier because she wasn't sure how long it would take, had arrived at the front door and rung the bell. I think it's going to be an interesting week! My non-working day, something of a mixed blessing of late, but I decided to try and keep myself busy with stuff... ...starting with changing my bed and washing all the linen. This gave me an opportunity to switch to the 'summer' duvet in honour of the Spring / Vernal equinox on Saturday morning (20th March).  I decided to air both the 'winter' and 'summer' duvets outside.  I'm not sure what good it will do, but I imagine it might in some way, so I've done it. T hree washes later and all the linen - plus some of son #3s - is hanging outside in sun. The morning...

The same goes for Sunday as for Saturdays (see Saturday). One of the morning's chores was to do the census. It's a right pain in the arse when there's five of you in a house, especially if any of you have ever worked. Got to a certain point when I found there were questions I couldn't answer for each of my sons, so I saved it to complete later. Spent the rest of the morning trying keep myself busy and keep my mind distracted. It's a valiant effort but it takes a lot to occupy my brain and there seems to be a deeply embedded circuit that is always capable of surfacing thoughts I don't want unless I'm doing something all-consuming. There aren't many things my brain finds all-consuming, at least not currently, which re-engages that circuit. After making lunch with son #2, I sat and watched a documentary called ' Blitzed: The 80s Blitz Kids' Story' on Sky Arts.  I actually started it on Saturday afternoon and plan to try and finish it in bits tod...

Weekend's gone in a flash and tomorrow I'm back to work.  It wouldn't be so grim if the three days off actually included time spent on something remotely uplifting instead of all this deathless making do (but not mending). Fuck's sake. Here I am again then. Is there a relationship between effort and achievement or even desire and result? There are those that would have you believe that, but I can categorically refute it.  I have all the proof and evidence to show that there is no link between those pairs. I seem to have made it my mission to disprove those relationships. In the process I will succeed in wearing myself down, crushing myself to the darkest densest black hole, which would be an achievement, of sorts. I pick myself up and do another day again in the face of total disinterest.  Sorted out flowers for my father-in-law.  Card in hand (not bird, sadly) How have a I frittered away the hours of my life today in the pursuit of futility?  Written a review o...

Out of bed well before 8am on a Sunday - unheard of!  Downstairs before the first carer arrived and setting up the living room for yoga. It's the carer's birthday today, so I surprised her with a card (not literally - I didn't jump out of a cupboard screaming 'CAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDD!', obviously (mind you that's a thought for next year, it's a big birthday for her then)) and wished her a 'Happy Birthday'.  I hope she finds the card funny - I had a devil of a job finding a card that I thought was funny whilst at the same time not overstepping the mark on obscenity or rudeness. Many cards made me laugh but you could only send them to someone you were very, very close to. We'll leave that thought dangling. Yoga this morning was an additional session to celebrate the Summer Solstice.  We did 108 sun salutes (Surya Namaskar), a fairly energetic sequence of poses. The number 108 is significant, however I'll let you find out why for yourself, ...