Just lately I've not been as prolific on the old blog as I normally am. When I first started blogging after the publication of my first novel Calumny While Reading Irvine Welsh you could not keep me away from the computer. My fingers itched to traverse the keyboard the way an addict hangs out for his or her next fix (put to good imagery in the book Trainspotting, which is a motif in my first novel).
But I've noticed something of a change in my habits over the past month. A bit of self-diagnosis on my part tells me the longer times between posts are likely due to the culmination of one shit thing after the other that has just left me feeling buried in a pile of utter blah. The shit things are not resolved, either. I could handle these shit things (my phrase for social stressors) if they could be resolved before the next shit thing rolls in, like a great big shitball being pushed along by a dung beetle. The lamentable thing is they are not resolved. One shit thing appears in my life, and is joined by another shit thing, then another, and along comes another, until they snowball into one gargantuan shit ball that is the metaphor for the crap situations in my life. Given the potential litigious nature of one of the shit things, I have not discussed it in my blog. Trust me, I would just love to. I'd love to take down the trouble makers a peg or two, and metaphorically grind their faces into the footpath. When it's resolved, I just might do that. But when will it be resolved? That is the question (to borrow from the vexed Hamlet).
As you can imagine, these situations have made me dreadfully unhappy, and are doing my health no good at all. But I have been taking charge of things, and doing activities to cheer myself. Also, when I feel that Black Dog try to hump my leg, I attempt to remove myself from the situation. I did this on Monday night by switching off the television. I had to. I was watching Q & A and the panellist Jim Molan (a retired army officer and now a Liberal senator) said a few times he had faith in Peter Dutton. I shouted at the television like Molan could hear me, demanding to know what the fuck he was thinking placing his faith in that evil, grubby, reprehensible fascist monster Peter Dutton. Then I knew I had to turn off the television.
So today I have been watching You Tube clips, and smiling again. This is what I've watched:
1. Locomotion by Grand Funk Railroad. I smiled because it's live from the late Seventies, and Mark Farner is not wearing a shirt. Call me a dirty old sexist she-wolf, but the dude's body could have been carved by Michelangelo, and on the lyrics: 'you gotta swing your hips now' he swung his hips. Ladies, look it up for yourselves and tell me I'm wrong to feel the way I do. Also, you can thank me later after you have viewed said clip.
2. One More Night by Yellow Dog. I think this might have been a one hit wonder. Does anyone else remember it from 1979 or thereabouts?
3. Cool for Cats by Squeeze. Lyrically, it seems very nihilistic and bleak, with a rather disenfranchised nohoper for a narrator. But the tempo is upbeat, and the delivery (half-sung and half-rapped in Cockney) is most enjoyable. This song was out when I was about twelve, and I remember the line: 'I'm invited in for coffee and I give the dog a bone...'. Um, I thought he was a really nice houseguest being courteous to the family pet. How innocent was I? But I'm thinking of putting this one on the iPod. My thirteen-year-old will almost certainly enjoy it. He's definitely inherited my musical tastes (except for his constant playing of Africa by Toto, a song I cordially detest).
4. He's A Rebel by Debbie Byrne. This was a remake of the Vicki Carr number by one of the Young Talent Time alumni. I really liked Debbie's interpretation, and still do enjoy listening. I remember someone on the school bus playing it on the old Sony tape recorder, so I equate the song with red vinyl bus seats, and this scrawny little twerp in second class singing along.
Well, I had best sign off. My tutoring session for this afternoon has cancelled, so I might take my dogs for a walk in the fresh air. This will do me, and my dogs, good.
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