I’m stuck.

I have to reconcile myself to the fact that I need an audience and without one I get stuck. i guess i have never grown out of the showing off – All my recent creative efforts have been directed toward a non existent audience. i have found myself performing to myself – Cancer and Covid made sure of that. Now that there is a possibility of rekindling the flames of an adoring crowd I just don’t know what to do, so I thought I would write to you, confident that most of you wont read this, but that doesn’t matter. The act of putting it out there seems to offer some relief, some path out of ‘stuck.’

in the spirit of some of the themes addressed below i have avoided correcting this (much) – hence it reads like shite!

i killed this blog because I was weary of listening to myself trying not to say the things that i wanted to say but instead saying the things that i thought you wanted to hear. thats got to stop. so this post is that most tiresome of posts – a navel gaze into my current artistic predicament

other than this bit

i am undertaking/subjecting myself to – a course of cognitive behavioural therapy in order to deal with what i refer to as my ABAS – Abducted By Aliens Syndrome (this is where i panic that something utterly unexpected and disastrous will happen to those i love)- it isn’t going to work of that i am certain and in case you were jumping to conclusions – this process – this writing a blog process – is not my self administered alternative – in fact i believe it has nothing whatsoever to do with the CBT but everything to do with the fact that i am so so very stuck and i need help.

let me tell you why.

first (you may sense i am rushing) i feel as if i have only limited time to get down all the stuff i want to get down. you may ask what makes you think you have something worth putting down – well i just do. – now i suppose i have good reason for feeling under pressure to get on with things, what with the cancer diagnosis – but fortunately that’s not a pressing concern just now – things on that front are quite miraculously OK. I can’t remember if i communicated in a previous post that i am, according to my last visit to the Royal Free, in a period of remission – so no worries there. Well that’s not true but you know what i mean. moving on – i said when i started this blog in 2014 that i had a list of priorities that i planned to stick to – or to put it another way these were the things i was going to worry about from then on: (in order) 1 – Family. 2- Health. 3 – Art. 4 – Work – as i have said health gets a tick – Family are very fine, and work is pretty Ok so that leaves Art – and dear readers it is in my Art – I AM STUCK and being stuck when time is running out induces a sense of panic that is not conducive to producing art – as you can imagine – a vicious circle.

now as i said I am very very aware that ponderous debates on one’s art are tiresome but i really need this and whether anyone reads this or not, whether anyone proffers any remedies doesn’t matter a jot – i am writing this under the illusion that i have an attentive audience and thats enough for me.

so whats the problem?

perhaps foolishly, no not perhaps – foolishly, i am under the impression that i need to produce a consummate piece of work – something that draws all my previous and current preoccupations into one summative ‘Ring Cycle.’ As i approach retirement from an undistinguished career at the university i fantasise about leaving with a flourish and publishing a groundbreaking something or other that makes them regret not making me Emeritus Professor of Total Brilliance – Now knowing that i am no Wagner – i don’t have, as it were, talent, originality, a consistent body of work that just needs a perfect exemplar to top it off – the best i can do is just assemble all the fragments, all the unrealised attempts, all the failures, the incompetent inarticulate fumbling with the various modes of artistic expression i have touched upon over the years into some sort of loose package that might encourage future generations of creative incompetents to do similar and might even be rather interesting art – while pondering this possibility I have become interested in Jospeh Cornell – He was an untrained amateur and recluse living in the new York suburbs with his mother and a disabled brother. He emerged as a true original during his lifetime so in that respect i have missed my chance to emulate him having not yet emerged as a true original probably as i have yet to do anything original – anyway he made ‘shadow boxes’ containing bits and pieces he got at thrift stores in the city – he assembled loose, surreal, dream-like narratives by juxtaposing seemingly random objects.

Randomness has fascinated me since being a teenager when i stole a copy of John Cages book ‘Silence’ from the school library. Needless to say i didn’t read it just carried it about. – (I have read it now its rather good) so the random nature of Cornell’s compositions tallies with the random noises, voices and musical samples i have been utilising in the phone box – some would say the disruptive result of letting serendipity or error into the proceedings provides a layer of amateurish incompetence but i would counter that when it works, and of course it only works some of the time, it blows away the cobwebs of excessive and potentially turgid control, rather effectively.

bad amateur art is one of my current preoccupations – i recognise that in many respects my work in the last few years has been amateurish – the result of not knowing what i am doing – i have tried a bit of poetry, a few short stories, some bits of visual art, even some musical compositions all of them are clearly the work of a first timer – but in my view that doesn’t diminish their worth i consider them all much better than any of the work i did as a ‘professional’ director.

why?

amateur work can be much more engaging than professional work probably because the mask of professionalism doesn’t sit between the artist/performer and the audience – of course you are probably not experiencing the work you are too busy empathising with the performer struggling to disguise their amatuerness but that’s the appeal, that struggle replaces the intended art with something rather better – more engaging, more human – at least for a short while – and brevity i am convinced is a crucial creative component – no art should take longer than 20 minutes and most should be restricted to 20 seconds to assimilate – speaking of amateur, my dad, a first time writer of anything other than technical reports and letters of complaint, produced a short autobiography – as a family we were a tad cynical at the time, i am not sure why – i guess we thought it was the sort of thing that old people do and why bother? – who is going to read it? – but actually we rather value it now – it doesn’t even attempt to be art – it’s certainly not bad art – its simply a record – the formal style and tone reflects his personality perfectly – i think it was a good thing for him to do and nice for us – it leaves a mark, even if its only for a generation or two and its better than nothing. Conversely i don’t think i would be a good as my dad at leaving a record but think i can leave some bad art behind, after all i call myself an artist so i should be able to do that.

the question is how? – what is the medium? what is the platform?

and thats why i am stuck.

I know myself, i know how lazy i am – the single most successful output of my creative life in terms of sustainability has been this blog – the reason is its very easy to do and consequently i can slip it in between indolent periods of watching TV and polishing my lighter collection – (i am doing this at 4:00 am because i can’t sleep, what other creative activity can be done when so bleary eyed and dull brained) – the telephone box that talks a bit like me has been a valuable stimulus for all sort of creative meandering but every step on its journey to fruition has been long winded, complicated and frankly at times not really worth the effort – that said it is something that excites people a lot more than a blog post – so the combination i am looking for is something that has the looseness and ease of this blog with the visual and auditory appeal of the telephone box but also the durability of my dads book – and i cannot find it.

Hence i am stuck!

I imagine a platform – i suppose it has to be digital to allow for multimedia content, in which you can sketch with video, scribble with speech, make pictures with text, graphics with sounds – interventions with live broadcasts – but effortlessly. A platform that isn’t owned by some mega media organisation, that doesn’t require a subscription and has some possibility of longevity. (i hope to be still doing it when i have retired from the university and my pipeline of free computers and software is cut off). I believe the solution lies somewhere in the idea of composited, overlapping and looped media eg. screen capturing websites as video, audio capture of live broadcasts and rebroadcasting them, filming and scanning handwritten document and sketches, layering and compositing media but not in an elegant broadcast quality style, maintaining the rough edges and collisions that occur spontaneously – somewhat similar to these website designs

I tried some of this in my latest telephone box film – certainly the best so far – but the last one to have documentary and explanatory content and still a significant distance from what I want to achieve

so the quest for the formula for my ‘ring’ – working title ‘ring ring’ goes on. I will put together a prototype miniature – a fragment made of fragments and circulate that – as i said at the beginning i need to share and the act of writing this has been very useful for me – it has brought some clarity, not a solution but a clear statement of the problem. if you have any suggestions please let me know although knowing me i almost certainly won’t listen – don’t mistake this for a discussion it’s a vent.

Thank you, if you have made it to here – you have my respect.

and if i hear the phrase ‘i just wanted to pay my respects’ one more time i will …

‘Alack’ the little one cries
‘My pink pony, the one with bright blue eyes
has died’

‘Oh brother’ says his mother ‘and I only bought that tuther day.’
‘Oh mother’ says her brother (the little one’s much loved uncle Doug) lend me a tenner and
I’ll get him another.

‘That’s canny’ says Nan (though she confuses gender) ‘If you lend her a tenner – she’ll scarper and buy heroin or a spanner.’

The little one’s no fool, he may be small, but he has balls.
‘Oh Nan don’t be a cow he’s a good man now – not a bit druggy, just a lovely cuddly puppy.’

Nan feels remorse and passes her purse to her son who with one long jump clears the little one the mum and mums mum and flies forth.

Through vale and wood
Cross stream and ford
By byway and highway
Twixt brook and flyway…

to the north parade toy shop but they have not one pink pony with bright blue eyes.
Nor nowt that toyish.
Instead, they offer
A razor with blades, a single skate, a book of tables, an earnest bear and a fake beard.

Doug proffers Nan’s purse for the the lot
…but the git what has the shop will part with nowt but the razor, the beard, and the blades
for nans purse holds but a tiny twist of hash, not a penny in cash.

Doug flies forth the back way.

Twixt brook and flyway
By byway and highway
Cross stream and ford
Through vale and wood…

till proud as he should, after such a journey, before the little one, the little one’s mum and the little one’s Nan he lavishes his hoard aboard the lap of his beloved.

The little bereft one so delights to sport the beard, to shave it clean with the razor and blades just like his uncle Doug does, that the pink pony’s bright blue eyes fill with tears, because you see she was only resting.

I have changed my mind. I had decided to kill off my blog but when it came to doing it – it made me too sad.

The main reason is that were I to just stop posting but leave it up then it would look as if I had died unless I put up a last post explaining the rationale. If I went for that then it would quickly get dated, suspended in time in an unsettling way. There is no way I would remove the whole thing that’s too cruel, after all I have put in quite a bit of effort over the years – so it stays while I think of a way of restoring my enthusiasm – maybe just pictures, podcasts or videos, maybe themed in someway – I really don’t know.

Meanwhile I returned to campus today after 27 months. I tried to keep my mask on, but I kept slipping. My main discoveries were that the journey is long, that talking to people face to face is nice, that I have lost my academic ear (the presentations I attended were completely incomprehensible), that drama students at Hull are smart and engaged in interesting stuff, that I am old and talk too much of the old days, that I am lucky to have this job, that I am anxious that my energy levels will let me down in the autumn, that busking a presentation stops it being boring but means you don’t get to say half the things you wanted to.

I am super knackered and super uninspired but never mind.

Needless to say I having nothing wise to say about Ukraine. I could come out with some meaningless platitudes to signal my concern but that would stick in my throat so instead I will carry on as if all that really matters is me and my family. Turn away now if that offends you.

I am really brain dead at the moment so I have nothing remotely entertaining to say – so I won’t attempt so to do. This post is a guilt post, triggered by a sense of ‘I haven’t posted for ages – I really should.’ I have no idea why I feel this way but perhaps, as I have reported in the past I have a habit of starting things and then losing interest and this blog is a rare example of sticking at something so I feel a compulsion to keep going even if I have nothing to say. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…..

This achievement contrasts with my ‘work my way through 6 CD’s of Charles Ives songs while pedalling the cross trainer’ fad, which lasted two go’s and about 8 songs. It turned out to be a poor musical match. Many of Ives songs are painful to the ear so combined with pain to the body the result was just pain. I swapped my Charlies’ – Ives for Mingus (Epitaph) – an example of a symphonically long Jazz composition that A admires – assuming it would be an easier listen, but that also lasted only two go’s just enough to finish CD one. I can now declare that distracting myself from the pain of fat reduction routines with challenging listening projects is a non starter. I neither listen nor pedal with any increased enthusiasm. I just can’t find the motivation to try to get fitter even with great music playing in the background. You would imagine, in my circumstances, I would see it as a damn good idea but try as I might even the prospect an early death by fat arsehole syndrome in advance of death by cancer is not sufficient to persuade my errant brain to make any effort. So sod it!

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A Poem Perhaps

The steel post preventing cycles using the daffy field path has been removed. Eddie is ecstatic and stopped to remark upon it on his way home from work.

His bike had two flat tyres but it didn’t seem to bother him.

I have done some digging. A trench to ensure that the build up of soil under our new fence doesn’t rot it away.

The trench is very straight. I set it with a string and two sticks. I believe it to be the straightest trench in our garden.

Our ornamental fountain was cut off when the sewer blocked and the plumber gave it a shove.

It is now full of autumn leaves turning black and putrid.

When out walking we can now pat other peoples dogs without worrying about catching COVID. We hope.

The birds adore our feeder. They are fussy about the fat balls preferring the more expensive recipe.

The cats have yet to notice the bird feeder. Do cats ever look up?

Yes when in danger of attack by Magpies I am told.

Our Ukrianian friend Maria who made Maria (Bovino) pasta meat parcels Ukrainian style when she broke her foot cannot understand why the parish church is so empty.

Perhaps she has a point.

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News up here, most of you are down from us, is negligible – and that’s good. Maria and I continue to lead a fairly hermit like life although Maria does go into work three days a week – still seated defiantly at her instrument protected by a massive perspex screen with the window open behind her even when it’s really cold. Nonna keeps defying all the odds and soon will be the proud possessor of the BMW of electric beds which will raise her up to a semi seated position and slide her backwards to remain level with her bedside table and associate necessities when she gets breathless – mighty expensive but worth every penny. We also have a petrol generator to provide power during our all too frequent power-cuts, the last one indirectly triggering an ambulance call-out when Nonna was forced to sleep downstairs for half the night which left her breathless and panicky. So now she has a spare bed downstairs, an electric bed upstairs and power to move her between the two and keep the Italian telly on the go whatever the elements throw at us. Can’t be bad. I have a reading week ahead so that means I can concentrate on some fun things rather than the rather endless prep I am required to do to keep up with teaching the latest software. All is good with our four – all very busy and creative which is fantastic.

Arthur is drumming on this album – which we love!

https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/7iuuUH70q6cEMA3lNVtFsu?utm_source=generator

Love xxx

Just had my 4^th vaccine.

I could go on about how much I don’t like the ritual of Christmas but you have all heard it before and I get quite bored of myself. I love a bunch of people who love it and so I love it too. The end.

I was very pleased to present my family (Xmas) present (see above) –  Btw I revel in the word Xmas – it should be universally adopted as a suitably debunking nomenclature for the pomposity of the word ‘Christmas’ only superseded  by the showy offy ness of ‘Good Friday’ – good for who one asks? Certainly not for our hero. Anyway sadly the family did not reward me with the sort of acclaim  that I felt my ‘David’ deserved. It took me ages, not necessarily a qualification for great art but it did. It went wrong several times but once I had figured how to get all the characters to look startled I genuinely  thought it a work of some genius and thus the tepid applause that greeted its unveiling – well it just ruined my Xmas.

We had all four of our lovelies in shifts and as long as no one said the C word – yep crackers – I must say it was a real delight. They are all very nice people, they all love Vinnie which is an entry pass to my heart. Bobby pissed on me. Lisa appeared on Telly in a series of ultra high energy  micromoments for Sun Bingo that I will compile in a later blog. My presepio (nativity scene] electric light fell down and broke the donkeys ear. Maria and I went to bed at 10 every night after an indigestible bucket of xmas telly (We are that much fun). Av nailed a short story about a Christmas vegetable.  Maria’s foot is still dodgy so the traditional Boxing Day walk was abandoned – ohhhh noooo! Someone cleaned Mitch’s bum cos he can’t reach it being so fat. Geo and Art jammed rather brilliantly on piano and guitar. A&G bought me me the biggest ever book on Jazz theory  – so I have got that sorted now – roll on ‘Ronnies.’ Art then showed me some cunning shortcuts on the bass and this combo of theory and practice has reawakened my enthusiasm for playing after a two year lull. I am very pleased about that. Got a very cool calendar with a series of black and white photos of moments and family- one pic (below) in particular shows Av looking like a supermodel and me looking very very ‘Bexley’ (only my sisters will understand that reference) or if you have seen it Ricky Gervais as ‘Derek.’  Gifted Nonna a very cool incense waterfall thing that she pretended to like but couldn’t see so I nicked it back for myself. I wrote two food orientated stories for the Mogford prize that I enter and fail every year. Submitted three entries in the end because I missed the deadline for ‘Shrewdini’ last year. £45 wasted but who cares! I worked up until Christmas Eve and started again the day after Boxing Day. I prefer to get stuff done rather than have it looming ahead so I am glad to say most of my uni marking is done and it’s not even the New Year. Good for me!

So I haven’t been enjoying this last week or two.

Maria has stolen my illness thunder by breaking her foot. I am convinced she did it deliberately. She has grown weary of my malingering and resolved to go for a more dramatic and noticeable ailment that also licenses, or rather requires her to have her lower leg in a cast for four to six weeks and to remain pretty much immobile. She clearly threw herself down the bottom stop at Nonnas hoping to snap that bone just where it matters, right across the knuckle in two places, a half centimetre higher and she would be in a stiff shoe and not a Henry Moore maquette.

So I have to say I am not taking this opportunity to look after her, her mother, three pissing pooing cats, my students, my career and my health philosophically. I am not enjoying the renewed intimacy brought on by adversity and compassion, to inject Maria in the belly with blood thinners because someone once died from a blood clot brought on by a broken foot – huh?? (actually I do quite like doing that bit- I feel like a proper doctor and slightly heroic at being able to stomach it (see what I did there) or to cook her mum a cordon blue pasta at 11:30 in the morning or measure her morphine into her syringe (the temptation to pour the contents of the bottle  down mine, or her, gob being barely resistible). I want my life back. I am not a caring sharing person. I want to write poems, listen to opera or tinker with stuff not maintain my loved ones health and welfare – it’s boring, arduous, stressful and a times potentially yucky.

Amidst all this joy the engine management light came on in the car signalling it had had enough of going and wanted a wee rest. It was like a message from God. “Gotcha you blaspheming atheist smug fat bellied bastard? I give thee cancer, thrice (well twice, thrice maybe still waiting to pass through the machine that sounds like a 1000 rusty cement mixers) and 6 weeks of hard labour. I give thee having to make dinner, breakfast, lunch, hot milk with two hermasetas and bickies, pastina with fresh parsley, basil, some fried tomatoes with garlic and a egg whisked in (I GIVE THEE COOKING thy most hated activity) – I charge thee to empty the back breaking cat boxes ripe with fresh poo, clear up the extra carpet poos triggered by an aggressive encounter, fill the coal buckets, light the fires, clean, vacuum, replenish toilet rolls, gather laundry, put the dustbins out in the right order –  CARE ENOUGH TO GIVE A SHIT if the green one is out on the blue day  !!!

HANG ON A MINUTE DOES HOP ALNG DO ALL THIS ON HER OWN?

No time for reflection or empathy I don’t like this at all, please get it to stop, please let me off. GOD I DIDN’T MEAN IT!

Actually our lovely ones have all offered to rush up and help. We declined.

‘WHAT THE F*** did we do that for.’

Last week was not good.

I had three hospital/doctor appointments crammed together because it was reading week at Uni. I volunteered to do creativity workshops everyday online. So in between blood tests and more intimate examinations of ones parts customarily keeps under wraps I was introducing Jeff Koons and Brutalism to a group of student designers – actually they were great and it was fun and distracting.

Now that I have a small library of diseases, whenever I am sent for a test for another my assumption is that I will have it. Happily this week I may have dodged a bullet on glaucoma, at least for now but received a graze for prostrate cancer. Nothing alarming I was told, borderline, but necessitating further investigation just to check. (Don’t you hate that outcome) Bugger I thought, not again. More trips up the silver tube to the sound of the archers omnibus (inaudible because of the sound of 100 rusty washing machines on spin cycle above your head.)But so be it – what’s one more worry to add to dodgy blood, errant proteins, a syncopated heart, pumped up eye balls and Covid of course. There is a law of diminishing returns. One disease – terrifying – two – troubling – three – you’ve got to be joking! – four – so what….

I am reading Camus – The Plague. Timely of course. His point is that life is absurd and that even when some massive event comes along that should change the course of everyone’s life we all carry on with our day to day trivia in an effort to maintain meaning. He is right of course, life is absurd but that doesn’t mean we have to feel miserable about it. I agree with Ricky Gervais and if we are lucky enough to be able to be born ( the chance of our existence being trillions of trillions against, the chance of us achieving the conscious necessary to realise we exist being trillions more against) we should enjoy it. We should treat life like a free holiday. An opportunity to do something we love. Of course we need to recognise how lucky we are to be in that position. Most people aren’t. So despite my library of diseases and no doubt more to come I am still extremely lucky to have this chance to enjoy my free holiday – and I am doing just that.

On a related subject. I had an epiphany in the bath while contemplating Camus. I like to contemplate the European literary giants every bath time don’t you? Anyway one outcome of the absurdist view is that we may be able to create meaning in a meaningless world through making art. I am not sure about that – it sounds like the sort of thing that artist or writers would say, after all that’s what they do for a living. Knocking out a quick opera may satisfy them but how about all the poor sods who don’t like opera or don’t like art does that mean their lives are meaningless. Now if life is meaningless there can’t be subsets of lives that have meaning, it’s an ‘all for one one for all’ situation. So let’s accept for a moment that life is truly meaningless or as Camus and the existentialists might say a ‘pile of bollocks.’ What should stop us packing up and going home with a 6 pack of special brew and a family pack of paracetamol. If it’s not about making meaning through art what is it about? This was my epiphany. From the ‘Dove’ derived suds between my legs a voice proclaimed – It’s simple really it’s about providing others with ‘relief.’ Relief from the pain inflicted on all us, but disproportionally on some, by nothing but chance. We are all stuck on the same absurd train journey but some of us travel first class with a free Buck’s fizz and some of us are hanging onto the running boards. There is no reason for this, no meaning in this discrepancy it’s just chance.
So despite the fact that life is meaningless endeavouring to make it as pain free for others is as near to a meaningful contribution that any individual can make. Nurses, social workers, care workers, doctors, even vicars are in that category. Opera directors are not.

Where does that leave me. I do next to nothing for others. I am selfish. I like to indulge myself and in particular I like to make art. Should I stop a devote myself to the service of others. Well frankly, probably, yes. Will I. Absolutely NOT. But you lot should!

Yes you are in for a treat. I have completed a 12 minute video/presentation/collage thing about ‘The Red Telephone Box that Talks a Bit Like Me.’ Still needs some work but here it is –

My neighbour next door has given me an astronomical telescope he has never been able to set up. I have spent the day trying to work out what all the knobs do and learning some new vocabulary eg. Azimuth? I just managed to focus it, upside down, on a tree branch in the garden, not exactly a revelatory celestial discovery but I am going to call that sufficient progress for the day. As a kid I was very keen on astronomy but really only from the point of view of the mechanics of the telescope (especially enjoyed cleaning it) and dreaming about alien invasions targeting all teachers – (I also made a wooden tripod for the telescope which my Nan praised very highly comparing it to something my grandad could have made (he was a great maker). Praise was something she didn’t do and it really stuck with me- I still feel proud – even if she was a dreadful old bat) As for proper astronomy I was too lazy and dumb for the boring hardcore maths and geometry and suffice to say I still cannot be bothered to figure out that bit.

A theme emerges.

My commitment to anything important, or lack of it, is a feature of my life that I will probably regret on my deathbed – if I can be arsed to bother to regret on my deathbed – let’s hope I am too morphinated to regret.  

So, I am in the process of leaving the Labour Party, they don’t make it easy. I can’t really say why I want to leave, or I could but it would just be for bogus reasons designed to sound good but aren’t really true. The truth is I don’t know why –  I have just gone off it. I have gone off ‘causes.’ I don’t think I am a cause type of person anymore. Feel free to criticise, call it giving up or getting old but just now I feel unexcited at the thought of being a member of anything worthy or serious so Momentum and the Humanist Society are next for the chop which leaves only membership of Curries PC World, Blockbuster and a coffee club – a free coffee every 10 – at some long forgotten coffee place in Scarborough. I’ll keep that one.

Yep it’s nearly September/October, my most hated time of the year and I am making Herculean efforts to stave off the grumps.

I have explained the September thing in previous posts, but at the risk of being boring it’s simple – darker, colder, wetter, winter, SCHOOL – the only compensation is better TV but even the new season of ‘Strictly’ just serves as a reminder that it’s darker, colder, wetter, winter and soon you will be stuck inside watching TV on Sunday dreading school the next day,  trying to elicit cheer from dancing celebrities you have never heard of.  

Going back to school was always a massive downer for me (sometimes lurching towards the clinical) and even now my heart goes out to anyone imprisoned by compulsory education confined for 12 years with classmates you don’t like, and teachers who don’t like you. Rest assured ‘young school aged person reader’ whatever some old Tory codger (who went to a school where they wear boaters) or well-meaning liberal education reformer (who went to a school where they teach foraging) might say to you, all school amounts to is is a sentence to be served out, hopefully without being beaten up or having your imagination drained out of you like sump oil from from my gold ford cortina my friend Jonathan sold me after it failed its MOT –  it is absolutely not ‘the best years of your life.’ If possible, find a way to bunk off. My preferred escape was orienteering classes (designed to help us audition mor effectively for service in N.Ireland I suspect)  in the course of which I would orienteer home for a banana sandwich and a Jimi Hendrix tape telling my mum we had the afternoon off for revision. “What revision?” She should have cried but she was much too nice and always pleased to see me. She loved me even when I was a bolshy teenage git skiving off school.

I am just getting to the end of a delightful few weeks of annual leave where my significant achievement has been to relax quite a bit and not obsess about a project. That said I have managed to shift the mental block that has been inhibiting my bass playing practice such that I felt I was letting myself down. I really used to enjoy playing in the family band but then both my boys got to be very good at playing all sorts of instruments and I stayed really bad at one, despite trying really hard and so I became despondent and I kind of packed up and sort of sulked  – but now I am back reenergised  – still a dreadful musician but no longer sulking  – the secret is to do very very little practice, 20 minutes is quite enough, but do it regularly! Also set realistic achievable and modest goals, not I will be the next Ray Brown in a year. Embarrassing though it is to report, I started first day of the holiday by learning where the notes were on the bass fretboard – ok I should have known that already but I didn’t. Once that started to gel I used an app called IReal to practice hitting the root note of the right chord while a song was playing. Went through a big chunk of the Beatles catalogue which was a joy in its own right. Had to slow some of them down but never mind I muddled through. So while I will never ever master walking bass, (something I have always wanted to do – it’s so cool and my composer best mate wrote an opera that centred around walking bass lines) it requires musicianship, taste and a quick brain (so forget that). I can now more or less hit one root note per chord in a jazz standard or Beatles song and occasionally provide a bit of rhythmic variety – that is as long as I have the chord chart in front of me and I don’t get lost in the repeats and whatnot. Ok it’s not much but it very satisfying and I am pleased with myself.

While on holiday we met up with extended family which was lovely and very kind of them as we obliged them to travel stupid distances just because we didn’t know the geography of southern England. Just because Deal is in Kent does not make it close to Tonbridge Wells Chris! I am lucky to have a not boring family that I don’t see enough of but the traditional big do’s where we all meet up on mass don’t do it for me and the last big one for familial ash scattering was marred by a dramatic, sudden and scary bout of appendicitis (not mine) and a general sense of weirdness and overwhelment on my part. Seeing them in small groups this time was just great. It’s easy to forget that family beyond those you partner up with or make within partnerships (ok that sentence is total rubbish as I try to extricate myself from the accusation of old fashioned morality – when I wrote it it read …’family beyond those you marry or make within marriage’ which I must say worked better)  are important and aren’t just for Christmas, weddings, christenings, birthdays and all that tiresome ritual crap that gets on my nerves as, loyal reader, you well know.

Yep I am succumbing to the September grump

But I am not pissed off to be back at work. I will have to do tons of prep, make loads of new videos, learn lots of software and support lots of student who have been derailed during the last year but I like the teaching even remotely so tomorrow I am intent on cracking on with enthusiasm.  

Research wise I finished a draft version, rough cut, of a short film on the phone box over the summer. It’s not terrible but needs lots lots more work, so this time I am returning to work with something to offer up to the gods of research which I need to do after a long period in which I have contributed zilch. Which in university terms is the equivalent of giving up trying – double cross xx for effort – call yourself an academic – huh!

The precise nature of my return to work is a bit uncertain. To Zoom or not to Zoom? I am waiting for a verdict from my consultant on Tuesday on the risks and then further discussions with the Uni. The Uni have been exceptionally supportive, and it seems I can continue to teach from home if that’s what’s safest, so we will see what he has says and take it from there.

In general I feel ok on the treatment – taste buds are still the only noticeable side effect – energy levels a bit low and at certain times in the cycle I am daft as a brush and make loads of stupid mistakes, really can’t think straight but it’s all perfectLy tolerable and the results seem positive. The visits to the Royal Free will kick off again in November (stopped for 2 years) so that’s good as they can do a more detailed analysis of my current state and make recommendations. A close member of Avani’s family lives yards from the Royal Free so I may have someone to talk to if, as we suspect, Maria is not allowed to come with me. It’s not that it’s particularly scary it’s just a lot of hanging around and entertaining oneself waiting for results. She’s a doctor so she can shed to some light on some of the bizarre tests I have to take that I have never really understood the purpose of. Loyal readers may remember the trotting up and down the corridor test and then reporting whether you are more or less tired than when you started trotting – duh yeh! Who would say no?

Tuffin 21

Across the road from our house is a white house. Someone has covered the bricks up in stuff and then painted it white. I don’t like this as I prefer to see the bricks all the way up to the roof. Our house has bricks at the bottom and then tiles. This is also bad but paint is worse. The main thing with paint is you have to keep painting it again when it’s dirty or flaky so the house is always fading away and I prefer strong things that stay the same. The people that lived in the White House  didn’t have any children so some new people have moved in with children and the old ones  have gone away to live in a bungalow by the seaside and then die or that’s what mum says. She seemed to think this was quite sad and I agree because surely it would be a lot less trouble to die in the White House and not have to move your things and have all that curfuffle. The lady and the man next door died and they didn’t move and now there are two new old people next door who look like they will do the same thing soon. The new people across the roads children are both girls which means all the children in the houses near me are girls. This is a blow because although he was weak Andrew was stronger than Jill and could almost jump from six stairs up. The two girls are twins but you wouldn’t know because they are not at all alike. I am suspicious that they are adopted. I have heard that adopted children are very deceitful because being adopted has to kept secret. Mum says that I must not ask them and I must not think that but then she was still sad about the people dying in a bungalow so she was feeling a bit sensitive and short.

When I grow up I won’t die or move to a bungalow by the seaside

Tuffin 22

They are not adopted I asked. They didn’t mind in fact they thought it was fun to pretend they were. They said that their real parents were German and had been captured and put in prison so  their new parents rescued them and brought them here but their old parents were planning to escape  from prison and take them back to Germany to live in a castle which had caves and a lake that you were allowed to play in. I told them about the black swimming pool and they said they would like to see it and that one day I could visit them in Germany to see the lake and swim in it.  They are called Jean and Judith. I said it was a good idea to have the same first letter for their first name because then their initial would be the same so when they want to be more like twins that would help. They told me that there middle names did not have the same initial but they would not tell me what they were because they were German names so they were secret and hard to spell.  I think J and J might go higher up my list than Jill as Jill doesn’t speak German and they can. All my girl friends have a name beginning with J. That makes me think that J is a girlish letter but then John is a very popular boys name and I have a friend at school called Jonathan. Oh yes I go to school now.

When I grow up I want to change my name to Josh and learn German