In a moment of desperation and a lack of inspiration I sent my dear friend Paul my daily routine. It occurs to me that this account is of such import that the rest of the universe surely deserves a copy. So here it is. Blame Paul

My day goes like this –  stay in bed till late, reading or catching up with messages, or obsessing about something and of course indulging in my first bout of drug taking. Breakfast in bed brought by Maria, accompanied by a cat who tries to steal it assuming it is porridge with cream.  I get up, and get somewhat dressed maybe, and do something that I fancy. (Morning is the calmest time for back pain and I have the best mobility although I do feel very stoned because of the number and combination of pain killers consumed am). The last month or so i have been fixing things so that everything works properly in the studio, learning how to fix things, fixing things that don’t need fixing, organising materials for new projects, learning German and just occasionally helping sort something on Maria’s computer or trying to be useful in some way. I could do more jobs, such as load the dishwasher, and this does sound like a pathetic excuse but any stretching or bending while tolerable at the time pays a pain dividend later and that means more painkillers and yet more sloth later in the day or next day.

At some point we might go to the hospital, the supermarket or the doctor or Maria may escape to do some chainsawing, pop next door to Jenny and Geoff or do her one day per week at school. I will spend the afternoon fending off the desire to nap, eating a lot, or doing more of the stuff I was doing in the morning but by now my battle with the back is not going so well so sitting in an office chair is not fun. Maria meanwhile has been cooking cleaning, listening to Italian radio plays dealing with a million household tasks, drains, cats, cat litters, practising her piano accompaniments, reports etc. Then more drug taking for me in the afternoon. At 6:00 (quite often precisely, Maria does some intensive Duo Lingo to get her double points. She doesn’t know why but she has to. Should I be worried?

Evening starts around 7. 30. TV goes on, dinner on laps after which I really struggle to stay awake however absorbing the TV is until bed with hot water bottle on back and lots more drugs that anaesthetise me almost instantly for about three hours followed by any number of sleeping waking tolieting reading watching drug taking interruptions till about 8:00am (all of these have to get recorded in my health medication app to prevent me overdosing the next day). More or less every morning Maria gets up and makes tea and coffee and the day starts again. This morning I did it but came back moaning and groaning because I had mistakenly attempted it pre pain killers. There really are so many drug routines to keep on top of I don’t know how people pre apps managed it. They must have had much better brains than mine.

I have almost resigned myself to the current logjam of apathy and illness which is somewhat preventing me from getting on with my projects. If I think of what I can achieve from reading and fixing as learning, rather than doing, then I feel like I am achieving something. Also the pace of everything I do is glacial so it’s best I resign myself to that. I am enjoying the freedom to be diverted to topics off piste. Trying to read ‘Emil und die Detectives’ in German (not recommended for beginners as it’s full of 1930’s working class Berlin dialect) led me to an interest in Berlin between the wars and Weimar Republic art. A period of incredible artistic innovation and freedom with financial support from the German government. All very surprising given what was to come. Figuring out my camera from the massive manual has led to a whole series of film theory videos. Fixing my Steven Hawking synth has taught me about capacitors and replacing them, Figuring out my midi set up has reminded how much I love connecting up things in complicated ways. Trying to fix my mixer has taught me that shielded cables in some circumstances pick up hum much more badly than unshielded which is the exact opposite of what all the books and tutorials tell you. Finally when rodding your sewer drain take care not to let your rods come unscrewed so you need another set of rods and a rescue hook to get your original rods back out. And on that note I will stop