Before They Make Me Run

So I'm sitting in my chair last night, Julie's baking bread, I'm not doing very much at all, but there is this show on Planet Rock about the Stones 'Some Girls' album of 1977. Now I have danced around a great deal to this record in the past, and it just so happens that there are not many tracks anywhere in the world that precisely record particular circumstances, so as Keef finally got to record that fabulous confessional 'Before they Make Me Run' as his life hit the buffers in Toronto, it was funny to sit there smiling in Bethnal Green as my life hit the buffers here. I noted it is not a sad song at all, in fact, it's full of optimism, and it made me smile a great deal more.

Covalescense

The doctor says I'm supposed to be convalescing, which I take to mean sitting in a state of semi consciousness under a rug drinking tea between re-runs of Millions Like Us and some awful pap like 'Junior Bake off'. I am astonished there is actually a programme called 'Junior Bake Off', it must be some kind of sick joke, and nothing could bring me to watch it. Nothing can bring me to watch almost anything on today's TV, I long for Columbo, Ironside, The A Team and six o'clock cocktail hour but I long in vain. I wonder if tea and cakes will appear, but they do not, and then Julie says she's going out tonight and I start to hum the refrain from 'Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town'.

I don't think you can do convalescing self consciously, I think it is one of those great negatives, sort of 'don't do anything' unless you are stuck in a deck chair up a mountain in the sunshine of the alps, that never did Thomas Mann any harm, but I'm stuck here instead, three days a week, in recovery from the world.

Coldplay fans

Enforced to watch a lot of adds on the TV, and eventually reduced to muting them in disgust, I noticed last night the dreaded Coldplay are going back on the road. Now that's funny, have you noticed the 'Green Flag' roadside assistance add? 'We may not be the biggest, but we aim to be the best!' well that's not the main point about that add, the main point about that add is they promise to FIX YOU, no doubt tugging at the heartstrings of Coldplay fans, who no doubt, when you think about it, are probably more likely to be driving ropey motors than most demographics. Clever huh! Then remember that all roadside assistance companies claim to fix 93% of cars at the side of the road, but of course this is because 93% of roadside breakdowns are due to running out of petrol, and inability to fix a flat tire, and locking your keys in the car, which I suspect, is also something which statistically is more likely to happen to Coldplay fans, dozy lot.

Recovery

I’m sorry there’s been no blogs for a while; too bloody miserable by half. Bet Bukowski would have blogged solidly every detail of such an enforced lay up, lyrically recorded every spasm. Picked up Jeffrey Bernard’s Low Life, and even he manages to make hospitalization in to something, even if it is somewhere between Carry on Nurse and Dad’s Army. I couldn’t get anywhere near either, I was glum beyond glum and hospital was nothing like either anyway, it was a humanitarian disaster. Now I’m sick of ‘Hitlers Generals’ and even ‘Wheeler Dealers’ and I drink tea.

Still I am back at work, the lecturing bit anyway, I reckon I can avoid the dreaded meetings for quite some time yet, and a nice Turkish man comes to pick me up and whisk me away again in his person carrier with great efficiency and all for the money I’d usually spend in the pub. Instead I glide like royalty in a smoked glass goldfish bowl through the city streets. Without a pub to sit in I could be anywhere. And I lecture sitting down, which when I saw Dave Hickey do it, doubtless for similar reasons, can be pretty cool, but still exhausting.

There is a great fear lurking, having worked so hard on my pleasurable past, what will constitute any kind of pleasurable future? About this one has to be almost devoutly sanguine.