Reading Beneath the Lamplight

The Sailor's Soliloquy

'Go to hell,' screams the sailor
As he smashes up the classroom
Thrusting his fist out at the people
Who initiated the baby boom

'So, who's mad,' said he, 'Not me
I just don't need this - pseudo kindness
From 'normals' with feather hats and braces
Oblivious to their own inner blindness

If you're not mad when you come in
You certainly will be when you get out
At least that's what they've always said
What a ludicrous rumour to put about.'

Now, the sailor, he is walking down the halls
Selecting the identity he will assume today
Psychological jargon bouncing off the walls
Electro-convulsive therapy - he is on his way.

(1990)

Stubborn Luddite!

I received my newly-repaired Evesham Voyager Laptop via Parcel Force and told Doug that he now has a share in it. He responded by laughing and asking what use could he possibly have for it. I am trying to persuade him to let me teach him the finer points of information technology. But he waves away my suggestion. 'I'm too old for all that,' he says.

And this from a man who claims he prefers the company of young people and says he intends to stay as young 'in his mind' for as long as he possibly can. I told him the story about my grandmother's attempts to familiarize her own mother with what was then new technology - the radio. 'She tried to shout back at it once,' my maternal grandmother said. 'Mother, they can't hear you. There's nobody actually in there!'

Doug himself told me that his own stepmother was so afraid of electricity that she refused to have it installed in their home until after the war. 'God knows what she thought would happen,' I recall him saying with a touch of scorn in his voice.

And yet he cannot see any parallels between her situation and his own.

He has at least agreed that I will take the laptop over to his flat occasionally and he can dictate an e-mail to his oldest daughter who lives in America - in Las Vegas, on the edge of the Nevada Desert.

Writing My Heart

Lyrics - Bryan Adams - This Is Where I Belong

Bryan Adams - This Is Where I Belong

I hear the wind across the plain
A sound so strong - that calls my name
It's wild like the river - it's warm like the sun
Ya it's here - this is where I belong
Under the starry skies - where eagles have flown
This place is paradise - it's the place I call home
The moon on the mountains
The whisper through the trees
The waves on the water
Let nothing come between this and me
Cuz everything I want - is everything that's here
And when when we're all together - there's nothing to fear
And wherever I wander - the one thing I've learned
It's to here - I will always....always return

Courtesy of these people.

Belated Regrets

Richard Whitely is dead (I know. I am a week late). He was a presenter of Channel 4’ s CountDown, It was not as though I went out of my way to watch the programme, mainly I am as thick as a pile of piggy poo and found it impossible to solve the mathematical conundrums. (In mitigation I am pretty darned hot on 15-1)

R.W. died of a heart attach, apparently.

I remember my prolonged periods of Catatonic Depression in which I would sit upon the sofa – cross-legged, staring but unseeing at the television (And that, for all you cynics) is not an exaggeration) being temporarily relieved by the amusing and occasionally hilarious banter between Whitely and Carol Vorderman.

An impressive feat as this was something that no antidepressant was able to do at that time. For many, years Countdown became a TV institution which, I’m sure, will be much missed.