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Bring me laughter...

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I was trying to think of when I last experienced uncontrollable laughter. It was a long time ago. I think it was in Berlin, in a restaurant called Vau. I was there with my photographer, Rob, and a PR woman, whose name escapes me. It goes without saying that I had been drinking. Laughter always involved an artificial stimulant of some sort or other. And now I have no such thing. I don't drink, take drugs or smoke cigarettes. The nearest I get to anything like a stimulant is the occasional cappuccino, but I prefer a sparkling mineral water, a Pellegrino or Badoit. Perhaps I should get myself a tin of Andrews Liver Salts, they used to be fun: a teaspooon of the stuff 'for a refreshing drink' but there's also an element of excitement as once the teaspoon of powder hits the water, the whole thing fizzes up and you have to be quick to drink it before it loses its zing, I suppose similar to Berocca tablets. So I checked out Google and found that Andrews Liver Salts ceased prod...
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Kept awake by goats...

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As I lay awake in my yurt in the foothills of Turkmenistan's Kopet Dag mountains, dangerously close to the Iranian border and, therefore, within range of Trump’s and Netanyahu's missiles which might at any moment rain down upon me accidentally if the ceasefire doesn't hold, I can hear the gentle sound of bells tinkling quietly and likely coming from a herd of goats either passing through or simply milling around a few yards away. It's early evening, the sun has yet to go down and the noise, if you can call it that, has the desired soporific effect. At some stage I fall asleep and when I find myself awake an hour or two later, the bells are still there but now they are becoming irksome and I wish they would stop. I am lying on my back staring up at the conical roof of my albeit temporary home, but when I turn my head to the right and notice police siren blue lights I remember that I am only yards away from PNC Park, the Pittsburgh Pirates' stadium in, yes, you guesse...
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Right wing television...

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You know how it is, you're sitting there of an evening watching terrestrial television wondering whether there's anything better to watch apart from the BBC and other agents of the thought police and so you switch over to You Tube or some of the more right wing terrestrial channels, and lo and behold there's a whole new world of crap you can watch from extreme camping to pop star interviews and, of course, plenty of extreme right wingers guaranteed to make you angry. There's probably loony left videos on there too, but they don't appear to be as visible. There's nothing better than a charismatic politician running a low-grade political party to get you wondering what you've been thinking these past few years and that perhaps you were wrong about this or that. Hell! You've been wrong about EVERYTHING!!! Throw in an issue that's bound to get the right wing agitated and a whole new shit show opens up and provides the entertainment you never thought ...
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Get a grip!

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Sometimes I feel I ought to write something to keep myself sane, and by that I don't mean that I'm  losing my mind, I just think that writing is therapeutic and it takes me out of myself now and then. It's not the only reason to write, of course it isn't, but therapy on some level is good for everybody and perhaps one man's meat is another man's poison, as the saying goes. I know a lot of people who either can't write or they find it really difficult to get started or what have you, and that's up to them of course, writing isn't for everyone. I'm sitting here now, in my living room, in the dark, the TV is on and I'm just listening to it, as if it's a radio, preferring to focus on this blank page in front of me. I've already had trouble getting online; or rather not getting online, just getting the computer to work. I've got a Chromebook and to get it started I simply lift the lid. Over the years, however, just lifting the lid is ...
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"It is what it is"

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An expression that I have been using a fair bit of late is "It is what it is". In many ways, it's a get-out clause that stops the conversation dead. Once somebody says it, others shrug and, invariably, the discussion moves on in a different direction. The problem with "It is what it is" is that the phrase is a metaphor for life and, indeed, the human condition . It's not a case of adding, "if you say so" because its an indisputable fact and not something that is debatable. It means that whatever you're discussing is a foregone conclusion, a reality that nobody can change, it was already there and something, therefore, that shouldn't be discussed any further. It is, for some, a mechanism designed to stop a conversation dead and it implies the ignorance of the person it is directed at. To say "it is what it is" during any conversation is there to make the conversation starter feel in some way at fault, as if they should say, "...
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First world problems...

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Last night very little in the way of sleep. And now very little in the way of time. I've only just made myself a cup of tea, having overslept by an hour. Somehow I must have got around 30 minutes or so sleep as I awoke and found I needed to jump out of bed and get ready for work. I walked into the kitchen and stood there for a good 10 minutes just thinking about breakfast and how there was nothing that really appealed. No Added Sugar Alpen , not that adding the sugar would do me any good, was the main attraction; and then there was cornflakes of which some say there's more nutrition in the box than its contents. Porridge . Fine, but when you've overslept and need to be thinking about getting a train to work, it's too time-consuming and then there's the added dilemma of do you make it with milk or water, the latter being as depressing as hell. Bread. High in salt, and if you add marmalade you're basically eating a salt and sugar sandwich. Boiled egg. Fine, but ...
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What is wrong with me?

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On Saturday I felt physically depressed all day. It was horrible, I could actually feel it, I wasn't just feeling down. There are many reasons why. On a very superficial level it could be something to do with not riding the bike. I normally go out on Saturday morning, ride around 20 miles and come back feeling energised. Not this Saturday. And normally, when I don't go out I fret inwardly about my lack of exercise until I forget all about it either because of a pleasant distraction (like we all go out somewhere that is happy and away from the sources of my depressive state) or because the whole thing just lifts, again through a distraction: it might be the television or something and it disappears, or somebody tells me to lift my spirits and remember that I'm a lucky guy (which I am). Sometimes it does the trick, but not this Saturday. It's probably worth pointing out that last December my sister died and more than any other passing I have experienced it had a physical ...
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