Homeward bound

My bag is packed. My ticket is ready. Now the waiting begins. In a few hours time I will be flying across Europe again. Yet the time is, as always, too short. Too many people to see and not enough time. And sadly, unlike the line from Paul Simon, my love life is not waiting silently for me.

Head examination required...maybe

Another song plays from the jukebox that is perpetually playing these days in my brain. This time it, rather disturbingly, a Take That song which was originally written by the Bee Gees. The answer to the question in the song is 'very' but that fact that I'm humming along to something like this is somewhat worrying. But then I look up the lyrics and they actually kind of sum of my feelings today, albeit in a rather corny Bee Gees way.

So perhaps my brain isn't playing tricks with me after all. But I have to wonder what it will play next. Any requests?

Track changes are the spawn of satan

I return home after a pleasant evening with friends and make the fatal mistake of checking my work email. Always a bad idea and I should know better by now. Anyway I find an email that butchers a piece of my work and turns it into a pile of horseshit. I must refrain from replying now, but I can only hope that I can be more level headed in the morning. Amen.

Flashback

The pages of my old university magazine turn quickly until my eyes stop on a page. A face in a photograph looks familiar and, on closer inspection, so does the name. Then it hits me and I remember who the person is. And then the memories of a moment return. Sitting together under a bridge, both drunk, watching the world go by. One of us waiting for an action from the other, which never came. I have often thought about what would have happened, what if...but I will never know, and maybe that is just as well.

A pause

I need to make a big decision, perhaps one of the biggest I've ever made. In reality it isn’t that major, I know, but it feels that so much depends on it. And the problem, of course, is that I'm desperately trying to avoid making it. Every time it crops up I put it back, shelve it, park it to one side. Put it on that pile, on that long list, of things you need to do. Hoping that, just like the shopping list you prepare, you will either forgot things from the list, or completely forget the list itself.

Home is where the heart is...or the heart is where the home is

As I sit in the train, some Paul Simon lyrics float into my ever distractable brain. He apparently had the inspiration for the song in Widnes of all places. I've never been there, and to be honest, I wouldn't mind if I never am. But the words are perhaps more apt as a result of that. For me the word 'home' has so many different meanings. Is it here in this foreign land, is it the small town where I was born, the city where I grew up, or the city where I became who I am. So I'm torn in different directions. My heart says one way, my brain says another, and my feet just wonder their own path regardless, waiting silently for me.

Words

Four short words from a few days ago ring loudly in my head, as the beautiful music of Ali Farka Toure fills the space that surround me. I have no answers to the question, only more questions myself. Comic, surreal, prolonged, delusional, confused, self indulgent. Take your pick but the magic mystery tour continues unabated.

Bugger

I write one thing and then go and do the exact bloody opposite. Always seems to happen.

Ho hum

The doctor says not to worry, everything is fine, but then lists a series of things which sound quite scary to me. A quick search on the internet doesn't really help and leaves me with the impression that I'm probably going to keel over any second. Then I realise I am looking at the wrong condition altogether. So I decide to accept the doctors advice, but just hope that his knowledge of medicine is better than his knowledge of the Arsenal first team.