Gurdy Girl.

Following on from my discovery of Alina Gingertail (see a few posts ago), I’ve now found another little jewel in the YouTube musical chest. She calls herself Patty Gurdy, apparently after the fact that she plays the hurdy-gurdy (could there be any other reason to choose a name like Gurdy?) and she plays this little-known instrument exceedingly well. She also writes and arranges music exceedingly well.

The piece which follows is the one that exited my attention and brought me into the fold as a bit of a fan. There’s something dark, mystical and compelling about it. I find it bordering on hypnotic. In fact, if I were a film maker this would be the very music to suit the kind of film I’d be likely to make. It’s a bit weird, and I like weird. I also suspect that Ms Gurdy was probably a wood nymph in a previous life.

(And I think I should add that her legs had absolutely no influence whatsoever on my opinion of her music.)

The Pre-Op Dilemma.

Tomorrow I go for my pre-op in preparation for the big day next Monday. They’ll ask me lots of questions as they always do, and many of them will be the same as they’ve asked several times in several sorts of circumstance already this year. I need some good answers for the more frequent ones, but humour doesn’t come easily in an atmosphere drenched in the energy of anxiety and the subtle fug of man-made chemicals. The compulsion to scream comes easily and so does the desire to run away, but both inclinations have to be stifled and the consequent stress leaves humour languishing in a distant corner with its thumb in its mouth. The only one I’ve managed so far is:

Do you have any allergies?

‘Politicians, captains of industry, and celebrities generally.’

So far nobody has laughed, but maybe that’s because time is at a premium in NHS institutions and they need to get on with the next question. Or maybe it’s because it isn’t funny. Maybe I need to be a little more adventurous when the questions become more specific:

Are you allergic to latex?

‘Only if it’s covered in Johnson’s Baby Oil.’

It’s a bit enigmatic, isn’t it? Arcane even. I suppose it would give some indication of whether the questioner is sexually adventurous or not, but why would I want to know? Besides, it might give the impression that I’m gay. Is that a risk worth taking? If the questioner is a female nurse, which is most likely, I suppose I could always follow it up with a provocative comment. But then I’d be accused of sexual harassment and get into trouble. I doubt they would consider a plea of self-defence to be admissible in such circumstances. Maybe I should keep the enigmatic bit and drop the provocative comment. Who knows, I might learn something.

But the real problem of tomorrow is that I will have to get up early in order to do something I don’t want to do, and that’s the kind of thing which depresses me.

(Incidentally, I’ve no idea why they ask do you have any allergies? on page one, and then further ask are you allergic to latex? on page three. Maybe I should query it. Who knows, I might learn something.)

Em's Big Day.

Today is Emily Brontë’s 200^th birthday, and the BBC website has an article on the creative people who have been inspired by her novel Wuthering Heights down the years.

Coincidentally, I had the letter today calling me in for my next operation in a week’s time. As predicted, the NHS missive has done nothing to lift my mood, which is why tonight I feel particularly intolerant of the fact that people have been completely misinterpreting Wuthering Heights for a very long time. It appears that most people’s inspiration was based more on the numerous dramatic adaptations of the novel than on a careful and unbiased reading of the novel itself.

End of post because I’m in a very tetchy mood and can’t be bothered to write any more.

(Except to say that the full gist of my reasoning is here if anybody wants to read it, but be warned: it isn’t a scholarly essay, it’s obviously self-opinionated, and it drones on for about three thousand words. And I think I should mention that I’m fairly sure Emily is still around. I haven’t seen her for a while, but I think she is. After all, she’s the one who pestered me until I wrote the essay. And it would be nice to think that she might offer me a little emotional support in my current health struggles, but I doubt she would. She doesn’t strike me as a particularly sympathetic person – being strongly self-sufficient herself – and her own health struggles were rather worse than mine. If she had words to offer at all, they would probably amount to advising me to cultivate a death wish.)

A Disgusting Little Contrivance.

By the time I succumbed to my third overnight stay in hospital back in April, I’d retrieved my appetite from the deep, dark dungeon into which it had been unceremoniously cast during the first two stays. In consequence of this happy circumstance I had a big bowl of Rice Crispies for my breakfast the following morning (actually they were all the same size, but this is a blog.)

It failed to fully sate (which is a deliberate split infinitive, by the way, just to confuse the nice foreigners who are trying to speak English properly) my much improved gastronomic faculty, and so when the food woman came back to collect the dishes I asked whether I might also have some toast and marmalade.

‘There’s some here,’ she said brightly. ‘The man in the corner ordered it, but then he was sick and didn’t want anything to eat after all.’

‘Sick?’ I queried, coming over all suspicious like (which is an example of vernacular English in common usage.) ‘He wasn’t sick… erm… you know…’ pointing at the plate.

‘Oh no, bless you, no. He was sick in one of those (actually, she said ‘them’ but we’ve had quite enough of the vernacular for one night) sick bowls the nurse gave him. I suppose a bit might have splashed, but it won’t be much.’

I really, really wish that had really, really happened, but it didn’t. I just thought of it when I was having a slice of toast and marmalade at around midnight. But, you see, if life won’t give you the jokes you have to manufacture them yourself. And it pleases me to note that my sense of humour seems to be improving even if my health isn’t.

A Notable Rarity.

So here I am at 2230 on a warm Sunday night in late July. The darkness has now fallen, the communion with bats, moths and growing things is done (I got caught in a squall and wasn’t dressed for it), I had my shower earlier, and there is still an hour and a half to go until my bandwidth becomes unrestricted and I can access YouTube for my nightly fix of old movies, comedy clips, and the never ending fascination of world music. This is the time of day when I become restless for something to amuse me, so tonight I read one of my old stories over on the other blog.

I used to think I was a good writer, but now I’ve changed my mind. My fiction was generally competent but hardly impressive. Much of it got published, but I shall never be listed among the shining lights of English paranormal fiction. I’m no MR James or Algernon Blackwood.

Tonight I decided to read Simon Says and I was suddenly struck by a particular paragraph. I liked it and thought ‘this is worth posting to my blog, even if only to save me thinking of something new to say.’ So here it is. Like it or not as you choose.

I stood on the prow and pondered the enigma. I was alone again and conscious of the intense stillness all about me. There was no wind, and nothing stirred in the overgrown breaker’s yard or on the road that I could see beyond the fence. No wading bird called plaintively from the reeds on the far bank and the water in the channel languished dark and silent as though it had lost the will to lap the piles of the old jetty. The red mist was as thick as ever, obscuring the view beyond a hundred yards or so and turning the other sad vessels into ghostly grey shapes that hovered uncertainly between heaven and earth.

January 8th Revisited.

I used to make fun blog posts, but not any more. How can I make fun posts when I’m feeling repeatedly nauseous, the joy of heartburn is never very far from another flare-up, little pains niggle and nag, the cloud hanging over my future can’t decide whether it’s going to dispense its cargo or drift on, I have a tendency to fall asleep when I should be wide awake, and somebody with a tray full of sharp instruments is about to invade my body again?

I dislike being invaded. If there’s one part of our bodies that is undeniably private, it’s the inside. Even I’ve never seen it for heaven’s sake, so how should I feel about some stranger laying it bare while they pick and poke and prod and slice, then sew it up and say ‘that’s nice’? It isn’t nice; it’s obscene.

The road on which I set my unwary foot when I visited the GP on January 8^th is proving a little rocky. Did I ever mention that a number of notable episodes in my life began on January 8^th, and that they always led to notable periods of difficulty and distress? I have now.

On Being a Silverfish.

For some years now I’ve had a regular email correspondent in America, and yet only tonight did I get around to Googling her name. I don’t even know why I did it. It was probably because I’d just read one of her stories and wasn’t quite ready to leave the groove when I’d finished – a bit like licking the inside of the carton when you’ve finished your tub of ice cream, I suppose. All rather indecorous.

Anyway, the returns from Messrs G were impressive. They – and a few other factors – made me realise how much better a writer she is than me, how much more erudite she is, how much more multi-talented, and probably how much more intelligent. And then there’s the world she moves in: a world both vastly more rarefied and expanded than mine. Seeing this made me feel like an insect nestled under the skirting board at the edge of a room populated by big and impressive animals all vying for her attention. I currently owe her an email, but I have no idea how to begin it or what to say once I have. This isn't how a healthy deviant is supposed to see things, so it seems I’m not being a very good deviant at the moment.

Maybe it's because last night I got an inkling that clinical depression might be setting in. Not the feeling-fed-up type that everybody gets occasionally, but the real McCoy. I might be wrong; I often am. If I were to tell anybody about it they would probably suggest I see a doctor, and what an irony would be contained within that little piece of predictable advice. It’s the doctors working diligently to restore my health who are in large part responsible for my mental unease (however much I remind myself that gratitude is the order of the day.) If only they didn’t have to be so bloody invasive about it. Invasion of any sort is one of my most notable neuroses.

But at least I can say with some degree of certainty that I feel like an idle Sherlock Holmes right now, picking fretfully at his fractured wits while awaiting a knock at the door of 221B which will herald the promise of a new adventure. In my case it’s more a matter of waiting for a small but growing light to appear in the gloom, carrying at its core the warmth and water necessary to reinvigorate the frozen tundra of an uncommonly staid existence. I do have to wait, you see; I always have. I know from past experience that there would be no more point in me going out to try and find an energising light than there would in Sherlock going out to search for a murder to investigate. Where does one look? And so I think I need a syringe and something strong to put in it.

(I still haven’t received the letter notifying the date of my next operation, by the way. The tense peering into the post box every morning goes on.)

And I don’t expect anybody out there to be the slightest bit concerned about my health, the state of my mind, or anything else about me. Why should they? That would be illogical. But do please make allowance for the fact that this is a late night post. Late nights are the best of times and the worst of times.

Sundry Nonsensical Jottings.

I do my best to understand myself (you might have noticed) but one thing I still don’t get is why I make jokes when I’m depressed.

(Somebody told me today that I’m depressed, but that was because she didn’t understand what I was saying. People often don’t. And actually I wasn’t. I was just fed up, which isn’t the same thing.)

Anyway, tonight I was thinking about the Dark Rider again – a frequent preoccupation these days – and was going to make a joke about the Lone Stranger and Toto. I decided that:

a. It was too deep and enigmatic.

b. You’d have to be ancient to get it.

c. It was crap anyway.

So I didn’t bother.

And then I started to write a spoof version of my favoured old ditty I Want to Go to Sleep Now, but I had a bit of a toothache and fell three lines short. I might pick it up again one day, but for now it’s confined ignominiously to a musty old drawer. Much like me.

At the moment I’m listening to the complete Boheme album by Deep Forest on YouTube, which is rather splendid. And I’ve suddenly started sneezing a lot.

And none of this matters at all. The real reason for making the post is that tomorrow I’m expecting to get the letter calling me in for the next operation and that will send my mood plummeting. After that I don’t know when I’ll post again and I do so like to make the 30 mark by the end of the month. Why on earth I should be concerned by something as pointless as a number is something else I don’t understand.

There are no slugs in my kitchen tonight, which is unusual.

Chloe’s friend, Anna, has a remarkably enlivening presence (just in case Chloe stumbles across my blog while trying to find something interesting to do in Vietnam.)

If anybody wants to meet me in Ashbourne tomorrow, feel free. Hang around Costa Coffee; I’ll be there some time. And please ask them to save me a cheese scone. They didn’t have any the last time I went in.

I think I might be finally turning into a bowl of trifle. Night.

Getting It Right For Once.

I was standing outside the main entrance to the hospital yesterday when a middle aged woman walked by and stared at me. Now, you know what middle aged women do when they stare at me, don’t you? They smile, and I never understand why because I have the sort of face which doesn’t deserve to be smiled at.

But she didn’t smile; she said ‘Cheer up’ and walked on. And my faith in the perceptive faculty of the human middle aged female was elevated very slightly.

Old Words.

I just came across an old comment I made on YouTube about four years ago. It related to an old Fleetwood Mac song called Little Lies, and said:

This reminds me of why it’s sometimes better not to remember what a song reminds you of.

I remember writing it. I remember it slipping effortlessly out of my head like slurry out of a well oiled muck spreader. It was pure stream of consciousness stuff and I didn’t know what it actually meant at the time. I still don’t. I can’t decide whether it’s a pile of complete gobbledegook or really rather clever. I’m settling with ‘it sounds good.’

It’s had two likes so far.