¦ dialling in from workstation ¦
17:35 GMT, Monday 20th July 2009. My laptop is still broken. My car is not safe to drive. I’ve got handwritten notes stacking up on sheets of paper, ideas backlogging and squashing together. Not being able to write and work on my stuff is driving me crazy. A dysfunctional computer for me is like walking around with my front teeth missing; my tongue probing the gaps where they ought to be… depression, stress and anxiety jabs my nervous system. I’m not a happy camper. Car was supposed to be going into the garage tonight but it’s been pushed back a day… which means yet another day riding the bus between Bristol and Bath, suffering snotty school kids jabbering, posing and bullying each other at high volume, high pitch. Grrrr.
All my creative projects are slipping now. I am really fekked off, tired from stressing and can only look forward to a point where everything works again.
One good thing happened this weekend. Woke up late Sunday morning and discovered it hammering done with rain. I grabbed my jacket, tied up my heavy duty walking boots, packed a wind/rain proof kagool and took the bus into town. Bounced between a couple cafes, writing notes and avoiding the rain… then decided to do the harbourside walk. 3 miles. One mile in, I’m heading towards Hotwells and I’m looking down the barrel of the Avon Gorge… the hills of Ashton Court are only vaguely visible, rapidly vanishing within a moving grey squall… a solid wall of greyness that was rapidly heading in my direction. Shit! I dropped my bag onto a bench, dragged out my snood, started to unpack the kagool when the first drops of rain started to hit me. Two seconds later I’ve got one arm into the kagool, slipping it on over my waxed black jacket and it was as though somebody had thrown a bucket of water over me. The downpour was incredible. I span round to keep my back to the rain as I struggled to get my other arm into the kagool. The intensity of the rain was incredible. I zipped up, pulled the hood up over my cap and tied the cords around my chin. Turned round and gasped at the increasing density of rain and speed of the wind. I staggered forward, grinning like a fool in the onslaught. After a few strides I had a waterfall pouring off the stiff peak of my cap and my jeans where glistening, shiny and wet. I kept walking. My waterproof walking boots began seeping water with every stride. My waterproof kagool began to leak. My waxed jacket failed to protect me.
Then it was gone. The sky turned blue. Hot sun shone down. I began to melt.
30 minutes later I was back at my starting point, the Arnolfini café, and the sky had turned grey again as another block of rain hurled itself down the barrel of Avon Gorge and ripped through the harbour area. I stepped into the café, asked for a pint of that dark Czech beer “for outside”. The barman glanced at the heavy rain beyond the windows and then looked at me like I was mad. I smiled, “I’m already soaked. If I sit in here I’ll just steam up.”
So I got my beer in a plastic pint glass, and a sandwich and stood outside in the pouring rain, enjoying the experience.
Then Jo arrived on cue to pick me up. Back home, strip off wet clothes, into hot bath with a mug of fresh coffee… then out and slipping into warm dry clothes. Fab.
Finally bit of joy, my good friend and soul-brother Mr Vega$, aka Hiab_x has pointed me to this video of a couple of musical icons.
Gary Numan and NIN; two figures who’ve had megalithic influence over my writing and imagination past three decades.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FncsSgbH2U4&NR=1
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
David