No one Under 70 Should be Described as Elderly

Maybe I should not listen to loud and issue-based rock like this; it gets me wound up to the state I was in yesterday. I was convinced that someone was slipping me regular coffee instead of the decaff. If only I was this angry in my twenties; I could have been an angry young man. There is some comfort though. I think I probably mentioned this before but when Simon Armitage was on Tracey McCloud's show on BBC 6 he was described as a 'young poet' and he is older than I am.

I just read The Guardian's review of The Streets' new LP (that's how the article describes it). Now ever since Seamus Heaney praised Eminem, I have been slightly suspicious of such candidates for Pseuds Corner - this article even nominates itself for the sentence "Half Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, half Samuel Pepys." but this time I have been swayed. I kept thinking the description of the narrative reminded me of something and in the end I decided it was a Mike Leigh film. Read the article and see if the same thing occurs to you. Maybe ML should do the video. It's a concept album; why not do a concept video. Sounds like it would have a lot less bad language than the Gordon Ramsay programme. Not sure I will buy Mr Skinner's album though. Someone will let me listen to it first I am sure.

The Pepys book is wonderful. After the pages listing the main people mentioned in the test it drops straight into the middle of an argument between Pepys and his wife Elizabeth which is as good as (well far better than) any soap. An extended paragraph on smell also draw you in using a sense that is often overlooked historically but which is probably the most evocative. I seem to have fallen into a fuzzy-edged state which means I cannot think properly any more. I am not sure what this means but the solution probably requires some coffee. Well my lfe is certainly not as interesting as Mike Skinner's is it?

I was driving home yesterday. Within about a mile of home, with good classical music playing on the radio, something hit me about how everything seems to be going well. I may have talked about a moment when I was still at school and went for a walk up The British Camp. While sitting at the top I though I suddenly had the total solution for everything - a sort of spiritual Unified Field Theory. Unfortunately, the feeling left me as soon as I decided to walk home again and all that remained in memory was the sense of loss. It struck me yesterday that just by growing up and experiencing things, I have been working my way to some sort of non-paranormal solution to what I saw all those years ago. The sense of rightness is nothing like as intense as that first vision; it is instead a gradual build-up to feeling good about everything. It may just be a local feeling, local to now but it seems to be a useful factor. I sometimes think of myself as still a kid, or at least still in my late teens. I like to think that I have a balanced view of things despite all the Pompous, reactionary old git stuff which sometimes gets the better of me. It is around this age that the occasional worries about mortality become more prominent but this feeling of confidence in your own place in the world seems to be a screen for this. Larkin was petrified of old-age and death; it seemed to be an almost permanent worry for him, something which does not seem to have troubled other poets publicly.

Listening to Second eponymous Throwing Muses album. Maybe that does not sit well with what I have just been writing but its a good album. I should listen to the lyrics but then again they probably don't make any sense to anyone except Kristin Hersh. Remember "This hairdo?s truly evil; I'm not sure that it's mine." from Hips and Makers?

Time for sleep - er work.