Sun Day

This morning I was looking out on a Brighton sun-day, after a properly muscular mug of coffee and a roll-up, thinking that this may after all be the best of all possible worlds and if freedom time cometh not soon then perhaps it is already here.  Catch me later in the day and there might be a different picture.  The weather could have changed, the coffee will have worn off and I would be thinking sensible, depressing thoughts about the roll-ups.  Seize the day and fritter it, is what I was thinking.  The day never allows much of itself to be seized in any case so  I need as much fun as can reasonably be packed into a couple of hours.  This means breakfast in one of those cafes where the croissants and bacon are crisp and they are generous with the coffee refills followed by a walk along the sea-front with an ice cream cone.  Fun usually always involves food of some kind.  Well I can report that a fabulous breakfast has been had, plus freshly squeezed OJ, and look - the view from the window post noon is still sunlit and I am, dear reader, on account of breakfast top-up, still caffeinated - just.  A walk along the sea-front was a step too far because, although these windows allow you to believe you're in the south of somewhere other than England in April, it is still cold out there, and windy.  I am still having a good time.  The great upside of chronic illness is that those windows of time when one doesn't feel wrecked are almost always good.  The world is charged with the grandeur of God (Gerard Manley Hopkins).  The world is charged with life - and also sometimes caffeine (Signs).

Good times used also to mean booze and hanging out with friends - my thirtieth birthday party was a champagne breakfast in my Bethnal Green flat.  BG is trendy these days, but it wasn't then, you could buy a flat cheaply and - oh halcyon days - pay the mortgage on it even if you didn't have a proper job.  This year I will be twice that age.  I no longer do booze apart from the occasional small glass of wine.  I do friends, but given certain restrictions one doesn't hang out in quite the same way, and a window of blue sky and sun, watching Brightonians cross the road to buy newspapers or milk at the corner shop, can feel as though one has been at a very pleasant social gathering.  One doesn't have the voices, true, but the voices in one's head are (mostly) very good company and often illuminating.  Joan of Arc might have said the same, before they burned her.  Time for a herb tea, I think.

still winter

I can't say anything more about Thatcher's demise than hasn't already been said better, and eloquently by La Baroque.  But I have been surprised by how miserable I felt after hearing about her death - because of a sudden, renewed apprehension of how much we lost as a consequence of her reign.  Her corpse is being treated like royalty here, so the word 'reign' seems apt.  I am also miserable about the singing and dancing and the raucous street parties.  The household is divided because Mr. Signs thinks it is an important symbolic act to stamp on her memory and sing.  I see what he means, but we are still living the aftermath, nothing that was broken can be put together again and there is no evidence that the meek will inherit the earth. 

And also: I feel there is something about death itself, an actual physical death, that asks for some kind of respect - for the death itself.  If nothing else is sacred, then surely this, where the Hail Mary (I am not RC) asks for special intervention for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death...  

And also, it is still winter.  Still. 

I Wish I Was Dreaming Of You

I am unashamedly promoting this vid that my son wrote for the Zig Zag Birds.  He is singing it too.  I love it.  Ok, it's my son, I would say that.  But if he had nothing to do with it I would still love this and other Zig Zag songs (which you can find on the side, on Youtube).  They are retro with a twist and remind me of the kind of songs from the 70s that I would want to play over and over.  Anyone remember Andrew Gold's Lonely Boy  and Never Let Her Slip Away?  He comes to mind, but there are others too so feel free to remind me of them.