Category: Diary

Just love this song by Garth Brooks

I been all night drivin’ heifers
Closer in to lower ground
Then I spent the mornin’ thinkin’
About the ones the wolves pulled down

Sometimes it’s before your time is up.

My mindfulness moment now… So many tangential thoughts. But did anything happen today?
I went swimming in my new swimming trunks, and did eight lengths. So hard to breath under water.
I read my book, The Remains of the Day, in the early hours. I just love the time before dawn.
I did my blood pressure, which is a little higher today than yesterday. I’ll do it again tomorrow. Currently reducing meds.
I won’t get a dog. That will just be a memory of a very sweet time. Lenny, my lovely dog.
I won’t get a girlfriend. It’s all too complicated. Dogs are better, but not at the moment.
Really interested in my academic reading. Struggling a bit to organise my notes and produce any writing. Too many things to write about. Not enough time left. Too many blind alleys.
I love language.
I practised the piano today, sight-reading a transcription of an improvisation of All of Me. Then I had a go at improvising the tune myself. Not good, but it may get better.
Going to cook a green minestrone with what I’ve got in the fridge.

Night driving on cruise control. Feeling sleepy and pulling over to nap in lay-bys, the car rocking when lorries pass. The waste land of all-night service stations, 24/7 coffee and fast food. Cravings for a bacon sandwich.

Nice opticians in Radlett. Initially intended to check out both, but first was friendly and competent. I must have come across as bubbling, loosing my own glasses amongst the new ones on display. Wacky David. Afterwards I decided not to have lunch at Elstree airport and instead went to Colney Fields where I bought a large quantity of discounted alcohol. I must have gone into M&S because I remember seeing a poor middle-aged sales assistant, flushed, trying to catch my eye and sell something. Maybe he just went home and drank. What other options does he have.

In my book, the Remains of the Day, the protagonist has just retired his father. The book, so far, is very depressing but maybe there is some reversal at the end. Does he rebel, does he throw off the servant role and live his own life. Dignity, respect, so old fashioned. We no longer respect our elders, our betters, anyone.

Trying to recapture a rhythm to the day. But I’m writing now, and I read and I’ve played the piano, and gone to the gym, and worked hard on my studies.

Ry Cooder LP on my vinyl deck. World music, fusion. Accessible, brilliant, brilliantly digestible.
Soup tonight, vegetarian, slightly creamed up with a packet of Ainsley Harriott’s New England Vegetable Chowder. American chowder, like the Seafood Chowder from the store near the Whitby ferry just outside Seattle.
First day of summer. 23C
Thought (memories, anticipations) of Port Eliot, four days under canvas. Alternatively sunburned, washed out or blown away. Can’t wait. End of July.
Thoughts of night driving. Long distance lorry drivers, hitchhiking through the night, going west.
Thoughts of getting a dog. Plan a visit to Verstone stud in the Lake District.
Wild oats in the corn field, and some barley.
Keep going. Forgive myself and get started again. No other way. Desiderata. Hait Ashbury, 1968.
Complex Crossings

May flowers in the meadows
Neighbour, Mat, talking about dogs
Tommy John underwear ads on CNN
What else happened?

The good news is that my health has improved so I’ve got years ahead. I’m suffering from a surfeit of health! Damn? The clock ticks so slowly.

Dr C said it was normal, normal for your mood to take a dip after good news. He’d seen it a lot. The cloud lifts but you sink, or at least you may do for a while.

It’s as if I invested in a certain sort of reckoning, in coming to terms with finality or at least trying to. I had started to live outside myself, in the world that will survive my existential annihilation. I even saw my life as just a line on a Gantt chart, alongside all the other lines. A sum total.

Now what?

Bluebells and small white flowers
Piper reducing engine revs on base leg before final.
Yesterday, after the storm, there were dark grey clouds down to the ground to the south.
Set alarm for 0444, ie 0529 minus 45. Deep blue of sky at first point of dawn. Even earlier, the dawn chorus starts. Magic.

Nala and Mat in flat 1
Cricket on the green near the pavilion where I voted yesterday.
Lamborghini vroom, vroom… Then boy racers from social housing
Wild grasses, wellies, off-piste, woods, walks, birdsong, rain, corn fields
Families, children on bikes
Cat hut
The virtual dog walk
Cut down tree trunks. The teddy bear’s picnic.
Invertebrates, common ancestor 600 Mya

I’ve been exploring potential links with Imperial where I did my PhD and have managed to get myself an invitation to a closed workshop on Third Wave AI (3AI, Human-Like Computing HCL, Artificial General Intelligence AGI). Very blue skies academia. No deliverables. No commercial applications until 2030s. I had to submit 500 words on my current research and I got invited! Sounds silly because it’s just a day’s workshop but I’m excited.

So that’s my news, other than missing Lakeview and wanting a dog, and fantasising about living in a motor home.

Movement between D and G in Wave by …
Sleeping and dreaming
Intrusive thoughts – split off, egodystonic re flat or behaviour
Music playlist from 2003, 16 years ago (56y)
Death, shroud, dressing gown
Piano chords in muscle memory
Bingeing at 5 pm, happy hour
Yesterday’s nightmare day, no rescue fantasy, but nice walk (but cryptic)
Indoor day, reaction formation … against what?