IGNORANCE IS BLISS

I don't really know any of Kanye West's songs but then I don't know anything about Girls Aloud or Ed Sheeran or Jay Z or Drake or Bruno Mars or pretty much anything about 21st century contemporary music good or bad. I watch Graham Norton and listen to the artists he gets on the show and I think out of the hundreds who have performed I only liked Stormzy. You probably think I live a monastic life or that maybe I have been high on drugs in prison, or maybe on another planet. It can get embarrassing, mainly for the other person. Not me. I have no shame when it comes to ignorance of popular culture. I watched a programme called Saturday Night Take Away with someone called Ant and Dec earlier this year which had lots of pranks and so on and it ended with some kind of party with a lot of familiar famous faces. Everyone seemed to be having a lovely time and it all looked like it had been a great success. I turned to my sister and asked her ''do you think they will do this again, it seems like it might catch on''. Turns out the show has been going since 2002. 

DOGS ARE THE BEST

Those close to me, those who really know me know I am solid as a rock. An unbending tree. Devoted and faithful. Loving. Adoring. If pushed I will be at the front of the crowd leading like a warrior defending the right to have a good life for why else are we here if not to be alive and loving. On that note I believe I should have been born a dog.

Since being ill I have felt rather tired, washed out even. Not all the time but especially when I have been out and about on my bike. I've been finding it more and more difficult to cycle up anything remotely resembling a slope or inclination. Today I noticed the back wheel was making a funny noise so I took it into the local bike shop so the bloke there could have a butcher's. Turns out I haven't got long Covid I just needed my tyres pumped!

As some of you know, we were ill recently with something akin to or maybe affiliated with Covid. One of those old school viruses or bugs that leave you with a throat full of broken glass and no strength. One of the other  symptoms was weird dreams. Mr van de Ven assures me all my dreams are weird and he should know but these were characterised by a fever rather than the usual nervous excitement nonsense. I had a week of dreaming about famous people. People I am not remotely interested in kept popping up. Isabella Rosellini offering me her coat as I felt cold. Sir Ian McKellen insisting I was talented at something and shouting, ''well when are you going to do something about it?!'' Playing some game of words with Rowan Atkinson and Paloma Picasso. Random shite. On and on they went until I found myself in an old pub one night with Oliver Reed. The pub could easily exist somewhere like the New Forest, all old beams and layers of history. I was given some task to do which involved writing out Christmas cards to more well known people with instructions from Reed that I had to be, ''active aggressive''. A kind of reverse, ''well that's him/her off my Christmas list'' threat. More a, ''Dear Jacob, what's your f#cking problem?'' kind of style. Mentioning things like, ''money is your God'', and, ''want want want, that's you all over''. Not very Christmassy at all. And then, the best bit. I signed them, ''yours, Mick Lynch.'' 

Day seven or maybe nine of being ill and bored. ...Mr van de Ven has this habit of not remembering famous people's names correctly. This is how it has been forever and now it's affecting me. For example tonight I was trying to remember the name of the bloke who thought the queen was a lizard and the first thing to pop into my mind was David Lynch not Icke. Then we were talking about Dame Edna and how she would invite 'guests' onto her chat show, introduce them stage right, and then abort proceedings by opening a trap door, with said 'guest' never making it to their chair. Typically, we couldn't remember the name of the Austrian who Dame Edna got rid of just as he started to walk along the podium, the one who also had some kind of memory loss. But there is a big difference between the ex secretary general of the UN, aide-de-camp with the Nazis, and us not remembering his feckin' name.  
-You remember, Klaus Wunderlich.
- That's not him, he was a German easy listening organist.
-Klaus Barbie? 

-Nope. 

-It's on the tip of my tongue, Klaus Kinski....

-Just stop it, he wasn't called Klaus.

-Nomi?

-It began with a K.
-Klaus Waldheim?
-No! Kurt for f#cks' sake!

To everyone who asks me how I'm feeling about the Queen and all that.....

H is watching something called My House. He has just asked me, "who is this bloke? Isn't he from the Hairy Mondays?" I have a butcher's and I'm guessing the bald bloke in question is Shaun Ryder.