I’m sitting here listening to Glasvegas. As I have been for about six weeks, give or take the odd bit of manflu, work-hatred, non-running (still injured) and experiments in Nigella-worship.
And it’s simply not good for me. The huge sweeping guitars, the nursery rhyme lyrics, the Motown percussion bits, the thickly accented home truths. It makes me feel like winter. Like standing on a clifftop in a thick arran sweater and shouting into the wind. Of finding satin shirts in the back of the cupboard and thinking that they really DO suit me after all. Of getting ripped on red wine and writing poetry for French people (note — not poetry in French, I’m not American, you understand). Of mooning after girls with impossible haircuts, and wishing I had cheekbones. In short. Acting like a teenager.
It fires a little stove in my belly marked ‘misery’ and we all know that misery loves mince pies. It’s music for secret crushes and bessies bunking off school to go and smoke fags on the pier. I’ve never smoked. And my best friend is my wife. I guess that’s why I’m not really Scottish. Or wear many sequins. Cough. Any sequins.
I’m too old for angst. I can’t carry off the Bunnymen look any more. I don’t wear nail varnish any more (I rather amusingly found a bottle of nail varnish remover the other day in an office-stationery-amnesty. I always suspected that HR had kidnapped the staple remover. But I digress. Hmm. What sort of stationery would fit a digression? Probably a motorised pencil sharpener — the joy of which reduces the original point to a stub. Ah..joyous language… both metaphor and truth united. Ack. I did warn you about the poetry. ) So, where was I? Oh yes, emptying my drawers. Metaphorically and chemically.
Time to consign nail-varnish remover to the ‘ideas whose time has passed’ folder of life. Like space-hoppers. And finding new things to say about white dog poo. Or finding Belinda Carlisle attractive. Sorry Belinda, I know this is a crushing revelation to you.
Perhaps one day I will do the same for red wine. And mince pies. And then I will run fast and win the respect of my fellow runners. Or be thin and miserable. It’s a win-win, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Anyhoo. So. Gothic romantiicism no longer fits the bill. That’s small ‘g’ goth, not big ‘g’. How Fat Bob still gets out of bed in the mornings is beyond me. And thirty years on he still hasn’t learnt how to apply lipstick. Or eye shadow, for that matter. Oh joy, I have just discovered another thing I can criticise and have an opinion on — men’s attempts at make-up. It is the entire human race that gets more and more snarky as they get older, right? Pointing out bags that the council really should collect before the rats or the hoodies get to it? Let us unite in an army of grumpiness. Never mind hoodies or zombies, here come the Grumpies. Although they can be easily distracted by mis-spelled street signage and confusing offers on menu boards.
Argh. Digression will be the death of me, said the man as he crossed the road with his bessie, Marzipan the Chicken. Marzipan is in itself one of life’s tangents. Let’s find a way of pissing off everyone who loves both fruit cake and icing by putting some indeterminate layer of goo in between. I mean. If marzipan was any good it would have been deep-fried by now.
SO. As I was saying. Gothic romanticisim. Bad for the mid-thirties brain. I’m feeling 15, yet looking and acting increasingly like Kenneth Branagh in Wallander. Stubborn and on the point of tears. Like a bearded baby with wind.
And completely clueless as to how to form stable and rewarding relationships with people who don’t want to blow you up. Although it is fairly rare to blow up babies. Not the done thing, you understand.
Thinking about it, Sweden would be good right now. Lots of cliffs and squinting into low-sun-horizons. Ooh. And jumpers. And coats with big pockets. It’s important for overgrown teenagers to have big pockets to thrust their hands into, so that we can creep the end of our Marks and Sparks jumpers (sorry, sorry, Arran sweaters covered in fish guts and absinthe) over our hands like we did on the way to school, but don’t want to be caught doing so in a street where they think you can’t afford gloves.
Um. Yes. So I should really stop listening to Glasvegas. And right on cue — here comes ‘S.A.D. light’. It’s delicious. Music to hope by. Music to do your emotional roaring to.
Not very good for running to though. It’s difficult to run while you’re being fey. And noticing the way the sunlight catches that leaf. You know. That leaf.
We all have that leaf/life/leifmotif. Be excellent to each other. And turn off your S.A.D. lights.
