Monk Quixote

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 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’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. And con­sign­ing nail-varnish remover to the ‘ideas whose time has passed’ folder of life.

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 Fetchies. Or be thin and mis­er­able. It’s a win-win, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Any­hoo. So. Gothic roman­ti­cism 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?

Argh. Digres­sion will be the death of me, said the man as he crossed the road with­out looking.

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.

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.

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.