a strange fear gripped me....

Earworms of the Week

Electric 6 – “Gay Bar”

I’m working on a project for something called a “Technology Bar”. Inevitably, that has been abbreviated to “tech bar”, and we’re only a very short leap from there to this extremely potent earworm. I did suggest that we renamed the project entirely, but apparently having a “Gay Bar” means something completely different and might not be considered appropriate.
Pfff. Squares.

Fleetwood Mac – “Albatross”

It’s quite remarkable how soothing it is to hear this record as you have your first cup of tea of the day. It’s also quite astonishing how far away this is from the band that Fleetwood Mac became. I can almost hear the seagulls.

Daft Punk – “Giorgio by Moroder”

I spent most of the first half of the week listening to the new National album – which is excellent – but inevitably as the week has gone on, I have drifted into listening to the Daft Punk album. I streamed it from iTunes last week, and I wasn’t initially bowled over by it at all. It seemed decent, but nothing grabbed me in the way “Get Lucky” grabbed me when I first heard it. You know what? It’s really good, although I doubt you need me to tell you that. My favourite track is this one. It’s long and has the epically unpromising premise of having the now-73-year-old talking about his life. It’s brilliant though. Moroder has an interesting story, which is a good start, but the tune behind it, when it kicks in, is just fantastic. It’s over 9 minutes long, but it definitely doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. I’m not one of those people who is saying that this is a solid gold classic record already, but certainly I’m not one of those people who hates it and is determined to say how much they hate it. I instinctively prefer the National album, mainly because they’re very much more my default music preference, but Daft Punk have really got something, no question. A very, very accomplished album.

Thin Lizzy – “Whiskey in the Jar”

A single mention of the Cork and Kerry mountains by an Irish colleague at last week’s wedding and I was away……

Ash – “Burn Baby Burn”

Not my favourite Ash song (mmm. “A Life Less Ordinary”. Or “Orpheus” or maybe “Goldfinger”. “Kung Fu”, even). Not even my favourite Ash song from this album (“Shining Light”), but y’know, this is kinda catchy, isn’t it? They did some great records, didn’t they? Speaking of great records, and Ash and Supergrass are vaguely connected in my head, have you hear the new one by Gaz Coombes ("One of These Days")? It’s brilliant... although I can't find a link.  It's on iTunes, mind.

The Knack – “My Sharona”

Unbeatable. It’s practically perfect.
Wooo!

Rodriguez – “I Wonder”

Pretty much worth the price of entry for this lyric:
“I wonder how many times you had sex
I wonder do you know who'll be next”
I bought the OST to the film “Searching for Sugar Man”, and boy it’s good.

Simply Red – “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”

As you know, I hate Mick Hucknall, so you can only imagine how much this particular earworm is giving me pain….Let me explain: C. has been assessing this week and she came across one guy who was completely and unironically like David Brent. Awful, apparently…. And then she got back to the office to the news that someone had hired this guy to work on her team. Ahahaha. Well, eagles may fly high, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines, so…. David Brent, of course, famously recorded the definitive version of this song.

The Flaming Lips – “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”

Celebrating their 30th anniversary. I’ve never been their biggest fan, and in fact I don’t know all that much of their stuff at all…. But this song is just deliriously brilliant.

The Smiths – “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”

Speaking of deliriously brilliant….. On the BBC4 documentary the other day, I was watching a musicologist at a piano explaining the genius of Johnny Marr. For this song, he was talking about how the verse is in interesting minor chords, but suddenly this all resolves into a completely irresistible major chord for the chorus and you can’t help but feel uplifted…whatever the lyrical content about suicide pacts. To be honest, as a teenager, I was more interested in relating to Morrissey’s heartfelt lyric about darkened underpasses…. But I’ve kissed a girl now, so we’re all good and I can appreciate the music now. Beautiful song by an untouchably brilliant band. As Steve said in the comments below, probably not my favourite band, but DEFINITELY the band that I hold the dearest and that has meant the most to me.

Right, well…. That’s it. Enjoy the long weekend, peeps.

over and over.....

I saw Daniel Kitson performing on Sunday.  He was excellent.  I love the fact that he's a stand up who:
a) Sat down for the whole duration of the show behind a desk on the stage
b) Doesn't talk down to his audience.  At all.  He's not afraid to toss out ideas and thoughts and theories that assume that you are basically an intelligent human being and will be able to follow.  You actually have to concentrate on what he's saying for the best part of two hours with no interval.  I really like that.  He's not above the odd knob gag, obviously....but frankly, who is?

Anyway.  The show was about lots of things, but one idea that has stuck in my head was about memory.  Kitson talked about how strange it is when someone has a memory of you that you don't remember at all.  He also talked about how no one, even two people who were in the same place and saw the same thing, will have the same memory of anything.  I love this kind of stuff, and it's one of the reasons that I really enjoyed studying history... the simple, but mind-blowing, idea that there is no such thing as a FACT.

FACT.

Anyway.  I digress.  When musing about the nature of memory, Kitson theorised that our memories are not actually little freeze-frames of an event in our lives, forever frozen in time exactly as they happened, but instead they are living things that are constantly changing and evolving.  In other words, we remember these things because we keep thinking about them and giving them a polish, and that in the act of polishing them before putting them back into storage, they are subtly changed over time.

That's an interesting idea.  Is it true?  No idea.  But what I do know is that I'm starting to get the same sense about this blog.  I've been writing this now since early 2004.  That's a long time.  You tell me, but I do sometimes get the impression that I'm telling you the same stories over and over again.... with the memory of that event getting subtly changed each time I tell it.  In my head, I was convinced that I saw Iron Maiden when they played at Donington in 1988, but when I wrote about it the other day, something made me check and it turns out that I actually saw them play there in 1992.  I had to go back over the post and correct some of the chronology, not to mention deal with the fact that I'd written the whole post around the assumption that I'd seen the band when they were touring "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" and not "Fear of the Dark".  Dammit.

So what?  Memory can play tricks on you, right?  Yes of course, but whenever I sit down and write about how I first started listening to The Smiths (or feeling fat or whatever), I get this creeping sensation that I've probably told this exact same story here before.  Slightly differently.  Broadly the same, I'm sure, with most of the key points appearing the same every time, but each time I put metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper to write about that event again, I'm probably moving my own memory further away from what actually happened.

Is that a big deal?  Not really.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter at all.  In fact, it's mildly interesting to see how my OWN perspective on an event in my life is shifting.... but you will tell me if I start to bore you though, right?  If I'm repeating myself incessantly and telling you about ever-more-fictional events in my own life, then you will let me know, won't you?  I don't mind it when a TV programme starts with a quick recap of what's happened so far to bring you up to speed, but that's not a TV show in its own right, is it?

I'm beginning to bore myself, and that's never a good sign.

Monkey.  Minature Cymbal.  That's me.

wishing I was skinny....

There was an advert on the TV a little while ago - for Dove, I think. I’ll let the Guardian describe the premise:

“The ad follows a forensic artist, one of those people who draws crime suspects based on witnesses' descriptions. In this case, he draws facial portraits of several women based solely on what they tell him. He can't see them. Then he draws pictures of the same women based on what people who have only interacted with them for a short while describe. In almost every case, there's a stark difference between the two images of each woman. The self-described portraits are uglier, sadder and almost sour-looking in some instances”

[you can watch the advert there too, if you're interested.]

The idea, I suppose was to show how our own mental image of ourselves is often a lot more negative than the reality.

I mention this because I’ve recently been forced to consider my own view of my body. Since I was about 7 years old, I’ve always had a view that I’m fat. I think this came from the simple fact that from around then, I started to be bigger than average. Hardly surprising really, given that I’ve ended up nearly two meters tall, but it’s incredibly damaging to a seven year old to have legs too big to fit into an average pair of shorts and to be forced to wear something with the magnificent label of “chunky shorts”. Since then, I’ve generally struggled to find off-the-peg clothes that really fit me because they’re cut for the average person and I’m not built like the average person. That shit stays with you.

By the time I was at University, I was fully grown but was also pretty hefty – a good six or seven stone heavier than I am now. I’m big and I have broad shoulders, so my frame hid the heft pretty effectively, but I was still a pretty substantial physical presence. Not fat, I don’t think, but my mental template was already fixed. Ironically, I was actually even nicknamed “Chunk” for a while.

I’ve lot a LOT of weight since then. My ribs show and everything; you can see the muscles in my stomach. I’m long and lean, but I still immediately reject it when people say that I am skinny. It’s simply not the way that I see myself and I probably never will, no matter how much weight I lose (and I’m lighter now than at any point in my life since I was a teenager, I think). I actually had someone ask me if I was still trying to lose weight the other day. I’m not, but she was marvelling at the enthusiasm with which I told her that the banana bread I was eating was entirely fat free. I eat it because I like it and it tastes good, but the way I describe it makes it sound like I’m dieting.

My MS is challenging my perception of myself too: I already knew that the muscles in my arms and shoulders are wasted to some extent (that’s one of the reasons I swim), but the specialist pointed out to me last week that my left thigh is noticeably less well muscled than the right due to wasting, and I’m gradually being forced to face up to the physical toll the disease is taking on my body too.

I’ve been bumping into a friend of C’s at the gym quite a lot recently. We’re reasonably friendly, so we tend to have a laugh about how we always seem to meet half-naked in the changing-rooms or up by the swimming pool, and rarely fully-clothed. But who doesn't enjoy meeting someone they know on the side of the swimming pool, eh?  Not at all awkward.  Anyway.  C had coffee with this guy the other day, and as she was talking to him about my bio-mechanical woes, muscle wastage etc. and how it’s all affecting my running, he remarked, “Yes, I could see at the pool that he was looking a bit spindly”

A bit spindly? I’m still struggling to adjust to the idea that I’m not fat. But spindly?

Who wants to look a bit spindly?

only words....

Someone called me a spastic in the office the other day.  She was referring to my inability to come out and join them for a run by saying that "I was a bit spasticated".  It would be going too far to say that I was shocked by the choice of words, but I was certainly a little surprised.  I don't think anyone has called me that since I was at school.

Of course, back then, being called a "spaz" or a "joey", usually accompanied by the appropriate facial expression, was entirely commonplace.  It's all Blue Peter's fault, of course:

"In 1981, the last year of his life, Joey Deacon was featured on the children's magazine programme Blue Peter for the International Year of the Disabled. He was presented as an example of a man who achieved a lot in spite of his disabilities. Despite the sensitive way in which Blue Peter covered his life, the impact was not as intended. The sights and sounds of Deacon's distinctive speech and movements had a lasting impact on young viewers, who quickly learnt to imitate them. His name and mannerisms quickly became a label of ridicule in school playgrounds across the country".

No kidding.

I have no idea if it's true, but the story goes that the Spastic Society changed their name to Scope to try and escape the playground association, but all that happened is that subsequent generations of schoolchildren simply belmed at their mates and said "Scope" instead of "Spastic" at them.

Kids, eh?

I don't know if it's simply because I'm older or if we actually live in more enlightened times, but, on the whole, this kind of casual bigotry is far less commonplace than it used to be.  Back in the day, we were just kids and we didn't really know any better, but language is important and words can hurt.  The elimination of this kind of casual, unknowing prejudice from most people's everyday vernacular is an entirely good thing.  After the huge success of the Paralympics, it seems entirely possible that the average person's understanding of disabilities like cerebral palsy is much greater than it used to be, and surely we're all the better as a tolerant, accepting society for that... or at least heading in the right direction.

That said, I actually used the word "flid" in conversation last week too.  It's a word that I haven't used in more than 25 years, but one that we used to use all the time to mock someone for being a bit of a weakling.  I was talking about a colleague who always seems to be getting colds, and I joked to someone else that, "back at school, we used to call someone like that a flid".

No sooner had the words dropped out of my mouth than I realised, probably for the first time ever, the derivation of that word and I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself.  I hadn't used the word in years, but every time I had used it, I had been completely ignorant of what it actually meant.  Yeah.  Ignorant.  There's no better way of putting it.  I didn't know any better.  Well, now I do know and I won't be using it again.  Once in two decades is still once too often.

Words have power.  Choose them wisely.

not like any other love....

It's thirty years and one week since The Smiths released their debut single, "Hand in Glove".  I realise I'm a little late on this and should probably have mentioned this last week, but I've been listening to the band a lot over the last few days and have been thinking about how much they meant to me.

I can actually remember the Top of the Pops that featured the band's debut performance in November 1983.  They played "This Charming Man" and Morrissey caused quite a scene waving his flowers around the place.  Do I remember that?  No.  I remember watching it because "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel was UK number one and I do remember watching that, dressed up in my dressing gown.  I didn't get into the band until much, much later.... some time in late 1992 or early 1993.

The first albums I ever owned were things like Adam and the Ants, Nik Kershaw, a-ha and Five Star.  The first album I ever bought for myself was "The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden some time in late 1987.  This was an enormously formative period in my musical life and I spent enormous amounts of time listening to bands like Aerosmith, Guns N Roses, Queensryche, The Almighty, Poison, Faith No More and - save me - Poison.. briefly, and I never really got into Motley Crue.   By the time I turned sixteen, although heavy metal was still a real staple part of my musical diet, I was also starting to listen to The Doors, Lou Reed (especially his "New York" album) and was discovering classic rock by the likes of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.  The charts at the time seemed to be a pretty bleak place, and - somewhat ironically given how much I like them now -  I viewed people like the Cure, the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays and James with a deep suspicion, never mind the rest of it.  I don't remember coming across the Smiths at this point, but I'm sure that if I had, then I would have loathed them.

Nirvana caused a bit of a stir, of course.... although, for a fan of rock music, it really wasn't such a great leap from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to the Seattle scene.  At least it was real music, right?  The first album I listened to after my parents left me at University was "Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" by the Black Crowes, and at some point in my first year at Warwick, I attended a legendary Faith No More gig at the Birmingham NEC where seat covers rained down on the band as they played their encore of "Easy".  I had posters by people like Therapy on my wall and I was happy with my black leather biker jacket listening to heavy metal.

And then The Smiths changed everything.

I can't even remember how it happened, or how I even ended up with a borrowed cassette copy of part one of their greatest hits, but somehow "Half a Person" struck a chord and I never looked back.  I was nineteen years old, but I think emotionally young for my age, and there was just something about Morrissey's lyrics that spoke to me.  It was always about the lyrics too, at least at first.  Not for the first time and certainly not for the last time, it was Morrissey's words that chimed with a lonely teenage boy who craved an emotional connection.  He just seemed to have an uncanny knack of expressing a yearning I wasn't able to articulate for myself; he seemed to understand how I felt.  An appreciation of what Johnny Marr brought to the band only came much later.  For me, then at least, it was all about Morrissey.

I hungrily began to buy the music.  Ironically, at the time, it was actually quite hard to get hold of Smiths CDs: the originals were out of print and the Warners reissues hadn't yet begun.  I can vividly remember trawling a record fair at the Birmingham NEC and coming home triumphantly with a French import copy of "Hatful of Hollow" on CD.  Imagine that.  Now you can just download pretty much everything the band ever recorded instantly.  It's not a proper album, of course, but "Hatful..." remains my favourite long player by the band.  There's just something about the rawness of those session versions that really brings those songs to life.  Morrissey's yelp on "This Charming Man" is just electrifying.

I never gave up on rock music, but I also began to listen to bands like Blur, Suede and Radiohead.  Mostly, though it was always The Smiths and then Morrissey's solo work.  Nothing else touched me in the same way and I'm fairly certain that nothing else has got close since.  They are without a shadow of a doubt the most important band in my record collection.

The Smiths weren't a perfect band ("Golden Lights" anyone?), and goodness knows Morrissey is increasingly a loud-mouthed, opinionated idiot who doesn't think before he speaks... and they also seem to have more than their fair share of irritating fans who try to write about their favourite band in the way that they imagine Morrissey speaks, using mainly song lyrics for their turns of phrase.... but in spite of all this, and in spite of some of Morrissey's solo output, no other band has meant as much to me as The Smiths.  No one.   I found them relatively late and long after they had ceased to exist, but no one else has inspired such a fierce, possessive devotion in me.

I have been listening to a lot of their back catalogue this week, and the records still sound amazing to this day.  The chemistry between the band members, especially between Morrissey and Marr, just sparkles and crackles out of the speakers.

I've done a lot of growing up since I was nineteen years old, but there's a part of me that will always be that shy, lonely boy who found comfort in these records, and I'll always be grateful to the band for that.

send this one out to the old school....

This is a massive few weeks for new releases: this coming Monday alone sees the release of both the New Daft Punk album, "Random Access Memories", and "Trouble Will Find Me" by the National.  Last Monday saw the release of Vampire Weekend's third album, "Modern Vampires of the City".  The schedules are packed with decent music just waiting to be released.

I don't know about you, but I always feel that this now produces something of a dilemma: CD or download?  Instinctively, I'm still the kind of person who likes to buy a physical copy and file it in the appropriate place on the shelves with my other CDs.  Some of my friends have got to the point where they've more or less sold or given away their entire collection of CDs, but I've got hundreds and hundreds of them and have no intention of getting rid of them any time soon.

That said, my consumption of music is now almost entirely digital.  Even when I have a physical copy, the very first thing that I will do with it is to rip it into iTunes and add it to my music library.  The CD itself may never actually get played before it gets put onto the shelf, and I will listen to the MP3 file either streamed to some speakers from my laptop or by using an iPod/iPhone.  I used to have a little wallet of CDs that I kept in the car, but these days it's just a simple cable and we're good to go with an iPhone wired directly into the car sound system.  That CD wallet is now kicking around inside the house somewhere, with the CDs still in it from the last time it was used.  Here it is..... Gorillaz, Rufus Wainwright, Snow Patrol, Arctic Monkeys, Beatles, Billy Joel, Kings of Leon, Killers, Editors, Moby, Radiohead.... so about 2005, I would say.  I've never even bothered to put the CDs back in their cases.

I suppose it's true that I quite like having a physical copy as backup.  I do buy and download music all the time, but I'm not quite at a place where I entirely feel comfortable putting my whole music collection into the cloud.  Some stuff, yes... and instant gratification is a marvellous thing, and back catalogue albums are often ridiculously cheap to download too (especially if you shop around).   But as I sat in front of Amazon the other day wondering if I should buy a CD or just pre-order the download of Monday's new releases, the price difference wasn't big enough to make me feel like I was wasting money on a physical copy.  So I bought the CDs.

Besides, I kind of like having them around.

It's only a few months since we put a new shelving system into my cave to allow me to put all my CDs and books and things in one place.  It had been stressing me out for months that, if I wanted to put my hand onto my copy of "Graceland", one of the many albums in my collection that I've never quite got around to ripping, then I didn't know immediately where it was.  Now I do, and when I last fancied listening to it, I pulled it down, ripped it, put it back on the shelf and then streamed the music from my laptop through my good speakers.  Job done.

Apple TV is slowly starting to change the way I consume films - I bought my first ever film in the cloud the other day, "Batman: the Dark Knight Returns part 1".  It sits on Apple's servers and can be downloaded onto any of my devices at any time, but I do not possess a physical copy.  At the moment, that's the exception rather than the rule in my collection, and it's a slightly odd feeling, but it is SOOOOOO convenient.  Storage is cheap, but I don't want a de-facto set of servers in my house and I'm more than happy to outsource that service to Apple or to Amazon to do it for me.  I've never really got into Spotify, but I imagine it's a similar sort of thing.

Ah, but I'm only renting content and who is to say that these companies can't strip it away from me at any time.  Well, let's not forget that I bought the original Star Wars trilogy about four times in different formats and in different versions.  Just because I owned it on VHS didn't stop me buying it again on DVD.... this isn't really so different to that, is it?  I suppose I could have held onto my VHS player, but I willingly upgraded to something else.

Anyway.  What do you do? Do you download everything or are you a (mostly) luddite like me?   Thinking about it, it's probably just as well that I never got into vinyl.  Can you imagine what my house would look like now?  Didn't John Peel's house need reinforcing to support the weight of all his music collection?  Well, maybe not quite that....

Incidentally, on the subject of my new shelves....

.....now that's what I call a proper bookshelf.  It's not a man cave without many virtually identical books  of cricket statistics (and some Shakespeare folios).

broken heroes on a last chance power drive....

Is it a good thing or a bad thing when a medical professional tells you that you’re a fascinating case? The two physios I’ve seen over the last six months were both fascinated by my calf muscles. They see calf muscles all day every day, right? It was slightly unnerving that they were especially interested in mine. I saw the sports injury consultant today. His first question to me when I walked through the door and we’d exchanged pleasantries was,
“So, what’s your sport?”

This threw me somewhat, as I see myself as a hobbyist at best. I dabble with running, swimming and cycling, but I’m hardly Mo Farah, Michael Phelps or Sir Chris Hoy, am I?

I’ve been having mechanical problems, as I keep telling everyone, and I discussed these with the specialist, although he was equally as interested in my multiple sclerosis, when it started, how it first presented itself and how it affected me now.

The long and the short of it is that he wants me to keep running and is keen to get me back on the road as soon as possible. Within 15 minutes of meeting me, he’d already gauged that running was vitally important to both my physiological and psychological sense of wellbeing and he was adamant that this should continue for as long as possible. He’s right, of course. Running is important to me; it’s when I’m running that I feel as though I’m free. It’s painful and it’s hard and it’s often a slog, but it brings on a sense of good, honest fatigue… not the creeping lassitude you get from MS. I swim and I cycle, but neither of them have quite the same effect on me as running. Running just feels purer somehow.

I drop my left foot when I run. I have a lack of dorsiflexion in my left ankle. My left thigh is noticeably less well developed than the equivalent muscle on the right (not that I’ve ever noticed before today - I guess that explains why that new pair of skinny jeans felt like it had one leg tighter than the other.  It wasn't the jeans cut weirdly after all - it was me). These things are all likely to be caused by neurological issues and are causing me to run differently as I get tired and this in turn is causing mechanical problems in my feet, calves, knees and groin. Cumulatively, these problems are adding up and are really affecting my ability to run and taking a physical toll on my body.

When I feel fatigued, it can sometimes be hard to get out of the door to go for a run, but I always make myself do it. Always. For the first time in my life, I’m worried that this iron will might actually be causing me to hurt myself. I can push through fatigue, but if the fatigue is causing my body to break, then maybe I should stop?

Nonsense, says the specialist. I may have to cut my miles back and start to do more cycling and more swimming, but he’s damned if he’s going to let my neurology stop me from running altogether. We can work on the flexibility of my ankle and the strength of my glutes to support my knee as I run. He’s seen 39 year olds without MS in worse physical condition than me, and with the miles on the clock really starting to add up, some kind of wear and tear is inevitable.

More stretching. More physio. More running. Adapt, adjust and keep running.

So, in summary: fuck you, multiple sclerosis. This show is still on the road.

flirt....

My wife seems to be under the misapprehension that I am a flirt.

It has long been a standing joke in our household that, if everybody has some kind of secret super power, then mine is the ability to charm ladies of a certain age, waitresses and checkout girls.  Well, as super powers, I'm pretty sure there are worse ones to have....

There has been some concern, lately, that the target range for these powers is extending; that as I get older, my powers are beginning to expand to affect a younger audience.  To my mind this reflects nothing more than the fact that as a bald, married, middle-aged man, most members of the opposite gender consider me pretty harmless and behave accordingly, but my wife is sceptical and keeps looking at me with narrowed eyes as though I'm guilty of wilfully charming all young ladies who have the misfortune to cross my path.

An example: we were in Sainsburys doing the weekly shop on Sunday afternoon; my wife was busy selecting bags of assorted seeds and I manoeuvered the trolley into the next aisle.  As I rounded the corner, a lady with a small child sat in her trolley was coming the other way, we did that thing where we both stopped and waited to see who moved first, and then I scampered the long way around the corner with my trolley to leave her as much room as possible to get past.  I carried on up the aisle to pick up some bottles of soda water.

As I was about half way down the aisle, my wife caught up.
"Did you hear what that woman just said to her child?"
"Um.  No.  What did she say?"
"Just after you'd gone past her, she turned to her child and said 'He was a nice, smiley man wasn't he?'  What did you say to her?" (It was hard not to hear a slightly incredulous, accusatory tone to her voice as she asked this question, but perhaps I imagined that....)
"I didn't say anything to her"
"You must have done!"
etc.

It appears that my wife simply finds it hard to believe that - to that lady, at least - I might just be a nice, smiley man pushing his trolley around a supermarket.  And what could possibly be bad about having a husband who is seen as being a nice, smiley man? Why does there have to be some kind of other, more complicated agenda-that-I-don't-really-understand at work?  Maybe I'm just happy-go-lucky by nature?

Well, that lady only saw me in passing in a supermarket.  How could she possibly know that I'm really grouchy, argumentative and untidy?  True, but it's actually quite difficult to convey all of that in a brief smile as you navigate your shopping trolley around a corner and I'll admit that she may have taken away quite the wrong impression of me as a person.  In fact, she has no idea who the real me is at all.

It really takes a little more time and commitment to get to know me properly.

*sigh*

I've never understood women.  Quite how anyone thinks I am in any way emotionally equipped to flirt with one is entirely beyond me.

not beaten yet....

I've just completed a 5.10 mile run.  I ran all the way with my wife, and she was delighted with our overall pace of 9.09 minutes per mile.  I was less pleased.

It's not that I mind running with her - far from it - it's just that over the last couple of months, running has become a real struggle for me.  Physically, I mean... in a reversal of R. Kelly's conundrum in Bump n'Grind, the mind is telling me yes, but my body.... my body is telling me no.  Runkeeper tells me that in December last year, I managed 15 runs, this in addition to a couple of swims represents a pretty reasonable effort, I think.  An average week consisted of around 15-20 miles of running.  In the last couple of months, I have been forced to savagely cut this back to a solitary run a week of about 3-4 miles in length.

The reason?  My body just can't seem to take the strain.  It started with cramping in my calves, then it was plantar fasciitis in my left foot, then a problem with my left ITB and now it seems to also include stiff hips and two sore knees after every run.  I suspect that this is all caused by my tendency to "drop" the left side of my body when I get tired, and that this is having a mechanical knock-on across my body as I try to compensate.   Mechanical, yes... but also likely to fundamentally be neurological in origin and related to my MS.  I wish it wasn't, but I fear that it is.

I'm off to see a sports injury specialist doctor on Wednesday, and I'm hoping that he'll be able to pinpoint the physical problems and to identify a solution..... but I am also preparing myself for the news that there may ultimately be nothing he can do if the problem originates in my brain.

I'm adjusting already to the change in my exercise schedule: I'm swimming more and I've started replacing my long run every week with a cycle, but it's just not the same.  Oh, I'm sure I'll adjust further and I'm certainly not going to give up running easily.... but equally I'm not an idiot, and there's only so much punishment the body can take and there might come a point where even I have to just accept that.  It doesn't matter how strong my will is.

This evening's run was longer than I have attempted for some time.  The pace was reasonable, albeit around 45 seconds to a minute per mile slower than I would have run it in December.  It's just that it was physically really difficult from the mid-thigh down from about a mile in.  My heart and lungs were fine, but pretty much everything else was telling me a different story.

I'm 39 years old now and have a few miles on the clock (Runkeeper alone has clocked up around 2100 running miles for me since November 2008).  I'm pretty big for a runner and a little wear and tear on my body is probably to be expected.  I don't want to blow this out of all proportion, and perhaps I'll get good news on Wednesday and everything can be back to what it was before.  Maybe.

And if not?  Well, I'll be sad but life moves on.  Life already is moving on.  I might get a new bike and find some proper hills....

her arms are wicked and her legs are long...

Earworms of the Week

"Snooker Loopy" - Chas n'Dave and the Matchroom Mob

Inevitable, probably.... given the presence of several of the matchroom mob on the BBC coverage of the recent World Snooker Championships.  Willie Thorne baffles me: he wasn't that good a player by the standards of the very best and he is a resolutely uninsightful commentator... and yet he persists.  The best commentators are able to "see" the shots that a player might consider in any situation and are able to enlighten the audiences about risks and how the break is planning out.  Willie Thorne, on the other hand, either waits until the shot has been played before expressing a view ("Oh, and that's a poor choice of shot") or he will say something inane like "Well, whether that break means anything in the context of this match, we'll find out in the next 24 hours".  Utterly pointless.  Great sport, though.  Has Ronnie threatened to retire again yet?

"Shadow Pico" - One Direction

I don't even know what song this is mocking, but this video is pure, unalloyed genius.

"Them Bones" - Alice in Chains

Brilliant.  Popped up on a playlist in the car the other day and has been sat in my head ever since.  This song was released in 1992 and still sounds resolutely contemporary today.

"Demons" - The National

One of my favourite bands.  I also heard "Slow Hands" by Interpol this week, and although they're another band I love, I was reminded again how much better Matt Beringer's vocals are.  He's got a lovely, honeyed singing voice and some beautifully tortured lyrics.  New album due later this month and I can hardly wait.

"Spoonman" - Soundgarden

New album by Soundgarden out too, I hear.  I've not heard a single thing off it, to be honest.  This is great though, eh?  For me, they're a bit of a nearly band.  Good in parts, but never quite the sum of their parts.

Theme tune to "Game of Thrones"

I loved the books and I'm loving the TV adaptation, but this might just possibly be my favourite credits ever.  I love the way that it shows you the world of Westeros in exquisite detail, revealing a slightly different set of locations every week to match the plot and sometimes to foreshadow events to come.  It's brilliantly realised and is also a great way of reminding you of the geography of the world and the physical separation of the characters.

"Tender" - Blur

More and more, this is my favourite song by the band.  I heard "Parklife" on the radio this week too, and that sounded pretty good, but this is on a wholly different level simply because of Albarn's emotional commitment to the song.  As I always say too, a truly epic performance at Glastonbury a couple of years back too.

"Man Smart (Woman Smarter)" - Harry Belafonte

Not just a song, but in my experience a statement of absolute, irrefutable fact too.  Oh yes, smarter.  That's right. That's right.

"Razzamatazz" - Pulp

Pervy, which is just how Jarvis Cocker should sound.

"Hello, I Love You" - The Doors

Simple.  Beautiful.  Memorable.  Enduring.  There's a reason that people are still playing this song on the radio, you know.  Just try not to think of how it all ended bloated, bearded and in a bathtub, eh?

Right.  That's your lot.  Have a good weekend, y'all.