And, well, I found this, something I'd pretty much forgotten about. It was the second thing I ever wrote for the blog, in 2009, (after the initial list of 101 songs) - intended to be 101 random thoughts about myself.
In the end, I never published it, and only got to 62. I think I just found myself getting boring, or perhaps was overtaken by the thought of what the blog would then turn into (the lists of songs on a subject accompanied by poems).
Anyway, here it is. The most striking thing for me, reading it for the first time, or perhaps second time, in 10 years, is how mundane it is. I perhaps thought at the time it would be uncommonly self-revelatory, but, of course, since writing the blog, I've shared most of these thoughts in different form several times over.
I also note that, while I'm mainly very much the same person, there are also some very significant changes in outlook - and situation (which have led to changes in outlook).
Nothing is, I think, painfully embarrassing or utterly shamefully outdated (apart from my devotion to Ryan Giggs). The most gratifying thing is that I knew I was a terrible dancer. I think I had it in my head that at some point I thought I could be a good dancer, and that was a ridiculous thing to have thought, but, no, I always knew I was rubbish.
I'd reword quite a few things, but there we go ...
As I say, it's pretty self-satisfied and banal.
Here's me, 30 and 31, in 2009, trying to say some interesting things about myself
1. If I ever form an indie powerpop band, whose trademarks
are handclaps, whistling, ba-ba-bas and stabs of understated brass, it will be
called The Turkletons.
2. My recurring dream, cliched enough, is the weeks running
up to taking History A-Level, not bothering to attend the class, almost
forgetting it existed, thinking I'd eventually find time to revise, thinking
there would be no problem, but then growing sense of panic and unease. The
dream never reaches the actual day of the exam stage, thank goodness.
3. I once came face to face three times in a month with
Michael Atherton, in a pub, in a bookshop and at a ... Michael Atherton
booksigning event. I've seen around, served in shops etc a lot of famous people
-only pointing Laurence Fishburne to the Theatre Section of Blackwell's on my
very first day there compares to the Atherton thrill - this was when he had the
effortlessly cool aura of a young Bob Dylan, the steely gaze of mid-period
Clint Eastwood, the batting average of a test-playing Graeme Hick, and the back
problems of an aged hunchback. Only Ryan Giggs or the Resurrected Christ will
top this in celebrity spotting for me.
4..I was watching 'The Sound of Music' recently (always a
good way for a 30-year old man to begin a sentence) and it made me feel
terribly sad. For me, nostalgia is looking at the past and seeing the billions
of possibilities that have died since then - the billion ways lives could have
gone but didn't, the fashions and inventions that might have been important
that weren't. Some people might think the possibilities increase as the world
moves on, but I can only think they decrease every second, till eventually
there'll be no possibilities left.
'Sound of Music' has more levels of nostalgia than anything
else I can imagine - Christopher Plummer now an old man, playing Tolstoy now in
maybe his final role, Julie Andrews who can't sing anymore, the child actors
who never became nothing, the actual characters who are all dead, the feeling
of nostalgia in the film itself for Austria in the past, the time when musicals
weren't naff, the innocence of it all, the time when me and my siblings used to
watch it as children without it being a running joke, it's time as a running
joke in parlour games ...it was a bit of a mindfuck. I don't get that with
'Mary Poppins'.
5. I'm good at quizzes - I guess that in a team or on my own
I've probably won 80-90% of the quizzes I've taken part in. However, I haven't
embraced this and pursued it in the way I would have done if i'd shown such
aptitude in another field (I haven't taken part in a quiz for about a year).
Well, I say that, I was very good at table tennis for a wee while, and then I
just stopped playing. But table tennis isn't available to play in almost every
pub every week of the year, with pretty good money to be won. At least I don't
think it is, if anyone knows of any table tennis pubs, let me know.
6. I'm a bad dancer, real bad. I don't think it was destined
to be so - I'm reasonably co-ordinated and fleet-footed, and I'm able to keep
rhythm not abysmally. I just never learnt to dance properly, so I'm a bad
dancer.
7. People say that the main regret in life is often hiding
your light under a bushel, not sharing with other people, not bein emotionally
open, not saying what you mean. But my main regrets, the evenings I look back
on with most shame and queasiness, are when I was too open, too indiscreet,
generous with my praise and saying what I mean. When I left my job in a
bookshop, I told my excellent boss, who always moaned cheerfully about his
position in life and the the fact he hadn't achieved more, that if I was where
he was in 10 years time, i'd be happy and proud of myself. And I meant it.
Icky. And after his superb first album, I saw Badly Drawn Boy live, happened to
meet him, and told him he was an inspiration. It still makes me cringe just to
type it. I don't know if the situation would be the same if his subsequent
albums hadn't been ever more confused and anodyne. But you get the point. We
keep it in for a reason.
8. As I grew up, there was no sense in which the aim of
eating wasn't to eat as much as possible. Any ideas of food groups, diets, even
the idea of being full, passed me be. At 19, my friend and I saw a '2 for the
price of 1 Pizzas' deal as a chance not to save money but to eat two pizzas
each. We ate two pizzas, went to watch 'Titanic' at the cinema - strange
strange day. Then at some point soon after that, the aim of eating seemed to
become to stop myself eating as much as possible ... 2 pizzas became 1 3/4
pizzas, and the rest is history.
9. My favourite film is 'The Big Lebowski'. Obviously.
10. The overwhelming impression of sport as a man's thing
just doesn't make sense to me. As I grew up, I played tennis with my sister, my
other sister watched every single game of the 1990 World Cup while taking her
A-levels, my mum took me to Ealing Cricket club every Friday evening, watched
the games, listened to Test Match Special and could tell me when i came
downstairs in the morning that India had England 194 for 6 and that
Sivaramakrishnan had just had Gatting LBW.
But now, mostly, women switch off when men start to talk
about sport, roll their eyes or shrink as if remembering painful childhood
memories of mistreatment and exclusion. It's a shame. And most sport is too
heavy on testosterone, I accept - park footballers puffing their chest out,
squaring up to each other, sliding in two-footed with bug eyes popping. Whether
through affectation or breeding, I always played sport with a bit of camp or
jsut plain silliness, whether it was T-rex hands when I got the football,
trying to do a David Campese hitchkick in rugby, or moving my imaginary
fielders when I bowled in cricket. Some of the great sportsmen have an
effeminacy and grace lacking in their more lumpen rivals - Roger Federer, David
Gower, Carl Lewis, Colin Montgomerie .... [2019 note: this is perhaps the funniest entry to read back, that I didn't realise that people rolling their eyes at men talking about sport was just when I was talking!)
11. I don't like it when people namedrop. But I namedrop as
much as anyone else, looking back and noticing I mentioned Michael Atherton,
Badly Drawn Boy and Laurence Fishburne as if they were, like, my mates. I don't
know any famous people. Apart from the guy who plays the chocolate bar in the
Gary Lineker advert.
12. I've hardly ever basically never taken illegal drugs,
which I realise is quite unusual for people my generation. I don't really know
why. I've smoked and drunk my fair share. I think it's an aesthetic thing.
13. I haven't looked after too many beings, not having had
kids, younger siblings, having looked after an elderly relative and not being
entrusted with my nephews/nieces alone. When I almost became a teacher, the
idea of being in loco parentis to 30 disparate/damaged 9 year-olds certainly
freaked me out.
I remember being about 12 when my dog was old and dying and
she looked like she might not last the night and I sat with her all night
reading her 'Oliver Twist' and touching her nose because I'd been told that if
a dog had a dry nose it was bad news. Her nose was dry, she shook and moaned,
and I kept on reading most of the book (I don't recall if i got to Bill Sikes'
death, that might have freaked her out). In the morning, her nose had a bit of
moisture to it and she went on for another year or so after that. I possibly
thought that dogs, like humans, are more likely to fight for life if they know
that there's someone who really wants them to. But, perhaps I've listened to a
few too many of JD's 'Scrubs'-closing monologues.
14. I'm pretty certain I think I'm a lot funnier than other
people do, but sometimes I'm not too sure, because a lot of people are so
polite and laugh just when your body language indicates they ought to.
15.I was in Chicago for 10 days the month before Obama's
victory, and though it's easy to say it, it was a city full of joy and hope.
You couldn't move for shops selling and people wearing funny Obama t-shirts and
there was hardly a single apologetic McCain/Palin one. I watched a lot of CNN,
which is pretty stunning, and Fox News, which is pretty extraordinary, and
despite it's best efforts, you knew there was nothing it could do to stop what
was coming.
Then again, I've just seen a poll which said that Chicago is
the 3rd most miserable city in America. So maybe it's that I was on holiday,
and the sun was shining, and I'd just done a marathon so was stuffing my face
with long-forgotten glea every second of every day.
16. My name's David not Dave. That's just what my name is.
It doesn't really matter, but it's felt important a few times.
17. You should wiggle your toes on flights. Getting a DVT is
quite painful, can be very dangerous - a shocking number of people die from it
if it goes to the lungs or brain - and, most pressingly, is treated like an utter
shambles in this country (not just personal view, I've read up on this stuff).
The frustration and irritation will blow your mind. And if you do get one,
whatever you do, don't be stupid enough to get a second one. Durrr ....
18. I'm Left. Just Left in every way. To my bones, to my
brain, unavoidably, unchangeably, left of the field, left of the hand, left of
the wing, left of the behind. The only thing is i'm actually right-footed (or
was last time I played football, when my right foot was briefly, rudely
disconnected from the rest of the leg), I just always got put, and put myself,
on the left side. I wonder if this is analogous to my secret, sordid
conservative streak which is always there but which I try to suppress.
19. There's a section in 'Cena Trimalchionis' from the
'Satyricon' of Petronius, where the grotesque central character, Trimalchio,
highlights his crass imbecility by discussing and planning his own funeral in
advance, even to the extent of shedding a melodramatic tear as he imagines
people's grief at his passing.
It's rather tremendous.
I've no interest in what happens after I die ... except I
would be quite glad if I could be indulged to the extent that Nick Drake's
'From the Morning' was played.
20. I still watch 'Home and Away'. That's just wrong and
weird.
21. They talk about Plastic Paddys - the Mcs and O's from
Boston to Sydney to Ealing who wear their Irish and their Celtic roots proudly
and sup their Guinness despite the fact they've never been within 500 miles of
Dun Laoghaire - and it's an easily mockable breed, to be sure, but as one
myself, might i offer a few words in mitigation.
Yes, i'm not Irish, I'm from London, but Irishness is a true
and real part of me. If, as a child, I was stigmatised for my Irish name and my
Irish face, and with children's fairly thin grasp of politics and history,
asked if I was in the IRA and called potato-boy (these things did happen, I'm
not just embroidering) it would be odd of me not to feel that was not just how
i felt but how i was perceived. Also, I'm a mathematical boy, and I worked out
with my father being 1 whole part Irish and my mother .5 English/ .5 Scottish,
that that made me .5 Irish and you round up not down , so I had to be Irish.
For the last 200 years, Ireland has been emigrated from more
than pretty much any country, i guess. There are people with irish heritage
everywhere you look, and any of us who look into the reasons for this diaspora
in even a cursory manner discover that Irishness is a complicated, big thing,
particular in relation to England and how England has treated it, and that it
has more to it than usual issues of nationality. Well, that's what I think
anyway -I'm not Irish, but I'm not particularly not Irish either.
22. To a lot of people, songs are the soundtrack to their
lives, but that's not really how it is for me. If it was, it would be "Oh
yes, this reminds me of the time I was sitting in my room, writing questions,
watching sport. Great days" for one and "Oh, this one, this was all about
sitting in my room, writing questions, watching sport. Brings a tear to my
eye". Songs have had to be about a bit more than the "pop"
phenomenon of moment-capturing to me, I've had to feel I could appreciate them
on their own terms, independent of what they might mean to me.
It's a bit of both of course, capable of being both
ephemeral and lasting, art form and entertainment, background and focus, more
so than any other artform, I think. That's why Pop Music is the best thing
ever.
23. I hate skinny jeans. I wear flairs, but it's hard to
find good flairs.
24. The main thing that drives me is trying to avoid
embarrassment. Embarrassment is an ever-present menace for me. I can stand up
in front of 200 people with a microphone and deliver a silly quiz, but if I
half catch someone's eye on the tube, the blood rushes to my head, and feel a
bit stupefied. It's a physical thing - a physical thing I hate. I'm not
particularly embarrassed by actual things, I slightly disassociate it from
insecurity and neurosis, which in some ways I'm quite free from, it's
embarrassment at the thought of embarrassment, at the physical blushing, it's
self-creating and self-perpetuating. It's not really manageable, but I try not
to look at people or talk to people too much if I can help it, and I've
realised if I make a twat of myself in my own controlled way that can keep it
at bay.
25. I'm quite sympathetic to caught drug cheats in
Athletics. When I say sympathetic, I think they should be banned from the sport
for 5 years, so that they definitely miss at least one Olympics, but a) you can
be sure that they are one among many and that they saw themselves as trying to
get an even break rather than gain an advantage, and b) people cheat, to
greater or lesser extents, in every sport. Footballers cheat in tiny ways every
game, asking for throw-ins which they know isn't there, tugging their
opponent's shirt at a corner, cricketers suck sweets to shine the ball, try to
move their leg out of line if they're struck in front. These are tiny,
acceptable bits of cheating, they won't stigmatise yr career if you get caught.
In athletics, there is only one way to cheat, you can't jump the gun, scupper
your rivals. There is only one way to gain an unfair advantage (or, like I
said, get on a level playing field), and that is to do something which will
destroy your life and career if caught. It must be a big call to start. (Also I
have particular sympathy for current pariah Dwain Chambers. It is his honesty,
ironically, after the event that has cost him. If he's just pretended he never
did it, and not admitted how long he's been cheating, he wouldn't have had to
pay back all his victory earnings for years and years, and he wouldn't have to
be constantly fighting for a livelihood which is being denied to him with
unique vehemence to those amongst the returning drugcheat fraternity)
26. I love music festivals. All those bands, so cheap, lots
of nice people, rivers of mud. Hooray, they're the best.
27. Pomposity seems to be the main sin of our age. You can
get away with being mean, selfish, unreliable, flaky, rude, it's all part of
individuality and character. But if you're seen as at all pompous or
self-righteous, people want to knock you down. I really like self-righteous
people.
28. I think with cigarettes, it's mainly the iconography
that keeps sucking me back in. They can ban advertising, put all those horrible
pictures on the packets, raise the prices, but they haven't yet scrubbed the
cigarettes out of the mouths of James Dean and Paul Newman and pretty much
every character in every film between 1950 and 1980, and every time I see them,
I feel something inside me asking why aren't I doing that, that's what the cool
people do. Whenever I envision myself saying something funny, I've always got a
cigarette in my hand. It's so annoying, they're so rank. Still, one week and
counting, just got to avoid watching 'Mean Streets'.
29. I don't think I've ever been persuaded to buy one single
thing ever by a TV advert, I really don't. I don't even consider that they're
trying to sell me anything. They should reintroduce cigarette advertising on
TV, I could quit for well and good then.
30. The world was silent while we died - a line from a book
about the West standing by while slaughter and disaster occur in African
countries. And it's true but how much can we feel culpable for our sins of
omission? How much can we possibly know? I'm going to tritely scale it down. We
don't even know what's going on in our friends' heads and if we did, we
wouldn't know what to do about it. People always hope people are watching them,
picking things up, ready to intervene at just the right time when salvation is
needed. But it just doesn't happen like that. People just don't notice when the
most important awful things are going on in their own backyards.
31. I fully appreciate I'm one of the most fortunate 1% of
people who've ever lived, in terms of the opportunities afforded, the stability
of upbringing, excellence of friends and family, things that have been seen and
done in this age, but I can't help feeling the last few months have given me a
little bit of a rough trot. I think I've managed to find it all pretty funny,
but I suspect if one more person fucks me about and I'm in the wrong mood, my veneer
of equanimity may come crashing down.
32. The death of Paul Newman was particularly significant, I
think. He was the last of a kind in a number of ways, and had a pretty
extraordinary life in every way. Made me feel sad, anyway. I couldn't eat one egg,
let alone fifty. What a badass.
33. When I was about 19, it suddenly struck me that I might
not have laughed for about two years. For the next few years I found myself
laughing like a hyena, like a girl, all the time. Then I stopped doing that at
a certain point and now have a normal laugh. Sounds quite phoney and affected
now I think about it ...
34. You do gradually mature into certain tastes, don't you,
whether it's coffee or olives or real ale. Up until a couple of years ago I
just could not look at a painting with any clue, I had no idea how to look at
anything and know if I liked it or didn't. I just had no frame of reference. I
still have basically no idea, but at least can now look at things and be
struck, or not, by them and so if I go on holiday I go to galleries and enjoy
them rather than be dragged along unwillingly. I can see myself listening to
more classical music at some point perhaps - opera will remain a load of silly
ballbag, though.
35. I really hate false compliments and automatic words of
affirmation. If I say "i've put on a bit of weight in the last couple of
months" or "I'm not very good at swimming" I'm not saying it
because I want someone to say "O no you're not" I'm saying it because
it's a statement of fact. It's not a plea for approval.
It's like, if someone cooks dinner for people, and the first
thing that comes out is a bowl of plain rice, and everyone coos and says
"Ooh, the rice looks/smells amazing" what value will it be when
during the meal the actually impressive dish which they've spent hours slaving
over is greeted with the same "Ooh, this is amazing". The right
noises are the wrong noises.
36. I think all things that appear to be magic will be able
to be explained one day, and I don't think of "genius" as far as
music is concerned, just excellence, brilliance, individuality, whatever, but
of all the people in music where you go "How did he do that? What is that?
That's a whole different world to anything I can understand" I'd go for
Nick Drake. It's so simple, but it's so eery and prescient. There's an extended
article on him called "Heaven is a Wild Flower" which sees Drake as a
kind of seer, with a complicated and unique musical and lyrical vocabulary
which dealt with and dwelt in a "heaven" removed from the pressures
of the modern world. I've explained it poorly - it's pretty interesting and
poignant both in terms of Drake's only death but that the journalist himself
committed suicide.
37. When I went up to the top of the Empire State Building,
it gave me a childlike excitement which carried me forward for a good couple of
weeks.
38. I don't miss trains and I'm never late unless something
utterly uncontrollable happens, and even then it's very rare. This is
self-righteousness. People don't have good excuses to be late. I read an
interview with Paul Newman where he gave Robert Redford a birthday present once
inscribed with "Punctuality is the Courtesy of Kings" cos Redford,
for all his charm and good deeds, is notoriously flaky and wilful. That's how
fucking cool Paul Newman was.
39. My first awareness of chronology was the summer of 1984
- I knew it was 1984 and I knew that next came 1985. I knew this because it was
the year West Indies toured England and won the test series 5-0. Their fans
going crazy at the Oval, bearing banners with 'BLACKWASH', the maroon helmets,
Malcolm Marshall batting with one hand. The team - Haynes, Greenidge, Gomes,
Richards, Lloyd, Dujon, Harper, Baptiste, Marshall, Holding, Garner.
Inerradicable to me. I met Desmond Haynes once ... I'll get to that. But all
the images from that summer are still in my head. I'm still fascinated by West
Indies cricket and how these small islands ruled the world in that sport for 15
years.
40. When I do karaoke with my chums and, say, friends of
friends, in a karaoke booth (here i feel no embarrassment) I'm trying
desperately hard not be overbearing, not to hog the mic, to pay attention and
enjoy other people's favourites, but gradually I realise, inexorably I end up
feeling like I'm doing that. Then again, you just can't please everybody. It's
like when I run a quiz for, say a church or synagogue, and there are a fair few
old people there, the main thought in my head is making it palatable for them,
so I almost entirely dispense with the usual volume of music, jokes, references
to TV/Film and generally the stuff that makes our quizzes fun for most people.
Then, in the 'Culture Round', I might play one clip by Buddy Holly and you can
guarantee one or two of them will scrunch up their face and complain to me
after that "there was too much of that awful pop music". Buddy Holly
died 50 years ago.
41. For a number of years, since about 2001, I've harboured
a desire to write a book about Ryan Giggs -not a straight biography, more an
argument, a thesis. I tried a few times, had chapter ideas set out, bit in the
end realised it was better to let the dust settle on his career before laying
it all out. As it happens, it looks like the book won't be necessary - people
have begun to realise, to some extent, what i always/felt knew about Ryan
Giggs.
42. My brother is good at art, five years older than me, and
had his paintings up all over my school when I went there. After a couple of
weeks, the teacher (who sneezed like the Latin word for alas - eheu! eheu!)
said to me "I don't believe you're actually James' brother". Mean,
really mean.
43.Since I was 17, I've written, or started to write, 2571
poems. I number them and have them in 35 notebooks. I don't find it
embarrassing, it's just not something which has any relevance to any
interaction I have with anyone really and it would alter the way i did it if I
thought about responses, so I keep it to myself. They vary between bad and
really bad, but I feel it's a good thing to have done, it keeps me in touch
with my brain and occasionally keeps me in touch with my senses when they're a
bit deadened. I try to keep it simple and mathematical. I've never got the hang
of it at all, I think it's one of those things some people just don't get the
hang of, like cricket, but, like I say, I'm happy enough to have done it.
44. I've really not got nor have ever had any proper
ambition. I kind of wasn't sure I'd ever get a job and imagined when I was 20 I
might be a bum by the time I was 25. Even now, I can't really look forward to
anything I particularly want out of life. Having said that, i certainly don't
live in the moment, i just kind of live week to week, constantly playing over
the past, recent and distant, and the near future.
45. When I'm alone, I often wish I'd done more and think of
all the time I've wasted doing nothing. Then, when I'm chatting to someone and
I've had a drink, I miraculously start to believe that I've lived the most
fascinating, globetrotting, crazy life and that all my stories will bring the
house down. I guess that's kind of indicative of this blog.
46. People who are anti-boxing say that in no other sport is
the very point to knock your opponent unconscious. But that's not "the
point", the point is to win the fight. That's the point. They pretty much
never knock either unconscious, most fights go the distance, since the horrible
night in 1995 when Nigel Benn fought Gerald McClennan, I've never seen a boxer
remotely seriously hurt. The doctors are right there to look at every cut, the
referee steps in as soon as someone's head snaps back pretty much. People pick
up so much worse injuries in other sports. I probably watch too much boxing,
but I find it mesmeric. And, believe me, I really do not like to see people get
hurt.
47. I like my job. It suits me and I'm very lucky to have
got it.
48. I always thought Alex James was the biggest chancer in
the world, a limited talent who contributed all but nothing to a great band and
thought because he hung out with interesting people that made him something
himself. I've read his book now and though I haven't necessarily changed my
mind, it's a brilliant book - pretty much the best of its type I've read.
49. I thought Ealing was the centre of the world for a long
time, then I thought it was Hyde Park, then I thought it was Delphi, for a
while I thought it was Edinburgh, then it was Soho, then it was New York. Now I
think it might be Ealing again.
50. Monty Panesar doesn't know the LBW law - he just doesn't
know it. If it was me, Monty, in your place, I would at least know the LBW law,
and I would also have a nifty arm ball in my armoury.
51. I don't watch cartoons or chidren's films or read
children's books, whether we're talking Harry Potter or Wall-E, or whatever
we're told is "not just for kids, but actually really clever". This is
somewhat due to a lack of imagination on my part, but mainly because I'm an
adult, and I liked kids' stuff when I was a kid.
52. The number of people who say Nelson Mandela is their
hero ... I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but come on! The 20th
Century was very much the era of black heroes, civil rights and
post-imperialism being the grandest stories. A lot of people will say Muhammad
Ali as well, without knowing the first thing about him beyond the very basics.
There are some equally strong stories which have passed to the periphery of
history, and there's a lot to be said for tracing the history of 20th century
Black America through the Heavyweight Champions - Jack Johnson, Joe Louis,
Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Ali (and the way he treated Frazier), Foreman,
then Mike Tyson and the mess that followed.
Sonny Liston's is the saddest story of all, tho Paul Robeson,
a trailbrazer and polymath who America threw in the dustbin, runs it close.
53. I'm against British Private Education, just because it's
unfair. 7% of the population getting an immediate, straightforward advantage in
life - if it was 50/50 and there was an actual choice for most people I might
feel differently.
Easy for me to say having had those advantages myself, of
course. I'll further push my luck by saying that one of the effects of private
education is the stigma for those that would have been through it - at the back
of your mind, you know that people resent you, that they doubt your intellect
is your own, they think you've never really had to work for anything, and you
kind of feel those things about yourself.
54. Christian Bale was just so good in 'Empire of the Sun' -
i went to see it in the cinema all those years ago and even at 8 I could tell
he was brilliant - no surprise he became such a superb actor. Him and me are
done professionally, though. Fuckin' ass!
55.I think of my heart being full of mercury, my head full
of snakes.
56. When I get migraines, or shocking hangovers, my head
fills with repeated phrases I can't stop hearing, or more commonly,
mathematical puzzles I can't, nor will ever be able to, work out, lines which
will never meet, journeys which can never finish.
57. People are wrong almost all the time. We've all been
utterly wrong about the way the world is throughout history, political
theorists and economic forecasters sell books and make lots of money getting the
future totally wrong. If someone is speaking to you, whoever they are, about
whatever, you can almost guarantee they'll be wrong. I used to be wrong a lot,
but now I'm right nearly all of the time. We call it McGaughey's Sporting
Predictions. You can count on me.
58. I was a terrible teacher, just terrible. That was my
last attempt to do good in the world by doing something I wasn't naturally good
at. I came face to face with the limits of good intentions one hot summer in
the worst class in the worst primary school in Peckham. Not waving, but
drowning. The funny thing is was that the most praised part of my teaching was
my use of technology, the thing I'd gone into it with the most fear of. Hmm ...
teaching/learning. So glad I'm not doing that.
59. I loved 'The OC'. It was the opposite of what it
appeared to be and what I expected. I thought it had the funniest, most
sympathetic central characters of any American TV show I've seen. Apart from
Mischa Barton's character.
60. The British Sports are light years ahead of the American
Sports, in my opinion, Cricket vs Baseball, Football Vs Basketball etc -
everything about the way we do them is truer, deeper, more dramatic.
Conversely, American Music is likewise light years ahead of British Music.
61 ... is my favourite number. Perhaps because of Highway 61
Revisited originally but it took on a life of its own. In Kenya, my frend and I
called our hillside hut (bigger than a hut, actually, but I'm trying to
romanticize the image) ' Number 61 Momentarily Hard Chemka' (chemka the
ki-swahili word for boiled) to the thorough bemusement of the local chidren.
Then it was the Number of my Football Shirt in the team we
started in St Andrews, and wouldn't you know it, it's the number of my current
address.
Also, I love Number 11, the number of my current Football
Shirt, the number of the Giggs, the classic left-winger's number.
Both pretty powerful prime numbers too.
Perhaps, I should have named this blog 11 Songs or 61 Songs,
to spare myself and you all the bollocks that will follow.
62. Here are some lines which often I can't get out of my
head
Country's got soul and city's got sickness
Poignancy's my enemy
I chronicle my hours and I can tell you I'm not in love with
anything now
Train or Milky Bar? You decide
