I'm not really in the people-space at the moment

"I'm not really a person-person"

Tom, in The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin. A sit-com so profound in its concept and brilliant in its writing and characters that it had a huge impact on me from a young age.

A wonderful Ronnie Hazlehurst theme tune too.

If you don't know, it's about an executive having a nervous breakdown. An existential crisis.
Very 70s. People were questioning the nature of our societal structures, what humans actually need to be fulfilled.

Reggie

It started in the counter culture of the late 60s, fuelled by radical thinkers, and among other things spawned the self-sufficiency movement which was also the basis of The Good Life, another highly successful BBC sit-com, in the golden age of British TV.

Not really the stuff of comedy, you'd think.

But it's an amazing piece of writing, with astounding characters who are caricatures of people we all know - the super confident Tony, the bag of nerves who is David, the tyrannical Boss CJ and the annoying pseudo-intellectual son-in-law Tom, who dutifully delivers a sprout wine on visiting and pipe smokes while uttering comments on everything.

A bit like me but with a pipe...

"I didn't get where I am today without having champagne not much just enough"

“I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone and West Germany.”

It's just wonderful surreal, profound, maddening. A sitcom that takes you to a place few others would dare: an existential cliff-edge.

Perhaps “One foot in the grave” trod similar territory

Talking of the catchphrases, you can read them here

Anyway, all this is a segue from my own condition which has been to isolate myself over the last few days.

It goes like that in the dementia space. I have long periods where I’m relatively social, and then I pay the price where I just can’t handle other people.

Trying to break it down - you - YOU - people just get in the way, physically. When I’m walking down the street, or queueing. Big blobs of matter talking incessantly, not paying attention, dawdling and meandering.

Would you do that on a motorway?

Children having fun but screaming in excitement.

Dumb males with overly loud combustion-engined vehicles.

People asking me questions, or to do things when I’m having difficulty even completing a sentence.

Too hot - I’m just trying to keep cool, trying to maintain a breeze going through the room.

Too bright as well. Bring me the gloom any time.

Reseal the bunker!

“Can I sit here?”

Sure. As long as you don’t talk to me, and don’t you dare put your phone on speaker and have a loud conversation, you self-important shit.

I will attack you with hot liquids.

Bloody exhibitionist.

I'm forgetting more words and the brain-fog is getting more opaque.

Waitrose and Death

Obnoxious ignoramus at the supermarket. Wouldn't help me at the self-help queue. A pesky garlic was failing to declare itself in my shopping bag.

He ignored me for a while as I waved at him.

Eventually he came over and chided me for not knowing what to do.

"Thank you soooo much." I replied as he walked away.

"You're welcome."

Cheeky cxxt.

As I walked out he had his back to me. The temptation to headbutt him hard where the spine meets the base of his skull to cause him irreparable damage was quite powerful, but then I realised that in the future I will still need that lovely Nduja pasta sauce which only Waitrose do, so I thought better of it.


Genuine life-saver.

Games Night

Been DMing for 13 sessions of our new campaign. It’s modular (i.e. made up of separate smaller adventures) rather than a colossal epic-style single campaign and it certainly seems to be going down well.

We’ve increased the player numbers to 5 now. We may have special guest stars such as Richard Basehart or Karl Marlden now and again just for the odd session.

It takes longer to put together now, and I never feel 100% on top of it any more, like I used to. So I just go with it. I also write down encounters like “Worst bandits ever” and just use my roleplaying skills to improvise it and it seems to do the trick.

The next day is always a write-off though.

In fact this weekend and last and the one before that I’ve just slept for 10-11 hours straight on the Saturday and Sunday and been even more useless than normal.

I can still run a good game though. And that’s what keeps me going.

Sharing is caring

I’m still struggling…

All that sunlight, summer cape-dresses and ice cream. Ghastly.

Make it go away!

Crawl back to the coolness of the cave and its screens where I can kill things with impunity…

I got tired of throwing Marjory out of the window. She came back in and I thought what the hell.
She keeps herself to herself.

Very hairy legs though.

Call me old-fashioned.
I felt sorry for her.

Chivalry is not dead!

Marjory

Disguised as a non-demented

Missing life much?

Watching endless YouTube clips on strange and unusual animals, Trump's America, the Epstein list, atheism vs theism, rugby league, Cab Calloway, Lindy Hopping, convergent evolution and some gaming channels.

I then look at the paper. The culture section looks interesting. I wonder what it would be like to go to the theatre. When was the last time I went to an art gallery?

I wish I could just pop out of this fug and rejoin society again.

Then I think, what the hell would I do? And I realise that with my inert executive functions I ultimately have no desire to do much of anything and would be of little use to anyone.

I felt normal

While walking Tomos in The Bishop's Fields I met a woman walking her dog, but she wasn't from round here and her dog was nervous in a new place. I assured her it was safe and it was fine to take the lead off.

So we made conversation and walked round the fields, letting the dogs play and meeting other dogs on the way. 

I went to Niche and acted normal.

No one suspected a thing!

No one suspects a thing.

Then I came home and  for the first time in ages and felt sad. 

Here I am, stuck here, unable to work, no will to do anything, missing the humans and the dogs (my god, I dream about the dogs!) and trying to keep my faculties as sharp as they can be.

For 95% of the time I barely feel any up or down emotions these days. 

That’s the Sertraline. 

If I’m stressed I come out in hives. 

Other than that, I’m so relaxed I’m almost supine.

Looking up

I look at the clouds and their shapes. Today cumulonimbus; yesterday, angels.

The modern system for classifying and naming clouds is largely based on the work of Luke Howard, a London pharmacist and amateur meteorologist, who proposed a system in 1802. 

I guess they were just ‘clouds’ up until this point.

It’s also round about this time that the apostrophe was introduced into English punctuation. 

Must have been the fashion to complicate stuff.

Anyway...

I look at the roof tops, the chimney stacks, the slates, the windows and their surrounds, the colours, the pointing, the brickwork or stonework or render. I look at the plants, the flowers, the trees, the people, the birds, the dogs, the shop windows, the floor; everything

I sniff the air (even through my rubbish sinuses) and try to concentrate on the scents of flowers to the smell of wet tarmac. 

I listen to everything - near and far - and try to decode it, picking out the distant hum of the jet planes and the cars, to the thudding and screeching of building work.

I look at the light and shadows on the land. I look up again at the sky to see if we are due shade or sunlight with any passing clouds.

I look at Tomos, and in my mind ask him to forgive me if I've been distracted. After all, I'm there to enjoy the moment with him, like he does every for every second of his life.

Inside 18th and 14th century brains

A couple of posts ago I mentioned Kubrick’s 1975 film, Barry Lyndon.

The critics at the time bemoaned its coldness  - or in 21st century parlance its lack of 'relatability'.

James Marriott wrote about the movie recently having - of course - researched this period very thoroughly. 

The 18th century was on the verge of the ages of industrialisation and enlightenment. 

It is an age of colossal wage disparity (rarely mentioned in those tedious costume dramas) where the majority of the population were agricultural labourers who starved for much of the time, and where the landed classes had astonishingly complex and unspoken rules of etiquette, where the distance you stood from each other, your bow, and in what order was a minefield. 

Laughter was considered impolite; an affected titter was all that was acceptable.

The elite viewed the those beneath them as sub-human, rather like the ultra-rich do today.

Life was cheap and random acts of cruelty were the order of the day. 

Putting cats on bonfires and hearing them scream was a popular past time, considered the height of hilarity.

Again, there has been a recent upsurge in the torture of cats, which is another strange correlation with the 18th century.

The coldness of the people in the film is a result of Kubrick’s exhaustive research. It was a period between the feudal and the industrial, and evidently very alien.

I’ve always loved a series called Inside the Medieval Mind which was originally on the Open University. 

One thing that stuck in my mind the Mapa Mundi - one of the oldest maps of the then known world. It it square, and has at its centre Jerusalem - the Holy Land being the centre of the world. On the perphery of the map are the dog-headed men.

Whether they existed was not the question - it was a given. 

The question of the day was do they have the soul of a dog or the soul of a man? 

If they have the souls of men, then they could be converted to Christianity and missionaries would be sent out to do so.

If they have the soul of a dog they can’t.

Their world was totally supernatural.

I sometimes imagine having the ability to go back in time. Even if we could speak as they did, how would we have navigated the unspoken societal rules?

I’d have been burned at the stake within hours of touch-down. 

That's enough Blues-Rock for one lifetime

At Wells Beer Festival on Friday. God it was loud, heavy meal pumping out from the speakers. 

I asked Jan as soon as I got there “Is this din going on all night?” 

Smiling, he said, “Yes.”

So I had my headphones on, and then the band started. ‘Fire’ by Jimi Hendrix, some Led-Zeppelin, some Cream, etc etc.

I loved this type of music from an early age, but I’ve really had enough of it.

60 years of this type of music being played by what seems like the majority of pub bands. 

I’m sick of second rate Zeppelin or Cream impersonators.

I hear other genres of music are available.

Great TV can also be trash

When I was in the 6th form at school, out of the 4 channels, Channel 4 could be relied on to provide interesting alternatives to the other 3.

One of the programmes they aired was The Gong Show, a late 70s US  - and it could only be the US that produced this particular programme - talent show which is still one of the craziest I’ve ever seen.

It features some of the most bizarre acts, with a live band (as they all did back in the day), a panel who physically beat a gong if the acts sucks, regulars such as The Unknown Comic and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine. 

The whole show was just a giant anarchic party. 

Such a tonic. 

When I watch it I have a fixed grin from start to finish. 

Howard's Way

Simon Park who composed and played this theme for the appalling 80s serial also did the Eastenders theme.

A great talent for viral irritation.

Here are the lyrics which must have been in Simon's head as he composed the shite.

Howard's way.

It's always Howard's way.

He always gets his way.

Bloody Howard's way....etc