A New Laptop


It’s been quite a day.

Some very big things have happened here in Ireland this weekend. I feel I should be writing about them, saying my piece, doing my thing. 

But, these things, they’re so big and so close at hand that it’s hard to immediately get my head around them in a way that would let me write anything worthwhile about them. It’s probably best if I don’t.

So, what else happened this weekend then?

Let me think… 

Wait, I know. We got a new laptop.  That’s what happened.

It takes a long time for things to change around here. We’ve had our old computer for so many years. But the old computer had never really been any use and it was obviously now doing much, much more harm than good, so we finally decided to get rid of it.

I’m very glad that we did.

Some people did not think it was a good idea to get rid of the old computer and get a new laptop. But the old computer was so useless that, for the longest time now, if we had to do something hard, we had to travel all the way to the office to do it. Some people perhaps thought it was better if we continued to travel to the office to do all the things we could not do on our old computer. Maybe it meant going out in the storm and maybe it messed with our head and sometimes it even made us quite sick, but it was still better than getting a new laptop.

A new laptop would open up new possibilities, you see, and not all of them completely attractive. We would be able to see things we wouldn’t otherwise see, We would have to deal with things we wouldn’t otherwise have to deal with. Wouldn’t it be better to just leave the comfortable old broken machine in place and let it do whatever it could do and, in those times when it couldn’t do anything, get on the road to the office where the necessary could always be done.

It was a thinking that prevailed for a surprisingly long time. But we thought about it and we considered it very carefully and we finally took action and now we have a new laptop to write on and to do other hard things on too. I’m sitting here now and it’s working beautifully and I’m listening to some peaceful music and it’s after midnight and I’m not really doing anything terribly important right now but I know that if I have something hard to do - something that really needs doing - I won’t have to go out in the cold and the damp to travel to an office far away to get it done. I can get it done here, in the safety and shelter of my home It still won’t be all that easy. It still won’t be without heartache. It still won’t be without pain. And, of course, I can still just choose not to do it at all and I may very well do that. But at least, if I do choose to do it, it is my choice and I can do it here in my place.

So that’s it. That’s what’s happened here in Ireland this weekend. A new laptop.

It’s been a good day and I think our new laptop will lead on to even better and brighter days ahead. I know that a lot of good people will really grieve for the loss of our old PC and I don’t think they’ll ever come to love or possibly even fully accept our new laptop. But I hope, over time, they will see how much better and stronger we have become because we have our new laptop. I hope they will see that it was ultimately a good decision, made by good people.

Will all that come to pass? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, I can’t help but feel proud of our new laptop and of the decision that led us to finally getting it. I feel we stood up for what we knew needed to happen and that, by doing so, we played our part in making life that little bit better.

But I think I’ll go to bed now.

It’s been quite a day.

Storm in the City


Thunder over Battersea
Despite the evening sunshine.


Here we go again.


Cat still snoozing, doesn’t know
What’s going to come down hard.


Drag the cushions from the chairs.
Leave the glass door open
To hear the first drops as they smash
On to the dusty yard.


Storm in the city.
City in the storm
Safe but still in danger
Chilly but still warm


Light is green and grey and blue
Cloud is closing in.


Here we go again.


Cat gone behind the couch
Nervous. Standing guard.


Drag the blanket from the bed.
Hold your eyes wide open.
See the lightning as it walks.
Smell the ozone charred.


Thunder in the city.
Lightning in the sky
Safe but still in danger
           Living but may die


Sacrificial Moments

You can’t choose the songs that whisk you back to another time. They just do.

In an ideal world, it would be a track from an album that has grown and matured, over the years, into some deeply revered and much loved thing. Better still, some obscure and troublesome classical movement from some obtuse symphony. How great it would be to evoke my memories to a soundtrack like that.

But that’s not how it happens. Not to me anyway. The songs that whisk me away every time are simple, rather familiar pop tunes. 

I heard Elton John’s song ‘Sacrifice’ the other day and off I went again. Swept away on the tides of the memories evoked by that tune. Back to January of 1990. 

‘Sacrifice’ didn’t become a number one hit in the UK until it was released in June of 1990 but we weren’t in the UK in 1990 anyway so that’s a moot point. Although it was apparently never a major hit in the US, it certainly got a lot of airplay over there in January of that year. A lot of plays. That’s where we were and that’s how it got into my head and became associated with that time. Tied up with the drive from San Francisco to Tijuana. 

Patricia and me weren’t yet married but we were having a ‘year out’ around the world. That’s a misnomer, actually, because the trip only lasted 364 days and not the full year, as advertised. The whole thing must sound a bit middle class and privileged now but it was really anything but. In late 1989, I was embedded in my career in London. I could have envisaged myself doing anything else, being a somewhat unadventurous type. What happened was that my car got stolen while we in the swimming pool one evening and it was subsequently destroyed by the nice people who stole it. In the time it took to get everything sorted out, I became accustomed to not having a car in London and so, when the insurance money landed, and under Patricia’s adventurous inspiration, we said ‘sod the car’ and spent it all on a cut price world tour instead. 

It was one of the best decisions ever. In my current existence, where I rarely go anywhere or do anything, the memories of the miles we traveled and the things we have seen, warms me and keeps me contented in my relatively confined life. 

And random songs sometimes bring me back to particular places.

As we drove out of San Francisco and headed off south down along the west coast, the Elton John/Bernie Taupin song seemed to be playing over and over and over again. I misheard the lyrics, thinking it was about some unfortunate person called CoCo Hall. In my mind, she was a sort of a modern day version of ChoCho San from Madama Butterfly. Sad and abandoned. Effectively ‘hard done by you’ as the lyrics say. Of course I was completely wrong. 'CoCo Hall' was actually 'Cold Cold Heart' but that didn’t stop me from singing along anyway.

Whenever I hear the song now, I experience a vision of the sort that you see in TV dramas all the time now thanks to drone technology. We are driving on Highway 1 down towards Carmel and I see a birds eye  view of us in our car, roof down, as we cruise along. We didn’t even have a convertible car but music-evoked memories can be a bit fluid like that. It was a magical time. Rare in the knowing that it was magical while we were doing it as opposed to only finding out it was magical many years after the fact.

The song reminds me of going to pick up the rental car in San Francisco. We were staying in a  hostel somewhere out by Fort Mason so I had a bit of a trek to get to the car place. I was then going to drive back and collect Patricia. I remember sitting in the hire car for a long, long time, trying to figure out how to put my seat belt on. It hung there above my head in a really unusual place and I pulled at it and tugged at it but couldn’t get it to go around me. In the end, I resolved to drive the car back to the hostel without the seat belt and use Patricia’s brain power to figure it out. I turned the key in the ignition and the seat belt automatically coiled itself around me and secured. Okay… that’s sorted then. 

I remember small things. All of the sign posts sounded like songs. Staying in random motels just because we’d never done that before. Having breakfast in some very tidy little back street pastry shop in San Luis Obispo. Trying to track down an old friend in San Diego and, when finally successful, spending a day with her on the beach in sight of The Hotel Coronado from 'Some Like it Hot'. 

The border into Mexico. I remember the considerable numbers of  troubled people on the Mexico side, pleading for help to get back into their own country. A gauntlet of hard luck stories to be run. 

A visit to Hearst’s Castle. Opulence and grandeur coupled with a subtle sense of slow crumbling. A sign for Disneyworld, quickly driven past.

And all along the way - the excellent way - there was that song playing on the radio. When I think of it all now, I think of the sun and the open road and the not knowing what lay around the next bend. But I always remember an occasional kind of low key sadness too. I remember being in some small town on a Friday afternoon and that song was playing. Everybody seemed to be buzzed because it was Friday and the weekend was here. But we were hobos on the road and everyday was a Friday to us. There was a brief sense of missing the ‘work is now done’ joy of a regular Friday afternoon. And, on the positive side, another sense that when we finally returned to that way of life, it wouldn't be all bad. Sometimes, too, out on the road, there was that small feeling of loneliness and isolation. To be a million miles from anyone who knew you or cared anything about you. We had each other, though, and that has always been plenty.

I also remember that every little place seemed perfect in its own way. That it would be easy to stop and stay forever in any one of those places and that life would always be easy and good there.

But, whenever I fell into thinking like that, the song was always there. Playing. Reminding me ever so gently.

“Some things look better, baby, just passing through.”

If I Had a Penny

For all the complaining I’ve done about Facebook over the years (and I’ve done some complaining) it does continue to provide a very important service to me.

It keeps me in touch with some of my oldest friends. 

I’ve always been more of a Twitter head, as you may know. Facebook was something I was sort of ‘dragged onto’, to take part in a campaign for Arts funding that was being run there. But I stayed and stayed, as I tend to do with things.

Twitter suited me, for some reason, but it didn’t suit everybody and so my old friends didn’t ever really show up there. But Facebook, for all its horrors, was a revelation in that respect. Old pals, who had become just a trace of fond memories and somewhat wistful thinking, were there. They were there almost in the flesh. A little older, a little more settled perhaps, but still very much the same in all the important ways. And there was their family and there were their kids and there was their dog and there was their cat. And it was like a bright window was opened into their lives, for me to peep in.

There was a reconnection, of sorts. For not only could I see them but, rather obviously, they could see me too. We exchanged ‘hello’s and ‘how are you’s and perhaps shared the occasional updated confidence but, mostly, in truth, we just saw each other again, after all the years. And how very good that was and how it remains that way to this day.

There’s MC, out on the ocean with her pals. There’s Nuala, still navigating the world like she always loved to do. There’s Brian, still making his excellent music. There’s Tim, hitting the Rugby with his pals and out sailing in the bay…

Even the friends I made more recently, on Twitter. They are there too with their lives and their families and their concerns. We are not linked by too many cords, my old Twitter pals and me. But the cords that do link us can get stretched and kinked and even a little torn up... but they don't break. They don't ever seem to do that. And that's a good and a somewhat precious thing. 

To look at my old friends, and to share small moments with them, is to also think of the friends who are not there. The friends who are out there somewhere, living their own updated/same lives just not choosing to share them on some website. It evokes a hope that they are okay and that everything is going along just fine for them. That’s why Facebook is so valuable in the end. If it wasn’t there, I wouldn’t call, I wouldn’t write. I would cast myself adrift by torpor and social ineptitude. Facebook provides me with the entry level tool that I need to keep in touch.

We think of our friends and almost believe that we will all be together again some day. But we won’t. Or if we will, it will be for a fleeting moment. A changeover of trains that are going different directions. It may be a sombre thought but I think that our time in each other’s company is largely done. One or two of us will meet, from time to time, but no entire collective will assemble. Indeed, when were we ever an entire collective? Weren’t we always just a combination of personal relationships that bounced off each other and ricocheted off in so many different directions.

That is why I think it’s important, when any two meet, that we evoke the others, the absentees, in fond stories and smiles. That is the only way we will ever manage to reunite again, in each other’s  collective memories, shared whenever we may occasionally collide.

Because the years are passing quickly now. Almost as fast as the pages can be torn off a calendar. Not too soon, but still soon enough, we will slip into legend as we all must do. That is when the distant relationship changes. What is cosy and warm now may become precious then, almost at the flick of switch. 

It is with that it mind that I am scribbling this down today. Here’s to you, good friends. Although I hate Facebook in many ways, I won’t ever leave while you are in there. The picture I see of you may be a rosy one. For who shares their upset stomach on Social Media? But it is still you. And your kids look great and your pets look great and I’m glad to see you looking so well.

My friends. Online and off. If I had a penny for every time I thought about them, well, I wouldn’t be very rich or anything. Or, more accurately, I would be rich only on account of the thoughts I have of them rather than from any pennies I might have earned. I’d have earned enough for one good drink, perhaps, and I would raise that glass in a toast to them.

Cheers. 

Glad to see you there.

Hope to meet up again sometime soon.

Keep in touch.