Progressive Thoughts - Day 31

At last we’ve reached the final day of this weird blogathon. I’ve enjoyed it – and I hope some of you have too.

My last song is currently top of the list in terms of number of times played on my iPod. To be fair, if ITunes had been available way back in 1973 the song would have been something completely different I am sure.

And yes, you’ve guessed it, the song is a progressive rock masterpiece, in my opinion anyway. It is called Drive Home by Steven Wilson and features an extraordinarily emotional guitar solo at the end by Guthrie Govan.

Steven Wilson has the uncanny ability to write sad songs and this is up there with the best of them.

The song is about a man who loses his wife in a car crash and blocks the incident out completely until, later, his wife comes back as a ghost to remind him what happened, urging him to move on and deal with the pain.

The accompanying video is equally sad – but despite this, the song is absolutely beautiful.  If you don’t want to listen to the entire song, just listen to the guitar solo from about 5 minutes into the video.

Anyway – that’s it. I’ve completed my second 31 day blogathon and I must say that it has been fun and has actually ticked off a couple of “resolutions” for 2017 (although not completely). I don’t really want to highlight resolutions but if you set yourself a target and (kind of) achieve it, you suddenly feel a warm and fuzzy feeling inside – something akin to happiness and contentment.

I moaned earlier about how dreadful 2016 was and how January as a month is dark, dismal and depressing and how I needed a distraction and this series of posts has helped a lot. I have increased the amount of writing I have done and also resurrected a 30 day challenge and this has helped me forget about 2016 and this, the worst month of the year.

As we enter into February I am content. I still haven’t lost my temper with a rant about Brexit and Donald Trump despite provocation of the highest order and I can hopefully put all that behind me and start being more positive.

It’s tough but I recommend it.

What’s in store next?

February will bring more misery in terms of the cold British weather but in terms of writing, I am going to aim to complete the first draft of my terrible novel.

I am also currently attacking my language skills, by brushing up on my German and French and taking on another language – Italian. We are thinking of a trip to Italy in September so I would like to impress the locals by at least being able to ask for things in their native language. My exploits with Spanish have shown that this is very difficult – but I like a challenge.

Whether I’ll achieve it or not, who knows – but it will be fun trying.

I will also continue with this dreadful blog and maybe try to post more regularly. Sadly, for you dear reader, that means more garbage from Manchester but it at least it will help those who want to see “How Not To Write A Blog Post”.

See you in February sometime.

And, as a footnote, I hope you’ve experienced a wider range of music and enjoyed a little bit of prog!

Welcome to my world!

Progressive Thoughts - Day 30

Today’s song is another by Canadian power trio Rush, called Cut ToThe Chase.

This is a song about chasing your dreams and ignoring those who try to dissuade you because they think it is a waste of time.

Everybody should have dreams and strive for them, otherwise what is the point of being alive? I truly believe that with a little willpower, it is possible to achieve your ultimate desires; history is full of such people.

Some people choose to be proactive but others simply wait until they are older and add desires to their bucket list when they realise that death is approaching.

I know that death is following me around and while I am doing my best to outrun him, I am relatively content not to create a bucket list of things that I feel I need to do before the Grim Reaper finally impales me on his scythe.

To be honest, I feel it’s now too late to try some of the things I would have attempted as a young man.

Age and sensibility have taken over and, for example, the very idea of hurling myself out of an aircraft with nothing but a huge silk sheet attached to my back with rope does not appeal to me in the slightest.

I might actually have tried it at the age of 20 when my fear of heights was non-existent.

Other features of growing old would simply interfere with such desires.

That’s not to say that I don’t have dreams – I do. But the difference is that I don’t want to achieve them just to cross an entry off a list and boast about my achievement to other people. I don’t want to tell my mates that I swam naked in the Mediterranean Sea for many reasons, not least of all that the mental image of me stumbling into a cold sea showing my fat arse and worse would be something that they would never forgive me for.

An image like that remains etched in the area of the brain marked “OH MY GOD!” for eternity.

Friends' response would almost certainly be a tsunami of verbal abuse that would make Quentin Tarantino run away in shock.

Actually, I realise that I may have given you the same mental image of a strategically shaved ape waddling into the sea, dear reader. I am truly sorry about that.

My dreams are personal ones and a lot of them are ongoing. Additionally, there are some that I haven’t even thought of yet.

I believe that no matter how old you get, you should continue to strive to make yourself happy with achievable and pleasant dreams that you can still manage. Put aside thoughts of having a dangerous liaison with the Angel of Death – you can’t do anything about that but you may bring forward the date if you decided that abseiling down the Eiffel Tower was something you feel like you must do.

What’s wrong with making an effort to be nice to people?

What about travelling?

What about writing that book of your innermost thoughts that your family friends can enjoy after the Grim Reaper carts you away?

All of the above are on my list, as is meeting as many new people as possible (as long as I can rid myself of the Shyness Beast).

Such things are easy, dear reader.

I bet you’re still thinking about a naked ape in the Mediterranean aren’t you?

Progressive Thoughts - Day 4

I love the title of today’s song but I must confess to not really understanding it. The song is by one of my most recent and favourite discoveries, a progressive rock band from Poland called Riverside, who have totally won me over in the past two years.

The song is called Lost (Why Should I Be Frightened by a Hat?).

To some people this sums up how strange progressive rock can be with weird song titles and bizarre concepts as subjects. Yet, despite the odd title, this is a beautiful song and typical of the band.

The meaning of the song is, thankfully, not weird at all. Basically, it is about somebody looking back at his younger self and picturing the innocent wonder as the boy contemplates his future life with no fear – only excitement.

I can relate to that.

I cannot remember the thoughts going through my mind as an innocent boy. Some of my friends may ask “Were you ever innocent, Dave?”, to which my answer would be “Of course!”

But as a young child, I cannot confess to ever being unafraid of the future. To be honest, I was captivated by it but also deeply scared because it was all about the unknown. My fascination with science fiction steered my imagination into a vision of the future that was as terrifying as it was amazing.

Back in 1970, most kids were looking at the year 2000 with awe. I used to love reading books and watching TV programmes about what life would be like in that amazing future. To be honest, some of it has come to pass, but equally, one or two ideas from that time are laughable.

For example, we all thought that there would be a Moonbase, like in the TV series Space 1999 and UFO, and that we would be travelling to the outer reaches of our solar system. Also, the vision of orbiting space stations crammed full of people seemed to be a distinct possibility.

Closer to home, we pictured ourselves sitting in futuristic houses, with robots as servants , We would travel around in flying cars and be able to travel to the other side of the world in aircraft that left Earth’s orbit and could, say, fly from London to Sydney in just two or three hours. Furthermore, seers predicted that we would barely have to lift a finger in our own homes, from asking the cooker to prepare dinner and switching things on and off with voice command.

Now these later items do seem possible. Certain people got it totally right, particularly with the prediction that we would be carrying or own computers with us (in the shape of a smartphone) to being able to summon our own entertainment by watching television on-demand from a vast library of movies, TV series and box sets.

I am fascinated by the future and I would love one of two things to happen. Either I somehow become immortal and can watch the development of future technology over the next few hundred years, or somebody invents a time machine that can whisk me away to the future where I can see for myself what happens.

That would be a dream if it were possible.

Of course, depending on your religion, there might be some hope that when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, I may be born again and enjoy the future that way. Sadly I won’t be able to remember this life – unless technology permits it, of course.

Who knows?

I remain optimistic.

The Light Sleeper

A few nights ago I had a weird dream. I was tied to the floor and a warm sticky substance was dripping relentlessly onto my exposed forehead. It was like Chinese water torture, only much worse; the dripping substance was slowly and inexorably drifting towards my mouth.

I can picture you reading this and I can almost sense the disgust in your mind but please bear with me - it's not as bad as you think (though it could have been).

As the drip approached my upper lip I started to panic; and as I panicked I began to hear an unearthly wailing sound.

And then I woke up.

Waking up for me is a traumatic experience sometimes because I am so short sighted that shapes take on a menacing significance. On this occasion, as my crusty eyes opened, I could see nothing. The room was dark and the feeble street light from the front window barely illuminated the room. And then I saw it; the blurred shadow directly above my head. My heart leapt; I almost screamed. And I’m glad I didn’t. If I had, a huge drop of cat saliva would have plopped right onto my tonsils.

“MIIIIAAAOOOWWWWW!”

Spike, our old, greedy, dribbling cat was perched on my chest, and howling for food. He was so hungry that he was salivating all over my head.

“URRGHHHH!!!” I screamed, and tried to turn over. Spike, thinking I was going to grant his wish for a tray of food promptly stepped onto my face before dropping to the floor, meowing incessantly. The racket was so loud that I decided to feed him. Because it was dark, I staggered out of bed, trod on Spike’s tail (causing him to screech in pain), bashed my knee on the bedside cabinet and hobbled downstairs. Spike, in revenge for the pain, tried his best to trip me up as I went. When I returned, Mrs PM was still fast asleep, oblivious to my trauma and pain. I was tempted to wake her up because it was her fault that Spike had woken me up in the first place. Why? Well, let me tell you a little bit of history.

When we moved into our new house we bought two black kittens called Jasper and Poppy and they were quite happy to sleep on our bed with us in it, in peace and harmony, moving only occasionally. However, when Spike, the cuckoo in our nest, arrived, he was so hungry all the time that he woke us up constantly at really anti-social hours. When I say “us” I mean “me". As you may have guessed, I am a very light sleeper and what annoys me most is that Mrs PM is the complete opposite.

I banned the cats from the bedroom and Mrs PM has struggled with this ever since I put my foot down. So to compromise, I foolishly allow them in the bedroom while we are reading, until it is time to turn off the light; then they are unceremoniously ejected from the room. On this night, however, Mrs PM had let the cats back in when I was asleep and, as usual, Spike had picked on me. Of course, he may have picked on Mrs PM first but waking her up is as difficult as trying to push a pea to London using just your nose.

Mrs PM can sleep through an earthquake – and indeed she has – twice! We don’t get earthquakes in England very often but Mother Nature decided to inflict one upon us last year. Being such a light sleeper, I was out of bed the nanosecond it struck. I was convinced that a burglar was trying to break down the bedroom door and in my confused semi-conscious state, I bellowed at the top of my voice, thinking that a burglar would flee if he thought that there was a maniac on the other side of the door. My screaming actually woke Mrs PM up on this occasion, as did the two hundred burglar alarms that immediately went off in the street when the tremor struck.

“What are you doing out of bed?” she asked in a bleary eyed state, before immediately falling to sleep again with a loud snore.

In these cold, dark winter months I can normally sleep quite well. It is dark when I retire for the night and stays dark until around eight in the morning. However, in the summer, in June in particular, it only begins to get dark at 10pm and by 4am it is light again and I find myself lying there in bed at 4:30 having been woken up by bright sunshine and the sound of the dawn chorus. I am so frustrated that I blame the cats for that as well. I’ve heard myself talking to Jasper:

“Call yourself a bloody cat? There are a hundred and forty two birds out there, making enough noise to wake the dead. Why don’t you round up the local moggy posse and sort the little buggers out?”

Jasper just sat there with that “Gimme food” look on his face.

When I complain to Mrs PM, she laughs and says “It’s not my fault you have transparent eyelids!”

Other things wake me up too, usually in the middle of a great dream. If a squirrel drops a nut in our front garden at 3am you can guarantee that I will be awake at 3am and one second wondering what’s making the racket outside.

I’ve tried wearing those blindfolds that they give you on aircraft. The problem is that I wake up with it still on and panic thinking that somebody has stolen my sight in the middle of the night, or find it missing and forget about it, only to rediscover it around my neck when I’m in the shower.

I’ve also tried earplugs with similar effects. Either I panic because I think I am deaf, or sleep through my alarm clock and end up at work two hours late.

Sometimes, Mrs PM can make matters much worse. She accuses me of being a duvet thief but the only person who wakes up on a cold winter’s night, shivering in the throes of early hypothermia is me.

Worse, she sometimes has a spontaneous, localised moment of being a light sleeper and suddenly screams out “What’s that noise?”. I get up, go downstairs, and usually find the cats having a party in the lounge, only to return to the bedroom to find Mrs PM snoring for England.

The worst thing about Mrs PM are her dreams.

Now I cannot read this woman’s mind but I certainly know when she is having a vivid and weird dream. Normally she cries out in her sleep, which immediately wakes me up. Sometimes, she wakes up, shakes me awake and asks a stupid question like “Why do the insects have to travel to Mars in a coffin? Surely the dentists will make them clean their paws first.” Then she falls unconscious again and starts snoring. I am such a light sleeper that her snoring keeps me awake for hours.

The worst episode involving Mrs PM and her dreams occurred the other week. There I was lying in bed in total bliss; I had caught the train to dreamland and was about to show my passport when suddenly Mrs PM kicked me. Furthermore, she kicked me so hard that I actually stumbled out of bed and landed on the floor. I was aghast. I woke her up and said “What the bloody hell are you doing? You’ve just bloody well kicked me!”

“Did I?” she replied. “I’m sorry. I was dreaming about a walking doll that wouldn’t stop chasing me; so I kicked it.”

And then she fell asleep and started snoring, keeping me awake for the rest of the night.

I need to take steps to combat my problem. How about ttaking these steps:

(1) Ban the cats from entering the room at all times when I am in bed.

(2) Buy a set of thick curtains that allow no light whatsoever to pass through.

(3) Soundproof the bedroom.

(4) Put Mrs PM in a straight-jacket.

Actually, I think one of those suggestions is a little extreme. I would cost a fortune to soundproof the bedroom.