Camus

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Kierkegaard

Life must be understood backwards; but… it must be lived forward.

Karl von Clausewitz

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

Aeschylus

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

Cosmic

disco is looming large on the horizon at the moment. I have always had a passion for the more expansive and open-minded end of the disco spectrum, and the current fashion for electro/house/disco-type music has lead to a rash of re-issues and reappraisals of this form of music. ‘Computer Incarnations for World Peace‘ has been on repeat most of this evening, and will be on my Ipod as soon as it is fixed. I have ordered 3 compilations of music and photos from Italy about Daniele Baldelli, the pioneering DJ at Cosmic (one of the few clubs to actually give its name to a musical genre), on Lake Garda, and visited by the great and good whilst on vacation.

Lovecraft

was seemingly a writer who liked the use of the word “antediluvian”. I also like this word. Today the torrential downpours across the UK flooded my workplace – my office was an inch deep (2.5cm for those non-imperialists) in rainwater. I got soaked. And I didn’t have a change of clothes, so my feet were decidedly wrinkly by the time I got home and took my shoes and socks off some 7 hours after getting wet. This is the second time this week I have been covered in water of questionable purity.

On Wednesday my neighbour beneath came up to ask whether there was a leak in the kitchen. “No, I don’t think so.” I replied. “I’ll go and take a look”. Fatal mistake.

Beneath the sink four inlets (two plugholes, a washing machine and a dishwasher) all meet in a kind of Spaghetti Junction of white and grey piping). I hadn’t used the dishwasher or washing machine, so I thought it must be the sink(s). I took everything out of the cupboard – why do the British insist on storing the most random things beneath the kitchen sink (paintbrushes, putty, flower pots…) I saw there was some water marking, but this may have been from previous floods with the previous tenants. Then I saw it, a small drip every couple of seconds. OK, I thought. As I’m here, I’ll undo the pipes, give them a rinse in some hot water and put them back together – tighten the dripping one and we’ll all be happy as Larry. Fatal mistake number 2.

As I began to unscrew the dripping joint, it rose to become a veritable arc of slightly dirty water. Fortunately I had placed a bowl beneath the plumbing, so I continued, logically assuming that as the pressure dropped, so the water would gently drain into the bowl. Fatal error number three.

The pressure did drop, but the brown water now poured everywhere. And as I sought to stem the flow, so random jets would build up and shoot out at all angles between my fingers. So I now have a bowl full of dark brown water, a cupboard covered in drops of dark brown water. And me, covered in drops of dark brown water. Fun.

So, one bowl full of water later, and it stops. I can remove the pipe, take out the festering filth that has built up to cause the blockage, clean it, and put it all back together. Only this last part doesn’t quite work. One of the pipes no longer seems ot fit, and drips as water comes down from the sink. So I unscrew it and take a look. And the seal has gone. Which was most likely part of the problem to begin with. So I head down to the local hardware store (yes, we still have one – no Homebase or B&Q here, thank you), get a seal (or should that be washer) and put it all back together.

And so far it has been OK. Touch wood.

Thanks and apologies to Mikhail Zoshchenko.

Something struck me

on the number 10 bus just before Marble Arch on Tuesday afternoon. We were waiting an age as a mass of tourists were trying to get on to the bus at Hyde Park. I was sitting upstairs, just past the stairs, on the left-hand side, looking out of the window and listening to my Ipod. There was a standard old man waiting below, flat cap, tweed jacket, questionably fitting trousers. Glasses, few teeth, you get the idea.

Then it flashed across my brain. Some people have sex with animals, some with morbidly obese people, others seek more vicarious thrills, and human sexuality is a many varied thing. I know some men (and not just characters in Little Britain) prefer the older woman, even the geriatric. And so I wondered whether there are those women (and men) who have a predilection for old men. Sean Connery and Jack Nicholson are both still considered attractive, despite the fact both have been drawing their pensions for more years than they would care to remember.

Are there young women trawling the saloon bars, ex-servicemen’s clubs and British Legions in search of grandad love? I would try Google, but I worry what I would discover – and I’m sure whatever it was would only be the tip of the iceberg.

OK, apologies for this post – such are the ridiculous things wandering through my brain at 1.48pm on Tuesdays and 3.28am on the following Thursday. Still, better out than in.  

An excess of science fiction

has taken over my life in the most insidious ways recently. I have been revisiting Dr Who in DVD form repeatedly – discounts via work are a killer – but it means that I have managed to ascertain that I did not imagine much of what happened as the Doctor regenerated from Tom Baker into Peter Davison when I was but four years old.

Parallel to this, I have come realise that a number of sci-fi influenced track have been on my Ipod – the Dr Who theme music and some electronica are to be expected, but even deep jazz, such as this rather wonderful release have been on repeat, as well as early-80’s dub with a definite space-age twist.  

Two dead pigeons

were on my way to the Tube this morning – not eaten – just killed, one in the gutter and the other beneath a wall, each surrounded by a mass of feathers. This lead me to wonder, for a moment, whether animals (I assume it was a cat that had killed them last night) can harbour psychopathic tendencies – cats, especially in Ealing, are unlikely to have gone hungry, and pigeons are quite sizeable opponents to take on. So maybe the cat just flipped out. Went postal. Or maybe it was simply indulging its primeval genetic make up. Or maybe these two things aren’t entirely different. Then I got to the Tube and thought about something else.

Top ten shuffle this week

Vats Of Urine – Dangerdoom/The Mouse & The Mask
Dimension 11 – Dopplereffekt/Calabi Yau Space
Good Thing Going – Sugar Minott/Jet Star Reggae Max
That’s The Way Love Is – Gladys Knight & The Pips/Marvel of Marvin
Satta Dread Dub – King Tubby And Friends/Dub Gone Crazy
Ely Cathedral – Map of Africa/Map of Africa
Julius Caesar (Memento Hodie) – Nico/The Marble Index
InstrumentalsA – Arthur Russell/First Thought Best Thought
Here I Come (Jungle) – Barrington Levy/Ragga Jungle Anthems 2
My World Premiere [12" Single Version] – Charizma & PB Wolf/Peanut Butter Wolf Presents Stones Throw: Ten Years
Avenue Of Shapes – Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd/After The Night Falls