As they say “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana” and this summer seems to have gone very quickly.

Had a few folks around to view the flat, but it may take a while to shift as anybody with serious enough wedge is just as likely to be able to spend a bit more. It needs work to tart it up  which I can’t do myself  and I can’t afford to get it done, but it will a bargain for someone if they want to live in these here parts!  So I shall bide my time and not get too excited. As ever I have a few musical things on the boil. I would like to be busier but my body is not quite up to it and I have to be a bit careful not to strain myself. Its easy to over do it if you do a couple of gigs and get carried away. Violin in particular can be a real pain literally at times. It takes it out on the shoulders and the neck. Paradoxically it helps because the whole of your upper body have to move to play, where as Piano is mostly arms and hands depending on what your playing. Violin requires you to make quite considerable stretches and turns and it easy to come a cropper. I should have learnt the Cello as you sit down for that and all you have to do is keep it between your legs. 😉 Now, now behave yourselves.

At the time of writing armageddon has not quite arrived though there is sufficient turmoil in the world to give the hint that it may not be far away. As a kid I used to have nightmares about nuclear war (which I still have from time to time) as did many who are old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis  in October 62. I was all of 5 years old but I knew it was something really bad though of course I could not really comprehend its significance.   So the North Korean situation is just a tad bowel loosening if you think too hard about it. Perhaps its best not to?

Last weekend was a slightly more knackering one than usually as one gig was as part of the Colne R&B Festival which is 240 miles from London, and we decided not to stay over as we had another gig down south. Driving can be a bit knackering. It took about 4 hours each way which is not to bad considering it was a bank holiday. It went down fairly well, and we are supposed to be doing it again next year. That means we will have five decent festivals for 2018. Not too shabby for a bunch of  geriatrics I guess.  And when people appreciate it its a nice little ego booster.  On the days when I don’t have gigs I am not such great company as I do tend to sink in to low moods fairly quickly so I have to keep myself occupied with positive stuff or the weight of the world starts to hang heavy on me.

Depression and its relatives in the mood disorder clan are quite exhausting. At a certain point you can push against it and that helps to a degree, but its at times difficult when people are over the moon about something and you try and make polite noises of enthusiasm and cheer on the  team members but you just feel meh.  I am what they call a functional depressive, so on casual acquaintance you would not be aware often. I am quite lively, I tell the odd joke on stage and quite often have been known to smile. Fellow travellers will recognise this phenomenon I am sure. The other thing that goes hand in hand is anxiety. I used to have dreadful anxiety attacks but these have lessened as I have aged and learnt to manage them better.  It has affected what I can do though and if I needed to work in a conventional job again it would be difficult. Deadlines of any sort seem to rob me of my cognitive abilities and reduce me to a jibbering idiot even if the task is well within my skill set.

I am still beavering away at trying to improve my severely limited French language skills but I feel it goes in one ear and straight out of the other. Never mind. I do spend about an hour on  it most days.