Train Of Thought

I’m having one of those days – the ones where you just want to go home and sit in a darkened room with a guitar and a glass of wine, maybe sing the blues for a while.

There’s no chance of that, of course, because the cats have serious issues with anything that takes attention away from them – plus I have promised myself I will go swimming and try and lose some of the gut I seem to be steadily growing.

I used to belong to a gym and my favourite time of year was always January when you couldn’t get on a machine – not because I’m lazy, but because it was always amusing to see the New Years Resolution Makers and take private bets on how long they’d last. Most wouldn’t make it past the end of the month.

But then I got a mortgage and the money was no longer there. I still miss it.

Back then if I was having one of those days I would make sure to go to the gym after work. Sure – I wouldn’t be in the mood or anything, in fact I still just wanted to go home and pick up that guitar, but I always knew that somewhere about half-way through my stint on the cross-trainer the endorphins would kick in and I would come home feeling better, if sweatier. Those days are long behind me now – I’d love to join a gym, but like most people I have bills to pay first.

This morning Furry had a good try at breaking my neck, he sat about half-way down the stairs and I only just saw his black shape in time to avoid stepping on him. He guided me to his bowl and demanded food – I pointed out that there was still food in his bowl and that he should think himself well off: “think about all the starving cats in Africa” I said, not expecting it to work any more than it had when my grandparents had tried it on me as a kid. It didn’t

I’ve got a forty page document to read on my desk at work – might as well be written in doublespeak or latin, but the basic upshot of the document can be summarised as such:
* receive problem
* copy information of problem onto computer
* decide who needs to deal with the problem and when by
* forward problem on to designated parties
* check on a regular basis that problem is being sorted
* record every stage of previous points

Another process to manage the process of process management: if you know what I mean. Shit: these days it’s not enough to do something, you have to prove that not only did you do it, but that everyone agreed to you doing it in the first place. The job requires absolutely no intelligence or part of my brain to complete. A thousand monkeys with a typewriter could come up with the same if you gave them enough time.

I think about the training my new boss has signed off and how glad I am that the old boss, Sauron the Dark Lord of Mordor, has gone, lifting a dark cloud from middle earth. He used to ask questions without even looking at you, and just storm past when you held the door open. Nobody was upset when he went.

I think about the painting I want to do, and the novel I should be writing – and decide the painting will have to wait until I’ve cleared some space in my house and the novel will have to wait and see if I’m in the mood tomorrow. I think about an old friend I lost touch with as a kid, about how it was my fault, and feel bad about that once again.

I wonder what I’m going to watch on TV when I do the ironing this Sunday morning – I’ve become strangely addicted to Power Rangers over the last few weeks, but now this is finished and I feel like re-visiting some of my favourite Sci-Fi series, or maybe listen to some Frank. Nothing suits a dull Sunday morning in September better than a bit of Sinatra.

I remember the bloke with the glasses, who was doing the backstroke in the pool last week and hit me in the face because he wasn’t looking where he was going. I actually came close to standing up for myself for a change and told him to look where he was going - but he nearly hit someone else on the next length. I imagine what would have happened to him if he'd hit one of my neighbours and hope to hell he’s not there this week.

I think about the bloke in the paper this morning who’s had his face altered so he looks like a cat (complete with attachable whiskers) and wonder about the sanity of the plastic surgeon who allowed this to happen. I pause to wonder if anyone who enters a talent show but clearly has no talent is truly deluded or just looking for a quick route to fame. Seems no one wants to work for their fifteen minutes these days.

I look on the blogspots and honour has written a new, beautiful, poem and it makes me think of an old song. I take a look at writerquake and Old Postcard Wednesday cheers me further still. Samuria gets me thinking, which i thought was going to be an impossibility today. A few others have yet to update, so I re-read what they say and allow myself to feel more hopeful. I think about holding my partner when I see her and it feels good.

This is my random train of thoughts. Today nothing is fixed in stone in my head, nothing seems to connect – but maybe that’s ok after all.