Skip to main content

A add9, C maj7, Em7, E7sus4


(self indulgence ahoy, but hey, at least it’s not politics)

Many years ago, when I took the fateful step of opening my own business, it’s reasonable to say that I didn’t fully appreciate how all-consuming it would be come. I also, in a stroke of world-class boneheadedness timed it to coincide with the birth of my first child (I had a better idea how all-consuming that would be). Between these twin responsibilities there was nothing. One by one the various interests and elements that had characterised my hitherto fairly careless existence got squeezed out.

I’ve written about this before, in relation to the return of a few of them. Gradually I found time to run again, even more gradually I found time to write again, two of my holy trinity had been returned to me (admittedly by the slightly unappetising solution of forcing myself out of bed at an ungodly hour every morning). This became a virtuous circle, the act of running, much like the act of writing, is a calming and organising influence for me. Now I felt at last that I wasn’t sliding backwards, becoming less like myself. I was slowly, very slowly, pushing forwards. There was just one thing missing.

My guitars had sat, neglected in the corner of the room that we loftily refer to as the study, unstrung and unplayed ever since we moved in. I told myself that I’d restring them when I could trust my sons not to destroy them. This was, of course, a fairly transparent bit of excuse making. I didn’t feel any pressing need. I didn’t miss it in the way I had writing. I occasionally cast them a guilty glance, but there wasn’t the same visceral compulsion as there was to write.

Until, one day a few weeks ago, there was. And once the need was there at was as if it had never been away. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I hadn’t picked one up for years. One quick trip to the inconveniently located music shop, one set of strings and a few bridge pins later and all of a sudden I felt like myself again.

Of course, given that I learned to play thirty years ago, and had had a long break from the instrument, I’d totally forgotten about how it’s murder on the fingers when you first pick one up. But omelettes, eggs, etc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To all intents and purposes, a bloody great weed.

I absolutely love trees, and I get quite irate when they get cut down. One of the aspects of life with which I most often find myself most at odds with my fellow man is that I'm not really a fan of the tidy garden. I like to see a bit of biodiversity knocking about the gaff, and to that end I welcome the somewhat overgrown hedge, am pro the bit of lawn left to run riot, and, most of all, very anti cutting down trees. I love the things, habitat, provider of shade, easy on the eye, home to the songbirds that delight the ear at dawn, the best alarm clock of all. To me, cutting a naturally growing tree down is an act of errant vandalism, as well as monumental entitlement, it's been around longer than you. So, this being the case, let me say this. The public outcry over the felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap is sentimental, overblown nonsense, and the fact that the two men found guilty of it have been given a custodial sentence is completely insane. Prison? For cutting down a Sycam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oh! Are you on the jabs?

I have never been a slender man. No one has ever looked at me and thought "oh, he needs feeding up". It's a good job for me that I was already in a relationship by the early noughties as I was never going to carry off the wasted rock star in skinny jeans look. No one has ever mistaken me for Noel Fielding. This is not to say that I'm entirely a corpulent mess. I have, at various times in my life, been in pretty good shape, but it takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of vigilance, particularly in my line of work, where temptation is never far away. Also, I reason, I have only one life to live, so have the cheese, ffs. I have often wondered what it would be like to be effortlessly in good nick, to not have to stop and think how much I really want that pie (quite a lot, obviously, pie is great), but I've long since come to terms with the fact that my default form is "lived-in". I do try to keep things under control, but I also put weight on at the mere menti...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...
Post a Comment
Read more