Insufficiently Limp-Wristed.

I play the guitar as many of my readers will know. I'm not a great player but I muddle along in an average kind of way. I have managed to get the hang of most of the techniques required over the years but there is one thing I still can't seem to be able to do effectively; fast strumming. Pete Townshend from the Who was one of my early influences and I tried for years to play Pinball Wizard which involves, for those of my non-musical friends, a very fast strumming pattern. I start off okay but after a bar or so my wrist refuses to co-operate. Despite years of practice I can't seem to get my wrist to move with the same fluidity as Townshend or the masters of funk such as Nile Rogers. I'm currently working on Hendrix's version of 'All Along the Watchtower' and he uses the same effortless strum. It's a breeze if you can do it, it's murder if you can't. The fact that I am rubbish at strumming and have fingers like sausages lead me to believe that I am not a natural guitarist.

If you Google my name, the first few pages of hits are related to a world famous virtuoso of that great rock and roll instrument, the euphonium. My namesake was born a year after me in Bournemouth and has achieved fame and fortune by sticking with the unsexy euphonium while I have achieved sore fingers, frustration, great times and good friends in total obscurity. Perhaps it would have been different had I chosen the xylophone. I can't help feeling it must have been tough for him during the punk years though trying to get into a band as a euphonium player.

What if Mo Farah had taken up discus instead of running because he fancied a girl on the field team? We may never have heard of him. If Bradley Wiggins had taken up boxing instead of cycling he would be just another 'shmo' with dodgy sideburns. The world is brimming with people who have undiscovered talents and talented people who haven't been discovered; that's not to say I am one of them though.

I have just finished a book by Stephen King called ' On Writing' which is a short autobiography followed by a brief synopsis of his approach to writing. In it he discusses having a true passion for your art whatever it may be and I believe I fall short of having the all-consuming desire necessary to be better than average on the guitar. Never mind, I'll keep plugging away as I still enjoy it. My friend and bandmate Rod will be pleased; there's not much room for a xylophone player in a Bob Dylan Tribute duo. 

'Read All About It'

I flicked through the local paper earlier this week; I generally do, just to see if anyone I know has been killed or arrested. Dearly Beloved does the same but she seems to have a particular fascination for the obituaries. I shall have to keep an eye on that, she might be plotting something. I remember having a conversation with a good friend of mine some years ago about how depressing the news is and I remarked that all the happier news stories seem to be in the local paper. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

Gone are the days of headlines such as ' George's Giant Cucumber Impresses the Ladies' with a picture of a smiling George at the WI horticultural show. Unfortunately, George has been relegated to page four behind such juicy snippets as ' Family of Four Die in Blazing inferno or 'Feral Hoodies Run Amok on Local Estate. On a really slow news week they would still rather put a depressing article about potholes or dog crap on the front page. No wonder everyone's so miserable.

There seems to be huge disparity between the how bad the bad news is and how good the good news is. 'Granny Finds Long Lost Fiver Down Back of Sofa' doesn't really stack up to. '15 Injured in Bus Tragedy'. What we need is some really good news to balance the books such as ' A Year's Council Tax Refund for Everyone' or Crime Rate Reaches Zero. How about ' Youth Finds Cure for Cancer in Local Dustbin or even 'Party For All with Free Drink and Recreational Drugs.

It's all about the advertising revenue, that's what pays and creates profit for the paper, so whatever they put in is just filler between the ads. When I was in the estate agency business we had a big weekly spread in the paper. We didn't get many calls from it but it helped keep a high profile and please the vendors. We couldn't afford not to at the time but the world has moved on. No one looks in the papers anymore, that great oracle Google is the first port of call for most people if they want to know something.

 I expect the days of the local rag are numbered. Businesses will spend less money on print advertising and more on internet based exposure. There is no point in reading it anyway because if anyone I know is likely to be appearing, I would find it out via social media way before the paper is out. It would be shame though; all that paper is very handy for painting and decorating. 

High Anxiety

I had a particularly bad day at work last week. Every job seemed to be a problem, wrapped in a fuck up, and hidden in a headache to misquote Churchill. Normally when I go home I leave the job behind and forget about it but that night I was still dwelling on it hours later. My usual antidote is a couple of cans of beer. Particularly bad days require the addition of some stodgy and shockingly bad-for-you comfort food such as pork pies or great slabs of cheese. On very bad days I have to resort to red wine to restore harmony. That night it was red wine and pork pies. Thankfully a very rare occurrence indeed. 

Stress used to be linked to 'high power' business people who throw a wobbly one day, turn into a gibbering heap and have to be nursed back to mental health over a period of months. Now everyone has it. Everyone you speak to claims to have a stressful job. It seems that just turning up for work causes intolerable pressures for some people. In fact you can be unemployed and still stressed. It's claimed that our cat could be suffering from it although I don't know how I'd tell as he sleeps twenty two hours a day.

Since the concept of stress has now been downgraded to the level of ' a pain in the arse' they have come up with a more modern and severe infliction called 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At one time you had to be a battle hardened soldier or involved in a disaster with massive loss of life to be diagnosed with it but apparently I can get it now just by answering the phone. I read an article last week saying that Americans in my occupation have been diagnosed with PTSD; hardly in the same category I feel. I have even spoken to a woman who claimed to have been diagnosed with it after being involved in several shouting matches with her partner. Soon you'll be able to contract it from getting parking ticket.

Luckily there are many prescription drugs, counsellors and alternative remedies to help people cope with the general inconveniences of life and the crooked, self-serving people in it. Personally, I think I'll stick with the red wine and bad food.

The Discontented Pony.

When I was very young and still in infant's school I used to read anything I could lay my hands on. This included such enlightening sources as the back of the Cornflake's packet and the credits at the end of TV shows. I had many books but the one I remember most vividly was one about a pony who lived in a field and one day found the gate open. His curiosity got the better of him so he trotted off down the road until he came across a fairground with one of those carousels with wooden horses that children could ride. He loved the colour and glamour of those majestic wooden horses and wanted to be just like them so he jumped up onto the carousel. Our little hero pony became scared of the flashing lights, the noise of the crowd and the speed of the ride so he jumped back off and hurried back to the field as fast as his fetlocks would carry him. He resolved to be content in his field and never venture out into the big wide world again. The book was called 'The Discontented Pony'. I didn't get it.

In my childish head I was thinking ' how did he know he didn't like it if he hadn't tried it. The thought of staying in one place and never trying anything new seemed ridiculous. Clearly I was born with a more adventurous spirit than the pony and missed the point the author was making, I get the point now but I still think he was talking tosh.

Children seem to be born with certain inclinations already in place. There is a picture of my lovely niece aged about four beaming happily while holding a spider the size of a dinner plate. This is a spider of nightmares that would have grown men fleeing for cover. It didn't bother my niece one bit and she wouldn't have understood what all the fuss was about. I remember my youngest son was very upset when we got rid of our old, battered and broken three-piece suite for a plush new one. He seemed unreasonably attached to it and accused us of a heinous crime. He is still a hoarder today and can't bear to throw anything away. He's the only one in the family.

'The Discontented Pony' popped back into my head last week while I was painting the fence. Enough time had passed for me to contemplate whether I had, metaphorically, left the field. I concluded that I had although I had only
gone a few hundred yards down the road rather than to the four corners of the earth as I had hoped. Still, I can't complain as life has been quite good to me so far. I am rather hoping that I will go a bit further down the road before my time is up and my number is called. I just need to win the lottery.

Daylight Robbery.

Dearly Beloved and I have always been quite lucky with our neighbours. We live at the end of a row of terraces and everyone keeps themselves to themselves, nobody is particularly noisy and we all respect each other's parking. We always say hello and send each other Christmas cards but that's as far as it goes. However this idyllic state of affairs has taken a nasty turn which will require swift and merciless retaliation. The next door neighbours have stolen our front door.

Well it's not our front door exactly but it might as well have been. You may remember my post from a couple of weeks ago saying that we needed a new front door. Dearly beloved and I did a little looking around and found one that we both liked so I filed it away in the back of my memory to go and buy when funds allowed. I was shocked and dismayed to leave the house two days later to find workman fitting the exact same door to my neighbour's house, sly buggers they are. This is actually a triple whammy for us as Dearly Beloved and I will have to find another door we both like which won't be easy. It looks very smart on their house and just proves it would have looked fabulous on our's and thirdly, It makes our house look just that little bit shabbier. This is not an affront that can be taken lying down. 

We have already started our retaliation by sending their cat to coventry. We used to make a fuss of it when it came into our garden but no more. This isn't a
problem for me but Dearly Beloved is finding it hard because she is quite fond of him. I have had to tell her to steel herself and stiffen her upper lip, this is a war and there will be casualties, we can show no weakness. We are going onto phase two next week by scowling over the garden fence at them. I don't know how effective this tactic will be as it's March and they will probably be indoors. We are also considering the strategy of leaping out of the front door when we see them outside just so we can snub them when they say hello. I've heard this is particularly effective.

I don't know how they found out about our plans, it's possible they have been following us around to see what we have been up to, or perhaps they have a network of spies keeping tabs on us. I am also not ruling out some form of mind reading or time travel device. They managed to get it fitted in double quick time which suggests they had help. How smug they must be sitting in their house looking at their new door and laughing about how they got one over on us. It has been suggested that it's a popular style of door and it's just chance they bought the same one. Coincidence? I don't think so.