Two songs, and apology and and another explanation . . . (You surely can't get enough of those)

First of all there these, two short videos accompanying tunes I’ve produced (‘composed’ sounds just a tad too hi-falutin’).

Here’s the first . . .

They Want My Money (And Soon They’ll Want My Soul)

And here’s the second, though no vocals this time because I’m still not as confident about my singing as I might be.

I’ve Had Enough (So Let’s Live)

I’ve produced quite a more few tunes over these past three or four years, some with vocals, most not, and if you want to listen to more you can do so here on Soundcloud (there are now bloody 96 tracks – I checked while getting the URL and that surprised me, I have to say).

Just dip in anywhere if you fancy it, they are in a variety of different styles and, frankly, it is nice for a song to be heard (or a book to be read or a video or photograph to be viewed, none of which much goes on with the stuff I produced, though that does give me the chance yet again – hope never dies – to plug not just my ‘Hemingway bollocks’, but a novel (Love: A Fiction – and if you do check it out, please remember the wise advice never to judge a book by it’s cover) and three volumes each of short stories (Vol One, Vol Two, Vol Three and Vol Four) and and three volumes of verse (Vol One, Vol Two and Vol Three).

. . .

When I started keeping this blog more than 14 years ago, I was reasonably regular in posting entries. The first entry was on February 6, 2009, although, in fact, I had already started a blog a week or two earlier, then somehow fucked it up technically and lost it trying to sort it out, so I had to start again.

I wrote about everything that took my fancy, past girlfriends, cars I’ve owned, this, that and t’other and, er, my take on ‘world affairs’.

The quote marks are necessary as I basically know as little about ‘world affairs’ as you and your dog (possibly even less than your dog, in fact), but by the time I started this blog, I had by then adopted my brother’s ruse of appearing ‘well-informed’.

This is far, far simpler than you might think and demands very little: it consists of reading the Economist regularly. Then – before I forget it all again – that I garner is recycled into a ‘commentary’ on [whatever].

Try it – it works a treat, though tread carefully: the degree of intellectual showing off you indulge in must be carefully gauged to impress whoever it is you are talking to.

Too much such showing off will have you marked down as an arrogant know-all, quite the opposite impression you would be hoping to leave.

As almost always, less means more: if you simply hint at being rather well-informed, the other party will do most of the work and imagine you are simply being modest and, crucially, know far more than you are letting on.

. . .

I eventually rumbled my brother and decided to adopt the ruse after for many year being quietly impressed by, and not a little envious about, his admirably wide knowledge of world affairs.

One day he might announce, apropos nothing very obvious: ‘Keep an eye on Ecuador – it might well get very sticky there politically.’

So far so – well, not all that extraordinary. But then he would flesh out his knowledge: ‘And it could all get very, very silly – it began with indigenous people protesting about new bicycle laws.’

Me: ‘What?’

My brother: ‘Yes, very silly indeed. So far 120 people have died and it looks like it might get worse.’

And thus one older brother – by nine years – was in impressed.

This went on for several years until one day – I rather felt that as middle-class chap in his mid-30s who was nominally ‘a journalist’ I really should be ‘better informed’ – I started reading the Economist, too. And it became quite clear exactly why my brother was so ‘well-informed’.

‘I see Iceland has got some very interesting ideas on what to do with glaciers. Apparently . . .’ Yes, I knew, because I had also read the story in the Economist. And being the honest sort . . .

NB NEVER trust anyone who declares he or she is ‘honest’ – it’s the surest sign they are anything but

. . . I can here admit that my ‘knowledge of world affairs’, my ‘analyses’ are simply a judicious rehashing I what I have scavenged over the past few weeks when it came to writing an entry.

. . .

Entries have been getting fewer and farther apart [‘further’? – subs please check] in recent months and for a very good reason: there are several topics I should like to write about, but they need rather more careful thought before I put pen to paper (i.e. fingers to keyboard). And, frankly, I have neither sufficient care, nor am I sufficiently thoughtful to do those topics justice.

Here’s an example: ‘women’, the role ‘of women’, the shit that women are still subjected to (in the past not least by me) and so on.

My problem is that I shan’t be writing anything extraordinary or new: I would merely be repeating what in recent years has been written and said many times, given that finally the world is becoming more alert to the shit deal women can still get. For example, believe it or not quite often women are still paid less for doing the same job as a man.

So what’s the dilemma, sunny Jim? Well, it’s this: I do not – ever – want to be accused of ‘virtue signalling’ or even in some sense ‘trendy’.

As it is I’ve found, oddly for a man within complaining distance of his dotage, that I’m drifting ever so slowly more to the left: the convention / cliche / tradition / expectation / insistence – take your pick of those and any others that occur to you as they all, in a sense, are aspects of the same thing – is that we old farts (or the term I came across some years ago which I like, although it is distinctly unkind, ‘coffin dodgers) are supposed to become more reactionary and by the age of 70 certainly well into ‘bah humbug’ country.

The thing is I’m not (or at least I don’t seem to be). On the contrary, I seem for some reason or another to be becoming what Daily Telegraph coffin dodgers regard as ‘more pinko’ by the month. And of the many inequities and unfair arrangements, I’ve been becoming more and more aware over these past ten years, the ‘lot’ of women is most certainly one.

Most reading this are – and bloody well should be – aware of the #MeToo movement.

. . .

I began writing this entry eight days ago sitting in the cafeteria of the Billi extension of Bordeaux-Merignac airport, and I haven’t exactly lost my thread – I remember quite well the points I wanted to make – but I have somehow in this occasion lost some of the steam necessary to write it. And without that steam it might begin to sound a little forced.

So I shall sign off here and expect you all this instant to hare off to Soundcloud to admire the ‘toons’ and songs I have posted there.

Pip, pip.