Saying Goodbye to "Sir"

Post by Emmanuel Baptist Church.

Decisions, Decisions...

- . ... - .. -. --. _|_ ... ..- -.-. -.-. . ... ... ..-. ..- .-.. .-.-.-

- . -..- - _|_ ..-. .. .-.. . _|_ .-. . .- -.. _|_ .. -. _|_ .- -. -.. _|_ - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - .. --- -. _|_ .--. .-. .. -. - . -.. _|_ - --- _|_ -. . .-- --..-- _|_ ... .--. . -.-. .. ..-. .. . -.. _|_ ..-. .. .-.. . .-.-.-

.-- .... . .-. . _|_ .-- --- ..- .-.. -.. _|_ .- _|_ .-. . .- .-.. _|_ -.-. --- -.. . .-. _|_ --. --- _|_ ..-. .-. --- -- _|_ .... . .-. . ..--..

-.. --- _|_ .. _|_ ... .--. .-.. .. - _|_ - .... . _|_ .--. .-. --- --. .-. .- -- _|_ .. -. - --- _|_ ... . .--. .- .-. .- - . _|_ -.-. .-.. .- ... ... . ... _|_ --- .-. _|_ .-- --- .-. -.- _|_ --- -. _|_ -.-. .-. . .- - .. -. --. _|_ .- _|_ --. ..- .. ..--..

Oh, hai...

It has been a while hasn't it? Let's hope that my familiarity with html has not waned (thank heavens for Google and w3schools who offer quick reference pages).

Life has been somewhat more complicated since I graduated and I admit that I have found this new phase of existence pretty difficult to come to terms with. Thankfully, I was able to get help in the end, and I now have a structure in my life which has seen my social life and job hunting get largely back on track.

And, joy of joys, I have been given an appointment for an informal meeting tomorrow with a view to setting up a proper interview for a job in the near future. I am looking forward to a more structured life with time for work and driving lessons (which I've started by the way - great fun too) and a nice catch-up with the blog-o-sphere.

However, for now I just popped up to say "hi" and ask you to think of me tomorrow and wish me luck.

Cheers guys!

My Brother is a Twisted Graphopath...

...But he blames me (not necessarily unjustifiably) for this particular piece:

• A Prophesise Sketch.

Back to Baking?

Hello interwebs.

I'm in the process of some mental rehabilitation, and attempting to back into a structured existence. This involves both baking and blogging, so this post seems like a pretty decent way to start. Cue picture:

Today I saw a post on G+ by my friend Florian who has just made an impressive looking first ever batch of English muffins, and it occurred to me that I haven't made any myself for a while. Being such a traditional foodstuff, there are, of course, many recipe variations on the muffin, but I was still intrigued by the differences in the recipe Florian was using, and thought I'd offer my own for comparison.

Ingredients:

• 8 fl oz/225ml milk
• 2 tsp dried yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1lb/450g all purpose/plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2oz/55g lard

Method:

• Put the milk and 2 fl/oz/55ml water into a saucepan and heat gently until just warm enough for you to dip your finger in comfortably. Put the warmed milk into a small basin or jug, add the sugar and the yeast, mix lightly and leave in a warm place for about 15 minutes and the mixture has a lightly bubbling top.
• Sift the flour into a roomy baking bowl, add the salt and stir. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour the yeast and milk mixture in. Mix all the ingredients together until a soft, non-sticky dough is formed; if the dough feels dry a little add more water a drop at a time, too wet add a little more flour.
• Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Put the dough back into the baking bowl, cover with a clean, dry tea towel and leave in a warm (not hot) place until the dough has doubled in size, this could take up to an hour, so be patient.
• Once risen, tip the dough back onto the floured surface and roll out to ½ inch/1cm thick. Cut into 3 inch/7.5cm rounds. The dough may start to puff up again but simply roll it back to ½ inch. Place the muffins on a greased baking sheet and leave to rise for 30 minutes, again in a warm, but not hot, place.
• Grease a heavy-based frying pan or griddle with a little lard, heat until hot but not burning. Add a few muffins, lower the heat and cook for 7 minutes on each side. Once cooked, put to one side, re-grease the pan or griddle and heat, then continue as above until you have used up all the dough.

I find this works pretty well, although I did like the look of Florian's recipe, so I think I may do a batch of each sometime and see which the family prefer.

As to storage and consumption, store them in an airtight tin and they will last a couple of days, after which they should be okay for a couple more as long as they're toasted, and why would you eat them untoasted anyway? To be honest, I feel the only way to eat them is to tear them open (don't cut them if you can help it), toast them and add lots of yummy butter and the preserve of your choice - marmalade or lemon curd for me. Alternatively, they work well with bacon and/or egg.

Hiding in my own house...

For a number of reasons, I have taken the decision to barricade myself into my bedroom which, although as hateful as the rest of the house right now, has the minor virtues of containing my bed, my laptop and the ability to be barricaded at all. Also, it gets me out of the way:

While my parents are away, my brother has become accustomed to having the place to himself to spend time listening to loud music and have his mates round. It's about half way through their holiday now and so far he's had to put up with me moping around the whole time. I figure that as he's been working all week and I've had the place to myself, it's only fair that he should be allowed some time which is similar to that which he is used to normally. So an additional bonus of choosing my room is that he's free to go about as if I wasn't here at all. With him being at work all day, my main purpose was to get food in for him, and I hope I've got enough to last at least until the beginning of next week, which means I'm not needed now until church on Sunday - I have cake and water in my room so I think everything's provided for.

I reckon we can probably go right up until mum and dad get home without him having to see any more of me, and if I miscalculate my provisions and die - we can always hope - it shouldn't be for a few days, and by the time it's noticed, they should be home and able to deal with it. He did tell me once that it would be inconvenient for me to die when it was just the two of us, so I'll try, but I have to admit, that today it was only through lack of equipment that I didn't wipe out an existence which should never have been at all.

Five Years; Five Pro-points

A week tomorrow I leave Bristol and return to Hounslow (anyone with whom I share correspondence, please don't send me any more Brizzle mail). This city has been my home for nearly 5 years now, and I don't mind saying that I really don't want to go.

5 years. How is it that in one breath I can feel that my degree has taken a lifetime, and in the next I'm wondering where the time went? It has been suggested to me, more than once, that me taking a degree was a "waste of time", and until I get a job I can't really judge one way or the other, but, although it has been a momentous struggle, it would be a lie to say that there aren't some things from the last half-decade which I can already recognise as positives. In the interests of balance - as they say on the BBC - it seems only fair to share some of the good things in requital for the seemingly endless stream of negativity so far published here.

Five Years; Five Points in their Favour

1. Living Solo:
   Okay, so I didn't adjust too well to all the changes to my life which I encountered on first moving to Bristol, but having my own place was a great boon to me. A place of order, where I could lay my hands on whatever I needed, as soon as I needed it; a place where I lock myself away and hide when I was at my worst; a place where I could go and not have to talk to anyone or be obliged to make conversation; a place where I could shout at the television and not disturb anyone but myself...
2. Family:
   I have a reasonable number of relatives in the West Country, but over the years, for one reason or another, we had lost touch a little. When I came to Bristol to study I was able to reconnect with them, and they were as great as I remembered from my childhood. My aunt and uncle (to say nothing of the dog) saved me in a not insignificant way, and were brilliant and understanding company, both when I was really sick and when I improved. My two cousins, whom I pretty much idolised when I was growing up - I think they came second only to my brother as my role models - have become "grown-ups" since I was last in any real contact with them, with partners and mortgages and the like, but they're tech-savvy, drink friendly, geek grown-ups, who are cool to spend time with and gave me some very sound advice during my time here.
3. Unintended Friendships:
   I have to say, if you'd asked me 5 years ago to predict this list, I would definitely not have put friendship. I have never had, or felt the need for, many friends as they don't really seem to me to be necessary, but over the years I have encountered some people who just seem to fall into that category. At Uni and through church I have met people who have had a real impact on my life, and the starts of pretty much all of these friendships have had very little to do with me.
   Take my Best friend, Maddy, for instance. Now, Maddy is a genius of the first degree (literally, she actually got a 1st), who has a life, a good degree, a black belt in Kempo and now a good job, and yet on the first day of the first year of lectures, she met me and seemed to decide that I would make a good sidekick. For a seemingly well-balanced person, this has always struck me as a bit odd, and I can't for the life of me work out what she gets out of the relationship, but I think it's been good for me in a number of respects.
4. Rekindled Hobbies:
   I think that I always quite enjoyed photography, helped, of course, by the fact that my father was a photographer, but it was just one of those things that one did on holiday. I've also always had a bit of a thing for the countryside and for good architecture, and Bristol has both in abundance. So what would be more natural than to take some shots? It was at this point that I discovered I really enjoyed photography, and when my uncle gave me his old film Canon, I found I could have some real fun. I have no pretensions to creativity (my brother got all the family "artiness"), so my shots are neither imaginative nor particularly pleasing aesthetically, but they're fun to take, and I have, in the past, tried to get some inspiration from sites such as ephotozine and flickr.
5. An Interesting Diagnosis:
   At the end of last year I was diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome (AS), a condition on the autism spectrum. It may seem strange to list this as a positive, but this is a life-long condition which is now recognised and may explain quite a lot for me. I don't know for sure what difference knowing I have AS will make in my life, although there is a chance I will be able to get some more support with certain aspects of it, but it does seem to shed light on some things both from my past and my present (certainly my mother thinks so), and it is at least a piece of knowledge for my internal files.

You're Giving Me Capt. Archer? Really?

Sometimes when thinking about certain situations, people envisage a number of different scenarios - generally along the lines of the best, or at least most preferable, one; the good, or at least acceptable, one; and the one which would be bearable if absolutely necessary. In this instance:

• To never have existed;
• To die;
• To have some use in the world and enough health/strength to see it through.

The problem is that one so often falls short of their own imaginings, even those they feel are conservative.

It's like needing someone to command the Enterprise: you're thinking Patrick Stewart, Bill Shatner, or maybe, at a push, Alan Ruck, but then you get stuck with Scott Bakula.

Of course, the first case is clearly impossible, but neither of the others are intractable problems, were I not so weak (even ignoring the physical weaknesses the solutions to which are largely in the hands of others at the moment). How often is it said that getting something done, particularly curing oneself of a mental illness, is simply dependent on really wanting it and deciding to make it happen? Motivation is surely a key, but I don't think it is purely will, I think it is the strength of character driving the will. I don't mean strength in the sense of depth of yearning, but more fundamentally, the ability to put such yearning into action. It is an ability, like painting or composing, which is not always available to whoever wants it. Yes some abilities can be taught, to a point, but can they all, to all people? Can a deaf man hear, just because he really wants to?

I am not just weak, I am weak minded. I mean, both ends of the life spectrum are on my list: oblivion or useful existence, and presumably I could make either happen - I'd love to in fact - but my mental feebleness and pervading cowardice leave me stewing.

I wonder occasionally, if God's idea of 7 days is 14 billion years, then surely the 28 day warranty on this life he gave me must still be intact. D'you think he does refunds?

So, While I've Been Studying...

... my brother and his mates have been doing this:

Crazy Music Happenings Resulting In "Existence Zero: Definitions of a Heresy"

Apparently, it's classed as Cosmic War Metal (generally in all caps, but I'm not really as shout-y as metal-heads), and as much as it's not my brother's usual creative style, it's not my primary go to genre for listening. However, it's the sort of music to play during global war, and when I'm revising that's what my head thinks is happening, so last week was a convenient release date in that I was in the right mindset to receive it and give it a hearing.

Without experience of metal in general, I can't really compare it objectively on the basis on conformity to musical convention, but from an outsider's perspective it seems pretty good. Although there is an overall theme and consistency of style, there is enough of a melodic, rhythmic and temporal range across the record which creates an entry point for a variety of listeners depending on their metal pedigree or tastes. For myself, I have discovered that vocals aren't really my cup of cha in this area, but the examples here seem well produced for those for whom this is not the case, and, since the record is not too vocal-heavy, this did not detract significantly from the listening experience.

I will probably listen again properly when my exams are over, to give a more detailed review, and perhaps to see if the lack of stress alters my perceptions, but for now, I recommend a listen and would have to say it is the best cosmic war metal EP I've heard, although it may help to know that this is the only cosmic war metal EP I've heard...

Hmm...

My boots are dying and I will soon have to replace them, but unfortunately, the prospect of shopping, particularly shoe-shopping fills me with an acute sense of dread. At times like this I am tempted to think that I might be better off if I were slightly more akin to the prototype of my gender. Or, preferably, just a little less agoraphobic.

Usually, I am able to avoid trips to physical places of trade by resorting to t'internet and sites such as Amazon, but I have a feeling that buying heavy-duty footwear which will be in everyday use (and thus must be as comfortable and hardy as possible) without first inspecting it is probably a bad thing.

Is anyone else who has suffered from this problem able to provide a solution - or, alternatively, willing to be my minder - because any useful advice would probably be received with my purchasing you the beverage of your choice?

Also, my coursework is nearly at an end, so the likelihood is that when revision starts in earnest, so will the blogging. (Delete any RSS feeds now!)

Thank You to Dr Williams

Today Rowan Williams announced his forthcoming departure from the post of Archbishop of Canterbury (the highest post in the Church of England, after the Monarch). It always seemed to me that Dr Williams was someone who proved that faith and personal integrity do not necessarily have to be wholly incompatible with the society of the Western World in the 21st century.

I find zealousness in any belief system, theistic or atheistic, unpalatable, but it seems that much press is given to those scary people - the horrible Terry Jones, or the highly vocal Richard Dawkins as examples from either side of the fence - and so has been generally quite reassuring to see Dr Williams appear every now and then with some quiet, well reasoned statement about some piece of current affairs.

Basically, apart from being a highly intelligent man whose opinions always seem carefully considered and genuinely held, he is the kind of person who shows that not all Christians are ignorant, crazy people, whose views can't ever be respected. He's the poster-boy for those who hold that there is no conflict between science and God: believing someone lit the fuse on the big bang can't quench the passion for knowledge.* So this is me saying thank you to Dr Williams for appearing sane and praying for his future success and for the appointment of somebody suitable as his replacement.

*In fact, it's like a onus to have that passion - if you believe in God, you believe in the parable of the talents and thus you should use every tool at your disposal (including technology, since that is the product of someone else's talents) to increase your talents and help your fellow man. The biggest (and possibly the only) difference that I can see between Christian and non-Christian knowledge-seekers is that Christians believe that one day they will get all the answers. That's not a licence not to look for the answers now, though: From a personal point of view, it's like taking apart a car to find out exactly how it works with the expectation that the manufacturer, having seen I want to know, will tell me what I've missed when my time to look runs out. But in that scenario, as in many, it's a case of if you don't ask, you won't be told (that's even in the Bible, "ask and it shall be given to you", not "sit on your arse and it will be handed to you on a plate").

Life, The Universe and Everything (Well, Google, but that's close, right?)

Life,

Apparently I have been wandering around since New Year with 'flu. It seems to have gone now: exchange program with the common cold. My blood test also showed virtually no vitamin D or folate registering in my system at all. This is considered a bad thing, thus, more pills, and food.

Now, I have been trying for a couple of months to eat everyday, but I'm not a fan. It's like the effort it takes to eat outweighs the energy I receive. This standard of diminishing returns feels pointless, as does the time it all takes. However, it seems imperative to keep up the whole eating lark for the time-being, so I hope I adjust soon.

The Univers(ity)

The end of my time in Bristol is approaching at what feels like an accelerated rate. I have roughly updated my Uni blog with what's happening, but it hard to do since I haven't been with it for a while now. Unfortunately, this not only impedes my ability to discuss work, it also disrupts the work itself. Therefore, I have made the decision (probably a few weeks late) to take a couple of days off in an attempt to let both my body and mind recuperate a little so that I am in a somewhat better state to complete the necessary work in the 5 weeks leading to the Easter break at which point I can refocus on the last stretch to my finals. I hate taking time off, but I am only missing 2 lectures and I think missing 2 and understanding the remaining 18 is preferable to recording 100% attendance and 0% competency.

And Google

Last week I had my final official session with my Google mentor. I had't intended to take part in the mentor programme when first I was offered it for a number of reasons, for example:

• It simply didn't feel very fair - I have not had the best education when it comes to programming: we weren't taught in school, my C lecturer was useless, my Java/Haskell lecturer was out-of-date and clearly apathetic about the whole thing, and I taught myself C++. Clearly, this would make improving my coding skills a mammoth task.
• Inter-personal relations are not my strong suit - I hate being rude, but I have problems understanding generic social boundaries and have to adapt to each individual's as I get to know them (not always a quick process), after which there is always still a chance that I'll say something insulting without even knowing it.
• I was sure I'd be useless - I spend most of my time exhausted, and when I'm not I need to be working on Uni stuff, so finding time to do anything outside the sessions was likely to be impossible.

However, I was told to do it and I think I'm glad I did. I don't know what experience the other students on the programme had, but I would hazard the opinion that I got the best one. I've always had a lot of respect and sympathy for anyone who has had to be my teacher, but for my Google mentor I think it must have been especially hard. How do you work with someone who basically doesn't know anything, who never has any time to reinforce the information you've passed on, and is mentally broken? Well, I still don't know, but he managed it - and stayed cheery throughout as well! Here are just two of the non-programming-specific things that he taught me:

• When faced with a problem, try and break it up into little chunks, or sub-problems: Small problems are generally more easily solved (and/or compared to other problems whose solution you could recycle).
• Never ignore your first idea: Writing it down may help you see where the main issues are, or suggest new ways to break the problem down. It also "gets the ball rolling" which is always a good thing.

Ok, New Plan...

I don't want to go back on anti-depressants again.

The problem is that it's looking increasingly likely that I will soon be in a position where I essentially have no choice. (I know, we always have a choice, but external pressure is a bigger thing than you'd think, as is the shadow of suicide, hence the "essentially" modifier.) I want to stave this off for as long as I can. Luckily, my doctor is almost impossible to get an appointment with, so that helps.

If I want to get anything done I'm going to need to reimpose some semblance of structure into life. I am not functioning at anything even approaching optimal, in fact there seems to be far less than 50% operational efficiency, and I know that lack of structure and routine clouds my mind. Therefore, reinstating this would seem to be a logical thing to prioritise. If my hypothesis is correct, it should at least mitigate, to some extent, the debilitation I currently seem to be experiencing. So, not so much new plan as reinvented old one.

A theoretically public forum may be expected to produce a sense of obligation to maintain standards set, and thus I have chosen this blog as one of the starting points for this regime shift. I will attempt, in particular, to begin using a Word of the Week type premise again, in order to have something in my new routine which is not work related but may be subjected to analysis and is a compatible activity with the need for timetabling.

Any other suggestions, besides "pull yourself together" (or equivalent), would be gratefully received and taken into consideration.

Looking for the Answer

There's a shed-load of stuff going on at the minute. I really didn't think that life could get much more complicated than it has been in recent years, but, as has become the standard, I was wrong.

I find life pretty confounding at the best of times, and these are most certainly not the best of times. What with University work, health (or lack thereof) issues and all the other things that the majority of people seem to think are par-for-the-course in daily life, I am utterly bemused and not entirely at ease.

University

I recently discovered that my skill set and unit choices have me headed (if I survive the year) towards a career involving programming - in no way did this scenario ever present itself in any previously considered 'game-plan' of my life. Thus I am having, whilst still attempting to do the relevant coursework, to completely reassess my plans and adjust to the thought of becoming a code-monkey.

Now, I had just decided that I actually did enjoy programming, particularly Java, and then I went and failed my Autonomous Systems Coursework. Don't get me wrong, I think I have established the problem, and there is a chance that I could fix it, but I'm somewhat broken myself at the minute. I got myself worked up into such a state that my parents were willing to come and pick me up, take me back to Hounslow, and let me forget University altogether. I ended up handing in the broken code, and I now can't look at the program without verging on the catatonic. Weirdly, this does not suggest 'programmer' to me.

Oh, yes, and I have a number of other units and my thesis which are suffering similar fates, partly (although I suspect not entirely) due to the extreme, over-arching reaction generated by the catastrophe of Autonomous Systems.

Health

This is currently a substantial area of concern for me. There's a lot going on which is complicated and may or may not have a bearing on the majority of my future decisions. I will, I hope, have a few more answers on the health front in the next couple of weeks, but I'm very much in limbo until then. This limbic sensation is also bleeding over into my academic work and being very disruptive to my thought patterns and motivations. It is very distracting.

Daily Life

From getting out of bed in the mornings, through to diving under the duvet at bed-time, people seem to do an astonishing number of 'things'. For a start, while they may not do it willingly, I have noticed that most people don't seem to feel that getting out of bed in the morning is the sort of event which is tremendously momentous or requires much careful planning, weighing-up of variables, and overcoming the gut-wrenching disappointment over the fact that death did not make a delivery during the night. This is how my day starts, and it tends to continue in a similar vein. The level of difficulty seems to be increasing, and trying to explain, and even justify, this way of existing is almost impossible. I think it likely that a lot of the stigma I feel is self-imposed, but when I hear how other people are 'getting by', it really does seem like I have gone substantially wrong somewhere.

Every day is a struggle against the desire to end it all. When you live like this, to scare, no, petrify, even yourself with the intensity of your own suicidal urges, that's a situation to take note of. To make matters worse, we were told today that the new project for Autonomous Systems had been posted on the unit web page. I opened the page, but before I could get any further I was struck with the same feelings I had at the end of the last project. Not only did I wish more than anything that my head would burst into flames and burn my brains away, it felt like I was experiencing something about as painful, but unfortunately not as fatal.

The general consensus is that you should tell someone when you feel that bad. God knows why, but my pride won't let me say it out loud, although it will let me post it here - perhaps it's a stepping stone. Anyway, here's me telling 'someone': I'm on the edge and the cliff is crumbling.

The Voices

My schedule has my final "Work" period of the day down as 1900-2100, but having been a bit under the weather lately (I caught a couple of the "start-of-term" bugs that're always flying around academia at this time of year), I have let myself stop at 2000 instead, with a few more breaks during the day as well. Hopefully as term progresses and my health improves, I will gradually increase the number of working hours again - I see the coursework decreeing a few "all-nighters" in the (not so distant) future too... If you want to know the sort of thing my coursework entails, I have a blog chronicling my final year which, although currently quite sparse, will hopefully, during the year, shed some light on what is apparently quite an obscure discipline to a lot of people.

In the meantime, here is a poem I wrote about 10 minutes ago - it's a bit "meta" since this was written to try and quell some of the noise to which it refers:

It's noisy in my head,
Like a telly on the blink.
But the noise is more than static -
There are madmen in my attic.

How can I make them see,
That these half-formed words and sounds
Just flood my brain and knock me down -
It only takes an inch to drown?

I hope they mean no harm,
But their presence all the same
Really does me no good at all -
True thoughts displaced by inane drawl.

Here We Go Again Then

Who would have thought it - I made it to the start of my Master's year? When I was growing up, particularly in my teenage years, one of the things that I considered to be an inevitability in my future would be the acquisition of a degree. The astonishing effort to get this far was not something that I remember featuring in this prophecy, and the exhaustion which it has generated was more than a little surprising and deflating. I am thus looking forward to my final year with mixed feelings. In principle, University has been fantastic, the majority of my units over the last few years have been things that, had I been in better health, would have been of great interest to me, and so I should be tremendously excited... There is, however, also the increased sense of trepidation which has been steadily growing since I was told that I had passed last year's exams, and is in fact only the latest, almost seamlessly transferred, incarnation of fear which has engulfed me for a number of years. Basically, my anxiety seems to have more lives than the Master - every time I think it's dead, it glows a little and returns in a newly regenerated form of madness.

This time next week I will have had my first day at Uni. I say day, but I think that it will be one lecture only on Monday. In fact, before Christmas I believe I have an average of 8.6 contact hours a week. Don't be fooled into thinking that this is one of those degrees where you have a couple of lectures a week and then spend the rest of the time drinking and sleeping - I will study 8 units and write a thesis (with accompanying website and poster design) in the course of this academic year, and I can quite easily envisage putting in a lot of 60 hour weeks before I am through. If anybody is reading this and happens to be interested in the work I do, I plan to maintain an online chronicle of what a final year in Engineering Mathematics entails, hopefully at a level accessible even to the sciencephobic.

The hope is that this year will progress in a smoother fashion than those preceding it, but as I am not renowned for my optimism, I am not going to lay odds on it. As usual - and based on everyone insisting that it's the healthy thing to do - I will attempt, during term-time, to assign more recreational activities to my schedule, which probably means I will try and reinstate my Word of the Week hobby, and perhaps begin writing and taking photos again. The likelihood of renewed panic seems to be quite high, and as this site has been designed as a venting place, I imagine numerous dark and/or inane ramblings will appear here in the near future.

I see a pattern emerging...

Different poem, same theme:

And how,
In this world of promise and light,
Do you see so little
In the way of illumination?
Could it,
Though, in truth, I shudder to ask,
Be that your blinkered eyes
Look not for a brighter path than this?
Tis plain
This lethargy runs far too deep
Dulling the mind and wit -
An apathy to be fought in vain.
A cloak
Is draped heavy about the heart
An enveloping force
Quells a passion never even there.

A Conversation

I feel like a ship
Broken in two

But everything's fine
What's wrong with you?

Waves of confusion
Break on a forgotten shore

But you got what you want
You can hardly want more?

If the answer were simple
Would the question exist?

What question is that
I don't follow your gist?

I wish I knew
And could see some light

Why do you feel so wrong
When it's all going right?

Why is it no different
When I see what I've got?

How is it that still
You're not content with your lot?

Contentment is one thing
Harder to reach is an easy mind

So you're sticking with melancholia
To accompany your daily grind?

Sounds of Simon

A number of people have expressed a desire to see what my writing is like when framed in a more up-beat context, so here is a contracted review of my favourite musician, instigated by the glorious (and most likely once in a lifetime) experience of having seen him in concert this week.

Disclaimer: These opinions, while stated as fact for the purpose of publication, are entirely my own. You are perfectly free to disagree with the ideas presented here, in the same way as I am perfectly free to hold them in the first place.

Unless you are a complete heathen – and I am aware that such people do exist – it seems to me to be impossible not to appreciate Paul Simon on some level. A master wordsmith and the embodiment of versatility, his career has spanned over half a century. Does that mean that he had a career and then spent the proceeding few decades milking it and thanking heaven that he didn’t die along with so many of his contemporaries? Certainly not! His current tour is not a mere nostalgia trip: he is in fact promoting his 16th studio album (that is, not including soundtracks, lives or compilations), So Beautiful Or So What. Nor is it a comeback, since he never really went away. True, he is not churning out an album a year, or whatever the going rate is these days for those new artists who manage not to be a one-hit wonder, but his last was only 5 years ago. When you consider that he is a family man, still semi-regularly touring, approaching his 70th birthday, who has produced a record containing such beautifully and intricately arranged original tracks, that timespan suddenly moves from the mundane to the phenomenal.

Why do I say he should appeal to everyone? The expert spanning and conjoining of genres and, indeed, cultures – as witnessed by the African/Caribbean influences and collaborations in his recent works; the mix of subtlety and transparency in his wordplay, generating the span from tears to chills, to laughter; the glorious instrumentation and rhythms, causing an inescapable urge to move and give in to the call of the beat; his ability to remain continuously relevant, with old and new material alike; his continual productivity, and his general, all-round ‘nice-guy’ attitude combined with his dedication to his music, his band and his fans are but a taster of the virtues of a man whom I have no compunction about describing as an artistic genius.

Thought Saturation

I have been trying a lot of things lately to try not to think about my impending exam results. Today I was editing and finishing off an essay that I started a while ago. This particular piece was tricky to finish for reasons which will become clear if you read it as the subject matter is somewhat self-explanatory.

As always with my writing, it was a difficult decision upon completion as to whether to publish or burn the piece. Two times out of three I will opt for burning (or in some way seeking to destroy), but this time I thought it might be interesting to publish and gauge opinions.

So, if you fancy taking a look, please click the following link: THIS IS THE LINK.

If you do decide to read it, please let me know what you think. This is still a relatively early draft, but without having an English teacher anymore, it's hard for me to look at it objectively to see where to improve.