Here we go again

So. Here we go again. Another late night, albeit an early weekend for me this week.
My phrase of the month is "emotional rollercoaster". Tomorrow we're going to find out how sick Femmie is... Fingers and everything crossed that it's going to be as good news as we can hope for.
Esther's pregnancy hormones are kicking in with a vengeance now. She's getting sickness very heavily - much more so than she did with either Willow or Ayla. She's also being really weird, but that's not exactly unexpected :-)
Next week or the week after I get the official notification of the proposed redundancies at work. It's the annual downsizing, but this time it will be about a third of the company. Ironic, just as the economy is finally picking up, but this will be the big restructuring - moving to just a magazines house.
Saturday we're having the Halloween party - it seems to have got out of hand. Not only am I running the party, but from somewhere we seem to have got 17 kids at the latest count. Which is going to be absolute madness I reckon!
Work's the usual, although I'll be sending off an application to a place in Alkmaar in the next day or two. Not that i expect my own job to be in jeopardy - although you never know. Frankly I could do with 6 months off and chance to get some real writing in.
Last but not least, I'm still missing Luna. Let's just not think of her because there's only so many tears for a dog without non-dog-owners not getting it. Though maybe I've been holding back a bit too much lately :-(

So this was an unusually diary-like entry. Of course there is that element of the diary to a blog, and it's not as if I invite many people to actually read this. But mostly I'm just keeping the fingers in the writing habit at a time when I'm not really doing much creative. ANd maybe laying a few aides de memoir for the future.
Still, if anyone does read this - even if it's me in the future, it would be nice if it's not totally small-minded and assinine - a personal diary purely.
Frankly though - what grabs me. US Army deaths in Iraq this month are the highest in 2 years. About double what NATO killed in Afghan civilians on Tuesday alone.
The end of the world due to climate change continues to grab little attention. Oh well, we'll have to worry about that another day ;-)

Still. Festival season. It really starts here, and I think it's one of the most delightfully primal parts of people - celebrating the seasons and the spirits. Christmas is coming, and SInt even sooner, but for the next few days...

Happy Halloween!

On being cool

Tom Waits and the Dude Lebowski. It's a feeling, it's fitting in and it's being totally set apart. It's being in the right place and time, yet standing out. Being cool isn't emulating that Ray Charles Sam Cooke cool; it's the recognition of difference and acceptance of your place in the circus of freaks. The willingness to stand out and be discounted.It's the clack of pool balls and the lipsmack of jack Daniels for sure, but more it's the ability to look around and see the story and understand, to play the game and remember it's a game. And never care for winning or losing. It's intelligence and sometimes wilful ignorance, especially at the bottom of more than a few Jack Daniels or Jimmy's. It's turning to the dataday world and saying that not only do I understand you and not go along with your story, but I'm living the way you'd really like to live and I'm your hidden dreams.
If only you were cool enough.

Acid house

Two posts in one night. Well, they're linked after a fashion, I guess.

I was just reading the Wikipedia piece on 'Acid House' and it's noticeable that nobody seems to know where the term or the music comes from.
Interestingly, they suggest that the term 'Acid House' might come from Chicago. Well, I was going to the very first House parties in England, which were at a couple of gay clubs - the small club above Heaven whose name I can't remember right now, and another which I went to once and it played too much poppy shit. And as far as I was concerned, they were playing 'House' as in 'Soul'.
It came from Chicago, for sure, but it was Chicago Soul music as far as we were concerned. We understood that the 'House' name came similar to the 'Rent Parties' of 15 years earlier - these were House parties the same way there used to be Rent parties - to pay for the house. And if you look at the music, that makes sense - it was Black soul music from a local Black scene, the same way the music at rent parties was. It got picked up by the gay scene in Chicago, which is why we were getting it in the gay scene in London. I went because I'm a sad kind of soul boy, and so were most of the other guys there. The term 'Acid House' was never used then.
But we did take a shit load of drugs, including alot of acid. What I remember is the DJs fucking with the music themselves to heighten the mood. Ecstasy came later - it was more expensive, more yuppie and less dangerous. Techno was Belgian, a year or so later. There was a very acid driven scene, that later came out in even those people who never went near the West End clubs - nobody would tell me the Mutoid Waste Company were on E's :-)
So my explanation - it was gay soul boys fucked up on acid that invented the term and the scene.
Interestingly, on the Wikipedia site, Genesis P. Orridge claims to have more or less invented the term. Funnily enough, he was living round the corner from me, but sure as hell I never saw him down the clubs ;-)

They were funny days. I never had the feeling that I was living through something really special, like punk. That's how people try to make it sound these days, but they're msotly the JCL's who were going to the M25 raves long after it became the new wave. Before that, the alternative and squatter scene were at the heart of things, but I remember being in that scene trying to play house and I was scoffed at for playing pop or boring music.
Probably something like punk after all - that didn't start in the squats or the suburbs but in a fashion shop on the King's Road ;-)

Oh, BTW that's Marky in the corner. Last saw him when we were both whizzing around Bang back when it was on Oxford Street somewhere. Never knew him well though, but the expression on his face that night was funny.

Bubbling under

I'm wondering what to write about, but I feel there's words coming.
I want to write a bit about Luna, but I'm going to leave that until the wound's a bit less raw and blooded.
I want to write about my feelings finding out yesterday that Esther's pregnant again, but that's more intense than I want to be right now. (I am happy, by the way, only that this is momentous news - have a beer on me and we'll talk about it later, OK?)
And I'm not in the mood for more politics and war and lying, cheating, dissembling arseholes.

I think what I'm noticing alot lately is memory. I don't know if this makes me sounds like an old man, but memory is playing a large part lately. If you'll excuse the recursiveness of the thought, it reminds me of when I first moved to Amsterdam and every smell and sight would trigger a memory verging on a sort of nostalgia. Seeing as I was only 22 back then, I guess this is not exclusively a middle-aged man's prerogative. Hopefully, it has nothing to do with a near-death experience back then :-)
WHat is the middle-age nostalgia about it is the frequent memories of my enjoyably misspent youth. The young lad sat next to me on the floor of the train this morning - separated by some needlessly symbolic glass door! - reminded me of myself. (And of the sort of boy that would have driven me crazy back then :-)
There is that being young and partying; unentangled and lustful; that is what drives middle-aged men to screw the babysitter and buy phallic cars I guess. I don't have any real desire to do that sort of thing - I still think that the guys who try to live that life when they're in their forties are the guys who never did it in their twenties.
So no, it's more a real pleasant nostalgia, watching and reliving through memory. Memory is tied in with death somewhere, but naturally I haven't got that all worked out yet.
I'm listening to the Pogues again right now, and the number of wildly drunken party nights I had with this music as my theme tune is countless. And tomorrow night I'm off out to party alone to the same sort of theme tune, but it doesn't mean I'm trying to relive past glories.
I lived good, I've had a real good life so far, and the adventure's only now getting into the meat of the story. The rst of it so far was prologue...