LSWMBO got married

Another one bites the dust

Bloggers seem to be falling left right and centre. The latest to fall by the wayside was, and indeed is, still one of the best. Benediction, always a source of inspiration, has decided to call it quits. Shame for many of us. Fortunately I can keep in touch with her but it does definitely make you wonder if it is, indeed Rabelais time.

Life is full of stuff at the minute but some updates are due I guess. My old man seems to be slowly on the mend - thank you to everyone who expressed their concern. When I left the UK I was somewhat despondent as he didn't seem to be doing much to help himself and he is the only person who really could do much about it. But he seems to have taken my little grey haired mother's message to heart - "if you don't do something I'll stop feeding you." This fills me with hope. The NHS are looking to treat my other's need for a replacement hip with acupuncture. Seems reasonable, if inscrutable.

The wedding...pardon me....THE WEDDING proceeds apace. The big decisions have been made, and I have a suit(!) but it's totally bloody amazing how many details there are in an American wedding. We also seem to have embarked on a total rebuild of the house so any visitors (who have never been here before so have no idea how scruffy and run down it is usually) won't be disgraced.

And I have a suit....

But it's Monday, ruddy Monday. Haven't done any music for a while. There was a Facebook meme listing the 25 albums that formed your background and another that had the 10 tracks that had strong associations for you. Memes don't go away, just shift their medium.

One of the big formative albums in my life was Eno's second solo effort - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). This was Darwin College, University of Kent at Canterbury. Late 1974, maybe early 1975. But this was played and played through The Fat Lady Of Limbourg, Mother Whale Eyeless, Third Uncle (check out the 801 Live version as it's a classic).

But The True Wheel has some of the best lyrics and also one of the best videos out there on youtube. It is really very clever....

A New RSS Feed?

Hmm, tricky cultural territory tonight. First up there is the new tasty soft drink being developed in India from ... cow urine. Now at first blush this might seem a little gauche and a trifle bizarre. But "gau jal", or "cow water" in Sanskrit is in the late stages of development by the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group. And at least they are totally open in the origins and content of their food product, as opposed to certain now dead Chinese baby formula manufacturers or Georgian peanut butter producers. Anyone who has a can (or bottle) - let us all know how yummy it is. Please?
And then there are the pink chaddis. An organisation known as The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women (membership 24808 and rising (oh yes, and Brad Defruiter desperately trying to get a membership list)) is urging people to send pink knickers to members of a Hindu Nationalist Group (Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram’s Army)) in protest at their beatings of unmarried couples in Mangalore. They are doing this because the Sri Ram Sena are losers. Maybe they can also send some to the England cricket team.

Oh yes, and the membership just rose to 24809 - and you too can join here.

Come home Oedipus, all is forgiven

Perhaps I shouldn't worry quite so much. After all, I live in a place where you can buy Valentines cards for your mother. Just think about it for a minute, and then shudder...

But there is the whole upcoming issue of the father-daughter dance at the upcoming nuptials. LSWMBO sent me an email that just said 'what do you think we should dance to' to which my obvious yet unspoken thought was 'why are you asking me what you and TTO should dance to'. But then it was gently pointed out to be by SWMBO I was living in America. And American weddings have a fixed dance-card - dance 17 appears to be the grooms third uncle twice removed dancing with the bride's second cousin' gibbon's hairdresser. That are very thorough.

But dance 2 is daddy-daughter and that was the source of my trepidation. Still is, come to think of it. Let's get some of the criteria out of the way - it must be danceable, not so sappy that you want to commit mass-murder, and not be taken as a tacit admission of incest by anyone in the audience. So Isn't She Lovely loses on 2/3 - sorry, never really did like that track - while Brown-Eyed Girl, so popular with many people....I mean have you listened to the words...

Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you

He wasn't checking her maths homework I tell you.

And then there are the weird ones - who would even listen to Sheryl Crow's mangling of Sweet Child of Mine, let alone dance to it? Or The Cure's Lullaby - not sure if the spiderman being always hungry is really the way they want to start their future lives together. Or maybe they do. What do I know?

So what does that leave me with? Not a lot to be honest. And even less than is present on youtube to share for a Monday. But if there is one song that has been there through LSWMBOs life and even a few minutes longer it is this one. Even if it isn't appropriate to the occasion it's still a damn good track....

The journey home

Coming back from England proved a trifle more complicated this time round. My flight wasn't until midday - but Air Canada insist on 3 hours beforehand and there was the usual issue of trying to get round the M25 early on a Monday morning. So - discretion being the better part of cowardice valour it seemed a good idea to spend the night up by Heathrow.

And this proved to be a good idea when the storm gods decided to dump 6" of snow over the Eastern bit of the UK. Round here that amount of snow would be annoying and make for a mucky rush hour. Back home they close the library when 1-2" of snow falls, so there were librarians up and down the length of the country barricading themselves in their bookish charges, armed to the teeth, and prepared to fend off all-comers. We are only a Trollope away from anarchy - in more ways than one.

So I blundered across to T3, checked in, and had a hearty breakfast like all condemned men. And waited while the word 'Cancelled' merrily appeared on the departures screen alongside a lot of flights. This caused some tension and I learnt some new words from the woman next to me when she learnt that she wouldn't be leaving for Shanghai on that particular day.

Fortunately my bus was running - the one taking me out to the plane that is - and we were lucky enough to get out of Heathrow about 20 minutes before they decided to shut down the entire country. Including the libraries.

And so to Toronto - while we made up about 20 minute we landed just early enough for me to miss the last flight to Indianapolis. Bugger. And, as it was weather-related, Air Canada had no obligation to house me so I had to doss down in the goosebump ridden fleshpots of Mississauga. A short night's sleep and then back to the airport at 5 am to argue with a snotty AC-employee on whether my bag was too heavy (it was), whether anyone had said anything about it in London (no, apart from 'have a nice flight'), and whether I could unpack anything to make the weight better (no). Then I hopped on another bus which took me out to a shed in the middle of the airport by a route so long and circuitous I thought he was going to take a runner down the runway himself.

The flight was uneventful apart from the snowstorm in Indianapolis which made the pilot abort his first approach....all very exciting. Not. He then announced that if he couldn't make his next approach and would have to head for his alternative landing location - Windsor Ontario!!! Thank God he made it in. So we landed, and then I had to dig my car out of the carpark and head slowly home past the turned-over SUVs littering the side of the Interstate.

34 hours to get home. A new record and one I don't want to break any time soon.

Crises

Ok, getting back into Eastern Time Zone and back into work. So what happened?

My mother calls me every Sunday at 10.00, give or take a minute or two. She's very punctual. When talking to he she told me that my father had collapsed/fallen over and was in bed after a struggle to get him upstairs. He's 85 and has become progressively more unfirm over the past few years. So just about anything robs him of his balance - it was a severe urinary tract infection this time. Oh yes, and my mother needs a hip replacement. I was worried, found a flight home the following day and spent the week over there helping her. Well I hope I helped her.

My father is quite cantankerous and stubborn. Not like me at all. He is quite resistant to anyone in the family - he's the patriarch - but was very responsive to the nurses who came in and cajoled/bullied him to sit up, get to the chair at the end of the bed. It's tough for him, but important to his recovery. I suggested to my mother that she buy a nurses outfit and hire random women to come in and get him to do his exercises. They live in a town of ~20,000 so ~5,000 of them must be women of nursing age. So by the time they've got through all 5000 he should be better - simple.

By the time I left the immediate crisis seemed to have passed but the recovery will be long. And the journey back is a whole other post....

The other critical issue I have weighing on my mind is - what should I dance with LSWMBO in the daddy-daughter wedding dance. Sounds easy, but there are certain criteria:-

• It must be danceable
• It must not be so sappy you want to poke out your ear-drums with knitting needles
• It must not scream "INCEST"!!!!
• We must both like it

And that's another post.

But while we're on the topic of music - a musical giant passed away while I was back in the UK. John Martyn was a true rebel-rouser whose dissolute lifestyle pretty much crippled him. But he produced some wonderful music, particularly the Solid Air album. I remember my first acquaintance with him was a folk-singer covering Traffic Light Lady and the chorus has stuck in my brain for some 34 years. Can't remember my name, but that song just sticks...

Couple of tracks - May You Never is probably one of his definitive tracks:-



And I Don't Want To Know About Evil....


Sad loss....

Normal service will be resumed shortly

Back home after a long trip and seemingly longer return journey. Have to do some catch up and will post tomorrow. I hope.