Are friends and family ever enough?

Hi,

this song is taken from an ajbum which uses re-workings of old and new songs to trace a love affair from start to end, good songs and well arranged and beaufifully sung. some people won't recongnise Joni's voice from her early work as it has deepened (she says from smoking and boozing) but i actually like it better now.

This was one of her early hits which has been orchestrated to fit in with the album (there is also a great version of "Case Of You" from the Blue album on there with the same treatment).

I think its great, lets see if anyhone agrees with me!

Andrew
xx


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqQlfFuQFXo

hello anyone,

I didn't post when i got back home as i was tired and just watched tv instead, then when i just switched on now because i'm awake, I decided to go online as can't sleep and I find that no-one else has been on it either I wondered - am i out of fashion now, past it, outmoded, out of style, anathema to the new generation, not worthy, unusable as a new site, not in the new, cast out with the old, yesterdays news, todays fish wrappings, a bin lining, dust covers, todays haddock skin cover, a bit of old hat, not todays requirements, old fashioned, not new anymore, a part of the ancieme regime, the one we battle against, a Rose Dugdale target. not the meritocracy, surely not all of these things? - lol -

its alot to fight against!

or just because i wasn't here everyone was missing me?

hope its the latter!

Anyway, now I have used up most of my available vocabulary to describe a person sent to Coventry (wonder where that expression comes from?) I am here innthe wee small hours as I have woken up and couldn't get back to sleep immediately (I want it now) I decided I may as well write something.

First of all I hate this laptop keyboard because my palm keeps hitting caps lock and i then have to undo and re-type everything I hadn't noticed was in caps, secondly because the comma key is
next to the hash key and keep hitting that by mistake and lastly because i can't type very well anyway.

I am writing by the light of the silvery screen which doesn't help either.

Anyway I was wondering; does everything we do have a consequence? Is it possible for a person to commit a truly unselfish act? I don't know the answer but it has been preying on my mind.

If it is possible how would anyone else know, as soon as you told someone else would that act itself become a selfish one because you receive the plaudit for philanthropy or does it remain in its pristine state but just that someone else knows about it?

I just hit a key by accident that cancelled out three paragraphs of thoughts I had written about that subject and they were gone, now the process that created them can't recall all I had committed to paper on it. Isn't that just a bummer? Oh well maybe they were rubbish anyway and that was an intervention from elsewhere to make sure they were never seen.

Talking of which another thing that keeps popping into my head is what happens when you die? I am not sure i believe in an all-mighty presence that rules the heavens. From what little I recall of my physics at school energy cannot be destroyed. There is electricity in our bodies which governs various things like muscle twitch etc, so where does that energy go to when we die? If it cannot be destroyed and, therefore, needs to be dissipated where does it dissipate to?

I have no idea at all but there has to be an answer. I know That Richard Dawkins would probably know or think he does, or even Stephen Hawkins (funny how there names rhyme - (I say apropos of nothing) but they don't know for sure and I would like to, please!

I'm only pondering these things becasue I can't sleep and I often wonder about them not being a religous person myself. Doubting Thomas wanted proof and got it then why can't I? Don't worry I am not going to write any sort ot thesis on the subject, I was just wondering out loud and considering whether or not to ask someone on the spiritual side of things my questions about why me, what happens next etc.

I have another question as well, when you think of something it invariably seems to become a song title or lyric, is that because the song writers have already used the best questions or because your mind goes to them as an easy route to get your thought across? Thats one thats hard to fathom.

I saw an interview with a famous sing writer once who said that she had to be in a bad place emotionally to write a good song as writing a happy song was the hardest thing to do without it being trite and unbelievable. I can see that in many songs, they seem to come from a place part way to misery and heartbreak before they become believable. Or, perhaps, its just easier that way. Do you think that these writers make their lives purposefully unhappy in order to write a good lyric or does ot work the ther way around?

It was dark when I started writing this and now the light has broken thorugh the gloom of night and the birds are singing and these musings seem all the more unworthy. Ill-thought through musings always seem more aposite in the dark than the light, similar to saving the world when you're drunk in a way. Light replaces sobriety in that equation, it becomes unworthy trash in the cold light of day and you wonder why you've just spent 40 minutes thinking about and then writing abot them. Thats why I can't sleep then - I am wasting my brain on this!

Am I the only one that does this sort of thing, or the only one that writes it down? I am also doing some back stretching excercises whilst I write so its not a complete waste of time and energy - lol - didn't want you worried it was all just a complete waste of time!

Todays itinerary includes lunch out (yes again) and then spending money on a new camera for which Daz has kindly supplied me with name and type of one which will be best suited to my needs and current competence. I think it highly appropriate that if my friends have clubbed together to get me the helicopter ride for my birthday then I at least should have the equipment to take some good pictures of it!

Also if I get it before my short hols in Portugal it will give me the chance to try it out on a less important subject matter. I am hoping that there are whale watching trips from there. I looked on the hotel website and they arrange helicopter rides around Gibralter so perhaps my friends and I can give that a whirl (pardon the pun) and see.

I am so looking forward to this short holiday as it has become a victory in my head against the cancer, a kind of ya boo sucks, to the disease that I can have it and have my life as well. That, I think, is what we all want, if I can't be cured then at least I can live a little. I also think that all that meta-physical rambling nonsense above leads to the same point.

I still want to do the European driving holiday that I have seen, it incorporates the drive from St Malo down to Santander and adds in a drive across the top of the Iberian peninsular to Barcelona. So just what I wanted to do, with some added extras. That would mean I can add in a visit to the Gugenheim museum in Bilbao which I would love to see just for the building alone never mind the works in it.

There I have wandered off my path again!

I want to get some new clothes for my short jaunt to Portugal and being in town will give me the chance to do that. I now have a plan for Monday as well, an old friend has suggested, via e.mail, we go out for lunch and at the same time a mutual friend texted me the same idea with the same person, how about that for synchronicity! So on monday we are all three getting together for the first time in about 12 years. Should be some catching up to be done there then!

The hospital has sent me a zimmer frame round which came very early yesterday morning, I was a bit "I'm not that bad" sort of thing but it has helped around the flat and keeps my posture more upright and that has straightened my spinal bulge out a bit which, in turn, has helped ease the back pains. Phew, that was a long sentence! I still use the cruches (now correctly lengthened curtesy of hospital physio) for going out but the zimmer is great for indoors, thats something I never thought I would ever say.

Anyway as the radiotherapy effects wear off I am hoping that I will need neither of these means of trasnport to get about. I did speak with one of the radiotherpy interns whilst I was in there who told me and entirely different sequence of events that I should have expected. The "flare" up of pain could come at any time in the three to four weeks after treatment and that it could last (in a diminishing way) for up to three months.

Now if I had been told that at the time I would not have been so surprised by what actually happened! Its sort of like - "how many doctors does it take to give a prognosis" - but I am the kind of person who needs to know the worst scenario so I can prepare for it and if it doesn't happen then I am happy with it. That used to be calle negative thinking now its calle pro-active thinking.

I just looked back and have seen the length of this posting, sorry if you thought there would be some golden point at the end of it all, there isn't - its still just me - you can play this tune here to get my drift a bit if you want to maybe it will help -;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fBj2wsimvQ

Did it help at all?

Readers paying close attention will recall my thoughts on song writers asking the questions before me (or we) do!

It's now 05.30 and I am now wondering whether or not its worth going back to bed to try and sleep again, but with the caffeine and nicoteine I have consumed whilst writing this opus I'm not sure its worth trying now. Probably best to have a sleep this afternoon.

But you will be happy to know that I have run out of thoughts and questions for the moment so we will call a halt here, so until next time dear reader, good morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDsNLnsg6lo

I hope that song finishes it off nicely for you and thanks for your patience whilst you were wandering with me through my thoughts.

Andrew
xx

p.s. Macmillan - why can't we have a spell checker for the threads?

Morning All,

just thought that I would let you know that the sun i shining, the sky is blue and the leaves are green. The birds are singing and its just a beautiful day outside!

I may go for a drive this morning just to blow the cobwebs away.

Hope you are all going to have a brilliant Sunday and tomorrow is another day off!

Hi Sue,

I was up and awake and bored so just wrotw whatever came into my head!

Have a good days sleep - lol - catch up at some point.

Andrew
xx

Morning Liz,

you just caught me before I go back to bed - I think i need a couple more hours before I start the day properly.

I will be back on later, proberly late afternoon so will catch up then if thats ok?

Andrew
xx

My fingers crossed for you too B

XX

Going to see some old friends for Sunday dinner and looking for another cheapie holiday. Over 2 weeks to the op so thinking might as well get some more sun. Im thinking positive so just booked flights to Geneva for a friends wedding reception end of July so I got to be back on my feet by then. Hoping my radio iodine treatment doesnt coincide. They said 6 to 8 weeks after op im hoping for 8 so I will be back home when i have stop taking meds. :-)

How about you?

x

Dear Everybody,

I wrote a short novella - joke, its really just some things running through my mind that I have - , its on page 200, there are some thoughts and some questions included in there that I wouldn't mind peoples answers and feelings about.

So please have a look and see if you have anythinmg you could say that would help me out or I'll do a longer version and bore everyone to an earl death!

Thanks people, it would be much appreciated.

Andrew
xx