February Friday

Late friday afternoon. Just been for a swim and fought my way back through the pre-weekend traffic London style. Never gets any easier that's for sure, the traffic that is. First swim I've had for quite a long while, years in fact as far as going to the local pool is concerned. Le piscine. Don't know what it was but I was just sitting in the office this morning, looking out at the blue sky and thinkin' to myself that it would be good to go and have a swim this afternoon. An' lo and behold that is eactly what I've done. Stayed in the pool for around 45 mins and when I came out there was only one other person in there. Empty. Water, smooth as a millpond and lifeguards sitting around looking bored witless. Maybe Friday afternoon is a good time to go for a dip. Guess that kids these days don't hang around the pool like they did when I was a kid. Just ain't cool anymore. Plenty of other things to do...like lurking round in da shadows practising being thugs an' shit like that. Not true of course, they're all in front of a 'puter doin this an' that in a different reality. The windows of the pool had bullet holes in them, clearly someone had used the building for a bit of late night shooting practice. Boom baba boom. Sign of the times. One more step on the road to disintegration. Or maybe not. Otherwise it all looked OK though, so not all doom and gloom. Feeling the effects now though. Really it is the first bit of exercise I have done in quite a while, apart from walking but I guess for a lot of people that doesn't really count. For me it half counts. Maybe I will try to make it a regular thing again, get Tamdin to come along as well every time I wanna splash. We shall see.

Weather quite mild. No winter at all this year and they say it is gonna be the mildest winter on record. It is now patently obvious that things are changing weatherwise and the only question is just how far things might go. The whole thing is really too big to worry about and whatever happens there will probably be some who will survive, whenever the big shakedown comes along. I like the attitude of Mr Bhopal who comes to collect our parcels at work in his Parcelforce van. The lads in the warehouse were having a conversation with him the other day about the weather and it seemed like it was the first time that Mr Bhopal had ever heard that there was such a thing a global warming going on. His answer was that it was best not to worry and that "they will fix it", whoever they might be. Some bunch of benevolent government guys maybe, who are only out there looking after our own good. Oh yeah...like fuck. As we know the whole goddman thing is totally and utterly within the claws of the relentlessly huge and ever devouring capitalist machine and it will only stop if it ever makes sound economic sense to do so. Otherwise just forget it baby. We're in for the illusory chase after materialism ride all the way and there are powerful forces in place and upheld constantly to make sure that nothing is gonna stop us. Unless the world happens to slowly and then quickly become all but uninhabitable.

Getting back to London and I soon fall back into my old ways of thinking. And those ways go something like...oh my god it is really not going to be long before the world is going to end. Don't know why I end up feeling like this, thinking like this in London Town. It is not necessarily a negative state of mind I have to say, no, far from it in fact. It is just particular to London though, there is no doubt about that. Kind of apocalyptic I guess, but not bad! It must be because everything always seem to be travelling at maximum velocity as far as London is concerned. Traffic, people trying to cut a deal and going this and that in the process. So far that you just end up thinking that the wheels are going to fall off. Maybe it is just the part of town that I live and work in...down the old East End. I dunno. The feeling rarely goes away though. Think Peter Ackroyd said something similar in his book about the city.

Guess I need to try and get back in the routine of doing a bit more meditation, that might take some of the edge off it if I so desire the edge to be taken. Yes, meditation should bring some focus. Not that I want to make a dull routine of it of course, something that merely becomes contrived and forced. Reduced to something that I do because a voice inside my head tells me that it is something that I have to do, and so I go scampering upstairs to sit on my cushion like a good little meditator. Irrespective of the fact that I might be engaged in an activity that is little more than a complete waste of time. Need a bit more creativity than that. I'll put my hands together and rock n' roll when I know in my heart that it is now or never.

Sitting here writing... and feeling kind of hungry. Must be the effect of the swim. You know the feeling, when there is a lot of saliva in your mouth although your stomach is not necessarily empty. But you still have the craving to eat, and to eat a lot. Various things keep passing through my mind, repeating themselves in fact. Crackers, fruit, chocolate. Got up once or twice from writing all this and had a poke around to see if I can come up with anything. I have already had an apple and a cracker, a Dr Karg's organic three seed biscuit, but somehow they don't seem to have been enough. Nowhere near enough and I think I wll be up again soon to try my luck. Pitta and humous. That is it.

Gonna read thru' and post this now. It's not the best thing I've written, not by a long way, in fact quite a few people if they ever bother to wade their way through all might be quietly staggered at how shit it is, but the point is that I ain't gonna leave my blogs hanging round for weeks and weeks in the edit room as I have done throughout the course of '06. Best just to say what it is you wanna say, get it off your chest, and fire it up! Really, it don't matter much either way in the land of the Ghost Eternal where it is just me quietly hoping that I'm gonna live forever.