This One's Got Lazyitis....
I've been a little remiss I know. Can't-be-arsedness has been rampant and the World has turned and the days have zipped by and the clock has ticked and ticked and ticked and ticked.......
But what have I been doing apart from trying to find a fucking job in Mr Brown's New World Order? (Perhaps that should just be New Order as I've just watched 24 Hour Party People and read the Anthony H Wilson "novelisation". If you know what I'm talking about, great. If not, it doesn't matter. But perhaps you should read/watch films more. To paraphrase a recurring motif from the said work.)
But, yeah, what have I been doing? Well, drinking a lot and playing the Blues obviously. When a man has a resonator guitar, a glass bottleneck and a moon to howl at, that's what a man will do. Well, this man anyway.
I've also been discovering some great music and can personally recommend Cherry Ghost, Newton Faulkner and Steve Earle's latest.
Perhaps the most bizarre thing I have decided to turn my "talents" to, though, is ballroom dancing. And before you point your fingers and snigger, it's fuck all to do with that "Reality" TV show in which the be-chinned one ekes the last few pieces of silver of his career from the BBC. It's the unique way it's funded y'know. And I should know. It's me (and a few million others) funding the fucker. Still, a Brucie bonus (for Brucie), nice.
No, it's not that. It's the fact that Dearest has always wanted to glide across a dance floor with apparent ease in the arms of a suave and simmering hunk with a penchant for the Paso Doble**. So, essentially, there's a gun to my head. I know my place.
I have surprisingly enjoyed it though. Apart from sweating like a pig at the end of the hours session because I've never danced for more than the length of your average pop tune in my life. And I've enjoyed it in spite of the be-buttoned, be-cardiganned bereft-of-an-original-thought-in-their-forlorn-lives fellow learners who shuffle and twitch to our right and left as we struggle to master the basics of the waltz.
Now this has had me baffled 'cos, for all intents and purposes the waltz should be - and is - a piece of piss. But for me it just doesn't work. I feel alien trying to do it. The quickstep and the square tango I can handle, but the waltz......
I even tried practising alone, at home, when Dearest was elsewhere acquiring even more shoes. It's just plain wrong. (The waltz that is. Not, obviously, the Gollumesque search for the precious shoes/boots/crocs/sandals/wellies/fustian feetwarmers. That's apparently perfectly natural.) I sat awhile and gathered my thoughts about why I couldn't grasp this simplest of dances. And then I realised that it feels alien because it is fucking alien. Waltz time is not a natural rhythm. You may think it is because it seems to have been round since time immemorial, but it isn't. 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 ISN'T NATURAL! All the dances I've been able to get my head round (and I'm not alone here - Dearest can't grasp the waltz either) have their roots firmly in common time. 4/4, four to the floor, call it what you will, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.
It's just natural. You probably walk in 4/4 time. You would have marched in 4/4 time. You would have gone into battle in 4/4 time. You certainly wouldn't have chanced going over the top to the strains of the Blue Danube or Tales From The Vienna Woods. It's not right. It feels, to me, like an 18th century affectation. I would need a wig, waistcoat and pomander to get in the zone.
So, given that I'm 53 and time's flashing by at the speed of light, with the nights too dark and the days too bright, the waltz can fuck off. There are not enough hours in the decade.
It's four-to-the-floor for me from now on. The quickstep'll do for me. Hip-hop, rock, pop. Y'know I reckon that even reggae lends itself.
Now, where's me Old Spice, cardigan and ganja?
I've also tramped the highways and byways of my immediate surroundings - mostly with the shit-machine - but sometimes not and pointed the soul-stealer and clicked the button and fired up Photoshop and....well.....here's a few of my faves:-
"What was that?"
Trilby.
The evening sun kisses the Arndale as the wheel turns.
This should've been a band. Manchester's fabulous Northern Quarter swathed in Autumnal sunlight.
The fountain in the centre of Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester.
Heaton Park, Manchester. October 2007.
**I can never figure out whether that's irony or sarcasm.
