"ask" - the smiths

"spending warm summer days indoors"


i hate the sun.

obviously i am grateful for its life- and light-giving properties and recognise we'd be pretty stuck without it so i should clarify that i hate the sun as a weather condition rather than as an astronomical entity. in fairness to it, there are many weather conditions i hate more, but on a hot summer day everything i do seems to be tempered by avoiding pain.
firstly, bright lights hurt my eyes, and in the sunshine everything vaguely reflective, or even just very white, becomes a potential bright light, thus leaving me incapable of looking at anything without pain [although mild discomfort might be a more accurate term, i prefer the drama of pain].
secondly, the hot rays hurt my skin. i hate the feeling of sunlight on my bare flesh - the prickly frying sensation that imperceptibly slowly develops into the redrawness of searing flesh. i spend all my time wearing long-sleeved clothes and ridiculous hats and clinging to the patches of shade i can fit myself in. plus i really hate the way tanned skin looks. that's not a racist comment, by the way - there are some stunningly beautiful people of ethnicities different to my own - but porcelain whiteness is much more aesthetic than the blotchy honey-smeared look of the person whose body has just experienced hot sun for the first time in months.



later i put this song on in the car. i told my daughter that she had to be able to sing along to every song on louder than bombs by the time she is 10. my wife didn't seem to think this was a good plan - but i don't think it's much to ask. when i was a kid i knew pretty much all the words to any album of my parents' that i liked - and even many i didn't much - by the end of the third or fourth listen. i wish things came that easily to me now - i cant even remember all the lyrics to most songs i've written at the moment

"here is what i dreamed" - mike keneally

"then i was jostled by police to hand my wallet over"



the strange, zappa-esque, mildly self indulgent hat album has been in my cd rack for some time and i'm not entirely sure how and why i came to own it. im pretty certain i wouldnt have bought (or even lifted) a cd by someone i've still never heard of in any other context, i dont think i know anyone who would have lent it to me for me to forget (deliberately or otherwise) to give it back, and its not something most people would give as a present. but however it came into my life, its an album i fairly regularly rediscover having forgotten it and there are some real gems on it.


i was reminded of this song, with its bizarre narrative of repeatedly being stopped by the police who gradually steal everything he owns, when i saw 3 policemen pushing a young black guy against a wall. despite his protests, he had the resigned look of someone to whom this happened a lot. its ages since ive been stopped by the police, but when i used to walk home alone late at night a lot it was fairly regular. i felt a strange, if fleeting, sense of solidarity for the guy, and then i started to think that maybe hed actually done something to warrant this treatment which made me worry about the moral implications of siding with a criminal.
before id had time to think about it much though, i had walked past the situation and away, got distracted trying to remember the lyrics to the earworm and forgotten everything else.