"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

"the jeep song" - the dresden dolls

"i try to see it in reverse. it makes the situation hundreds of times worse when i wonder if it makes you want to cry every time you see a light blue volvo driving by"


it still shocks me that the dresden dolls arent huge. maybe not pop huge, but certainly indie huge. theyre both scarily talented musicians, their songs are intense and beautiful, amanda is a good looking lady with an original look - surely thats the right set of ingredients and then some.

i woke up this morning with this song in my head and its still there 6 hours later. its a catchy beast - particularly the sweary bits.

there are some cars that i instantly associate with people - beat up old red fiat pandas with jack, for example - some with events - small blue fords with trying in vain to get a whole band and all their gear through carmarthenshire in one - and some with times in my life - any of the increasingly few occasions i see a morris marina will always remind me of my childhood when it was our family car.

i'm pretty certain noone associates me with a car - since i've never owned one and since my wife's estate is useful but unremarkable - but i wonder what people do associate me with. might there be things that people see and are always reminded of me or a situation involving me? i'd like to think it was something cool and musical - cheap, heavily-customised guitars and gear for example - or something quirky - like silver body paint or stripy purple tights - or maybe even something meaningful, but i suspect if anyone does associate me with anything its something rubbish. thats the thing about other peoples memories - theyre so hard to alter.

"do you remember the first time?" - pulp

"but you know that we've changed so much since then, oh yeah we've grown"


when i was in junior school i had a thing for a girl named carly halpin [if you've just googled yourself, hi, its been a long time]. at the time i was far too young to know what love was, and probably too young to even know what fancying someone was in any significant way, but my memory of her is that she was really cool and quite pretty [is that the start of a life pattern?]. looking back more recently at an old class photo she seems, to my cynical adult eyes, a fairly unremarkable 11-year-old girl but at the time i was kinda smitten. not in that mawkish-ignorant-impression-of-a-romantic way that would, in my later high-school life, cause me to make a twat of myself repeatedly, but in a vaguer, perhaps truer, way of thinking she was great and wanting to be a better, closer friend with her.

did the following happen in real life or did i dream it? it seems simultaneously so ridiculous and so plausible. perhaps some of it is truth and the rest embellishments. perhaps theres no such thing as truth anyway.
in my memory it was the summer after i left junior school on yet another saturday evening i was sat in with my family - trying really hard to enjoy watching noel's house party (which was pretty new at the time) or something similar - when the phone rang. at this time it was a sound that barely touched my consciousness since it never heralded anyone wanting to speak to me - except that this time my mum shouted that it was for me. still mostly stunned at the fairly alien concept i pressed the receiver to my face - and was promptly nearly deafened by background party noise. amidst the kerfuffle a voice i couldnt be sure i recognised said something like "is it true you fancy carly? do you want to go out with her?" my emotional immaturity - amplified by shock, confusion, disbelief, fear that it was some sort of trick and fear of looking stupid - could think of no appropriate response except to mumble something incoherent, gently put the phone down (in my memory this happens in slow motion - like a really bad horror movie cliche) and walk back to the lounge to continue numbing my brain with tv pretending the whole incident hadnt happened.

the more i try to remember it, the more certain i'm becoming that it really did happen.
i'm pretty certain she has changed as much since then as i have, though i have no idea whether she went on to be something great or just another girl with a croydon facelift, and i have no idea if it was a cruel trick or some genuine offering of an opportunity, and i have no idea if she will ever read this. but

carly, for the record, i'm sorry.