Thoughts of the day.

Following all the social distancing rules so as not to get infected with Corona is one thing, staying sane is another.  I know one thing, for me, social media isn’t doing it. ‘They’ say that social media is a good way of staying in touch with loved ones etc, is it? Whatever happened to giving them a call? Do we need social media to stay in contact? Not really, it’s a myth. We don’t need social media to stay in touch we have phones, zoom calls, or Skype. It’s just a ploy to get us to scroll up and down FB, Twitter, and Instagram and the likes, the longer they keep us hooked to their screen the better it is for the data fishing algorithms. They milk us for data like farmers' milk cows. I recently asked myself -in all honesty- to write down what benefit or good I get from being on Twitter for example. First I tried to kid myself that I get news updates and get to read the views of people I respect etc, all nonsense, of course, I can follow those people and news media on their web...

Good afternoon, although I don’t know you, may I wish you and your family a safe and healthy voyage through this pandemic? Stay safe.   How many people do we see during an average day? Lots and lots, of course, most of them we don’t know personally, so they might as well be shadows, or robots that pass us by on the street. We don’t pay any attention to most people, unless they look weird/scary/peculiar or get in our way, block a parking space, ask for money, annoy us in any way.   We are aware of all the people around us, and that we are just part of the ‘human herd’, but we ignore most people because we can’t handle more people than our family and friend groups (our bubbles as they say since Covid19), according to specialists on the subject it seems that we can handle roughly 100 to 150 people in different levels of familiarity.   We all know people from the pub, from work, from football matches, neighbors, people we see every day but have not much contact with. To say w...

  I don’t know about you, but for me the Novelty of this Corona/Covid19 plague is starting to wear off. At first it was a welcome break to the routine of the rat race (as long as we all stayed healthy) , loads of free time to do all the odd jobs that have been lying around the house waiting for me to change into my handyman super hero disguise. Then there were the vague ‘doomed to fail’ promises to myself that I would write a book, learn a new language, learn yoga, get fit, learn a new skill etc etc etc.   The D.I.Y. jobs are almost complete, I have started some more or less creative projects like these columns (I write mainly for myself). Getting fit is a slow burner, it comes and goes, somedays I go on really long walks and then spend a few days thinking ‘what’s the point’, but I try.  Now I’m starting to think that this could be how we live for a good few months yet, so I have to get my head around the feeling of a new reality. A new way of living, a total change ar...

  It’s Saturday, that used to mean something, pre-Corona.   It’s 5 pm on a Saturday afternoon that meant even more pre-Corona.  Saturdays, 5 pm , pre-Corona that meant getting ready for the Saturday crowd at whatever venue I was performing that evening, while listening to the football results on the BBC .  Saturday crowds are different to Friday Crowds, Saturday crowds have had time to get over the workweek, they’ve had more time to get dressed up. Comedy would be just part of the evening ahead, food and drinks before the comedy  then maybe afterwards out till late, no commitments on Sundays except for those who fear hell.  Saturdays were always special, pre-corona. Now it’s just another day. Another day to sit around, worry about the virus, about work, about the future about- well anything (nowadays we worry a lot).  It’s Autumn, dark days ahead, the days I love (I’m not a summer person the heat sucks my energy) Autumn born and bred that’s me...

  All over the world governments are trying to get to grips with the Corona/Covid19 pandemic, balancing between economic interests and healthcare.   It’s a 'hit and miss' social experiment trying to minimize infection rates and keeping an economy going, there are success stories but in the main, most of us are stilling feeling around in the dark.   Nobody (as yet) really knows completely how to stop the spread, we could all just stay indoors and only go out to get food but then the world wide economy would just collapse, so we have to have these ‘hit and miss rules’. Stay home, unless you really have to go out for exercise or your job, keep away from large gatherings but if you can’t wear a mask, non-essential businesses like bars and restaurants should close but they can still do a take-away service and as many of us as possible should work from home… that’s about the sum of it.   It’s not a problem that we can solve with a # hashtag, likes, or retweets. Fake news d...

  Fail again, Fail Better.* I can’t remember who said ‘Fail again Fail Better’* but it must have been someone that eventually made it, otherwise we would have never heard of it.   Fail again, fail better, do what you want to do, don’t let others put you off, don’t let others fill you with self-doubt - do it. Whether you paint, sing, play an instrument, or act, whether you are a comedian or poet, it is impossible to just be good at the get-go. Every day you practice your art, you work on it, producing stuff that isn’t that good in the beginning, but with each ‘failure’ you get better, bit by bit.   Self-doubt is probably the biggest threat to anybody who is creative. The fear of negative comments can lead a person to be defensive or over self-confident to compensate for the doubt, it can lead to that ‘creative murderer’ imposter syndrome  which leaves you afraid of being ‘found out’ because your self-belief is rock bottom. Whatever you do there are the criticasters wa...

  ‘Bad news sells’ is an old but true cliché, reading all the news websites, doing your daily, time-wasting, social media tour, it’s all doom and gloom out there (I covered this in a previous post), but is it? Of course, there are some really frightening things going on, threats to our way of life and our planet are real, but should we, therefore, lose faith in humankind? What’s more, should we lose faith in human kindness?   Our society is built around an economic system that needs us to consume and not just the things we need to survive, we need to buy, buy, buy, whether we need the stuff or not, in order to get us to consume, companies need to advertise and get us hooked on the instant gratification of something new and preferably ‘shiny’, the dopamine hit that makes real drug addicts look like amateurs.   Bad news sells, we seem to seek out bad news items more than the good news ones, why? Well, it could be evolutionary that we humans have always had to be on the look...

  I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m suffering from an information burnout and overload, we are living in a constant stream of news (fake or true, who knows) that gets us outraged, angry or makes us even more apathetic toward a society that seems to have not only lost its way, but also has no idea of the GPS location we’re supposed to be heading to. You would think that the Corona/Covid19 plague would bring us together, after all it is non partisan, neither left or right, not communist or fascist, neither ‘boomer’ or ‘snowflake', it’s gender neutral and non racist. So hell yeah we could at last all come together and show that human solidarity, ingenuity and science can defeat anything, right?.  Wrong again!  Here we are a year after we first heard of it, and we are all raging against one another either in the streets or in the cess pool that social media has become. There are the deniers (some of whom have since died of the illness, or from Karma), the ‘deep st...

  How the f**k am I supposed to concentrate? The radio is on in the background, the coffee machine -although smelling good- is making this sort of gurgling sound and I have wet hair from in the shower and some droplets are running down my neck.   ‘Silence is golden’ who sung that song way back in the 70’s? Or was it the 60’s? Who knows, everything fades and gets muddled, how do we know any of our memories are trustworthy.  I struggle on, trying to make meaning where there isn’t any, digging into my soul to mine the last bit of creativity and at the same time thinking ‘what if I am just not creative?’ I read all these books and listen to all these tutorials saying ‘we are human therefore we are creative’, but what if we aren’t? What if evolution, and especially the tech revolution has taken away some or all of our creativity? What if ,what if.  We often ask the question ‘does anyone still read books?’ The question in the future might be ‘does anybody write books a...

  Ok , day nr 6 on the 'intermittent fasting' routine, for those in the know I’m on a 17/7 which is 17 hrs of fasting and a window of 7hrs to eat… At the moment I’m feeling a little light headed, is this what they mean when they say you become more focussed? Well it could be, I’m really focussed on my light headiness. My sleep has gotten better that’s a positive, no more tossing and turning at the moment, I’m sleeping like a baby without the peeing in a pamper bit.   There are so many tutorials, advice and self help videos on you tube about ‘finding yourself’, ‘reaching the real you’, ‘getting to know yourself’, etc etc etc in the end you ask yourself if you have ever really known who you actually are, the more you watch this stuff the less you feel certain of who you are, and then you need to watch other videos to end self doubt and multiple personality disorder. Just before going to sleep yesterday I took an on line IQ test, just for the fun… to my relief my result was ...

 I will be an internet Guru The only one that knows I'll get followers, likes and the likes. I'll be mega important right I'll have the looks even a laptop, with a phone as back up.  Call me 'Influencer' I can change the scene Being clever though never mean Spitting wisdoms I half understand making a stand Virtuous and grand Subscribe at the bottom take a peek With your help I might even last a week.

  How hard it must be for colleague comedians who depend on Comedy for their income, Corona has shut down so many places where we would usually be doing our thing. I’m lucky to be old (who would have thought I’d ever say that?) , and, I’m at the arse end of my ‘career’ so the cancellations haven’t really hit me financially. What corona and all the cancellations of shows has done is put a dent in my confidence and has confronted me with a life without the daily comedy pressure, adrenaline rush, ego and meaning.   Twenty two years I’ve been doing comedy, solo shows,   line-ups all over the place, and now I sit at my desk as I always have done, but without the extra motivational pressure of the next gig… (it’s in another four days). I don’t need sympathy, most people are in the same boat, not just comedians and entertainers, a lot of people aren’t sure if they will have a job by the end of the year… 2020 it started out well, but really bombed after March. (in comedy terms we...

  October 6th, 2020 A.C. (after Corona) I've been trying lots of 'spiritual tips' on line to improve myself  (after all I've finished Netflix). So I woke up this morning hoping to feel the positivity I was meditating on when I fell asleep, but all I could feel was my full bladder.  I got out of bed early to call a mate and had an hour long chat on the phone, I actually used my phone to talk instead of typing some text that corrects itself, even the phones are into self improvement. It was a good chat 'man to man' - if that's not sexist, if it is forgive me it was still early I wasn't quite woke. The original plan was to get to the supermarket early, but I received a mail from U.P.S. saying my package would be delivered today so I had to wait. I don't usually order stuff on line, but I needed new underpants and pyjamas so I bit the bullet. So now I'm a climate change traitor, screwing the planet for the sake of nice new pants without rips and stai...