Stories, Rhymes and Brain fallout.

  Regrets. All the bad decisions. All the things I shouldn’t have done, but did. All the things I should have done but didn’t. All the people I tried to impress for no reason. All the times I cared too much about what others might think. All the real friends I forgot to thank. All the people I thought were friends but weren’t. All the opportunities for happiness I failed to see. All the things I acted on for the wrong reasons. All the times I didn’t say Sorry. All the times I didn’t say thank you. All the things I forgot to cherish. All the actions taken without thought. All the good thoughts that didn’t bring action. All the times I forgot myself. All the good that I easily forget.   All the things I left unsaid.

  Trees. I've never used a tree when I've needed to pee,  A bush or a shrub or a hedge maybe, but never a tree. Good things come in trees, or maybe threes as someone once said to me. I once made love to a bird up against a tree, she was no songbird but she did reach notes higher than me, but that was in my politically incorrect days as you can see. I've sat in a tree but never shat in a tree. I once had a discussion with a weeping willow, just to clear the air, the sadness was because of me. Now Greta Thunberg you might not be but the least you can do is plant a tree.  I love trees, there- it's out. I think of them with every breath I take, but hey that's me.

I had a socially distanced 'one-night stand' We wore surgical gloves and she held my hand She took me home threw me on the bed went to the bathroom then she said "I'll be in the bath, it's safer there" "Now get on ZOOM and show me you care."

  So now I have read all the books and ‘tips from Authors’ and all the internet can offer on writing- how to start, how to continue, writer's block, what sort of paper -ink or pencil to use… all I have to do now is write FFS, and make it a daily habit. Like everything else the more you do it, the easier it becomes, not necessarily better, just easier. One thing that Corona has taught me, I’m not as talented as I thought I was, as the absence of my first killer novel proves, the empty joke notebooks and half-finished projects in the house. I have this one thing and that is getting on stage and making people laugh through words I carefully select, that is it -end of talent roll call.   So my only talent is impossible to perform at the moment,   I’m stuck in a sort of waiting room an entertainment purgatory between heaven and hell, just hanging around, trying to stay relevant by making podcasts that don’t go anywhere, doing live streams so people can see me and remember me a...

  ‘About Town’. Cycling around town during the Corona ‘semi-lockdown’ is like a dream.  A lot of the Cafés are doing their best to accommodate people with ‘take away’ coffee, snacks, and such, but there remains a problem when it comes to the bladder -as the Cafes cannot offer toilet facilities, and Belgium isn’t really well known for its public toilets, but I must admit living in Antwerp gives the extra advantage of being able (as a man) to legally pee against the wall of the Cathedral in one of those enclosed by a wall, ‘old-school’, pee gutters that used to be all over town (in the old days' Women never used to pee I imagine). Cycling over the main pedestrian shopping street you see people collecting ordered items from shops (the minority) but also people just staring at closed shops like consumer junkies in ‘Cold Turkey’- or pigeons expecting to be fed, listening to the regional accents many come from out of town just to walk through the closed shopping area which see...

  Lockdown Diary.  7:00  De wekker loopt af, ik sta op, ‘vroeg begonnen is half gewonnen’ nooit vergeten.  7:30 Gedoucht en al aan de koffie, mijn eerste gedachte ‘Waarom ben ik om 7:00 uur opgestaan in godsnaam’.  8:00 Samen met mijn derde tas koffie beluister ik het nieuws op de radio, ik besef dat ik alle nieuws over Corona kotsbeu ben, idem Trump - Brexit - en de meningen van iedereen die geïnterviewd wil worden ’s morgens op de radio na het nieuws van 8:00 uur.  8:30  Ik plan mijn dag en merk dat ik weinig plannen heb, ik denk dat ik veel ga lezen vandaag.  9:00 Mijn plan is aangevuld, ik ga wandelen en nu onmiddellijk, als ik het Coronavirus wil overleven als oudere man moet ik fit blijven, in beweging blijven, ik schrijf ‘it’s harder to hit a moving target’ op een papiertje en pin het tegen mijn prikbord.  10:00 De wandeling viel tegen, het regende, ik besefte dat één van mijn wandelschoenen lekt. Het oorverdovende geluid v...

  Diary,15th of November, 2020. It’s Sunday again, these weeks of waiting, staying indoors, and trying to find ways to encourage creativity, fly past, whereas the plans I had to fill the gaps that have opened- up due to lack of employment- remain in the ‘planning’ stage. The ‘never to be done’ tray of my idler brain.  The lack of planning leads me to panic because of days and weeks racing by without anything to be shown for it, had to be taken on, head-on. These past three days I have tried to plan a schedule and keep to it.  The morning would be spent ‘out and about’, the afternoon divided between writing, reading, and my podcast. The evening was left for the idle consumption of Netflix ‘Scandinavian-crime’ series or other such time fillers. This planning has worked and made me feel more contented this weekend.  The morning plan today was to visit ‘The British Shop’ called Stone Manor, not far from Brussels. The drive would only be about forty minutes...