Alasdair Watson

blah blah dull bitterness blah blah happy for my friends blah blah evil corporate holiday blah blah nauseauting couples blah blah some people are happy single blah blah. I am legally obliged to say these things, because I have a blog, but not a date.

There. That’s that out of the way for another year.

Now I’m going to drink hot chocolate and curl up to watch “10 Things I Hate About You”. I had tentatively planned to make a shitload of cheap Valentines Cards and stand on street corners handing them out to random passers-by, but frankly, I’m much, much to tired to do that. I haven’t slept well in a couple of weeks, not so’s that I’ve felt rested. So I’m going to try and do nothing much that I don’t have to do for the next few days, and hope to be feeling my old self by next week.

“That dark and evil day is approaching when nauseating couples drench the world in golden syrup and sashay around showing off their love for one another as if they had licence not to get punched. Which they don’t.”

This is why I read Tom Coates’ writings. Because he makes me laugh like a drain.

Or something like that. Normally, I have a healthy skepticism about folk music. I regard it with the same sort of suspicion I regard beardy men who wear hand-tooled leather belts with faux-celtic knotwork and go on about “real ale”. A little warped, perhaps, but, you know, not really hurting anyone.

I do, however, make an exception for Fairport Convention, who have done my favourite versions of two traditional ballads (and yes, I have a soft spot for some traditional folk tunes, which I will explain another time – remind me about it at some point, if you really want to know), “Matty Groves” and “Tam Lin”. So, from time to time, I dig out the couple of albums I own by them.

So, the other day, I was in Virgin, looking for “Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward” by The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band (you need to check this out, by the way). I didn’t find it there, but I wandered into the Classical/Jazz/World/Folk Music section looking for it (not totally implausible – I’ve seen weird Post-Rock filed under “Classical” before) and found that they have a new Fairport Convention album playing. I liked what I heard, so I bought it.

God help me, I can’t stop listening to it.

“Elizabethan England On Crack.”

I came up with this the other night as a tagline for a pitch I’m working on. If it ever sees the light of day, you’ll know which one it is…

I’m kind of big on responsibility. Taking responsibility for yourself and for the world around you is an important thing to do. It’s the mark of an adult. Normally, I find the thought that I’m responsible for myself and to the world around me a very liberating thought.

Tonight, I want nothing more than to be told that no, I can be let off for a bit. That I can crawl into a corner, pull a duvet over my head and pretend I’m three years old again and someone else can make all the big and scary decisions.

Tomorrow, I shall feel better, but for tonight, I’m just fed up of being a grown up.

Does anyone out there know anything about the sorts of things one might have expected to see at a feast in sixteenth century Ireland? Does anyone even know where I might look to find out about this sort of thing? Help!

I have got through the last fortnight by the judicious use of coffee and whiskey. Before anyone makes any smart remarks about that being how I get thought life all the time, I’ve been drinking more of both than I normally do, which in the case of the coffee, is a little frightening, even to me. And between that starting to catch up with me, and the stress of jury service (which is much, much, more tiring and stressful than I’d expected), I am utterly exhausted. So I’m going to meditate for a while, and then collapse into bed very early, in a effort to make my brain work again.

I’m doing my jury service at the moment. After several days, we’ve just finished the case for the prosecution of my first case. And frankly, bits of it have been crushingly dull. To the point where I was having trouble concentrating on what the witnesses were saying, despite the fact that I know just how important it is that I not miss anything.

The last witness was for the prosecution was the officer in charge of the investigation, who really didn’t have much to do but participate in a reading of the interview she had conducted with the defendant. I wasn’t complaining. I mean, normally any sort of Scottish accent will make me sit up and beg, but dear god, this was possibly the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard.

This is sort of amusing to me on several levels but mostly because I have a mental picture of trying to chat her up afterward, were such a thing possible: “Excuse me, you don’t know me, but I was a juror at the trial you just gave evidence at, and frankly, the sound of your voice damn near melted my brain. Would you fancy a drink, or possibly just reading to me at random from whatever book we can find?”

Rocket Whores. The Tagline reads “Pop Culture Assault Site”. I will be producing words for them, periodically.

Yes. It’s true. I am a rocket whore. My mother will be mortified.

More news soon.