Almost a wasted day ....

24 March 2012

Now this is getting really silly.  Jan was up early this morning to go some churchy thingy and left me in bed.  That's fine, it's what we had agreed to.  What I hadn't expected was to get up at just after 10 o'clock!  So up I got and went through my normal wake routine, got down stairs, made me cuppa, took me morning pills and then sat down to read this morning's Telegraph.  Fine; when I finished it I looked at the clock and it was midday!!!  I must have got up at 11 o'clock, not 10 o'clock!  Now that really is silly!  It's a glorious day out and I've wasted half of it lying in bed.  Not good, not good at all.

I wonder if there is a PHD in artists, depression and suicide.  An artistic couple somewhere in Warwickshire have hanged themselves just days apart.  The husband work had held an exhibition of his work at the Herbert Galley in Coventry.  They had met while at art college in London.  He worked as a cleaner while his Japanese wife worked as a social support worker for MENCAP.  Depression seems to be a regular thing with artists no matter what area they work in.  Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Van Gough of course.  How many more that we don't know about.  I'm wondering though whether they were depressed before they became artists or if it came on once they had artists.  It can be a worry you know.  I'm a writer which make me an artist too.  I became depressed just over three years ago at the time of my brother's death; the writing came a couple of years later.  With me the depression comes and goes, I'm lucky in that I am not permanently depressed.  Right now I feel fine and will be off down town for a few hours and maybe a pint or ten. 

I'm a bit puzzled by one piece in today's paper.  I always thought that if you sat down to eat in a restaurant then you were charged VAT on your meal.  If you bought fish as a take-away then you didn't pay VAT because there was no service supplied.  Now it seems that sticky fingered Osborne is looking at adding VAT onto take-away foods.  That means we would be paying for something that we haven't received.  What is now puzzling me is why I am so surprised by it.  After all, the country is run by a Tory lead government therefore I should be surprised at anything that lot of muppets think up.

On Longford Road, Coventry there's a disused cinema.  A local church group has applied for planning permission to turn it into a church for their growing congregation.  Their application has been turned down.  Yet there is a Sikh temple further along the same road-way that was also a disused cinema.  The reason for refusal of planning permission was the lack of parking.  Strange that ... the Sikh temple would now be refused for exactly the same reason if it was being proposed now.  Yet it wouldn't be an issue of it was to be revamped and reopened as a cinema.  It makes me wonder what these planners are thinking about - if they are thinking that is!

On 24 March 1603 Queen Elizabeth I died aged 69 years.  Pity she couldn't have a carried on for 15 more years.  Then perhaps the country might have been spared Oliver Cromwell.  Now here's the point; it didn't happen did it?  In fact she did well to keep going for 69 years, life expectancy wasn't that long in those times.  But when someone begins to ask those sort of questions, they are moving into what is term 'counter-history'.  The idea is to find how things would have changed if things had worked out in a different way.  It's another form of the 'what if' game we all play at some time or other.  But the 'what if' didn't happen so there is no need to worry about it is there?  See what I mean?

Today's photo then is of the town centre public bum-washer ... 

Every so often some prat puts a load of washing up liquid or soap powder in it and the council have the job of cleaning it out.  Well, not the council we agreed to buy the damned thing but their employees who have do all the cleaning up and sorting out of their masters cock-ups!

Another gudun ...  

 
An Englishman, a Frenchman, a beautiful blonde and a nun are all sitting in the same carriage on a train journey.
The train enters a long tunnel, and for a while, everything is pitch black. A loud 'slapping' sound is heard and when the train emerges back into daylight, the Frenchman is nursing a large red mark on his cheek.
The nun thinks that the Frenchman has made a pass at the blonde and she has slapped him !
The blonde thinks that the Frenchman was trying to make a pass at her but made it to the nun instead. Therefore the nun has slapped him
The Frenchman thinks that the Englishman has made a pass at the blonde. The blonde obviously thought it was the Frenchman and has slapped him instead !
The Englishman thinks..............
I can't wait for another tunnel so i can whack that frog again !