Here we go again...

Well, as I said, life is strange sometimes. Here at this time of celebration of the birth of Jesus, it continues to be strange. Of course, the celebration is carried out at entirely the wrong time of year - Jesus was probably born in March or thereabouts, so it is reckoned. This may explain why, try as I might, I find it hard to feel appropriately involved in the religious celebrations, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to the subject of this page.

I must say I was viewing the approach of Christmas with some trepidation. Not because of what I myself would be doing - I would be going to stay with my parents, which is an enjoyable and relaxing experience and also cognate with my desire to spend Christmas not doing very much. But since the middle of this summer things have got interesting for me, as related elsewhere on this site. The result is that I am happier than I have ever been. But nothing in this world is perfect. I have to deal with some very strange heavy shit as well.

I must point out that I am not complaining about this. It is all part of a great gift from Jesus, and as I have said, my experience is only "heavy" in the same sort of way that light gas oil is slightly heavier than kerosene or paraffin. And the good stuff is good enough to compensate me by many orders of magnitude. One of my mates likes to comment that "pigeons are such grumpy fuckers", but this pigeon is not feeling grumpy in the least.

So, as I was saying, I had some expectation that the Christmas / New Year period might be something of a difficult time. Might not be, of course... there's no reason to think it has to be like that, it's just a slightly higher probability than at other times of year. It's just that it goes on for such a bloody long time, so if things were strange there would be a lot of time for them to be strange in.

So there I was, administering Linux servers, swearing at my printer, playing Barclay James Harvest, driving my Volvo 164, the usual sort of stuff. Christmas was approaching; the calendar ticked over to the 20th December. What was going to happen? Could go either way... The fuel racks whacked wide open, the turbos spooled and great plumes of exhaust blasted into the sky. If you wanna run cool, you got to run on diesel fuel. This was gonna be a good one. Excellent. This was right.

And so on to the day itself... not bad, if quiet. The Christmas special of Doctor Who was good. But it seems that I cannot expect the entire period to be consistent. Yesterday was distinctly dodgy, and today it became clear, as it was on the ride back from the Ratbike Review, that some unknown person somewhere was in some unknown fashion severely taking the piss. Though that might be much too mild an expression.

Who and what? Fuck knows. I neither need nor want to know, and I don't. It would probably not only piss me off more if I did know, but also render me less able to take any measure of corrective action. Of course, my options for taking such action are severely limited in the first place. But Jesus stands behind me, and I will not do nothing, even if wibbling on on this page is the apparent limit of what I can do.

When I am at home such feelings generally translate themselves into a need to play certain albums. The Final Cut, Broadsword, Jugula, David Gilmour's About Face. I not only play them, I crank them up. Bring me my broadsword and clear understanding. (That's "understanding", not "knowledge". Different, see.) I like these albums anyway, make no mistake, but they are a great help with the appropriate direction of my feelings when played at high volume during times of strangeness.

But here I was at my parents', lacking this option. No CDs with me and nothing to play them on if I did have any - not at an appropriate volume at any rate. So I fell back on my voice, and went through the first three tracks of Jugula (which is all I ever play anyway). I then gathered together some work I had brought with me to help cope with just such an eventuality - I could at least spend the time earning some money - took it out to the isolation of the garage, and proceeded to sing my way through The Final Cut.

I didn't get all the way through. At some point during the title track it seemed that my musical efforts had been effective. I didn't need to sing "Not Now John", though I couldn't be dissuaded from singing "Two Suns in the Sunset" out of a need to round it off properly. Good stuff, music is. John Lees said "If music be the food of love then someone ate the crown". I must admit I haven't got a fucking clue what he meant; I must remember to ask him some day.

So I brought that stage of the work to a logical conclusion - the point at which effort switches from hardware to software development - in a much happier frame of mind, came indoors, made a cup of coffee, went outdoors again for a smoke (which is a real pain in the arse, but it's not my house) and then decided that some wibbling on the computer would be in order.

And I think it's going to be all right... well, I know it is, I just can't put a timescale on it. Which is something of a bummer. Not to worry. I believe in Jah Rastafari only, and I shall never be defeated.

Thankyou Lord.

Shit fails.

The good stuff does not.

Have a good one.

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