Author: Justin Page 28 of 65

Today I was very stressed. Very. Really Very. Like the sort of stressed I was virtually every day a few months back when Very Bad Things happened.

I’m pretty sure it’s all to do with the fuuuuuuuu from yesterday. I’ve mostly come to terms with the insurance debacle: it’s only money and I won’t miss it once it’s gone. But I think the business with the Elderbeast hit me pretty hard. He’s been remarkably well balanced over the last few months, and seeing him genuinely stressed and upset is tough. I can’t keep him happy all the time, but it was a bit of a throwback to some of the struggles we had earlier in the year.

But there are positives. I was stressed today, but most days I’m not: today was a reminder of that. Likewise, the Elderbeast is in a markedly better place now than he was earlier this year.

Also, I emailed his PEAC teacher to thank her for her intervention of yesterday. In return I got a lovely email that helped reassure me that we’re all on the right path.

Not all bad, then 🙂

Two things happened today, which filled the day full of fuuuuuuuuuuu!

Firstly, the Elderbeast had a minor meltdown on the way to his PEAC class. I did my best to navigate this, and to talk him through it, as we got dressed, made breakfast, dropped the Kinderbeast at school, and drove to PEAC. However, by the time we got to PEAC he was lurking outside the class in tears, reluctant to go inside so his classmates didn’t see him.

I ended up going inside to let his teacher know that he was somewhat stressed. She immediately came out with me, sat down with him and talked him through it. The transformation in him was astounding. He went into his class and, in fact, was in a top mood for the rest of the day.

That’s Positive One from the Day Of Fuuuuuuuu!

Then I have my day of work and I return home. You may or may not recall (because I may or may not have written about it) that one of my neighbours dropped round last week to tell me that our shared fence had been damaged in some recent weather. At the time I had shrugged it off, reasoning that my insurance would cover the cost of replacement.

Tonight is when I remembered two things. Firstly, that I would still have to pay the excess on the claim. Secondly, and most significantly, that I was literally a week into a new home insurance policy. As part of this policy, in a bid to reduce my monthly premium, I had adjusted my excess liability. And I had adjusted it from $400 to $1000.

Yup.

Fuuuuuuuuuu!

So, what’s the positive? Well, I checked my bank account and realised I can cover this quite comfortably. I’m not sure what I’ve done right, but I’ve been doing my best to build up a financial safety net over the last couple of months exactly for unexpected emergencies like this. So, it’s certainly $1000 I would rather have spent elsewhere, but at least I can cover it and still feed the Kinderbesten … and buy bluetooth lightbulbs …

I hate to be the naysayer, but I’m a little worried about New Who (the titular mantle now inherited by Chris Chibnall’s iteration of the show).

Worried about a female doctor? Hell no. It’s the most exciting thing to happen to the show since it got resurrected in the first place.

Worried about Bradley Walsh. Nope. If they’re going to do what I hope they’re going to do with him, it’ll be a blast.

Worried about the other new cast-members? Worried about them being soap refugees (apparently)? Worried about all the diversity? Nope, nope and nope.

Here’s what I’m worried about: the BBC losing faith in the show. The numbers have been on the slidey side lately, and, like it or not, introducing a female Doctor is a risk. A cynic–who is obviously definitely not me–might think that that the BBC is worried that Jodie Whitaker might not be able to carry the show on her own, and is therefore surrounding her with a range of other characters (which is what happened when Tom Baker left) in the hopes that at least one of the characters will land with potentially disaffected audiences. The last three (male) Doctors have all started their days in the TARDIS with a single companion, giving the new Doctor plenty of opportunity to make his mark.

Hopefully I’m wrong, and this is all just part of a new vision for the show–and, believe me, I get as excited as anyone to see how the show changes and evolves each time the showrunner or Doctor changes.

And, then again, the BBC is giving us fewer episodes each year. At first I was all up for this, when  rumours suggested that we were getting 60 minute episodes instead of 45. That sort of change offers the chance for a completely new storytelling dynamic–a whole extra 15 minutes to craft a story in. And then it turned out each episode is only being extended by 5 minutes, which … isn’t so exciting. And, in fact, it smacks of nothing more than the BBC trying to reduce the costs of the show.

Again, I might be wrong. And I am seriously excited to see a completely different version of the show at some point in 2018. I just hope that Jodie Whitaker is given the space to own the show, as every previous [male] Doctor has; and I hope that the change in format (and running length) has a better rationale than money saving.

So, come on New Who–bring it, and prove me wrong 🙂

I had minimal plans today. Carter had his friend over post-sleepover. The weather wasn’t promising much. I wasn’t about to punish myself for having another easy day. I was happy with the prospect of things not being done.

Yet, somehow, things got done. Gardening. Laundry, Cleaning. Tidying. Cooking. Baking. Alongside the general chilling out, there was a steady stream of unplanned chores getting ticked off in a relaxed and efficient manner. It was pretty good. I’m enjoying this theme of ‘unplanning’ that appears to be taking over my weekends occasionally.

Long may it continue. Or not. I’m breezy …

The Elderbeast had his friend over for a sleepover today. His friend, I have to say, is exceptionally well behaved–polite, clean, tidy: all the things you want of a house-guest.

However, when the two of them get together, the noise levels inevitably ramp up. Most people reading this will know I have a particular sensitivity to noise–and if you didn’t; you do now. Letting the Kinderbesten have friends over is a double dilemma. On the one hand, I want them to socialise and have friends, and do all the normal things. On the other hand, the resulting noise causes me such stress that I usually have to go and hide, and leave them to it.

Maybe that’s just a regular dilemma. I don’t know. Give me this over-dramatisation, will ya?

So, for this evening I let the Elderbeast and his friend play Cuphead on my PC, while I hid in the front room. I literally shut both doors and picked out a film that would hopefully provide a reasonable distraction (Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, if you were wondering). For the most part it worked: the beasts had a good time, and I enjoyed a relatively chilled out film night.

Maybe one day I’ll learn some better strategies for coping with the noise and these evenings can be a bit more of a family thing. For now, however, I’d rather take myself out of the equation than have to keep barking at them to be a bit quieter.

Yep, yep, yep. I know …

Tonight for Friday Night Horror, we watched Fright Night, which is one of my all-time favourite horror films. I suspect it’s another one of those films I discovered through that 14 inch TV with my friend Will, but I remember all manner of catchphrases from the film following me through various friendships.

It is soooo eighties; so much so that it almost looks like a film that was made to look like it was made in the eighties. It’s also gothic: it’s got the Hammer aesthetic down pat when it needs to (including the schlocky gore). And it even throws in a dash of that suburban horror feel that’s been a staple of the genre since at least Halloween.

It also has some perfect casting. Chris Sarandon is appropriately oily and intimidating as the undead serial killer next door, managing to thoroughly convince while wearing the worst of eighties fashion and keeping his tongue firmly in his cheek. Roddy McDowell, sadly missed, makes for an excellently self-doubting Van Helsing/Peter Cushing stand-in.

It doesn’t get the credit or acclaim that a lot of its eighties brethren receives, but if you ever want a perfect eighties horror movie then Fright Night is it.

I’ve had this new favourite old Dexy’s Midnight Runners song stuck in my head on repeat for days, and since the best way to get rid of an earworm is to share it, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

First the lyrics, which are smart and angry, and at least half of the fun of the song:

Dear Robin,
Hope you don’t mind me writing, its just that there’s more than one thing I need to ask you. If you’re so anti-fashion, why not wear flares, instead of dressing down all the same. It’s just that looking like that I can express my dissatisfaction.

Dear Robin,
Let me explain, though you’d never see in a million years. Keep quoting Cabaret, Berlin, Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Duchamp, Beauvoir, Kerouac, Kierkegaard, Michael Rennie. I don’t believe you really like Frank Sinatra.

Dear Robin,
You’re always so happy, how the hell do you get your inspiration? You’re like a dumb patriot. If you’re supposed to be so angry, why don’t you fight and let me benefit from your right? Don’t you know the only way to change things is to shoot men who arrange things

Dear Robin,
I would explain but you’d never see in a million years. Well, you’ve made your rules, but we don’t know that game, perhaps I’d listen to your records but your logic’s far too lame and I’d only waste three valuable minutes of my life with your insincerity.

You see Robin, I’m just searching for the young soul rebels, and I can’t find them anywhere. Where have you hidden them? Maybe you should welcome the new soul vision.

Now for the song. The video is just weird, so I’m going for the audio only here:

After searching for the song by title on Spotify, I made the awesome discovery that The Wonder Stuff had covered it (intriguingly, they drop the horns in favour of strings, which is exactly what Dexy’s ended up doing when they moved into their Come On, Eileen phase):

Finally, and this one is admittedly for the purists, Dexy’s (now in their Come On, Eileen phase) gave the song a radically slower and more soulful interpretation back on The Tube in 1984:

After a weekend of poor sleep, a late night out on Monday, and the odd day of work, today was the first day in a while I have not felt hugely tired.

And it felt great!

The Elderbeast turned eleven today. And there was much rejoicing.

In age terms, eleven is a nothing number. It’s neither your entry into double figures, nor the dawn of your teens. It a transitory age in which the process of growing up tends to simply continue.

However, pop culture (thanks Stranger Things, and Spinal Tap) has bestowed great significance upon the number. And that’s not all. It’s a prime number, and the first two-digit prime number. It’s always been one of my favourite numbers mathematically, on account of being one of the easiest numbers to multiply. It also has a unique mathematical quirk … which I’m just going to paste from wikipedia:

If a number is divisible by 11, reversing its digits will result in another multiple of 11. As long as no two adjacent digits of a number added together exceed 9, then multiplying the number by 11, reversing the digits of the product, and dividing that new number by 11, will yield a number that is the reverse of the original number. (For example: 142,312 × 11 = 1,565,432 → 2,345,651 ÷ 11 = 213,241.)

There are numerous other significance to the number, including the fact that a surprising variety of sports teams utilise eleven active players.

However, my favourite is undoubtedly that eleven is the number of spacetime dimensions in M-Theory! What does that mean? I haven’t the foggiest …

Back in 1981, the UK charts were dominated by Adam And The Ants. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. I was ten-years-old. It might have been Prince Charming and Stand & Deliver that got me hooked, but it was the Kings Of The Wild Frontier album that I kept going back and listening to. It would take me decades to appreciate the role Adam And The Ants played in transitioning the British music scene effortlessly from punk to pop to the modern romantic era. It’s fair to suggest that they also transitioned me from a passive listener of my parent’s music, to someone who started to take an active interest in music.

Then, as a typically disloyal young music fan, I left Adam Ant and his solo career behind.

Years later, somewhere in my late teens, I made a friend called Will. We both played guitar, but only one of us would stick with it. We would often hang out on Friday nights and watch movies on his tiny portable TV. These movie nights introduced me to many future classics, like The Terminator, and even as I rewatch them now in hi-def surround sound on my huge TV, I often think about how I really learned to love them in crappy mono VHS on a 14 inch portable.

Then, life happened, as it does, and Will and I drifted our separate ways.

Will ended up carving out an awesome career in music, with too many credits to list here. However, where these two seemingly unrelated strands of my life come together is where he ends up being lead guitarist for none other than Adam Ant. Honestly, this still blows me away. We may not have been in touch for many years, but it still makes me incredibly happy and excited to see an old friend doing something that would have seemed an unfathomably unachievable dream job back in those long gone teenage days.

Tonight Adam Ant, with Will on guitar, brought his Kings Of The Wild Frontier tour to Perth (and Will was awesome enough to sort me out with tickets). Not only did I get to see my old friend on stage, but I got to see Adam Ant performing live for the first time (back when I was ten, going to an Adam And The Ants concert was not really a thing that was ever going to happen).

I’m not going to review the concert, except to say that Will was an absolute star and professional throughout, and Adam possibly has even more swagger and attitude now than he ever did. It was a joy and privilege to be part of the audience. It’s one of those occasions you never expect to be part of because you never truly expect certain things to come around a second time.

And now I just need to go and sort out this ringing in my ears …