Silly season is upon us

Ah joy. I’ve heard my first Christmas carol today. Okay it’s not a carol but it’s a christmas song. In September. I’m not keen on forced joviality, it seems a bit Teutonic for my liking. When I was a young man I worked for a time in a cinema. A fabulous old building that is sadly no longer in use. The seats smelt musty, the walls were covered in a thick brown tar like substance that was more akin to a smokers lung rather than any form of paint.
It was there that I began to empathise with Jean Paul Satre. He wrote a play called ‘No-Exit’. Essentially in this play, 4 characters are locked in a room for all eternity, which lead Satre to the immortal line ‘Hell is other people’. Well, it was like that at the cinema. 4 people on duty, a hot, dark and strange smelling building, where ghosts would be afraid to haunt in case they caught something. We were there for 8 hours per day and listening to christmas songs, played endlessly, haunting our ears and driving us further into insanity.
It was like a scene from a Lovecraft novel, or a greek tragedy featuring Sisyphus.
Hence now, when I listen to Christmas songs I feel as though part of me is dying. As though a streak of melancholy runs through my being and solidifies.
I will have to overcome this though as I’ve been cast in the upcoming Panto at the theatre. Of course I am highly delighted at this and can’t wait to get going on it.
Just so long as we avoid singing Slade songs I think I’ll be fine.

Even my browser is insecure

These are indeed strange times. The country is revolting. The banks are collapsing and there is nothing on the TV to cheer us up. Yet, my concerns at present seem more existential than anything else.
I suppose part of this is a response to my recent health scare, another reason being that my career is finished.
The thing is, I loved being a mental health nurse at first, just over the past few years I came to the conclusion that eventually it will kill you.
However, since becoming interested in meditation recently, the idea of ego death is quiet appealing. Necessary in fact.
Let’s consider how much of our lives are lived out of habit. My work clothes for example tend to be the same, a shirt, tie, smart trousers and polished shoes. This morning I decided to just wear the first things that I saw. This means I am wearing a green t-shirt that features a guitar amp, my wifes jeans and a pair of boots, adorned with a sports jacket and a trilby.
I decided that as I normally shower each morning, I would go with not washing to experience the sensation of smelling. I did decide to clean my teeth however.
At my desk I decided to drink a mixture of tea and coffee. I am ordinarily a strict tea drinker and do not enjoy any sugar in my drinks. Again this bears the hall mark of a habit, so it seemed entirely reasonable to have 5 sugars.
Of course I won’t be having it again and I really did not enjoy the drink, but it was interesting.