Lost In Music Part 1 : Even In Blackouts

It was one of the first real biting cold evenings we've had so far this winter, not the sort of night where you expect much of anything to happen. Certainly I did not expect to experience something that left me caught in a moment of wonder, an entire hour of that rare time where you think of yourself in the third person and just KNOW that you will treasure this most perfect of moments forever.

I feel like I'm constantly on a journey with music. Just when I think I can no longer be surprised by new songs or new sounds or new styles, just when I feel burdened with cynicism about the industry having no cards left to play, something like this comes along and shows me a way out. And it's got nothing to do with technology or relevance or that strange thing people call 'cool' - it's to do with feeling and with music's unique ability to touch the truth.

A friend of mine with a good few friends and contacts in the punk scene, had arranged for a US band called Even In Blackouts to play at his house. From the moment I first heard the idea I thought it was an unusual but quite brilliant thing to do. In fact the band are veterans of this type of guerilla gig. For a nominal fee they'll come and play at your house, the internet being littered with pictures of similar gigs of theirs in America and Europe. How great is that! For that reason alone they should be crowned the greatest band in the world.
With their name already implying their non-requirement of electricity to perform, Even In Blackouts are 'acoustic punk' - two and three minute blasts of love and anger bursting forth from thrashing acoustic guitars. The room containing this gig was no more than 4 or 5 square metres, an audience of around 20 people close enough to hear the strings buzzing and literally FEEL the vibration of resonating guitar tops. On top of all this fantastic musical physicality are Lizzie's vocals. Without need of a microphone to bolster her, a voice of gorgeous American clarity simultaneously froze and melted everybody present. I felt like I might never hear a voice like that again, and couldn't stop listening to it for a single second. All five of my senses felt alive. I have never been more involved in a gig.

The picture above doesn't do justice to how special this night was, its fly-in-amber staticness depriving you readers of the boundless kinetic energy emanating from every band member and infecting everyone in that tiny room, leaving you only with a visual impression of the glorious hats the band were wearing - which is something I suppose. Perhaps my horrible, stark flash photograph serves only to highlght the ordinariness of the surroundings, (if a Chinese guy dressed as an American Indian chief drinking a can of lager counts as ordinary) and tells you everything you could ever know without having been there. Maybe it is all only there in that moment, to be either half remembered or lost forever.

Before He Cheats

I try and ensure that whenever I post some great lyrics here on Join The Road, that I at least have a vague link in mind with the mission statement. This time I guess I don't. I just love this song. I heard it on the radio a couple of weeks ago and was instantly enamoured with its directness. The chorus alone couldn't be any more to the point in its cathartic viciousness. I love it!
Singer, Carrie Underwood is clearly a star. However, the fact that this song comes from a winner of the American Idol TV show I find astounding. Why can't the contestants of our own UK X-Factor TV show sing songs with as much ballsy gusto as this?


Before He Cheats
(Chris Tompkins/Josh Kear)

Right now he’s probably slow dancing with that bleach blonde tramp and she’s probably getting frisky
Right now he’s probably buying her some fruity little drink ‘cause she can’t shoot whiskey
Right now he’s probably behind her with a pool stick showing her how to shoot a combo
And he don’t know...

Chorus:
i dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little suped up four wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seats
Took a Louisville slugger to both headlights
Slashed a hole in all four tires
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats

Right now she’s probably up singing some white trash version of Shania karaoke
Right now she’s probably saying I ’m drunk and he’s thinking that he’s gonna get lucky
Right now he’s probably dabbing on three dollars worth of that bathroom polo
And he don’t know...

Repeat chorus:
I mighta saved a little trouble for the next girl
‘Cause the next time that he cheats
You know it won’t be on me

You can listen to the song here at Carrie's official site:

http://www.carrieunderwoodofficial.com/

Your couch my couch

Sofa, Settee, Couch. So good they named it three times. Oh but it is great isn't it? Your couch I mean. Or my couch at least, because of course it stands to reason that your couch is never going to be better than mine. You probably feel the same way about your own. A couch is a very personal thing. Some people say that your bed is usually the most important piece of furniture in your life, after all you do spend an obscene amount of your life cocooned within its warm folds. But beds are all pretty much the same, more or less, unless you happen to have some crazy four-poster affair - in which case you probably aren't reading this but are either courting royalty or sleeping with a footballer.
But with the couch there are just so many more variables. high arms, short back, cushioning, vallance - all are important things to the couch connoisseur. The couch is the first thing you appraise when walking into someone's living room, and you don't feel comfortable in a house until you've sat down on it.
My couch is great. It's a huge dark blue thing that looks about as lazy as I usually feel. It seats three comfortably, and so is perfect for swinging your legs up onto it completely, or alternatively houses other people or a fanned-out array of channel zappers and DVD remotes with the greatest of ease. It is perfect for either snuggling or more formal occasions. Although my house has very few formal occasions, I will opt for as many opportunities for snuggling as I can get.
How many coins and candy wrappers have worked their way down into the little nooks between the cushions? How many small items have been lost under it?
If anyone takes the time to leave comments on this article, I'd love to hear about your couches. Take a breath when you are about to sit down, savour the moment, and take a seat. Describe how it feels. Could it be better - a little softer maybe - or is it a wondrous feeling to take the weight off your feet for the first time in a day? Do you feel guilty about spending so much time on it? What do you do on it; watch TV, play videogames, kiss?

Tell me about your couch! This is important Join The Road research.

Lost

Sometimes I'll be in a place or situation and my mind will dwell on the notion that I really should be savouring the moment, remembering the details and so enable me to write about it later. A 'blog moment', perhaps. I imagine other blogging types get that feeling too. As I've said before, I don't want Join The Road to become a diary, but as a bunch of descriptions of happenings in (my) life, what is it but a diary?
Back at the beginning of this week, by a strange set of circumstances going on around me, I found myself out on the south downs walking my friend's dog. He having taken his son to school, and his wife having gone to work, could I take the dog for a walk? I readily agreed and then quickly proceeded to get completely lost. Of course the dog, a pure-bred border collie, wouldn't have cared if we were stranded all day. For him it simply meant a longer trek, complete with more sticks to be thrown and more opportunites to get nice and muddy. It was a Sunday morning, blazing sunshine. Keeping to proper footpaths we walked through open fields full of sheep - and watching the way they parted as we passed through, bleeting as they ran - made me feel like I had somehow travelled back in time. It felt like such an iconic image, the sort that you see on TV whenever they need to stamp 'countryside' in your mind, and there I was right in the middle of it, with a proper sheepdog no less!
Adding to the time travel idea was the noise in the sky, specifically the fiery roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine as Spitfire fighters flew overhead. Somewhere nearby was a Battle of Britain re-enactment, and a few pilots were out on an early morning sortie to thrill me and probably half of Sussex too, wheeling in the sky and making that unmistakable silhouette in the blue morning sky. It was utterly thrilling. It was sobering too, thinking how my walk in this wonderfully contoured countryside was arguably only possible because of the guys who'd flown those machines so bravely so many years ago.
Can you see how this walk was becoming one of 'those' moments? Just lots of little wonderful events conspiring into one great morning, something so inocuous suddenly becoming so essential. I wasn't really lost at all.

Driving through the clouds

I visited Scotland last week. My first time this far north in Britain, witnessing such delightful scenery from the elevated position afforded by the lofty passenger seat of a Citroen van. Perhaps I had a little travel itch to scratch after that 'Thank You' post recently, but whatever the reason, I readily accepted a friends' request to accompany him on a weekend trip to Kirkcaldy, just across the firth of Forth from Edinburgh.
It was only going to be a short trip with an overnight stay, so why bother with the expense of accomodation when you have your own metal floor to sleep on? If you're going to sleep in a van then you might as well cook in it too, and that philosophy goes some way to explain the above photograph - for there we were setting up a couple of camping chairs and making a lovely brew of tea in a rather windswept lay-by somewhere in the wilds of Northumbria. Without me in that photograph it is perhaps difficult to picture the sight which greeted other motorists as they came along the road, that of two grown men sitting in the late-afternoon mist drinking tea. I honestly don't think I've ever felt so English.
It's not easy to think of Scotland as a foreign country, but upon entering a pub the differences become very clear. I've never made the acquaintance of so many random people as I did that evening, whether being cajoled into karaoke singalongs from the comfort of the bar, or being quizzed in a most friendly fashion by people with the most unfathomable accents. Any preconceptions I had were swiftly confounded by the sight of girls swirling around in 1950s-style pleated skirts (and how pretty they are!), a good few pints, and the mightiest curry Kirkcaldy had to offer.
The journey back was in contrast to the previous day's travel. An ominous sky began to throw rain at us as we opted for the motorway rather than the bendy B-roads in an effort to save time. This time the journey was beautiful in a different way. Here we were dwarfed by mountains on either side of us as we followed the motorway snaking its way towards home. A combination of atmospheric conditions and our elevation meant that at certain times during this part of the journey we actually drifted in and out of the clouds. One moment they were hanging just above the roof of the van, the next moment we were plunged into the swirling mist to suddenly descend out of it again seconds later. It was such a strange detached feeling. The motorway was busy with other traffic but we might as well have been completely alone, allowed to drift skyward for a few precious moments as the road fell away beneath us.

Negative One To Ten

This isn't a news type of blog, but this news has been bugging me for ages now. My favourite band of recent times, Tsunami Bomb, split up a few months ago. A punk band in the best sense of the word, they stood up fiercely for their independence and freedom of voice. In the end it seemed that business pressures overtook the band as they gained more success, and rather than tow the corporate line like so many others, they split.
With just two albums they imprinted themselves on my mind, a sublime mix of incendiary guitars and intricate yet unfussy arrangements provided the perfect backdrop for singer Agent M's forceful cajoling vocals. Okay, let's stop there before I get washed away in a sea of hyperbole. Let's just say that they were fantastic, and I miss them to bits.
Here's one of their lyrics - 'Negative One To Ten':

So these girls live on my street,
or I guess I live on theirs.
They thought I was showing them,
but really they made me aware
just how momentous music is,
and why we should care.
Songs stay with your your whole life,
remind you of time spent and time gone.
Carry you through dismal days,
and help you to carry on.
I owe so many positive times to my favorite songs.
It can be more than just sounds and words -
it can be something that saves you
from yourself,
your thoughts,
your life,
your world.
It can be more than a favorite line -
it can be something that shapes you when you're young,
but give you freedom at the same time.

(Lyrics by Agent M : From the album 'The Definitive Act')

Thank You

I might as well come right out and admit that this post is simply paying tribute to my friends around the world. This summer, more than any other in recent years, it seems as if everyone I know and care about is flying to and fro around the world. Whilst a dear friend of mine from Croatia is about to jump on a plane and make the trip of her life to LA, another from here in the UK is currently sitting in a swish hot tub overlooking San Francisco bay - probably on the lookout for a Nandos, knowing her as I do.
A friend from Australia has visited three times so far, once coming back from Scotland (bringing me an edible cow-poo), once coming back from Italy and who knows where from next time. Whilst here we toured around the country to various towns (and cities, sorry Chester), never stopping still for very long, except to indulge in choc milk and vodka in large measures.
Friends from Germany and Holland have also been and gone twice. I've endured the twin assaults of crazy fans of both Scarlett Johansson and Reese Witherspoon, with a little Evi for good measure!
I mustn't of course forget the great people here in the UK, and trips to Coventy, Chester and other places over the course of the summer have all resulted in great times, lots of ice cream, and sad goodbyes.
There are yet more friends I guess I'll have to wait for the next Dido tour to meet again. Football crazy Spanish girls to whom hugs are long overdue, or personal apologies I still have to make to my Swiss friend whom I missed in London a month or so ago. Then there are friends in Brasil and elsewhere in South America who send me such wonderful gifts in the mail.
So to all of you guys, only a few of whom read I know read this blog, I send out my love to all of you for enriching my life and for just... well, being awesome.

Countryside

Today, I have a lovely picture for you. How could I be anything but inspired having sights like this just a few miles from my house? It's gazing at these rolling views, with the wind bluffing around my ears, that makes me think about things like doing this blog (there you go folks, blame nature, not me). After a time, I can go back there and wonder how many people actually read it.
Walks in the countryside are truly ace though. It must be a combination of the view and the amplified effects of the weather that forces you into feeling both alive and part of some huge organic happening. If this is the place you go to when you are lost, you always come away with hope. As I said, it's ace.
Every time I have friends come to stay there's an obligatory visit, and it always generates such wonderful winning conversations. I guarantee that whatever the topic is on the journey there, it will be an entirely different one on the way back. And by that I mean the whole tone of a conversation will have changed - more positive and more at home with the world.

Chocolate Milk

Vaguely unsure of whether I'm asleep or awake I lie on my bed, on top of the covers. Every possible window is open to its fullest, yet makes little difference in these nights of such stillness. This is a stillness that allows me to hear the chiming of a tiny clock on the other side of town that I have never heard before, a stillness that carries the lulling rhythm of a railway track over two miles away to my bedside, and a stillness that allows me to measure the slightest, most delicate breeze across my back to the nearest millimetre.
There is only one thing that disturbs me from this posture, forcing my muscles to react against the continuation of this lovely dreamy summery night, and that is the thought of chocolate milk downstairs in the fridge. Suddenly I go from lazy reverie to a point where I'm forcing myself to stand upright and lurch half-asleep to the fridge humming away to itself in the kitchen.
I'm quite serious about this. Every so often throughout any given summer night, I make a trip to the fridge at least every half hour. And there really is nothing like it. Nothing.
After feeling my way downstairs, I open the door and bask in the lovely waft of cold whilst blinking in the light. My fridge is on slightly too high a setting, resulting in a chunk of ice on the back wall, and that is where my chocolate milk is hiding, hugging up against this mini-glacier.
The first big draught from the bottle is heaven, my knees sometimes buckling with pleasure as I feel the icy cold chocolate trickle down into my tummy. TIme stands still. Then I take another big drink. Time stands still again. I wait for the feeling to go away each time before taking another drink. Only after about three or four big glugs do I close the door and head back to bed, only to repeat the process in a half hour's time.
This is such a ridiculously simple pleasure, yet for me such an intense one. Only when I write something like this do I really reflect on how much of a pleasure it really is, yet in the accepted scheme of things it is hardly a footnote.
I'm not saying that we only remember only the 'big' things in life - that isn't true, but it does seem that often we devalue the tiny pleasures that seem to slip between the cracks.

Golf

What could I possibly write about the sport of golf that hasn't already been said, certainly by better and more distinguished writers than I? I guess it doesn't matter what has gone or been written about before when you're standing there at the tee, nervous anticipation trying its very best to break through your hopefully calm exterior as you address the ball. Or in my case, wild terror, and a vain hope that I don't raise up the mother of all divots and damage my club.
Just very recently I had the round of golf that got me hooked on the sport. I've played before, mostly on holiday or other such excursions, but this was the one. The course itself was nothing special, or at least certainly not exceedingly glamourous, being a little nine hole pay-to-play course hidden away on the south coast, but something about the sport finally grabbed me. A pretty little course, I was taken in by the meeting of chilled relaxation and enormous concentration, such harmonious surroundings existing purely as a backdrop to my ultimate goal - a small cup about 180 yards away.
Even when you're strolling around the course away from the pressure of the tee, the normal trappings of life recede into the distance. An aeroplane can occasionally be heard leaving its jet-trail scar across the sky, and the busy nearby A-road generates a vaguely noticeable hum on certain parts of the course, leaving you to ponder the minds of those people driving to and from one busy thing to another, whilst for you the world has stopped turning, at least for a couple of hours.
The dress-code and other rules of this club are modest, but they instil a wonderful behavioural backbone on the other golfers here. As long as you're here to play golf you're a friend of all others present, and there exists an instant friendly camaraderie - an amazing atmosphere that simply makes me lament the passing of so many social rules in normal life. Without being weak, I sometimes feel lost with so much freedom in normal life - I'm sure others do to, and maybe that is part of the attraction of any sport, with its rules in requirement of a fair playing field. Golf just amplifies this by its heritage, its clubhouse expectations and its very nature.
One day I might even be good at it.

Bricks

I've been holding off from doing this post so long it hurts. Each day I walk past a demolition site where an old factory is being torn down. It seems such a clichéd and obvious thing to write about that I just didn't bother. I mean, I'm sure anyone reading Join The Road can't wait to hear how such desctruction is symbolic of this or a metaphor for that.
But as I said, I walk past the damn place every day, and now each time I go by all I can think of is how I'm NOT going to write anything about it. Which means I have to, if only for sanity's sake.
Anyway, what is such a big deal about a demolition site anyway? It's more or less a fairly mundane thing really, surely such sites come and go all the time. Is it the child in me lusting after the noisy machinery or just the idea of such fantastic (and legal) destruction?

The signs had been up for ages before the the bulldozers turned up. Huge plastic boards warning passers-by of the impending doom of this particular factory, of how yet another little slice of my town's industrial past was being erased. I'm hardly trying to defend this eyesore though, with it's smashed windows from too much air-gun practice and it's peeling walls daubed with such nuggets of dubious wisdom as "Hitler was right".
After years of dereliction, it was all over in less than a week. It happened so fast it just didn't seem right, only surreal. A swarm of white vans, tabloids slung on their dusty dashboards, surrounded the place whilst the dozers started their work. Rather than one of those wrecking balls that you generally see on TV, these guys had this machine with a huge lobster-like pincer that methodically nibbled at the building and slowly tore it to pieces. There were no Hollywood sound effects either, with only the occasional muted falling of bricks to be heard over the lull of daytime radio. No rending of twisted metal or massive collapsing walls here, this was the health and safety conscious version.

A few days later and a calm carpet of dusty bricks now covers the floor of the entire site. It's strange how it all seems so smooth, even from just across the street, when to actually walk on it would be very difficult. The reinforcing rods from the various concrete parts of the building has all been gathered up into a single giant hairball and placed atop the bricks like an odd piece of abstract artwork.

Seeing all this happen is to witness the evolution of the town. Such demolition is a part of that strange half-remembered intermediary stage between what was there before and what is there now. I know that sounds so ridiculously obvious, but it is something that we always forget about, the inbetween. We seem so obsessed with the end result that we don't take time to appreciate the getting there.

Stephenville TX

It would be negative of me to say that this post was borne from laziness, so let's just call today's update a 'guest post'.
Hidden away on the new Jewel album, "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland" is this little honey 'Stephenville TX', which is certainly in the spirit of Join The Road, just written by someone a few years younger and much better looking. It seems that we're all on this journey together.

------------------------------------

Housewives trying to recapture their youth
By wearing floral print and suede
Fixing their hairdos with PC, chemical-free hairspray
Martha Stewart taught them to make on TV
I was raised a farmgirl
I'm too far from home, all alone on the road
Trying to figure out who I am now the the stardust has turned to sand
And the sand has turned to stone on the starmaking machine

I'm 31 years old
That ain't the end but it sure ain't where I began

And my daddy, he wrote songs and he broke colts
And he went back to school to get a degree
Now he teachs music to kids, he taught music to me
And this Alaskan girl was living in Stephenville, Texas
Yes, you guessed it, I moved here because I fell in love with a man
And I moved his ex-old lady's things out of the closet
The same closet I had to move my things back in
It didn't make me feel that great, as if to demonstrate
Everything's temporary given enough time
But hey, I've got nothing to lose
I'm a singer for crowds, I'm a writer of songs
Hey Mom, look, I'm an entertainer
I'm a modern day troubadour trying to find justice with six strings
Trying to make the world make sense out of me
Trying to be loved completely, trying to love honestly
Trying to find a decent high noon cup of tea
In another shitty hotel
I'm trying to listen to the leaves speak
Trying to steal secrets from fishes in the creek
Trying to figure out who I am
A singer, a pretty bad cook, maybe a good mom
What will it be?

And I'm 31 years old
That ain't the end but it sure ain't where I began

I'm trying to figure out who I am
But there's no hand to hold, no Doctor Martin Luther King
There's just syncophants
And the mindlessness on TV or in the magazines
On the latest ways to behave
So why not follow me, the blond bombshell deity?
I'll sell you neat ideas without big words
And a little bit of cleavage to help wash it all down
Hey, everybody thought Godard was a clown
And that ain't gonna be me

View from a window

What is it so relaxing to just sit and watch the traffic go by?
Depending upon how you look at it, I'm either lucky or unlucky enough to live on a busy main road. Although my town isn't the biggest around, I live right on the main artery through the centre. It's just gone 9pm, the light is slowly fading from the sky but the occasional lit cars still seem too bright as their headlights swish by beneath me, leaving trails on my retinas like a long-exposure photograph.
My apartment is two floors above a shop, my third floor eyrie being just great for such casual voyeurism. No-one ever spots me so high, above even the upper deck of the frequent double-decker buses that squeal to a halt at the bus stop opposite every 10 minutes or so, loaded with lounging teenagers busily hiding illicit cigarettes from the driver.
I silently scold the erratic one-handed driving of those with cellphones clamped to their ears. I imagine I'm down there amongst the high-pitched revving of a vintage scooter club out for a midweek evening blast. I wince at the oversized exhaust fitted to an improbably tiny hatchback and think how proud the owner probably is of the fact that the noise can drown out his stereo. Sometimes fate and the road conspire to throw up a fun surprise; tonight an ancient pick-up truck trundles by, its flatbed rear filled containing a fairground dodgem with a mannequin clinging to the wheel, its bright ginger hair wafting crazily in the breeze, framing a rictus grin.
It's great to see such things hurtling past my window. I never wonder, as some might, what their destination may be. It doesn't matter. The few hundred metres I can see in each direction is all that matters, and what I ultimately see is not individuals with lives and cares of their own, but rather a wonderful collage of metallic paintwork and tiny habits. Like a daydream, they are gone almost as soon as they appear; fading from memory before a tangible opinion can be formed, to be replaced by another.

Amelia

Can you imagine what it would be like to be three years old again? Not a single shred of cynicism to cloud your mind or furrow your brow. Every thing you do is a new experience and it's always, always exciting. Unless it's scary, and then you just refuse to do it, like not eating the funny bits of dinner that you don't like the look of.

Each Sunday I visit friends for lunch and just live for the pleasure of playing with their daughter all day. Usually I'll be subjected to an endless procession of books to read and games to play. Sometimes we'll do both at once. Often we'll play house and I'll endure pretend cups of tea and ice cream cooked in her miniature microwave oven (you try telling her that's not how it works). Sometimes we invent games and also make things too, which means fun with glue and glitter and generally being really messy.

This Sunday we took a trip to the park. Her mum told me that she had been looking forward to this all weekend. I was wearing a t-shirt that read "birth-work-death" in a logo that parodies the recycling symbol, and there I was having my cynicism washed away by a three year old endlessly climbing up the steps of the slide and shouting wheeee in a fit of giggles as she came hurtling down it.
I remember buying that t-shirt. I remember chuckling when I bought it. I just never envisaged myself wearing it a couple of years later whilst making daisy-chains in the sunshine.
I think she must have climbed that slide at least 30 times, and in fact one of the few Sundays where she actually got properly tired. She has enough much energy to put all of us to shame. Her chatter is essentially one question after another, a constant thirst for knowledge for which she doesn't yet have a purpose - she just needs to know. When she looks at me, it is always directly into my eyes. There is no evasion of eye-contact with her, nor any other evidence of the barriers we adults place upon ourselves to protect against our own insecurities. That will come later, and it makes me so sad.

But, each week I learn so much from her. She is the brake on my skewed view of life. It sometimes seems so very strange to me that this won't last forever, as each week she grows up a little more, but right now she is my balance in this crazy world.

Making sense of things

I still don't have a clear purpose yet. I'm guessing that no-one has read this yet anyway so I'm free to ramble. I don't even know if I can find clarity without writing things down- well that's my excuse anyway.

At this moment, blogging seems like a better idea in the head than on the blank glare of the screen - or maybe its just set myself too abstract a goal? Should I just start again and do one on football or something. Much easier.
It's probably something to do with my hoovering up episodes of 'Lost' at the moment, but I have this vague idea to present readers with seemingly random shots of life and it will all piece together like some gigantic puzzle. Or at least I think that's how readers will perceive it if there's no clear goal from the outset. Of course, life is like that; the puzzle may not fit together at all, or even if it does it might not be worth it. Or it might just look like a pretentious bunch of arse.

And that's part of the point. Is a life worth reading about? If I pretty much tell you right here and now that there is no way this blog, if indeed it ever reaches a conclusion, will ever satisfy like a good TV show or movie can, will anyone still be reading?
I'll admit right now that music, movies, videogames and other aspects of pop-culture will colour my writing. In fact, it was my delving into various videogame-related blogs, and my reaction to what I found there, which initially inspired me to do this.

Actually, that's probably quite a good place to start.

From Little Acorns...

A clichéd title line for my first post maybe, but it's a line from The Long Good Friday so I'll forgive myself. I'm writing this and I'm feeling worried that I haven't really thought this through. I mean, what have I created this for? Will anyone read it? Do I care if anyone reads it? Maybe this is all an experiment - testing my ego. Are my writing skills good enough to engage a reader, any reader? Will this be a meandering diary like that of a teenage girl? Christ, I hope not - but should I have a specific purpose? Will my posts just reflect my day-to-day interests or have a higher purpose? The title I chose has a purpose, but it's as deliberately ambiguous as the meaning in Dido's song "Stoned" from which it came.
Join the road, and let's see where we go...