02 March. It’s been a crazy bit of time over the past few weeks. The first was I wasn’t getting anywhere with the writing of lyric, I had a total block, did some minor lines, but nothing to talk about. The second was the demands of the campaign site, I spent time sorting it or updating it, seen someone today in Edinburgh about improving things, not sure how that’ll work out, but time consuming. Third I spent a lot of time using the app Zoho that I pay a good few bob per month, and I’ve been sorting out a tweet or X every fifteen minutes with regards the various categories that I stand up for. In Scotland I risk being locked up, so be it. I did my lower back in last Thursday, woke up and the sharp pains I got when I moved you would not believe, it took me two hours to get out the bed, crazy. No doctor available that day, got a paramedic out via the clinic and that was the following day. He was great in the examination but a bit vague on the issue. To cut a long story short I ended up being able to leave the house still in sharp pain walking but made it to the clinic yesterday and he sent me to the hospital for an x-ray. Did all that, feeling a lot better but want answers that I still await. The doc was going to write me out a 4 week sick note, I wasn’t there for that, I wanted answers. In asking do I need that he ended up writing me out a line to cover my sleepover Tuesday and Wednesday, not happy at that because I’m improving all the time, but so be it. Not had a chance to get to a barber, I’m really scaring the kids now! Been relearning the guitar, last time I picked it up was what forty years ago, I’ll play something at some point! I miss where my day job is, or am I saying that because it sounds good? Not sure. I do miss certain people there but there we go. 06 March. I had to phone in sick for my Tuesday (4th) to Wednesday sleepover, the doc said he wanted me to rest for the week, I thought a load of crap, he actually was trying to throw me a 4 week sick note, no chance. But it turned out he was right regards missing that sleepover, still a lot of shooting pains. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’ve still got shooting pains but they aren’t flooring me and I can deal with them. I just need to get a lot better before my sleepover on Monday 10th which I am not missing, but I don’t want anybody noting the pain which sometimes stops me, we’ll see. I know it might sound boring but over the past few days I’ve keyed in the latest three notepads of lyrics. The first had 52, the second 47 and the third had 48. The first was from 4th January to 18th January, the second from 19th January to 4th February and the third from 5th February to 27th February. I’ve assessed the what I call A5 folder containing all the original ideas and B5 contains 89, and I have now assessed they lyrics and I have 50 items in the C5 folder. I’ve printed each of them out and I need to assess every one and catalogue them into the five folders although I will say again, only four will be posted here, my private folder is my inspiration folder which reflects into each and every other folder but ain’t for publishing. 09 March. Over the past three or four days I’ve been sorting out all sorts of stuff. My lyrics regards C5 have now been foldered and I need to assess them, that’ll take a couple of weeks at least. I’ve had to do a lot of video editing regards my campaign site, and the stuff doing here is seriously difficult. I’ve found it difficult in that I’m back to the day job after three weeks, seriously nervous about the whole thing, and that’s just now; tomorrow I will be a joke but I will be doing the task. I should probably at this time deliberate about what is right and what is wrong. I ask that question endlessly and it gets me all sorts of responses. I have never physically hurt someone, I qualify that with saying that over the years I’ve had no occasions to rarely defend myself. And so to the lyrical point. You find a lassie and you are totally connected, what do you do? Of-course you move in and express your feelings! There’s the four folders that when it gets to the third generation, I publish in their respective folder. There’s someone I really care about and has to stay in my personal folder, such is life. Someone that doesn’t, in the simple fact is the combative of the world, I can fight back, but I do not think I would enjoy that. 11 March. It’s nearly 5pm UK time and I’m home from my sleepover, totally exhausted for various reasons. One – I’m no spring chicken any more and I far too often still behave as though I am, I should know better. Two – I’ve always loved caring for people, I used to get a buzz at the end of every shift thinking I made at least a wee bit of positive difference to that life, I ain’t felt that for a while, maybe I’ve been in the game too long. But it was a great feeling yesterday and talking to the guys or the ones I got a chance to talk to clearly missed me, I had a wee tear in my eye which I’m an expert at hiding. I’ve rambled, but I think the point I’m sure I want to make is it was great to be bloody back man. Three – I’m too well aware that I’m walking into an environment of potential blame. We all make mistakes, that’s what you call being human and yes someone’s life could be on the line for that mistake, but all the staff I feel are carers, they’re aware of the responsibilities that they take on board when they start a shift and it doesn’t leave until they clock out; but when that mistake is made there’s a pool of people that can end up getting pulled into it. I’m nolonger bothered about myself although I’ll tell you if I make a mistake I sure as hell torture myself for ages and I don’t know, my boss would tell you, I don’t think I repeat that. But getting back to that pool of people, I’ve seen it in the past too often, and I noted it last month with the latest mistake, a certain staff was involved in that error and shouldn’t have been. That person has their whole career ahead of them and if anything like me, could put you off the vocation, I hope it doesn’t because he/she is damn good at the tasks and has helped me out endlessly. That’s all I’ll say on the job, but that bad taste has not left me. Four – A couple of weeks ago, actually it was Thursday 20th February, I woke up with this extremely painful stabbing pain when I moved in the lower left side of my back; never known a pain like it, it took me two hours to get out the bed and I had to end up rolling out of it and throwing myself on the floor which I will take to my grave. To cut a long story short, I’m a lot better, I can now actually walk with no pain, a presence, but I wouldn’t call it pain. But the thing is after so many tests and stuff, I don’t have an answer and last night when I went to bed, like I do every damn night, will I wake up with this pain again. I didn’t so end of for now. There are points Five and actually Six but they are more of a personal nature. The lyric-writing is progressing. I took the C5 lyrics to work because I rarely sleep, there’s tons of paperwork to do with the job but I’m not at the point of focusing on it and doing the job to my best ability. I’m pleased with my progression, I’ve got a couple of weeks off and I’ll be sitting at this desk hopefully moving things forward. 15 March. I’ve actually been doing a lot of work for my campaign site but that indirectly has been involving this place in that when I’m gaining the footage that I want to use, I’m often getting ideas for my writing. There are a number of categories on the site including Climate Change, Diversity, Education or Indoctrination, Free Speech, there’s many others including Women’s Rights. I often gain a lot of lyrical inspiration when gaining the footage. I’ve not been using my notepad too much of late, been focused on developing the lyrics I have for C5, it’s sometimes difficult but I’m slowly getting there. I’ve got a book ordered to help me with the learning of the guitar, I’ll get it on Monday, looking forward to that. This study that is where I more or less live when home, other than the kitchen for a coffee or the toilet, I really need to sort the place out, there’s three drawers on either side of my desk and they’re full of junk. My drawers with my clothes, I need to throw out a lot of stuff that’s past the falling apart stage. A lot of stuff to do on that regards, women are more tuned in to tidying up, but I’m tripping over papers, gadgets, clothes, I tend to just look at the chaotic mess; need to tackle it. 19 March. It’s left 6.30pm UK time and I’ve finally placed on-line my latest work, placed on the C5 page. I’ve still got the Love Project to place there, still working on that, but I’m trying to learn the guitar, trying and failing to write current material and trying to I guess avoid things. Note the word ‘trying’, it crops up all the time, no point in elaborating. You’ll find a more detailed narrative on the lyrics on the C5 page which I ain’t done yet, the links to the lyrics which I’ve sorted to this point are there, any post/comment would be more than helpful. Met up with my sister today and it was brilliant seeing her, that hug when I saw her, magical. We didn’t talk much about the family gossip this time, don’t know how we got on to talking about our Mum and Dad and they memories which I feel are often more to me like ghosts. Absolutely amazing talking to her, she’s actually the only human being on this planet that can share my and our feelings of childhood, everybody else has passed away. And on that note I’m going to have a drink. 24 March. I visited my daughter yesterday, brilliant seeing her as always; she’s doing well. She was saying that she went out for a meal on Saturday into the city on her own and she says she thoroughly enjoyed it, a bit hung over when I was talking to her, no sympathy. She works from home, has plenty of pals that she regularly meets up with but she’s the only one that doesn’t have a guy. She says she’s not looking for anyone but she’s doing the right thing getting out and about, all her pals have now got babies or partners. Hoping there’s some inspiration for my writing from chatting with her, we’ll see. The person that was my inspiration to get back to the writing (and actually still is), I’ve not seen for a while and not sure if it’s a coincidence but I’ve kind of dried up on my writing. I’m going to back off on writing for now, I’ve still got the Love Project for the C5 folder to work on, but I ain’t getting anywhere so I’ll shelf that for a while. I’m going to spend time on looking at the contents of the Commodore, Amiga and PC folders. I don’t have the files anymore but I can download those that I feel need highlighted and/or developed and key them into a separate folder; that’ll be time-consuming but well worth it in the end. 24 March. Yesterday I was working on the lyrics in the Commodore BO folder and I was saying again yesterday that I felt I would need to key them in. I was thinking they had all been done via the old dot matrix, turns out a simple copy and paste to a Word document does the job! I’ve assessed a good few, a lot of memories come back from my teenage years on writing the germs of the lyrics. They were the days when my Mum and Dad wanted me to go to Uni and me and three of my compatriots bought a battered white van and ended up touring all around big chunks of Europe. We mostly slept in the van, did gigs and kept us going. Messed around what, bits of France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Finland. We actually went across to Soviet Russia and I was dug up taking a picture of the train we were on. That was Leningrad at the time, it’s now Saint Petersburg. Brilliant education of people. Lost two of my mates by the time we returned to England, was homeless for a while, but don’t regret the adventure, bitterly regret the youthful decisions I was part of, such is life. I wasn’t due back to the day job till the weekend, been asked to swap and I’m a sleepover tomorrow, looking forward to it although I’m struggling with time-management not doing the day job! I talked about lack of inspiration yesterday and that is sure the case. But assessing my old work I can maybe gain a bit of structure again, I hope so. A few hours have past and I’ve now completed the assessing of the Commodore BO lyrics. It was seriously difficult/emotional doing the task, as it will be for the other folders, too many memories come flooding back and I remember a lot of the music to the lyrics. Anyway, job done and I’ve foldered 50 of the lyrics to move forward from the 85 or 86 that are present just now. 27 March. I was updating my two sites as I always, well often will do. I found a lot of errors mostly to do with the site tech, needs sorted and shall. After getting that off my chest, and it’s not that big a chest, but there are so many varied things I carry, far too often I need to carry. I spoke the other day on my working on assessing the Commodore files, really chuffed at completing the job, I guess that’s a rare adult blessing I’m gaining from not needing much sleep! I’ve sorted out Commodore BO, BP and BQ. They brought tons of memories back, not just the writing but the occasion that I was writing about, difficult to remember, but important and relevant stuff mostly to do with what I’m trying to do with my writing now. I guess I had better stop chatting and get back to what really matters to me. 28 March. I’ve been at a tick the box training session today with my day job, I didn’t think it would remind me of a lot of things, but it did. Anyway. I had eight lyrics in the Love Project, I assessed them down to four and I feel I’ve got two of they four now working, needing a lot of work but there is potential. That work was done pulling out my bits of A4 and thinking on the trains to and from the training, I often do my best work that way, I was actually doing scribbles during the training but that’s something I would need to deny! God knows why I’ve got this crazy stupid desk! I have the dentist tomorrow at noon and the rest of the time is mine till a week tomorrow! Need to have the Amiga lyrics sorted, was looking at them and they are a mess. The Commodore lyrics that I want to move forward will be the lyrics that will replace those present, I don’t like the presentation, it was done years ago so it’s being removed, I’ll note the links for my archive, but that is it. Enough gabbing and back to work. 29 March. I hate dentists, it’s a childhood thing. In the bad old days my Mum would need to drag me into the place on Shettleston Road and underneath that mask I know he was having a good laugh. The smell, the sound of the drill, they’re stuck in my head. Nowadays, it’s a doc I see at the dental practice and he explains everything he’s going to do before he does it, but I still feel he’s smirking under that mask! Out of the four lyrics for the Love Project I have sorted the third one, really chuffed. Did it at 5.30am to say an hour later this morning. I’ve been looking at the fourth one and I shall see what I can do tonight. Like I said yesterday, I’m going to be revamping the archived files, I’ve sorted out on the pc what I want to upload with regards the Commodore and the Amiga files, still one folder to folder regards the later, shall do tonight. I’m going to change the names, Commodore, Amiga and PC are a wee bit dated, as am I; need to get more accurate. I’ll try and work out roughly the years they were done. There’s somebody I really miss that has always been a genuine inspiration to me in my writing and in other aspects of my life, not seen her for ages, but such is life. 30 March. I completed the lyrics for the Love Project for C5 yesterday, there’s four from the nine I started with. I’ve just uploaded them to this place just now. Glad that job is done, it was hanging over my head a bit. Still finding it difficult to creatively write, that inspiration just isn’t there, but I’m working on it.