clinging to the wreckage

  The journal corrects many memories. For example, I have been convinced for many years that I watched Good Riddance live in London just after 9/11 happened. However, I could not find any record of a show in London. I pulled out my old journal from 2001 and, sure enough, I saw them in Portsmouth and not London. I also found the record of a conversations I had forgotten… significant ones filled with meaningful revelations… forgotten and buried deep in the past. I was quite shocked to read a passage in which I was talking about going out one evening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with ‘Elizabeth.’ I could not recall, and still can’t, Elizabeth, although the more I think about it, the more I have brief flashes of recollection about this mysterious lady. A discovery such as this results in digging even deeper into the diary and I am reading backwards into the past to understand more of what happened and how it came to be. I’d written a passage about goals that I had set and how they had made me feel

  The swimming pool has always been a safe haven for me. When my family moved to South Africa, we were fortunate enough to be able to put a swimming pool into our enclosed garden. As South Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere, Christmas time happens to be in the summer. This was a concept that was completely alien to us having moved from the United Kingdom where it was frequently cold and raining, with Christmas being a snowy time in the north of England, where I am from. With Christmas being a summertime holiday in South Africa, we would stock the house with drinks and food, and we would hide from the world outside. No bustling traffic and frantic shopping, just family and friends around the pool, hidden from the world by a few small walls forming a private space. Nothing could beat those times. There would be New Year’s Eves when we would drive around looking for ‘the best’ party only for one of my friends to eventually suggest ‘let’s just go to your house and drink at the pool.’ Tho

  Last week I invested in a microphone, some software, and some online rights, etc, so that I can finally try to do something I have wanted to do for about twenty years and, for multiple reasons, mostly procrastination, have never done. This is to create a podcast and, eventually, maybe even have a live stream or a radio show. But, for now, I have thrown together two very experimental episodes in which I was mostly learning how to use the mic and software that are somewhat embarrassing, but, if you are interested, you can listen on the RSS Feed   or you can listen to them on   Apple Podcasts   or even   Spotify .  These initial experiments simply explore my own discovery of music and share a few songs from those discoveries, but I hope to expand and cover more areas of interest such as books, art, and travel, as time goes on and I become more familiar with everything.

  I took a break from work and went for a brief walk around the lake. I did so, wearing my swimming shorts so that I could get into the pool immediately upon my return. The temperature was around 38 degrees Celsius, making the swimming pool essential. As I returned from the walk and entered the building to make my way to the pool, an Asian lady in a white bikini emerged from the ladies’ bathroom and opened the gate to the pool. She held it open for me and I warmly thanked her. I got into the pool and began to swim lengths as the lady lay on one of the deck chairs at the side of the pool. I noticed then that we were the only two at the pool. I also noticed that she was incredibly sexy. As I swam back to where I had started, she looked at me and waved her hand in front of her face and blew out air to express how hot she was. ‘You should get into the water’ I boldly said. She smiled and replied ‘yeah, I was thinking about that.’ At that moment, one of the building managers walked by and I

  As a teenager, I saw a video of GBH playing live in Stoke, England, and it absolutely inspired me. I loved the sound, the energy, the chaos. I dreamed of someday seeing them live. In recent years I have seen them four times. Two of these occasions were in the last two weeks, once in Las Vegas, and last night in Dallas. To be able to see GBH in 2023 is something I am truly grateful for, and I am still amazed by their energy and power. They are legends and yet so down to earth. I took a break on the patio last night just before they played, and the vocalist was standing next to me casually chatting to the people around him. Then he got up on stage and set the place ablaze. Looking back, it never fails to amaze me how life unravels, and I am so grateful, always, for all of the opportunities I have had and all of the things I have done. ​

  Arriving home from Las Vegas and returning to normality is not easy. Reality is a joke. Where are the pools with the drugs and the booze and the punks and the tattoos? I don’t take drugs, but I strongly encourage them, especially for people who are boring. For the past five days I have been in Las Vegas for the Punk Rock Bowling Music festival and… well, where do I begin? Las Vegas is extraordinary. I arrived at my hotel, downtown, to a street full of punk rockers… more than I had anticipated even though the festival was starting that night. I did not realize at the time, due to my confusion over the time zone, that Greg Graffin of Bad Religion was in the hotel at that very moment in the midst of a book signing event. As well as this, bands were setting up at the Swimming Pool on the third floor for performances that would stretch into the night. This was to set the scene for the weekend. I struggled to get up to my room on the 10th floor because the escalator to the pool wasn’t work

  Arriving in Virginia Beach, the airport is a surprise… it is tiny and cozy. It feels like a private space. Walking out and getting an Uber is extremely easy. It took me a while to get to that point, however, as I had left my AirPods on the plane and when I tried to return for them, I was denied access. I walked to the loo and then returned to the gate… the ground staff called out my name and handed my AirPods to me. Relief. The Uber driver looked and spoke like Ned Flanders from the Simpsons. He attempted to offer me guidance, which I appreciated, but I felt he was forcing himself in an attempt to get a tip. He dropped me off and I gave a relatively large tip in Uber terms, but he never ‘liked’ it, which means, I suppose, like many things in life, it didn’t meet his expectations. He’d dropped me at the wrong hotel, which was my fault, but a kind old African American gentleman drove me down the street to the correct one. I checked in just before midnight and was delighted to discover