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Not Dark Yet #360: A drowsy numbness

18/7/2023

4 Comments

 
Picture
Sartre and the Beaver by Phillippa Clayden (Private Collection)
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My apologies for absence. The plague which I had managed to avoid for a couple of years finally caught up with me on Boxing day last year. The usual stuff: high temperature, cough, sore throat, headache, loss of taste and smell. I quit nicotine and achieved dry January. Enough already, I thought.

But like the struggle, it continued. And yes, April was the cruelest month.

There have been positive blips in the long lethargy, the drowsy numbness which pains my sense. Only now, however, have I felt up to posting for the first time this year. Why now?

Not the good news - the music, the cricket and (in the last couple of weeks) the baseball, friends and grandchildren. It’s the bad news. It’s the fucking politics.

Jill won’t listen or watch.  But I feel drawn to the spectacle; to the viciousness of the Tories and the refusal of Labour to recognise and commit to repealing the ideological nastiness.

It’s the anger and the frustration that has woken me from the drowsiness, the numbness of the last few months.

I feel better for it.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob’s sensational series of shows across Europe with random covers from the Dead, Van Morrison, Merle Haggard, has been a constant. But today, Bennyboy released his Best of: In the End There’s Just a Song. Even by his standards, it is a very special compilation.


4 Comments
Allan
18/7/2023 16:48:12

Welcome home. It's been a while. But yes, anger is the strongest emotion - and there is currently a hell of a lot to be angry about.

Reply
ChrisB
18/7/2023 19:40:42

Yes, get angry. And stay angry.

Reply
FelicityP
18/7/2023 19:43:21

Ok then: Keats or Dylan?

Reply
PaulS
31/7/2023 14:07:03

Love the picture. Have googled the artist but can't find this painting. Where is it?

Reply



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     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

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