Musical Meanderings

2005-02-18 at 10:46 p.m.

Ah, happy memories, I am listening to "Lovefool", off the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack (or rather, "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet", because we are too stupid to know who wrote the play, and because a cross is much cooler than an ampersand, naturally). That song always reminds me of my school play - we did Much Ado About Nothing, and I was Don John (and no, I'm not a closet cross-dresser, I went to a single-sex school).

My mother - who has, as I may have mentioned, gone a tad deaf, has just discovered that her ear drops contain bicarbonate of soda. I have to keep this from my grandmother. Now, I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression, and my nana is a lovely woman, but she has an odd fetish about bicarbonate of soda. For her, it is the universal panacea that the whole world has been looking for, it can cure anything from mouth ulcers to backache, just give her bicarb and nothing can possibly go wrong. This is, of course, much more foolish than my mother's cure-all, whiskey, and must be prevented at all costs.

I've just been out walking by Tower Bridge (and I bet that sounds interesting to people who don't live here, even though it isn't particularly) and they have a little man in a hut shining a mock-Olympic medal on the bridge saying "London 2012, Candidate City". Not that there is anyone to see it aside from me and the strangely large numbers of Chinese tourists around here (why here? and why are they only Chinese? this is a perpetual puzzle to me). What a waste of money, our money, all those parties for the committee (*cough* corrupt bastards *cough*), the parties to try to persuade people that, yes, we really want a load of visitors and redundant sporting facilities and people crowding the already over-crowded tubes. Not to mention trying to persuade the rest of the country that they should fund London's ambitions yet again, because they're all so inferior, whereas London isn't really a parasite feeding off tourism and revenues from everywhere else.

Politicians get on my nerves. Especially Ken nowadays, and this weird scuffle going on with him and some reporter who he made alleged anti-semitic remarks to, for no particular reason, and which the Evening Standard is taking gleeful joy in.

Anyway, on another subject...I don't think I have another subject really. I've just been converting files into mp3s for my player (The Ballad of Tom Jones and Liars Bar, but thats about it) and playing GTA: San Andreas. How I hate car races, I am terrible at them, but I am, if slowly, progressing through the game.

The Mirror In The Front Hall
Constantine Cavafy

The luxurious house had a huge mirror
in the front hall, a very old mirror,
bought at least eighty years ago.

A good-looking boy, a tailor's assistant
(on Sundays an amateur athlete),
stood there with a package. He gave it to one of the household
who took it in to get the receipt.
The tailor's assistant,

left alone as he waited,
went up to the mirror, looked at himself,
and adjusted his tie. Five minutes later
they brought him the receipt. He took it and went away.

But the old mirror that had seen so much
in its long life-
thousands of objects, faces-
the old mirror was full of joy now,
proud to have embraced
total beauty for a few moments.

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