A little patience?

Firstly, do not panic! I will tell you here and now that my track today is nothing to do with Take That or Gary Barlow. Good grief! I feel soiled and damaged even mentioning that kind of thing. I might have had another birthday today but I have not gone completely batty. Don't shoot me just yet. I am clinging onto my sanity (maybe) by my fingernails but how long I can hold on before I fall off that cliff is anyone's guess. Bloody hell! Cliff! The day I say I don't mind Cliff Richard, please someone run me over with a steamroller/bus/train/tram/herd of cows. What about Englebert Humperdinck? Is he OK to like? Actually, if I can still pronounce Engleburk Hupledink by then with my falsies flopping up and down (TEETH! TEETH!) I'll be doing well! It's probably easier to say than write....

Certain things in life lately have certainly taken their bitter toll and have turned me into more of a cynical, mistrustful old bag than ever. In actual fact, I didn't have far to go. Dad promised me a bucket and spade when I was about three. He forgot and came home with a dratted ice bucket instead. I know he should have been given points for remembering he needed to get some sort of bucket and he did like his whisky at the time. That was no consolation to me at that tender age and I guess I made him pay for his mistake for the rest of his life. If he'd have been buried instead of sitting on the mantleshelf in a scatter tube, I would have had 'Dad! Where is my bucket and spade?' inscribed on the headstone along with 'I want to build a sandcastle in the bunker on the second hole of that golf course in the sky.'

Can I make a sandcastle in the bunkers on golf courses? Mom used to take me for walks when I was very little across a golf course in Brunei. I imagine it's quite a dangerous occupation with all those balls flying around. Maybe that explains everything....

Well not all the world's problems can be sorted out if you are prepared to wait for a while but the good news today was that my Xen box likes patience. I have to switch my laptop on and log in but then wander off to have breakfast for 20 minutes and whoopee! When you go to get on your Xen box, it's straight in as long as you don't click on anything and wait until it's stopped gurgling and flashing at you. Marvellous! I won't get over excited but I reckon that's sorted!

You know, patience is a very hard virtue to possess especially when you are knocking on a bit. With one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin, you could breathe your last while waiting for the bus, or even worse, when you are actually on it, like the man who was sat next to me on the top deck of the number 37 once. He was leaning on me really heavily and I gave him a bit of a nudge when we were going round a roundabout. I was a bit surprised when he fell out into the aisle in a sprawling heap. I assumed he was drunk, pressed the bell and ran down the stairs to get off the bus, telling the driver about the man as I got off. I found out a couple of weeks later that the man had died. Don't think too badly of me. I was only 15 at the time.

Track? This was on the radio this morning when I was burning my scrambled eggs. I remember reading ages ago that it only took David Bowie a couple of minutes to write it and he'd burst into tears afterwards as the lyrics meant such a lot to him at the time. Sob! - Absolute Beginners