One Hour
I’m forcing myself to take a break from work for an hour. An hour to empty my head into the keyboard. An hour away from all thoughts about programming, workflows, form designs, or anything else I’ve been submersed in for the last couple of months. I made this decision after unwittingly working straight through lunch yet again. We’ll call this a ‘late lunch’.
The sun is shining outside. I’m wearing shorts! I looked out of the window after scraping myself out of bed this morning, and remarked to my other half about it – she half smiled with her eyes still closed.
While I got on with having a shower, making lunches, cups of tea, feeding the cats, and so on, my other half didn’t appear. Three quarters of an hour later she finally arrived in the kitchen, and shot a glance at me that spoke volumes. Apparently Miss 14 had been threatened with being pulled from a rugby tournament at the weekend. A minute or two later a thunderous voice began bellowing from somewhere upstairs:
'YOU ARE SO MEAN! I HATE YOU!’ (pause for reaction) 'I REALLY, REALLY HATE YOU!’
My other half turned to me, after taking a sip of her tea, and quietly said 'she got better quickly after only just managing to murmur that she was too poorly to go to school’.
This is where I admit that I become completely distracted writing this, after 'Freedom 90’, and 'Can’t Fight This Feeling’ were played on the radio back-to-back. I might have to go lookup Freedom on YouTube – it had the video with the supermodels, didn’t it. I mentioned to my other half while washing up last night how lucky we are to have grown up during the period we did – I think Depeche Mode were on the radio at the time. You just don’t hear the breadth of invention in music any more – nobody wants to take chances, because there’s too much money at stake. You will never see another Roxy Music, Bronski Beat, Depeche Mode, Thompson Twins, OMD, or New Order – because they are too different – too much of a risk. When I was young the rules of music were being re-written, because new instruments appeared – the Yamaha synths, Boss drum machines, and so on. Now it can all be simulated via computers, everything has become derivative.
ANYWAY!
I need to get on with my work, before I start writing an essay about the brilliance of Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Duran Duran, and a hundred other bands that once had their names scribbled on cassette tapes in my bedroom.