Lucky

I've been doing this blog for almost exactly seven years. My first entry was about the mirror I'd broken the previous day.

Looks like my luck is about to change...

I scraped my hand against a wall on my way to work this morning. That's not going to happen any more. No more grazed hands for Paul, no sir. Fortune may favour the brave, but it also favours the mirror-breakers, seven years in.

Time to start gambling. First up, the Grand National.

I just placed a bet that the Grand National was happening this coming weekend, and got tremendous odds.

William Hill wasn't open, so I decided to bet with Henry Hill (Ray Liotta's character from Goodfellas). I have my fingers crossed that he'll pay out. I know he may not be the most trustworthy of people, as he is both a gangster and deceased.

I should have gone with Hank Hill from King of the Hill. Or Silbury Hill from actual hills.

With my winnings, I'll probably buy some hand balm.

***

I just stabbed myself in the thigh with a fountain pen to emphasise how thin my jeans are.

No, that's not true. No-one uses a fountain pen. Not these days.

I'm finding it difficult to concentrate. It might be the weather. It's close. Humid. Muggy. There's no room to think, because every gap in my brain is filled by the disgusting air.

Yes, I'll blame the weather. I feel like I'm drowning in a grain silo.

I just turned on a small desk fan. It's been on the top shelf for ages, gathering must. Now it's back on, but is very, very weak. It's not blowing away the cobwebs, it's not blowing away the grain. It's barely blowing at all. But to turn it off now would be an admission of failure.

Oh, hang on. It seems to be picking up steam. That's good. I feel vindicated. It's like when you decide against drowning a stupid friend, and then they turn out to have a lovely holiday home. Patience is a virtue.

If I could do anything I wanted to with the rest of my life, I'd like to be caught, paralysed and webbed-up by a giant spider.

Not eaten; that would be horrible. No-one would wish for that.

But if the spider perhaps died of natural causes after the webbing, or moved abroad, it would be an ideal situation for everyone.

I'd be nice and secure. I wouldn't have to worry about paying the bills, or attending christenings, or arranging MOTs. I'd be paralysed, so I could sell all of my juggling clubs.

I could just lie down, in a soft cocoon, on a bed of webs, and have a nice sleep.

What could be better than that?

It's practical, it's economical, and it just makes sense.

And yet, if I were to describe that scenario in a job interview, in answer to the question "Where do you see yourself in ten years' time?", people would be all like "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!".

Happy Friday, everyone.

Wax

I've got the theme to Rosemary's Baby in my head. Is that a good sign of mental wellbeing?



I'd like to do this song at a karaoke night. I think it would be a real crowd-pleaser. Especially if I turned up dressed as Mia Farrow, and there wasn't even a karaoke night planned. It would just be me, in a dress, playing the song on my ghetto blaster and belting out the "la"s. In a Wetherspoon's. With a baby.

A real crowd pleaser.

But I'll probably never get around to it. 80% of ambitions are never fulfilled. That's a national average. I don't know which nation, but it is definitely the average there.

Which do you think is the most ambitious country? Mauritius rhymes with ambitious (sort of), so that's one indicator. Turkey can be abbreviated as 'TRY' - that's another.

I think the least ambitious country is probably Neptune. It doesn't even have its own flag.


I try to deal with potential failure by micro-managing my ambitions. I have them, but I almost immediately snuff them out. I vow to achieve something and then decide against it before I've even had time to complete the thought. Whilst writing the last sentence, I passionately strove to swim the channel and then tore my wetsuit to ribbons.

During Lent, I fluctuate between action and inaction at such a frequency that I become invisible.

Ambition can be useful. It can make people improve themselves and the world. But it can also cause people to inflict terrible atrocities on others, under the guise of progress.

For me, the main benefit of ambition is that it rhymes with lots of things, and so is of great use in a freestyle rap battle.

Just think about it.

Ambition
Tradition
Mission
Wishin'
Chicken
Kitchen
Bitterne
Fish un (French for 'fish one')
Leon Britton
Mitten

You can arrange those in any order, and you're liable to come away with some kind of commemorative turntable.

In conclusion, remember the lesson of Icarus:

Visit Crete.

Power Station

This tab (computer box flap) has been sitting on my browser (internet-looking-at tool), taunting me for hours. I've been too stubborn to close it, even though I have nothing to say. I was waiting for a brainwave, but there wasn't one.

But my stubbornness can't be so easily overcome. I can make my own brainwaves. I am a turbine. Turbines make waves, as far as I understand. Turbines and the moon. That's how tides work.

I am a turbine.

I am also wearing a turbane (that's an urbane turban), and holding a turbone (supercharged femur). Also: OTHER VOWELS THERE.

You can't just sit around waiting for a handout. You have to grasp opportunity with both hands, and don't let go, even if the opportunity you're grabbing is asleep in a stranger's pram.

Inaction is a disease. Walk it off.

If you're in a hole, build yourself a mud ladder. If you have no skin, learn to knit. If you've been shot, paint the bullet and sell it at a local market. Encourage further shootings to increase stock. Diversify with painted knifes and hypodermic needles.

Expand. Attend the market more frequently. Hire more staff to deal with the increase in demand. Market yourself. Staunch the bleeding. Take out a small business loan by using your father's car collection as collateral.

Create a franchise. Drive other bullet-sellers out of the market with shady business practises. Decrease your staff's salary and buy a yacht. Ensure that conditions are in place so that no other victims of shootings will ever achieve even the tiniest sliver of success.

Go home to your wife and your heterosexual children. Tell her about your day. Buy her a griddle pan. Accept her thanks. Put your portrait of Thatcher in a gilded frame because YOU CAN AFFORD IT NOW.

You're British.

Never forget what that means.

We don't need any help, so why should anyone else? It wouldn't be fair.

Fair is fair. Starting from....



now.

Development

This may be controversial, but I believe all Panamanians are liars.

Ask them. They'll say they are not liars, proving my point.

***

I don't know, man...

It's been a strange couple of decades for me. I just haven't had much stability. Moving from school (primary) to school (secondary), from college (sixth form) to college (Mansfield), living in a wide variety of different buildings, being a wide variety of different heights.

I can't tell you how many pairs of shoes I've owned since the 80s, but it must be over a dozen.

I should bring an end to this erratic lifestyle. I'm nearly thirty. It's time to settle down. I'll settle down at thirty.

No more frivolous age changes. No more increasing my age by a year on an annual basis. No more following the latest trends and fashions for incremental ageing. I need to make a choice and stick with it. Thirty will be where I lay my hat and build my house on a non-sand foundation. I'll stick my flag in the earth and move forward never more.

Unless I get bored. Which might happen. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But only once. Unless I get bored.

I don't know, man...

It's like the man says: "It's like the man says".

It would be different if I had a calling. Not better, but different.

Imagine if I'd always been obsessed with becoming a darkroom.

That would give me a goal to work towards. I'd spend time excavating my torso, installing one of those red light bulbs, considering ways to contain developing fluid without poisoning myself. That kind of project would make me excited to get up in the morning.

Would I develop photographs in myself, or would that duty fall on others? Would the prominence of digital photography make equipment more expensive and harder to come by? Would a life spent as a darkroom mean that I would have to stay relatively still, reducing the time I had for actual photography?

I wouldn't have been so aimless in my education and employment. I'd know exactly which courses to take (photography, human structural engineering, marketing). I could have done an internship at a photography studio, or gain experience in some other similar project (such as a woman who has decided to transform one of her legs into a greenhouse).

I'd know who I was. I'd know where I needed to be, and what steps should be taken to get there.

[Side note: I just spoke to Lucy about the possibility of becoming a darkroom. Her response: "It would be difficult. It is quite dark in the human body, but there isn't much room." Always the comedian, she is.]

You see these Olympic athletes, and they've known what they wanted to do since they were five years old, and have worked towards achieving that goal ever since. Direction. Discipline. Courage in the face of adversity.

There is no human darkroom Olympics, as far as I'm away, but the comparison is still apt.

But of course, there are drawbacks to having that kind of focus. You can lose sight of other options. You may be trapped within a narrow channel of purpose. What if you want to change your mind? What if you're two weeks away from the Olympic long jump finals and you realise you would rather jump shorter distances?

And, by the same token, my darkroom ambition could be similarly restrictive. I might decide half way through the process that I no longer want to be a darkroom. Someone could have almost finished wiring up the electrics in my rib cage, and I might decide that I'd rather be a professional skateboarder.

That would throw a spanner in the works.

Maybe I'm better of being vague and ephemeral. I can change my mind at any point. That freedom may leave me feeling aimless, but at least I have options.

I won't take any of those options, but I still have them. Not taking options is an option that's open to me.

And it doesn't mean I can never be a darkroom. Perhaps one day I will be. When I'm retired, I'll have all the time in the world for that kind of stuff.

I'll be respected when I'm old (after forty years of being thirty).

"Look," my grandchildren will say. "That's my granddad. The awesomest skateboarding darkroom who ever snikeblommed".

(The word "snikeblommed" is future slang, the meaning of which won't be known until Easter 2019.)

I don't know, man...

and there's nothing wrong with that.