Living legend

Yesterday, I was ruefully musing on only having found out about this evening's Dale Watson performance too late to do anything about it.

Today, I am recovering from the shock that the fewer-than-300 tickets hadn't sold out within hours of Bob Harris using BBC national radio to plug Mr. Watson's only 2010 show in the UK.

Tomorrow, I expect to be a little tired and deafer than usual, but starry-eyed and grinning.

Thanks for looking

Welcome aboard, enjoy the ride and, fergawdsakes, don't read anything into what you find here. If you want to know what I'm like, invite me over for an interview. I would urge you to leave analysis to the professionals, if it weren't that I've known a shrink or two socially and wouldn't necessarily trust any of them to find their own derriere using both hands and a map.

If your next or previous stop is Facebook, the same applies there.

Origato, sayonara - or something like that; I only had a few lessons and that was a long time ago.

Tempus fugit

Time flies like a winged arrow - although, as Groucho famously added, fruit flies like a banana.

Anyhow, it will not have escaped your attention that August is now moving among us. For many, the significance will be that there are now more hours weekly during which they have to accept responsibility for their offspring; for others, it will mean a faster commute, as mothers take a break from daily ferrying their little darlings the few hundred yards to school.

For me, it means that I shall reach my half-century next month. I don't want to do that. I want to be 21 again, or 33, or 11 ... I want to be younger.

If I could track down the lunatic responsible for the canard about life beginning at 40, I should wreak severe physical damage upon their person, in punishment for promulgating such a despicable untruth. Did my life begin ten years ago? Hardly. I'm still waiting and I would not claim to be doing so with any great optimism.

A week or so back, the quack was obliged to warn me that when they knock me out, so that he can rummage around within my knee, there is an extremely remote chance of my being struck by any of a range of terrors, including deep vein thrombosis. He was most insistent upon playing down the likelihood of any such thing happening, while mentioning every faint possibility. If I thought that failing to awake from the anaesthetic was a real chance, I'd change my name and deny any knowledge of this prospective patient. This is, I fear, another manifestation of the Elfunsafety menace.

It's not what it used to be...

Nostalgia is, apparently, a thing of the past. Don't tell anyone, but... I've been indulging.

I usually ignore the occasional Facebook group invitation, but the recent one from an erstwhile comrade-in-arms aroused my interest. Three signings-up later, I am now in contact with almost 20 folks I've not seen in more than a quarter-century. We all served Queen and Country together, mostly in Cyprus, doing things we're still not supposed to discuss; I shall merely say that some of us were in the Royal Corps of Signals, while some were Intelligence Corps, but most of us had been taught Arabic, and let the reader draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, here's the problem.

With one or two trivial exceptions, I don't really miss the military life. And, although I'd love to re-visit Cyprus for a few weeks, it's not a hankering that keeps me awake at night. But...

Oh, ye gods and little fishes, my 50th birthday is approaching with most unseemly haste and I yearn pathetically to be, once again, just 21...

I want my money back...

At the end of last year, the local quack opined that my suffering was not a figment of the imagination, but could be attributed to a torn cartilage in my right knee. Five months later, I have endured at least four visits to three different GPs, two physiotherapist appointments, a couple of x-rays and a trip to the orthopaedic practitioner. A confirmatory scan is due to be carried out in a fortnight or so, more than five months after the initial diagnosis. The only change to the original conclusion is that it is no longer merely a strong belief; I have had the exact sites of the two cartilage tears shown to me, using a model.

Have I mentioned that it sometimes hurts a bit? The intermittently effective pills prescribed are, apparently, just a shade less powerful than morphine.

Those wonderful people in the NHS have proved themselves astonishingly efficient at collecting and spending my money during the three decades since I first trousered a pay envelope. Am I really an ungrateful wretch, now that I stand - unsteadily - in need of surgery, to ask for some of the NHS billions to be diverted in the direction of my knee?

All day long, I'd...

There is more to life than money. Just ask anybody who has enough of it.

I am so, so weary of having to count every penny.

Oxymoron No. 37: American Sporting Entertainment

When one has to set off no later than 06:40 for the daily commute, staying up until the early hours to watch television is probably inadvisable.

Monday's suffering, however, was more than justified by the spectacle of the Saints fighting back from a 0-10 deficit to thump the Colts 31-17, a record-equalling turnaround which was as entertaining as it was mathematically impressive.

This year's Superbowl was almost good enough to persuade me that I should watch American football more frequently than once annually. Almost, but not quite.

Meanwhile, I continue to contemplate an MLBTV or ESPN subscription, as Spring training looms with no suggestion that Channel Five might resume its twice-weekly baseball coverage. A live game almost every night? Not, perhaps, a good idea; I shall have to continue to root for the Cardinals without spectating. At least it will afford me some empathy with Ali, the chap behind the counter of our local corner shop. Born in Huddersfield but long resident in Surrey, he claims to be a Liverpool FC supporter while refusing to admit that he's never actually been to Anfield. At least I have the excuse of a major ocean standing between me and St. Louis...