White knuckle

At odds with the lyric in that Stranglers' song, the clouds are interesting here today (and not just in Sweden). From my study I have been watching various showers and other meteoroligical phenomena chasing each other across the sea. I can also see the Palace Pier and its various "rides". On a day like this I wonder why anyone would want to have themselves hurled about and blood draining levels of "g" inflicted upon themselves. As I contemplated that big arm that spins round in a vertical plane with a pod full of nausea at each end I found myself thinking about my first trip on a big wheel. When I was about 5 or 6 I lived in Glasgow. Around Chirstmas time there would be a fair and circus at the Kelvin Hall, maybe there still is. Only recently did I realize that that absolute temperature scale and the conference venue were linked. Lord Kelvin must have been quite someone, scientist, businessman, benefactor and so on. Anyway, his hall is big enough to fit a fair and a circus in it at the same time. The only problem with this event was that my mother would try to persuade my brother and me to have a sleep in the afternoon so we had enough energy to stay up late; this, in my opinion was not a successful strategy and inevitably lead to angst. The best example of this was in 1974 when we had a holiday in Ibiza; there was to be a firework display in the town which would be visible from our apartment roof. I was ten and my brother seven, as the pyratechnics would be happening later than we would usually go to bed, we were despatched for one of those (albeit rare) afternoon naps which, in this particular intance, I remember escalating into a great deal of waling and gnashing of teeth. Later I met a girl from the next door apartment who had been waterskiing earlier in the day. When I asked her "how was your water-ski"? She replied to my utter embarrassment, "how was your sleep?" Anyway, back in the Kelvin Hall and this particular year the clowns, the undoubted highlight of the whole show, arrived with a car which they drove about the ring and sytematically destroyed. Entertainment that for this young person, could not be improved upon. Consequently, every subsequent visit to a circus anywhere was a disappointment as there was never another vehicle. I am not sure if it was the clown car year, but I agreed on one occasion, to go on the big wheel with my Dad, actually, I must have persuaded him to take me on it as I don't reckon he was that excited about it himself. Up until then, the most daring thing I had attempted had been the all too ephemeral experience of a ride down the helter skelter sitting in a folded-up front door mat; ten seconds wondering if the end was just round the corner, and then a grazed leg. Not brilliant compared with the likes of "Oblivion" at Alton Towers or better still the roller coaster that is entwined around and through the New York New York Hotel in Las Vegas (properly violent). So, once on board the big wheel, despite the fact that is was relatively slow, indoors and not in a force ten gale, I buried my face in my dad's tweedy coat and cried the entire time.

Coffee and Cigarettes***

The third film of this name from Mr Jarmusch is the first one that I have seen. A series of what those film buffs would call vignettes, I found this a bit clunky to say the least, particularly as it would appear that much if what is going on is improvised by the (in some cases) rather self-conscious players. The segments are all in black and white and feature coffee and cigarettes as the main props (get it); some it has to be said, were quite enjoyable, there is one with Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina which I particularly liked.

Should I post this?

Dominic mentioned recently on Critical Mass that Peter Hammill tells us that the older you get the better able you are to make decisions but the fewer choices there are available to you.

What are the things that have the most impact over who we are and how we spend our time and over which we have control? Some would say that you choose your parents and that this life is entirely predestined but if we put that to one side for the moment, the answer is 'decisions'. At any given moment, we can take a decision or not. More so than working hard (although you can decide to do that) or the amount of effort we put into our daily lives generally, the decisions we choose to take have more of an impact on us than anything else we can do.

If I had not decided to move to London when I was 22 I would be living somewhere else, doing a different job, living with a different person and so on, (assuming I hadn't been run over and killed the day after I had been due to move).

Most of the best times I have had have resulted from decisions I have made, and certainly most of the worst times can be attributed to not making a decision at all, more so than making bad decisions. So my ability to make decisions is the single thing (over which I have some control) which has most influence in my life.

But when I was at school, for some reason, they wanted to teach me what year the Prussians invaded Bolivia instead of how to take decisions.

(The Barefoot Doctor suggests that you might as well decide to be happy, which should be a relatively easy decision to take even if you believe that everything is predestined).