Well, here it is. My 70th birthday! Never really thought Id make it this far, truth to tell. Seems as good an opportunity as any to count ones blessings which are inter alia :- - my family, both nuclear and extended. It contains no troublemakers, neurotics or social retards: and, indeed, two of the funniest people I know - the more or less contemporaneous artists who have kept talking to me since early manhood :- Bob Dylan, Clive James (sadly dying), Stephen Spielberg, Elmore Leonard, Paul Simon, Ruth Rendell, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Ian McEwan, Stephen King, Margaret Attwood, James Taylor, John Le Carré, Woody Allen……. - surviving a (normally lethal) cancer: and the smiling, hugely competent Doctor Lerout. He healed body and soul - Lallans which crept into my brain from a variety of sources - rough pals in Glasgow, Oor Wullie, folk songs, Stanley Baxter (Parliamo Glasgow), Robert Burns and certain wondrously silly street songs, e.g. Ye cannie shiv yer grannie aff a bus and Ma brither is a fireman bold, he pits oo fires - my running group which - sans membership, bank account, legal entity or committee - has organized a beery fun-run every Saturday for 30+ years and, in the past, some heroically bacchanalian - indeed cuckolding - weekends away. The ultimate libertarian set-up - Big Pharma for correcting various chemical imbalances in the aging bodies of me and many of my chums so we can all stick around longer - my daughter whose absolute ease with her complex history is a joy to contemplate - I ache in the places where I used to play (thanks Lennie) but - and this is the point - not nearly as much as I thought I was going to - a smallish group of family and friends (they know who they are) whom I would happily trust with my life: and - I hope - visa versa - the blonde who taught me, through example, how to be happy - watching the abandonment of certain nasty coercions - capital and corporal punishment, naked racism (No Blacks), proscription of gays, much censorship, and the sheer, stultifying tedium of Scottish, no-fun Sundays - The Economist - Facebook, for the fun, the information, the staying in touch - entrepreneurship which allows me to make a living while having fun. (I was never much cop at having a job) - booze as a social lubricant and - occasionally - a mind-altering drug - W.S - of course - Dylan Thomas, PG Woodhouse, Ella Fitzgerald, Albert Camus, Emily Dickinson, Rudyard Kipling, Evelyn Waugh, Elvis Presley, Somerset Maugham, Jaques Brel, Thomas Hardy, CP Cavafy, George MacDonald Fraser, John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges, and - for their waspishness - three hyper-articulate lefties, Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, JK Galbraith ….. - life, I suppose
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 06:24:44 +0000
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