by I’ve had an inch-wide ball-like lump on my back for the last few weeks. On Tuesday I was seeing the doctor anyway, so I showed it to him. He said categorically that it was a benign cyst. I hope he’s right. I’ll try and have it removed when I get back to Romania in September. He also wrote me two prescriptions for my antidepressants so I can stock up for my trip. Then I’ve got my incessant sinus problem to contend with. I was always a one-pillow person. Lately I’ve been using two. Last night I added a third, so I could really prop myself up. Two other rules: drink camomile (should I include an h?) tea before bed, ensuring I inhale plenty of steam both from the kettle and the mug, and no screens after 10pm. The heat hasn’t helped. Last night was just a couple of degrees cooler and got by without the fan; I had my first proper night’s sleep for ages. But I didn’t feel fully refreshed, even after that. I’ve been fumbling in a fog of near-permanent fatigue for weeks on end.
This morning I had a two-hour session with David (one of two Davids I now teach) who had his 16th birthday when he was in Tunisia with his family. He didn’t think much of the place; he showed me a beach strewn with camel shit. (Here’s David Bowie talking about camel shit in a song from Scary Monsters.) We played the skyscraper board game I came up with last summer; he suggested a rule change which I was a big fan of.
I recently listened to Too Many Friends by British band Placebo. It opens with an impressive “My computer thinks I’m gay” and then goes on to say “This is my last communiqué down the superhighway.” It’s about social media, and it’s no coincidence that it came out in 2013 when social media stopped being an ignorable sideshow and noticeably – depressingly – took over from everything else. Superhighway appearing in the lyrics is interesting. In 1995 the internet was this newfangled thing often termed (in the UK at least) “the information superhighway”. Placebo have been around for ages; they were already in business by ’95.
I heard a couple of other interesting songs last night on Muzicorama. One was the satirical Short People (1977) by Randy Newman. The other was the brilliant Fire Lake (1980) by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band.
Fifteen days to go.
