HOW DAYS BEGIN

I sometimes think that how days start out does tend to indicate just what sort of shape they’re going to end up having.

Take, for example, the morning a few days ago when I’d already woken up having had that dreadful night of the “Cold Shoulder” experience which I may already have mentioned.

Well, having successfully negotiated the routine parts of the day, I'd headed home with my plans in place to get through another day of spinning pizza watching and decided to kick it all off by going into the kitchen and brewing up a nice cup of joe.

I’d just made myself my morning cup of coffee and, in the spirit of saving the earth's resources just a little bit, I clicked off the light at the bottom of the stairs (because I’ve lived here long enough to be able to do that) when I became aware that, as I'd taken a step or two upwards, the end of the scarf, the one  that I’d decided to wear to try and keep my dodgy neck muscles toasty and warm, had plopped into my coffee mug and begun drinking it up.

“So, I thought, “That’s the kind of day that it’s going to be, is it...?” and rather grumpily removed the soggy scarf and headed upstairs.

And yes, it turned out that it was indeed that sort of a day.

The sort of a day that even picking up one of my old volumes of "Peanuts" cartoons to read at bedtime fails to lift. I have but five slim Coronet paperback editions which I was either bought or otherwise acquired in the early 1970s, and I recently just picked one off the shelf at random and was pleasantly surprised at just how unutterably brilliant they are - in a slightly melancholy way.

Reading them again last week, I can't help but think that most of the jokes sailed right over my ten-year-old head, but I suppose that's the beauty of them really.

Meanwhile, I caught the end of "Desert Island Discs" whilst I was driving around the other day, and, whilst I failed to remember the name of the composer being interviewed, she talked in such a media-friendly, soundbite-y kind of a way, that I began to suspect that it was all scripted.

After all, I wondered, would anyone really say "...his beloved Leeds United" in normal conversation....?

My "Media Sense" was tingling...

Anyway, whoever she was, she did mention the best piece of advice that she was ever given, and that was to write every day, which I suppose applies to words as well as to music. Even if it's rubbish, and you just want to throw it into the wastebin, she maintained, it keeps you in practice, and is a good thing to do because you're always going to prove to yourself at least that you are still able come up with something new.

This pointless piece of prose was therefore brought to you in precisely that spirit... and consigned to the wastepaper basket otherwise known as "Lesser Blogfordshire".