I keep thinking I’ll write something about the passage of time and miscellaneous fun things happening along the way, but then the world keeps dropping another load of WTF and I lose the will to. Bitching about the likes of Alien Covenant, for example, no longer holds the appeal it used to.*
Still, time passes whether blogged or not, and really a fuck of a lot of it seems to have passed by this point. Just today my current PI isn’t in the office because it’s his 50th birthday. Meaning, yet again, I’m the oldest person in my lab, albeit by a mere 7 days. Is there anything else to say about being a demicenturion? I’m thinking not.
The event itself was pleasant enough, of course, with a fair amount of fine wine and fine food consumed in some pretty good company. For me the highlight was the preceding night’s American Style, a self-described “jam session” by Philip Glass & Laurie Anderson, plus cellist Rubin Kodheli, one of the loveliest shows I’ve seen in quite a while. It was uneven and meandering — aren’t we all? But even in the occasional creaky moments (their rendering of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Democracy’ didn’t really gel for me, for example) it was still mesmerising, and much of it was completely transcendent. Hard to complain about ageing against such a backdrop.
But, just to put down a few markers for the aforementioned whatthefuckery, so I can maybe remember later: Theresa May is holding what she seems to hope will be the last general election ever. Trump is On Tour. A suicide bomber struck an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. GOP special election candidate wrestled a journalist to the ground, thereby doing wonders for his image. Brexit staggers onwards towards its cliff-edge. And every motherfucker seems to want to make every fucking thing fucking worse. It’s perfectly possible I’ll be looking back on this list in 10 years time with nostalgia, harking back to a comparative Golden Age given what comes next.
Happy days, everyone!
*TLDW: it’s rubbish.