In the interest of balance...

At this precise moment I'm in hardly any pain. The headache that plagued me for weeks has gone. It was replaced by a toothache and a pain in my ankle and knee. My life is based on the feudal crop rotation model, though instead of brassicas and allium, I'm harvesting tiny agonies. I'm currently enjoying a fallow season. No proper pain at all, merely midlife twinges. Fate, please don't look upon this as temptation. I'm not stepping to you. 

It's a reference to happiness but, yes, a really nerdy one.

A huge administrational imbroglio seems to have been lanced. Again, I'm typing with fingers crossed, but I'm really hoping that bullshit is behind me, and I can get on with doing the creative stuff again. 

I did a drawing recently and I really liked it. I might do more. Being middle-aged, I have patience now. I finish the things properly. My writing too, takes longer. It's more difficult to do, because it's done with more care. I want it to be better, and it feels as though it is getting better. There's more roughage, more heft. Fewer jokes. More research. More truth. 

I've been doing some singing. Blasted Heath will have a new EP out soon. I'm very proud of it. Some of the very best music I've ever been involved in. I've also been doing some other, more secretive singing. But I can say NOTHING. 

I'm going down to Dublin this week, to hang out with a childhood friend. He's over from Spain to meet his publisher. It's the first time I've been in Dublin for three years and, while there's going to be a massive Covid spike coming up, I don't have Covid at the moment. Only my boyish laughter is infectious. 

I'm going to see some modern dance at the end of the week. I really like watching dance. I think it's my version of sport. I get to see incredible athletes doing things with their bodies that I could never do, as I sit there sipping wine from a plastic cup, my limbs atrophied stumps. It's total theatre: the lighting, the costumes, and the music are always fantastic. And I don't have to hear the clumsy, fraudulent words of lesser writers too - what a win win!

I'm going on holiday. And as I'm going on holiday in the country I already live in, I don't have to worry about the endless bullshit of Easyjet. We'll let the train take the strain. 

I shall be buying a new computer. I bought this one over the internet during the pandemic, and it has never worked correctly. The keyboard is buckled and the "n" key either doesn't type an n at all or it puts in two or three. It sounds like nothing, but if you're typing up, say, thirteen pages of notes, as I was at the weekend, it soon starts to get you down, especially when your name is Joh Higgis. I appear to be strongly biased towards words with ns in them too. Never not-knowingly n-ing. You have no idea how many times I had to re-type that sentence.    

Lastly, the true author of all my happiness is Susan. I'm a ludicrous half-wit of a man. I can barely tie my own laces. I can't add, I can't remember things and I'm barely aware of my surroundings most of the time. I'm not even pretty any more (though in Belfast I'm competitive for my age. More than competitive. It's a low curve), but she still seems to like me. It's baffling, but there it is. 

Normal service will be resumed, I'm sure. But for now, cautiously, tentatively, okay. 

I really hope this post doesn't prove tragically ironic.