Ashes to ashes, dust to dust - The springs in ma mattress aint never gonna rust.

Not my words, Anna, but those of Marilyn Middleton Pollack, the singer on ‘Mardi Gras’. Still, as precepts go, that’s not a bad one. Precept? Nowadays you would probably call it a ‘mission statement’.
And please thank Brian for the information. As soon as I saw the name ‘Max Collie’ it all came back to me.

As regards my old 78s, I do not think you could buy a machine now that would play then (unless, perhaps, second hand on eBay).

Last night, I thought I would play some ‘happy jazz’ – and what did I find?
St James Infirmary, Careless Love, Since my best girl turned me down, Basin Street Blues… I am lying – I did find some (fairly happy) jazz and listened in bed, with the headphones.

I’ve been talking to John (he of the slim-skull). Well, actually he started the conversation; the usual thing: What are you in for? What are you on? I told him about your impending visit; I think that was a mistake. He asked if you were my first love? Well, not quite, I replied. He told me he remembered his first love. And his first kiss: at the back of the bike sheds, at break-time on a wet Wednesday morning. He said her name was Sharon, and that she was ‘more experienced’. Well, I said, girls usually are. That’s true, he replied – especially teachers.

He says he hasn’t got a girlfriend now, and he’s lonely. (Although how he can be lonely with all those ‘voices’ he hears… I just don’t know.)

The mind is a strange place, Anna. I was going to say it is an alien land – but how can it be alien when it is part of us? Even so, we know more about the Moon than we do about the mind. We’ve mapped the brain pretty well: Frontal lobe, Parietal lobe, Occipital lobe, Temporal lobe, Cerebellum, Brain stem… And this is only the ‘outline’ map; there are more detailed maps showing which bit does which, and to what. But I can’t be arsed going into all this stuff now - my brain hurts. (Actually, if I wanted to be pedantic – and I usually do – he brain does not feel pain. Isn’t that odd?)

But what about the mind? Is it part of the brain? Well, if you slice off the top of the skull and try to find the mind, it would be like looking for the pictures in a television set. The mind is not a thing – it is a process: a function of the brain – isn’t it? Or is it more than this?


I know I have talked about dreams before – well I am talking about them again. I dream every night. And I awake like a traveller returning from somewhere – but where have I been? Of course this may be just an illusion: the brain keeping me entertained while it goes about its ‘off-line’ work: sifting, sorting, deleting information (much of which is taken in subliminally). Freeing-up memory – to use a computer analogy. If it were not for this ‘housekeeping’ the brain would become clogged up. I know all this, but sometimes my dreams are so vivid, so strange, and yet so familiar, that I wonder if there something else involved. But that is silly. What else could be possibly be involved?

Have you read “The man who mistook his wife for a hat”? Oliver Sacks tells about what happens when things go wrong with parts of the brain most people don’t even know exist. As a neurologist who describes himself as a “…theorist and dramatist” (Theorist and dramatist - just like me, Anna!), he stresses the need for a new discipline which he suggests may be called “the neurology of identity” to deal with the “…neural foundations of the self, the age old problem of mind and brain.” I take this as an attempt to bridge the gap between the physical and the psychical, and describe how identity or personhood be related to a physical organ – the brain.

I’ve been farting a lot. Clive says it’s the medication. I think it’s the food. You can have too many vegetables, you know. And when you think of all that stuff fermenting and bubbling inside of you and producing all that methane – well, no wonder you fart.

I think I have lost the manual on life. You know, the one they gave you when you were born, that told you how to react in any given circumstances; the one that told you what to think and feel; the one that told you how to “… keep your head, when all around are losing theirs…”; the one that told you whether someone’s behaviour was acceptable or not – and when to “call it a day”.
So I am cast adrift upon the sea of life, with only the stars to guide me – and it’s a cloudy night.

Sorry to hear about Brian’s car; still, even a Volvo needs attention from time to time. Personally, I favour the Japanese motorcar for reliability. Anyway I hope he won’t be too long in getting it fixed. This place is beginning to get me down and I don’t think I can stick it out much longer.

And by the way - fancy your not knowing flared jeans are back in fashion!

The lonely linoleum yearns for the imprint of Swedish stilletos.

George