| Another Nail For My Heart |
[Apr. 10th, 2004|11:28 pm] |
A year ago I broke my foot, and it feels like only yesterday. The reason it feels that way is that for the last couple of days it's been hurting as much as it did while it was healing.
I'm listening to a CD of Squeeze singles at the moment, having seen Jools Holland on Jonathan Ross last night, and I'm getting quite maudlin. I had the album on cassette during my first year as a student and wore it out I played it so much. I bought a second copy for a friend, Alison, because she liked it so much and I remember her in my room in residences, swinging her feet up onto the spare bed and seizing a paperback and some orange juice in time for the line "legs up with a book and a drink" in Is That Love.
I'm also remembering another Alison, my ex fiancee this time, who wrecked my chance to see Squeeze play live by faking an illness or a breakdown or some such rubbish as soon as they came on stage, so I had to take her out the back to recover, where a bouncer banned us from coming back in again. As soon as it was too late for me to go back, she magically recovered. It was years - literally years - before I realised the extent to which she'd spent the relationship manipulating me.
I really do think Squeeze wrote the cleverest lyrics since Gilbert and Sullivan - look at Cool for Cats and Up the Junction.
I got quite cross earlier today when someone made a remark about escapism and it occurred to me that the word is always used in a pejorative sense. What's wrong with escapism? Why is it automatically a bad thing? We work for such a high proportion of our waking hours, what's wrong with a bit of escapism during the rest of the time to recharge the batteries and refresh the soul? Of course, if you're hiding in escapism to avoid dealing with things that are going wrong, that's a different matter. But for the most part these days when people say you're being escapist they mean you're being irresponsible, failing to face up to things, off with the fairies when you should be a good little drone.
Balls to that, I say. Up with escapism.
I'm not sure why I'm feeling so sour this evening. But right now, lemons ain't got nothing on me.
I've come across the desert
To greet you with a smile
My camel looks so tired
It's hardly worth my while
To tell you of my travels
Across the golden East
I see your preparations
Invite me first to feast
(Squeeze, Take Me I'm Yours, A&M Records 1978) |
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