Ach well...!

I’ve often heard it said that death, seemingly the most final of things, is very much like ‘going home’. You are only returning to where you were previously, to a state of un-living. That may well be one way of looking at it; another is that death is an utter bastard and should be avoided Thomas-esque style, at all costs. Lemmy, that diesel-faced bass player, once said that the secret of long life was  to ‘keep breathing’ and, philosophically, I can make no advance on that.

Mind you, if there were any guarantees associated with an after-life, and you could get it in writing that it was a rather pleasant reality, then I think I’d be about ready to press the fast-forward button.

I certainly don’t feel ‘at home’ in this life that’s for sure.

I think that if you start the whole thing off badly then it’s difficult to catch up on yourself. Like trying to catch a train that’s picking up speed. I have always felt certain that everyone knows far more about ‘things’ than I do. I feel that maybe they have been let in on a simple secret that I somehow missed. 

Maybe for this reason I've always been amazed when anyone pays any notice at all to anything I have to say. Everyone seems so sure of what they have to say whereas I am ‘tentative’ at best. I offer my opinion expecting to be blasted by the simple secret. To be lambasted and ridiculed for my sorry naiveté. My callow, simpering innocence. Often, though, at some point in the future it is proved that I may actually have been partly right, my intuition has proved sound perhaps, but by that time it is of course too late. It appears that the maxim about ‘shouting loudest’ holds a great deal of truth.

I’m thinking all of this as I’m waiting for a friend to arrive on an aeroplane. We've never met face-to-face.  She’s younger than I am but older as well. She seeks adventure like a hungry tigress and I’m nervous of her youth but also of her expectations. I hope she wants what I have to give her. I give it freely, so that, in that spirit she is free to travel on unbound to live her dreams.

Most of all, I hope she doesn't vomit when she sees me..