You may have heard through the media that the esteemed Welsh Assembly Government Minister for Health and Social Services made a bit of a boob earlier this week.  After arguing for well over an hour against an inquiry into the Welsh Ambulance Service, he managed to press the wrong button, allowing the Plaid Cymru motion, in favour of an inquiry, to be carried.  Much egg on face for Dr Gibbons, but it’s also an issue for the people of Wales as a whole.

Via another Labour AM (who was gossiping with some people I work with before the start of a meeting) I learned that the cost of this inquiry will be in the region of £3 million!  The Ambulance Service in Wales has historically had problems both with response times and money (there are more sheep, after all, in Mid-Wales, than people, so responding within 15 minutes down windy, country tracks can be an issue) and there have been more consultants employed to sort it out than paramedics in the UK.  Therefore, I can’t see why we should be investing a further £3 million of the Health Budget to carry out this kind of inquiry - when there are so many other things it could be spent on.  Another report to sit on a shelf and collect dust.

On a related issue, William left hospital 2 years ago today.  The neo-natal unit that cared for him has since been closed down - rationalised within a much larger unit in a hospital across Cardiff from where we live.  I wonder how much it cost to keep this unit going each year?  I’m sure it was more than £3 million, but I wonder how much.

I just wrote the word “necessary”.  In my head, however, I thought “Never Eat Chips Eat Salad Sandwiches And Remain Young”.

Is it just me?

Train from London Paddington
Tuesday 13th June 2006 from 1845

Do you ever get that knot in your stomach when someone calls you either on the telephone or across a crowded room?  You know, the “I fancy you so much it hurts” knot that seems to invade your system somewhere just after puberty and whether married with children or still single, pervades until, whenever it is you stop feeling.  I know I still get that knot.  The people involved are few and far between these days, but there are still certain voices that make my insides flip and my brain temporarily shut down.  This short-circuit doesn’t last for more than a few seconds and probably is not apparent to the person on the other end of the telephone or the other side of the room.  However, it’s there and however grown-up, responsible and married I remain, I enjoy the flip when it comes.

I haven’t had a really good flip for a while.  After all, it’s a small social circle that I inhabit in the Gene Puddle and because of this those few people who used to make my stomach invert a couple of years ago have lost the ability – not because they’ve changed, but rather because familiarity breeds, well, a certain level of boredom and with it the realisation that reality sucks and fantasies should remain firmly ensconced in the brain.  When I sit on the train I sometimes wonder what would happen if I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen since school.  That certain someone who had made me hold my breath in anticipation of the vague possibility that he would even glance in my direction.  Would it be a disappointment, or would my stomach lurch as it had back then?

I scan faces on Paddington some nights, when the train platform hasn’t yet made it as far as the boards and wonder whether there is anyone standing there that I once knew.  Not only from the Gene Puddle but also from those fun days of radical politics, excess drinking and extreme thoughts.  It’s not so mad, when you think about it.  If my friend can bump into someone we were in school with at Niagra Falls, why shouldn’t I walk straight into someone I know without the Trans-Atlantic flight?  Why shouldn’t I recognise a familiar face to share the journey back to Wales with and laugh about the old days (whilst my stomach remains firmly lodged at the back of my throat)?

Of course, it never happens.  Reality doesn’t work like that – only celluloid.  “Brief Encounters” on railway platforms are the thing of myth and legend, rather than the mundane and everyday.  But it’s the mundane and everyday that we struggle through, bravely raising our heads from the pillow each morning to repeat many of the tasks we conquered the previous day, in the vain hope that one day, perhaps one day, it will get better, will become more exciting and provide us with the unabated joy only possible from something new.  Without this hope, this expectation that there has to be something more, the yearning for one more “first time” doing, well, anything really, I for one couldn’t carry on.

It’s the moment, as just now, when I looked out from the railway carriage to see a beautiful sun, low in the sky across endless fields carpeted in greens and yellows, whilst Morrissey sang me “Asleep” that keep me alive, keep me ever hopeful.  Those are “first time” moments, which you’ve never quite appreciated in the same way before.  I’ve been doing this journey for more than half my life and I’ve obviously seen the same thing many, many times, but never in quite the same way.  Obviously, the smile that seeped across my face hasn’t lasted more than a few moments, but it was there and as such, today was good, with a “first time” to savour.

I don’t think asking for a little excitement in ones life is too much.  After all, sometimes a flip is as good as rest!

Rocky Horror.  Cardiff.  December.  Hoorah!

Playing with my new toy has given me some time for thought on the music I listen to and the way it is categorised by others.  As part of the Creative Zen system, you are given a link to GraceNote, which provides information on the CD you are “ripping” (don’t start me on downloads - I’m of an age where I need something tangible for my money and I like having CD cases to throw around the house/car as required).

I have only just started what, I am now beginning to realise is going to be somewhat of a mammoth task.  I’m 12 CD’s in (currently on Radiohead’s OK Computer) and am taking it slowly.  I haven’t even looked at playlists yet (as that is another reference to the manual in order to understand what this actually means) and am struggling!  However, I’ve got things going on that move from “Goth Rock” (The Cure) to Brit Pop (James) via some things that just can’t be mentioned in polite company!  Thankfully, My Dear Friend is winging his way to the Gene Puddle sometime soon with 4gb of music to download in one fell swoop.  He assures me it’s all good stuff.  I reckon we’ve all got some “musical nasties” in our collection somewhere (is this where I put my hand up and admit to owning a Keane CD?).

However, there is worse than this in the collection downstairs.  Some of it I still listen too in odd moments.  I mean the fact I have an All Saints CD just isn’t defensible on any level.  Neither is George Michael’s Careless Whisper, but at least that’s on 12″ and will never darken my MP3 players doors!  At least I stayed away from the vageries of Soft Rock, which some of my friends descended into some time ago.  And as for boy bands, well I trust you know me better by now (or at least you thought you did)!

I’ve never actually made a top ten of my favourite tracks.  In fact, I will go as far as to say that I think it’s impossible to do.  Different moods need different tracks (I take it this is where playlists come into the equation).  I certainly have some records that I listen to when I want to bask in some reflective thoughts and others that you know will make you feel ready for a great night out (i.e. The Killers, The Arctic Monkeys, etc).  However, if I do get round to making some of these playlist things up, I’ll share the experience with you!

Other than the music, life carries on a pace.  I’ve got heat rash in places that I can’t even begin to discuss, William is as brown as a berry (and completely in love with his Stone Roses stylee hat I bought him) and we found a lovely tiled flooring in the hallway, which the Other Half is trying to uncover from it’s horrible “self-levelling cement type stuff” covering. 

London tomorrow on the early train.  They’ve put Paddington style barriers at the back of the station just to add to my general panic in the mornings.  Bastards.

The Other Half is not one to hate people.  He’s remarkably tolerant, really.  Take living with me, for example.  That takes a great deal of tolerance (especially when I have a new toy to play with!).  There are a few people who would be on his Young Ones inspired “Bus to Hell”, for instance Cilla Black and Carol Vorderman, but they are relatively few and far between.

In fact, given his time in this small Gene Puddle, only one person he knows personally would join them and even he hasn’t lived here for 20 plus years.  Owen Smith was recently chosen as the Labour candidate for the Westminster by-election in Blaneau Gwent following the death of Peter Law.  He had such an effect on the Other Half (and one of his best friends) during their Sixth Form incarceration at the Academy for Young Gentlemen here in the Gene Puddle, that his name is still spat out and he is telling everyone in his work (conveniently situated in Blaenau Gwent) every last detail of his loathing.  As said Best Friend raged to me when he called to make sure we knew about Mr Smith’s standing “If he becomes Prime Minister, I’m emigrating..”.

Now, I don’t have such strong views on the man.  I knew his younger brother, but not well.  He was a bit of a tosser, but weren’t we all when we were around 18?  However, I would point out that Mr Smith has no idea what it’s like to live in an area of grave poverty and social deprivation (he came to the Gene Puddle when he was in his teens and lived in the very best part of town) or to wonder where you can look next for work.  He handly, given his father’s position, left college into a job with the BBC, then onto work for Peter Hain, MP, before a senior position at a pharmaceutical company.  He is, in the very worst terms, someone who has never wanted anything more than to be an MP.  This should, out of hand, mean he should never be elected.

I think we will see Mr Smith’s name up in lights in a few years.  I have visions of his wife (also a graduate of the Gene Puddle) standing behind him at various important Party events, smiling graciously and condescendingly.  If the Other Half had not been so drunk at various Sixth Form events over the years, I’m sure we would have a wealth of scandal that I could leak, but unfortuately, the Other Half does like his drink!  However, should Mr Smith ever make it to the dizzying heights of leadership, I too might very well be looking for a visa to another part of the globe.

.. so I decided to get myself something pretty.

Now I can take Morrissey with me in sound and pictures wherever I go!