Well this one has been a while in the gestation… not because it’s been a difficult write, rather that I’ve been busier than a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest over the past few weeks.
Oh, and I
had The Covids of course…
As inevitable
as an iceberg breaking off the Greenland sheet at the same time the Titanic
left its Belfast shipyard, when my mother was admitted to hospital in December following
a minor fall, at the end of nine months in which she and I had so assiduously
kept her (and me!) “safe”, it seemed predestined in her brief home-release at Christmas
that she’d develop “a bit of an infection”.
It was Coronavirus
of course and (after passing it on to me!) she sadly died on New Year’s Day, ten
minutes before all her octogenarian friends received their first dose of the vaccine.
Such is life (and death).
Besides
working every job the so-called “Live Events Industry” could throw at me in
this new Virtual World and looking after my Ma until her unfortunate demise, back
in December, I’d scheduled the release of my new Bikini Test Failure single, “Kiss
Me Like You Mean It” for the end of January.
By the time
the big moment arrived, my plate was so full I barely noticed and honestly just
thought, “Oh, forget it!”
But then something
extraordinary happened. Somewhere in that (rare) moment of emotional extreme, far
from ignoring the only truly creative, stress-relieving thing I’d done in the
previous weeks, I decided to put it front and centre; grieving, funeral
direction, house-clearing, work, could all go whistle and find their own place in
my schedule; I had this lovely new tune to unleash on the world.
Then,
perhaps predictably, the world of music took me over, calmed my soul and diminished
any horror that was going on. Not for the first time my own musical outpourings,
or those of a select few others instantly gave me that godlike perspective
which is usually absent in times of personal distress.
And what’s that?
Two people in Stoke-on-Trent have retweeted the link to my new video? Ahh. All
better now.
