Saturday, March 31, 2018

It's Still Dark

I woke up early, 3.30am. I needed a piss. I looked at my watch, it said 3 something. Buggar, I thought. I knew I was awake.

I rolled one way, and then the other, and then back again. It’s the other end of falling asleep on the couch at 8.30pm in front of the TV. I’ve only ever needed 7 hours, oh, since I have been an adult, as a teenager I could sleep the weekend away, oh for that stress free life again.

I got out of bed and started getting dressed. Instead of hissing from the dark about it being too early and to give smoking pot a rest, a voice said, “Nana getting up time.” That’s my joke about him always wanting to head to bed at 10.30pm. It is like clockwork. “Nan’s off to bed,” I say to him.

Sam whispered in the dark that Buddy had choked on something during the night, the chicken wings he ate for dinner under great suspicion. All I could hear was Buddy snoring contently from his bed next to ours.

I trotted off downstairs. I always walk through the house in the dark, I always have. At night, you see so many other angles you never see normally with the lights on.

I made coffee. I washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. (When kitchen duty is skipped, I just know I was dead to the world on the couch)

I roll a joint and sat in the garden.

Buggar the Apex Gang. If they were anything like the black commission boys who play soccer on Atherton Reserve, that have some fine arses amongst them. “Ha ha,” he says out loud, as he reads back over what he has written. That’s terrible. I don’t really even believe that the Apex Gang exists, I think it is more likely a vehicle used by the media, much more likely. I think there are all colours of kids in the bored little hoods, denied money by a cruel out of touch Liberal Government, who feeling like they have no other option, quite possibly, they hit out. I do think of them coming through the garden, though, when I head outside in the dark, but then I shake my head and it goes. Sign of the times in which we live, mind control works better than war, and it is cheaper too. Billionaire political media donors help out in his papers, as he’s of the same ideology.

4am. I put Beggars Banquet on my noise cancelling head phones and returned to the garden.

The noise cancelling headphones are good, the garden is noisy in the night, there are always cracks and crunches, and twigs falling.

You start with the Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet (1968) and you play right through to Tattoo You (1981), and you will hear the best blues rock ever recorded. They are the great albums, in my opinion.

1968   Beggars Banquet.
1969   Let It Bleed
1971   Sticky Fingers
1972   Exile on Main St.
1973   Goats Head Soup
1974   It's Only Rock 'n Roll
1976   Black and Blue
1978   Some Girls
1980   Emotional Rescue
1981   Tattoo You

And the Stones have four albums pre Beggars Banquet that are listed in the 500 greatest albums of all time. Between The Buttons, Now, Out Of Our Heads, and Aftermath.

They have 10 albums in Rolling Stones Magazine 500 greatest albums of all time.


357. Between The Buttons

270. Some Girls. Miss You is one of their greatest songs. The 2011 tracks included.

213. Tattoo You

180. Now

116. Out Of Our Heads

109. Aftermath

64 Sticky Fingers. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, is sublime.

58 Beggars Banquet

32 Let It Bleed.

07 Exile on Main Street. The 2013 tracks included.


Except, of course, I would add Black & Blue. That was the first Stones album that I bought, it has to be said, so maybe I am a little biased. So, I discovered everything else before Black & Blue, after Black & Blue. I found the sixties stuff, after I was sick of the crappy eighties stuff.

I see the two beady red eyes of the security camera light up, like the devil, every time I come in from having a smoke. Sam can see on his phone every time I go out, recorded while he sleeps. He usually enters the room reciting the number when he gets up.

Milo cuddles up next to me on the couch, he does this most mornings I get up early. He'll stay on the couch until it gets dark again, so that's about fifteen hours, or so. Still, I reckon Buddy gets in a good 20 hours sleep a day. My little blue guy.

My little Blue Guy.


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