Christmas came & went & that ancient white haired git that goes by the name of Santa failed to deliver on the two simple requests on my Christmas list. Any self respecting Saint should be capable of performing minor miracles – quite frankly my Christmas list should have been a doddle – all I wanted … More Old New Me Twenty Twenty Three
On my new meandering path to wellness I’ve decided to tackle my diet. Now it’s not that dreadful to be honest, if zero was a fast food munching coke gulping fatberg of a diet and ten was a macrobiotic pulse laden organic fest then I’d be a five or maybe a six, but there is … More Food. Tuesday August 2nd.
It’s the beginning of a new month & change is in the air. My son heads off early morning to Edinburgh, he will be away until September with his show at the Fringe Festival. I watch him head up the road weighed down with bags and as he disappears around the corner I send with … More 100 steps back 1000 forward. August 1st.
Second day of taking vitamins & supplements, no changes yet, maybe it will take another day or two? Went ‘Up West’ to see the show Jerusalem with my Son in the evening. I’ve seen a version of this show once before, with my Son in the lead when he was at Uni. He was fucking … More Showtime. Thursday July 21st
This writing a journal business isn’t going so well. Like those distant school reports of mine from long ago, it’s a case of easily distracted, could do better. The point of me writing a journal was that if I set myself the task of writing each day then this would necessitate me actually doing something … More Off my Trolley. Tuesday 19th July
I need to exercise my muscles before they all cease up from lack of use. This I’ve decided includes my brain, which though technically not a muscle I figure is a muscle like thing. I am going to make sure I write something everyday as a cerebral workout – a regular diary with day to … More The Amerikins – Sunday July 10th
My new relation found through a DNA website has constructed a family tree which in turn has had me ruminating on my forebears, or at least some of them. My Grandad Harry died when I was very young, my recollections of him are sparse & would fit on the back of a postcard ( a … More Harry Boyer
Good looks once possessed are now depleting
For the beauty of youth ’tis no more than fleeting … More A Rhyme in Time
With my ever advancing years there are few things that I find more satisfying in life these days than a darned good rant. Now in my book a rant is an invective filled tirade of a thing, replete with expletives and language from the gutter, it should go on for an extended period and inculcate … More Rant
So here I am sheltering under some scaffolding in Covent Garden trying to avoid the pissy rain. It has already turned the dapper gent that I imagined myself to be when I set out earlier in the morning into a bedraggled soggy mess. Next to me in a fire exit doorway sits a homeless chap … More Have I got news for you.
Akka Mahadev, 12th Century Karnatakan Poet, who went around naked. Clothes she felt were aesthetically unnecessary. I like the sound of her & was also rather struck by her idea that every woman is a poem. Here’s one slightly silly rhyme I’ve knocked up. with apologies to Mahadevi. The March of time wears down hard … More Women are Poems.
In a chap like you it surprises me one person be so devoid of qualities Did nature or nurture that make you this way It’s impossible to definitively say And hard as I try it is simply the case That positives in your favour I find little trace Just how does a person become such … More The loathly Laddie
A friend has given me a task to carry out each morning, when I wake up I am to find three things for which I am grateful. Now I know that on some kind of level this is an old touchy-feely ruse, a way of making me slightly less grumpy with the world (and myself) … More Three Things – Day 1.
Spring is here, I know this because on my perfunctory perambulations in the local park I am greeted by daffodils & croci poking their heads up through the grass, all stalks bending in the march wind & flowers straining towards the warmth of the sun. I do likewise, sitting on an old park bench my … More Walkies
Back in a land of palm trees and beaches I return to the life of a bum in the sun. My skin turns a shade browner as one day folds into another until my hide becomes camouflaged & blends in with the scenery and I imagine myself a part of it. My body follows the … More The Confessions of a Rambling Man. Chapter 17
New tales beckon from the year to come Lay the old days to rest with the year end sun laughter and memories remembered reveries A candle lit and a glass or two raised To old friends lost or simply mislaid Lets meet one day and recount our tales Of madcap adventures and lost holy grails … More N.Y.E
Here I am back in London, Willesden Green a mile or so north of my old home in Ladbroke Grove, I am staying with my sister who lets me use her spare room whilst I am in Town. After the best part of a year away the first few days are about catching up with … More The Confessions of a Rambling Man. Chapter 16
Down the stairs I go, it’s morning & that means coffee, into the kitchen, there in the sink is a pile of washing up. Bollocks. Never mind, there’s always the dishwasher I open it to find it full. Double bollocks. O.K.calm down Boyer there you go with your first world problems, forget about it, … More Dishwasher Displacement Theory
The thing about being ill & in turn being treated for those maladies in hospitals is that you have to surrender any semblance of dignity the moment you enter the portals of any given medical facility. … More Laughter with Grace
’s now one month and four days since my hip replacement and I am delighted to report that I am now able to poop sitting down for the first time in a year. … More POP. ( Post Operative Papa )
Tuesday morning, the phone goes at eight thirty – the Hospital: Mr Boyer you are due in for your hip replacement at 12.30 today, can you come in early? Um………. Yes, when were you thinking I ask………. Can you come now they say. Oh bollocks, I’d been psyching myself up for my midday appointment, … More The day I became a Hipster
Fast asleep in my tent at 3.36 a.m. on an August morning I am violently woken, in the pitch black darkness everything is shaking, bed, tent, the lamp crashes from the beside table, consciousness begins to kick in what the fuck is happening? At first I think of a wild boar, maybe one of the … More The Confessions of a Rambling Man. Chapter 15
Landing at Fiumicino the first thing my man brain registers – bright fluorescent lights of the airport shopping mall, glitzy designer clothing stores, then the sight of women in heels, the rhythmic clacking of those same heels on polished marble floors – six months spent by the beach in Asia meant that invariably the women … More The Confessions of a Rambling Man. Chapter 14
How footsteps crunch on fallen snow A flight somewhere out of Heathrow The sounds of a train on far away tracks Favourite tunes stored on my mac Tonic and vodka 40 percent proof The clatter of rain on an old tin roof A beautiful woman with a glint in her eyes An Athenian gyros with … More These are a few of my favourite things
When it’s time to move on from India I head south to Sri Lanka, I figure on giving myself six weeks to see the Island, I land at Colombo airport in the middle of the night with nowhere to stay and unsure of where to go, maybe I should have planned ahead but I thought … More The Confessions of a Rambling Man. Chapter 13
Tim had an unfailing ability to be able to echo locate a party at will, in fact it was a given that were you to be at any decent party on a Saturday night anywhere close to Portobello Road then there you would find Tim.
Remarkably Tim’s party nose even worked in India, A friend of mine he announced is having his 50th Birthday party down at OM beach, it’s a weekend thing, should be quite good why don’t you come? … More The Confessions of a Rambling Man Chapter 12
I don’t know about you but this Rheumatoid Arthritis business is a bit daunting to say the least, why do the simplest thing have to turn into a saga?
Take for instance getting an X-ray … More X-Ray
My eyes grow weaker with the passing of the years and yet somehow I find beauty in the smallest of things where once I raced by. The voice that once boomed has grown less insistent, my ears better at listening, I learnt to recognise the fool & the sage Wise enough now to see them … More Growing Older
Saturday morning and even before six am the sun streams over the rooftops of North London and through my bedroom windows. Despite my ailing body, arthritic – worn out & decrepit telling me all is not well the sunlight streaming through the glass sings a different song. The absurdity of these last few mornings – … More Up above the chimney pots
Welcome to another thrilling instalment of Martin’s arthritis diaries. Well it’s been an illuminating week, a visit to the hospital has brought news which I was not expecting, I require a new hip, apparently one of the two that I came with is what is colloquially known in the trade as totally fuc*ed. Also an operation on … More Hippy Shit.
Tuesday morning eight a.m. & I creak the twenty steps to the bathroom for morning ablutions, my stick aids my faltering steps, knees and ankles remind me if I needed the prompt that my rheumatoid arthritis didn’t disappear by magic overnight. Business completed I open the skylight and poke my head out of the window, … More Starling
The days and the months are racing by and though I feel their passing my arthritis has this habit of subsuming any notion of time turning day after day into a Groundhog Day kind of repetition. My daily task more often than not just trying to cope with the pain in my joints and get … More Plan B Thursday.
Count your blessings, that’s what a person needs to do? One of the unexpected benefits of suffering with Rheumatoid Arthritis is that I am convinced that I’ve had so many x-rays that I will soon not need to switch on the lights at night in the house as my body will begin to glow in … More R.A. Diary – Blessed
I wake on Friday morning at five something, tune in to the BBC World service for the news, there’s something in my head that makes me feel just a little connected to the World I’m in if I listen to it without actually being out there and involved. Unfortunately there have been kidnappings in Nigeria, … More M.A.D.
“He couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag” was a once relatively common phrase in English used to describe an individual incapable of even the simplest of tasks, this term now fades into quaint obscurity as neither penny chews nor fruit and vegetables are crammed into little brown paper bags by ageing corner … More MAD – Martin’s Arthritis Diary
Saturday night London, what will it hold this City of more than seven million souls on this first evening of reimposed lockdown? Taxi’s here shouts Sam, I am the last out of the house & into the taxi, it’s a nine mile journey from a North London house into Town, we are all in masks … More Satnite
The Spaniards who first colonised these islands in the 15th Century were so enamoured with their discovery that they named them The Fortunate Islands … More The Calima
The real boss of the house comes to introduce himself. Cesare, the Cat, a beast of truly epic proportions. … More The House of the Fat Cat
The first time I remember seeing padlocks on a bridge was in Paris, on the Pont Des Arts, which straddles the Seine close by Notre Dame. When I got there I was amazed, this bridge was covered in thousands and thousands of padlocks. … More Love Locks
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