Not Falling Off

And so I bugger on, digging my way out very slowly with a spork.  It’s like a prison film where you can only dig out bits of mortar while the guard is at the other end of the corridor, and you then hide the mortar in leftover dinner or in your wee bucket. 

Sporks aren’t terribly good for this; in fact they aren’t terribly good for anything.  Therefore I can’t report much progress.  Superficially I am the usual foul-mouthed and joky self which is apparently my personality.  Under that is just a lot of wobbling and trying not to fall.  I suppose in general for most people life is about trying not to fall off things, with occasional bouts of excellent balance where you stand on your head drinking tea and people clap.

I have not yet got medication for my brain-wrongness.  Let’s not go into the boring details why.  So I’m still full of cement.

Despite that, and almost to spite that, I am making myself learn French on the way into work and Dutch on the way home.  The hope is that though one part of the brain is full of shit, other bits are functioning.  Finding my old iPod has been brilliant.  I listen to Puccini arias as the train comes in over the unplaited rails just west of Bruxelles Midi.  The soaring plangent vocals (oh shut up, pretentious twat) and the grey furniture of industry make something lovely out of something not. 

And I hope daily to see the circus performers at the junction of Belliard and Arts.  They wait for the lights to change and then use the four-lanes-wide crossing as a quick stage.  I walk past them nonchalantly but then cannot resist looking back over my shoulder at a young man balancing on something like a Black and Decker Workmate, in the brief spell before red turns to green.