My Ex-classmate's kids

Been on a big fall bender since I read Mark E's Renegade and had that beery day in Birmingham going in pubs you wouldn't take a girl if you wanted to impress her with swish stuff. I know why I'm so entertained by the sheer chaotic noise of it all, it's because I seem to be so polite in musical terms these days. Playing nice tunes in posh places, I might have to buy an electric guitar and a fuzzbox.

Nowt was said about the form I filled in. I'll keep you posted. But one kid I found out was the child of an old classmate of mine. Where I teach, it's a large village, and everyone knows each other and it seems like no-one ever leaves. I lived there as a teenager and in the early twenties, but the bright lights and big thrills of Chapel Ash lured me away. Now Chapel Ash feels so much like home. Good.

What else can I tell you? I've been neglecting the weblog but I've been busy. Things are going well and another birthday just shot by and that stuff makes you think about the bigger picture. Especially when you see ex-classsmates kids. A few months ago another old friend phoned me and seemed to take delight in scoffing at my status in life. Why do people do that? He's done it before but seeing as I lately feel quite pleased I've achieved certain goals I felt pissed off about his scoffing. A couple of times, in recent years, whilst phoning me he's put my postcode into some search engine to find the value of my property. I used to like it better when we just talked about music.
Heck, people move on, I understand that. What's important to you when you're in your twenties changes by your forties. Sometimes I think people just have to accept they move apart. This happens with friendships, marriages, all kinds of relationships. A musician friend, who know lives abroad, wrote, after a visit to Wolverhampton, 'nothing changes, it's all still the same', and I can sense his slight disdain. Just as I could hear it even more in my friend's laughing at me for having lived in Chapel Ash for 16 years, and perhaps you read the same kind of disdain earlier, when I was on about the village I used to live in. We all like to think we've got 'life right', don't we? and it's like an admission of weakness to admit to our peer group things haven't panned out the way we wanted.
I'd like to think I don't judge people on their lifestyles of choices, but I'm sure I do. And although I certainly wouldn't trade my circumstances for anyone else's, I do have one friend who I think has achieved a contentment that I might never have. I couldn't live his life, because I'm me, but I do envy his un-troubled mind. I was at his (pristine) house watching his girlfriend laminating their daughter's pictures and it was sweet, and I felt like Leroy had just said "keep rocking" to me, like in the song, as if I was the strange unconforming friend, but in a nice way.
True friends encourage you to be what you want to be, and don't try to belittle you for being what you're not. But the true friend thing is quite rare, and requires a bit of empathy. Friendship is about respect, it's not a pissing contest. Rant over.

And lastly, the Pope's in the country. I hope he gets egged. Tosser.