A brolly in the wind

Sorry for the silence but our neighbours moved away and took our free internet access with them. It's not as though nothing is happening, not so much navel-gazing as navel-spelunking these days but with good results as far as good results can be expected. I'm getting my priorities in order. At the same time we have been meeting some great people and we are establishing a circle of – maybe – perhaps? – friends, and not just because they're there, but because we all – maybe – possibly? – like each other.

Anyways. More on that when there's more on that. In the meantime: today I heard 'Candle in the Wind II' (the thing Elton John 'sang' after Diana Spencer was smushed up by a bunch of soulless assfucking French paparazzi who probably made a good dollar off of it thanks to Channel 4 and other tasteful media outlets being so fucking classy) while I was shopping for umbrellas on a rainy day. I knew this year would mark the tenth anniversary of her death but I hadn't realized, silly me, that 'song' would go into play rotation again, certainly not that it would go into rotation in Belgium while I was shopping for an umbrella.

This was the first time I'd heard it, as back in 1997 I'd avoided it, just having moved into a university residence where everybody was listening to Pulp and Belle and Sebastien or some such - not music so much as a wall of gentle sound and clever lyrics to protect you from less gentle sounds and stupider lyrics, you remember the defensive nature of young people's music in the late 90's - and even at that tender age I'd taken a deep dislike to that 'song' as 'sung' about Marilyn Monroe.

Because I don't know anything about Marilyn Monroe, but I know she hadn't lived her life like a candle in the wind. You know what lives its life like a candle in the wind? Nothing. You know where a candle in the wind turns to when the rain cuts in? Nowhere. It's a fucking candle. It doesn't live or turn or do anything except burn. It's made of some string and the shit that bees clean off their fucking mandibles, or whatever.

But today I was a captive audience at the umbrella shop for a full 30 seconds because the weather was really quite bad and I really wanted a burgundy umbrella, which wasn't immediately forthcoming. So for a good minute I had to hear the newer abuses of the 'candle in the wind' simile - even fucking stupider this time, followed up by lines about how the candle in the wind didn't falter, when obviously a candle in the wind is going to fucking falter constantly until it just goes out. Finally I left the shop without an umbrella, got rained on, and bought myself a waffle to make up for it.

It's too bad, that shit Diana Spencer did about land mines was classy and somebody should have written a good song about it - I mean a princess and a bunch of landmines, surely that's a sweet spot to start composing from, half Sir Walter Scott and half Tank Girl - but it's 10 years after she gets dead and we're still getting this saccharine vampiric dribble about waxy dripping English Roses feet pitter-pattying against her country's shores. Ugh.