Depression Is Rather Poo

Near Corteconcepción, Huelva

Well, it has certainly been quite a while since I trundled through this part of my digital demesne. Depression is an insidious thing. It creeps up on you and wraps its tendrils around your being like a fog in a story by HP Lovecraft. And like Lovecraft’s charaters, there’s little you can do. At first you are unaware of this existentially threatening animophage, then you’re paralysed and tend, at leat at first, to

surrender as the abyss claims you.

Percy Moo, the Foundling Teckel

Then you go to the GP, get your Prozac and wait for three weeks until the meds kick in and you’re your jaunty old self again. But… are you the same? Is your animus free of the tendrils? Or, have their bonds been loosened just enough for you not to feel them?

Carmelo, the Cheeky Chappie

Probably this latter, for as you get used to the med.s, the corners start to get dusty and the dark begins to gather, thicken and congeal in them once more. 

Solution? Different, stronger, depression-inducing drugs to alleviate your depression (WTF????). I shit you not . High-octane homeopathy - a bit cheaper and less quackery involved, however. 

Please don't get me started on homeopaths and their willing victims - they're as despicable as cyclists. Both tribes tend to sneer at the rest of humanity for not belonging to their particular brand of holier-than-thou New Age misanthropy.  As the late, great Terry Pratchett said about the bi-wheeled hordes: "My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them. My dream holiday would be: a) a ticket to Amsterdam, b) immunity from prosecution and c) a baseball bat". For Amsterdam, read: "the cycle-friendly, pedestrian-persecuting town that it's my misfortune to be in at this moment".

But I digress. 

Percy Moo

If the pills don’t induce depression, they turn you into an emotionless zombie at the very least - all fine and dandy if you fancy a job in the meat trade, Guild of Assassins or want to cut a dash at your local suicide bombers' open day and gala. So one day, against the advice on the packet, and, indeed against your doctor's advice, you chuck the pills in the bin, start to come down/come up and cold turkey it out. This is not considered medical advice I 'm giving here, I haven't got a reputation for talking (and occasionally doing) bollocks for nothing. This is just what I did.  Except the bit about binning the pills. I was environmentally responsible - I took them along to the local chemist's.

Holy Prozac Batman!!! You stop
taking the pills???

I also cold turkeyed my ciggie habit a couple of years ago, but I'm not really sure it's such a good idea when it comes to psychoactive drugs. As Batman used to say on the 1960s TV show, "Kids, don't try this at home". 

"Life" begins to get even worse for a while, but one day you take your dog for a walk and you realise that you are both smiling and that perhaps the best type of chemical aids are your own endorphins.

Carmelo & My Dark Lady

You realise that not only has living with yourself been rather poo, it’s also been poo for those around you and you can’t but thank your Dark Lady, your children and your dogs for putting up with you while you’ve been morosely wallowing around in figurative poo for months. So thank you all for putting up with me and for dragging me along with you when all I wanted to do was sit on the sofa drink tea and listen to Radio 4 – which I hasten to add are all noble, legitimate pastimes per se, but  when indulged in, forsaking all others, can be quite debilitating.  

The Churchill car insurance
dog. I think he looks more like
Jeremy Clarkson. And on that
bombshell, ladies and gentlemen...

And fattening.

Indeed, as Sir Winston Churchill, all-time number one Englishman and self-confessed depressive once said "If your'e going through Hell, keep going", Oh yes. 

 It helps enormously, though, to be surrounded by people to help you keep on the track. Oh yes.

A footnote: A while ago I got some feedback about my Nutbrown Elephant Pie Funnel post from Peter Craig in Australia, also a victim of the Melancholia. Strange how these things happen. Here's his take on the pie funnel. Thanks, Pete for granting me permission to use it. 

Peter Craig's rendition of the Nutbrown Elephant Pie Funnel

Why Cyclists Are More Dangerous Than North Korea

I’m sure that older readers will remember Ricky Martin’s song, María: with the unforgettable chorus of Un, dos, tres, un pasito p’alante María. Un dos tres, un pasito p’atrás  - literally 1,2,3 one step forward María, 1,2,3 one step backwards. If not, here’s a link.

Well this is how pedestrians have to walk, or rather jump, about the pavements in Seville as cyclists zoom recklessly towards them, making the most of their god-given right to put everyone's life at risk – including their own. Indeed, watching a pedestrian trying to walk along the average Sevillian street is rather like watching someone in a Western “dance” as the baddies shoot at their feet. Desperation, lack of concerted coordination and the fear of imminent death or mutilation are common to both sufferers.

And the problem is this: enlightened Seville (a city for people[1], according to its own rather brainless propaganda) now has cycle lanes incorporated onto its pavements, but cyclists here (indeed, anywhere) respect neither the lanes nor the traffic rules. Speeding cyclists are a greater menace than speeding cars (at least in general terms cars do not speed along the pavement!). Yet for some reason, best known to themselves, cyclists do of course have greater right of way than any other form of life.

Cycling seems to have become a new form of Fascism. Once the wearing of a black, brown, or blue shirt with its corresponding armband raised the possessor above the ranks of the common herd. He – or she – became an exalted member of that class of  beings who, as Orwell so famously put it, are more equal than others. Such fascists, or communists (basically the same genus of being) could do what the hell they liked without fear of reprisal or punishment by the authorities. Now to be more equal than the rest of urban humanity what you need is a bike, tight fitting Lycra, no undies and a total lack of inhibition about parading your middle-aged bag of rusty spanners around.

Once mounted upon his or her gleaming, non-polluting charger, the rider becomes a sort of knight in hi-viz armour, bearing down upon the cycle-less villeins with all the contempt and recklessness of a Norman aristocrat taking a constitutional on his palfrey among - or even over - his serfs.

“By what right?” You may cry. “By the divine right of the non-polluting eco-warrior” Sallies forth the reply as, bell a-ring, lights a-twinkle pedals a-whirr and bollocks a-jiggle (with a bit of luck he'll be rendered incapable of spawning any progeny) the oppressor bears down on you. You have two options: stand your ground and get hospitalised or jump back and let the arrogant bastard waft by unchallenged.

 Teeth a-grind, we let the chevalier thunder past, as in days of yore. 

In a word, most cyclists are arrogant, selfish turds who deserve a timely stick thrust through their flashing spokes.

And so to North Korea. For all of the chemical weapons, nuclear bombs and avunculophage dogs that that particularly distasteful regime might vaunt, as yet it has not been a real threat to my life and physical integrity – or indeed yours, unless you have the misfortune to live there. The cyclist, on the other hand, is a real daily meance and a greater threat to your, or my, existence than the hermits of Pyong Yang. "Leave North Korea alone!", I say.  Get the UN Security Council onto the case of the cyclo-fascists.

Let us not, however, bomb them back to the Stone Age; let us merely put them back where they belong – on the roads, not the pavements – where they can put their own lives at risk without risking ours - even if this will entail some damage to cars. Either that, or send the whole parcel of them to Guantánamo and thence unleash them on the Castros.

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[1] As opposed to a city for insects, dolphins or lemurs, I suppose.