Nachtmusik

When the rain comes here, the sky turns so grey it feels like continual twilight. In Britain it seems more as though someone adjusts the colour settings on the TV and the blue fades to grey. Here the cloud cover is like a stack of thick duvets, all of them Tog 15. It's pretty funky actually.

On TV there is currently an ad for an X-Box game with the background music of Gary Jules' version of Tears for Fears' 'Mad World', the version he did for Donnie Darko. It seems an odd and yet strangely appropriate choice. And it sends me back to my last winter at Mayhem. By summer things were beginning to get sorted out and I knew I was coming here, we'd made the decision.
My journeys to and from school were accompanied by Greenday, Snow Patrol (Final Straw) and Queens of the Stone Age, but in the winter, when things were far from clear, I cycled down dark streets, past houses lit-up for the evening, past chimneys that breathed smoke when they shouldn't, past the cemetery that called to me, past chippies and pubs and churches and big little Tesco, across the park and past the Students' Union and Gary Jules sang to me. On my mp3 player I had Linkin Park, Evanescence, Nickelback, Staind, a single Beth Orton track - Central Reservation.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

When I think about this, now, I can hear someone else's voice in my head. Hearing voices? Maybe, but I am hooked on 'Dexter'. I've mentioned this show before, but now when I am aware of my own voice, sometimes I hear his, the soft, low voicing of thoughts which separates him from what he thinks of as 'normal' people. Dexter is a police forensics expert who kills other killers and who is locked into a psychological game of chess with one of them.

Not that I'm turning into a serial killer or anything, but I am eating too many chillies. I've realised that some days, the only meal I eat with no chillies is breakfast, I don't yet crave them with my porridge. This has no consequence until I do something stupid, ignore the rules of sensible cuisine. I made a wonderful stir fry flavoured with coriander, - I love the smell of that so much I could roll in it - ginger and fresh chillies. I put in tofu, too much tofu. Kevin has explained to me before about avoiding the stomach problems normally associated with beans by combining them with rice for example, something to complete the amino acid chain. Did I do as he had warned ? No. Did I suffer ? Oh dear, dear Lord yes. I will draw a line under that episode. Too much detail can be bad.

But I will say one more thing. My interest has been piqued this week by reports of a huge storm on the planet Saturn. I love weather, I love planets, what better combination? But most of all I loved the final observation,

"Dr Baines said that storms could help scientists understand what goes on deeper in planets. "When you have storms they tend to dredge up materials from deep down below, and so if you want to see what's in the deep part of a planet then you can look in a storm system and see tracers of the material deep down." "

How interesting, and how very Saturnine.