non-descript room at the hospital's clinic, learning how long he had left, the lengths that modern medicine would go to, to buy him that time. And now they were saying things like 'resection', 'laproscopy', 'successful'. When you've been anxious, or depressed, or swinging between the two for a long time, there are some emotions you've just stopped feeling. It's like colour-blindness, in that you know that other people are experiencing the world a particular way, but, you just ...aren't. There's red and green and people try to explain them to you but of course, what@they say refers to things you can't recognise anyway, so it's not even lack of understanding, you understand the words just fine, but the experience to which they refer isn't actually present in your life. Relief was like that for me. I knew other people experience relief at hearing the news we heard, even my own mum cried, and she'd never exactly warmed to him in the past. But for me, nothing. I still can't properly remember the last time i felt something close to what other people call relief. "when's the surgery?" was the phrase i blurted out. It was booked for six weeks away. Six more weeks then. I was sure he'd not wake up.

New piece : *You can't always get what you want *
Songs follow me around some times. I hear them more than once in the same day, and i'll know it'll stick around for a while. First thing in the morning, i roll over and put the radio on - waking yp to it wasn't working, just gave me rather current-affairs focussed dreams in the time between noticing it was light already for fucks sake and i'd failed agian and the admission that yes, indeed i'd have to drag my sorry fat arse out of bed - and be greeted by dusty springfield or something. Breakfast radio is like that. One day it was the rolling stones, you can't always get what you want. Later, after a day of sitting at work grinding my gears and not actually working because of lack of focus, lack of motivation, lack of a point to all this fucking noise i flopped down on the couch and it was on the tv. Hugh Laurie as House I think. The man's good at pretending he has problems. Hell, isn't everyone? You can't always get what you want. Life, don't talk to me about life. The next day i woke up to it, but on the 'internal radio' this time. Thing about the internal radio is that it's got no volume, no off switch, and it can only play the parts of the songs that i already know, so it's repetitive. At least there's no dj yet, the only voice i hear in my head is my own. That's enough anyway. When other people say things to you, there's the extra layer of interpretation on top of it, so that there's always a chance that they didn't