Friday 8th March

Another day, another song.  John Lennon, that most quixotic of creatures, on his last album ‘Double Fantasy’, his triumphant if literally short-lived return to recording in 1979 had a wonderful song on it ‘Watching the Wheels’.

And I am watching the wheels too, as I sit in an old-fashioned café near Baker Street station. The traffic slows down for traffic lights and then speeds up again, and mostly all you can see of the passengers are dark shadows, but watching the wheels turn is quite hypnotic really.  And strangely comforting too, the familiarity and mindlessness of silver car wheels turning in the rain.

It is raining again, drizzling after a few fine cold days, that clammy wet and dreek weather has returned.  But at least it is noticeably warmer today, even if Spring still feels a way away.

And I think about my life and what I am doing with it.  All I am doing is watching the wheels go by, but I am not really engaged at all.  I am simply freewheeling along, letting the current take me, drifting from one week to another, limping from holiday to holiday with no discernable purpose.

There must be more to life than this.  Repetition, monotony, watching the wheels go by. And I am watching my life go by too, watching as the days turn to weeks and months into years, and Christmases come and birthdays too and you do begin to wonder if there is any purpose in any of it.  Outside people are buttoning their coats and hoisting up umbrellas against the sudden squally rain.  Another day, another working day for so many.  Because they (we) have no choice but to keep on keeping on.  Because if we all decided not to, then the wheels would stop turning and what would I watch then.