Starbucks, Coney Street, York

Coffee House: Starbucks, Coney Street, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: Carrot Cake

So I go to Starbucks. Doesn't make me a bad person. Perhaps indicates that I'm not fussy when it comes to coffee but. not to be sidetracked (feels like I'm about to start a rendition of Alice's Restaurant) - Luck & Fate.

Lots of songs I could quote for starters "I lived by luck & fate" (Back In Your Arms, Bruce Springsteen) "I can't help it if I'm lucky" (Idiot Wind, Bob Dylan) "Simple Twist of Fate" (Bob again) and one I've rediscovered "That Lucky Old Sun" (hit for Frankie Lane in 1949)

Up in the mornin'
Out on the job
Work like the devil for my pay
But that lucky old sun got nothin' to do
But roll around heaven all day.

That's pretty much how Ann sees her and me. I'm the one lolling around all day while she goes out and earns a crust. I haven't always, lolled around the house all day. I did the whole 9-5 office thing and lots of other jobs where I did manage to break out into a sweat, freeze my fingers off, knacker my back, work like the devil for my pay - drove trucks, picked fruit, was a construction worker, worked in a mine, cleaned operating theatres....

And there were times when I had money and times when I didn't (bizarrely I was probably the most broke/in debt when I earned the most) But I've always favoured the Mr Micawber/W.C. Fields school of economics i.e. 'Something will turn up'

It always has and I truly believe it always will. My wedding speech a few years back was basically describing how blessed I had been/am, how all along the line things have worked out for me. Whenever things looked bleak, things would change and, as if by magic, everything is good again.

I don't believe in a god of any flavour and broadly think that we're all here on our own and it's down to us all to make the best of it and try not to mess it up too much for everyone else. So no hand guiding us and judging us. Just ourselves. I do think though that some people are 'born lucky' Not just that they are born in the right place, though I was, like the vast majority of people in the West born after the second world war. More that life for some reason (or maybe for no reason) plays out well whichever seemingly wrong path I take, bad decision I choose, poor company/hole I fall into etc. It does all work out. For me and for a proportion of other people who are born with the lucky gene

There are a good number of people who don't have this benefit. Again, not a geographical thing necessarily, although if you have been born into squalor in a poor part of the world life is going to be very hard indeed. There are people who just end up having a crap life, bad stuff keeps happening to them whatever they try to do to avoid it. As I have said in another one of these blogs, I do genuinely admire their tenacity as they keep pressing on. But for me it's broadly been all good.

You'd think therefore that I would be a very happy bunny indeed but mostly that's not the case. I'm not unhappy (and have periods of great happiness) but I've always been a half-empty glass kind of guy. I wrote a suicide note a number of years back (as you do) where I said some of the above and talked about not just wanting the glass to be full but overflowing. Thought about having the Peggy Lee song 'Is That All There Is' on my tombstone, except I would rather be cremated. I live my life expecting a lot, and often do get a lot, but it can lead of course to frequent disappointment. The great thing about being totally misguided about possibilities and options however is that sometimes they do work out and you're in a new/brighter place.

I heard on the news recently that there's talk of giving careers advice to kids from 11. How sad is that. If it was up to me no one would be able to choose a career, get married, have kids until they were at least 30. After they'd had a really good go at experiencing the world, doing lots of bad and good things, met more people/drank more alcohol/taken more drugs than they ever thought possible. So they would hopefully have some sort of context for living a long life that is going to be the default now for the majority of us.

I stopped the work thing 4/5 years ago, formed a band just before my 60th. With a bit of luck I'll have 15-20 good years in front of me to make some more bad and good decisions, to experience whatever slings and arrows are thrown at me up to the point when it's time to call it a day. Then it'll be, I imagine, a great relief. I reckon all 'old people' are just the same inside as they always where. They seem different to younger people because they were born and brought up in a different age but they are still the same people as when they were 30. I know I am. But there'll come a time when it all seems rather too hard to keep on keeping on. But until then, tramps like us, baby we were born to run :-)

Dear Lord above, can't you know I'm pining, tears all in my eyes
Send down that cloud with a silver lining, lift me to paradise
Show me that river, take me across
Wash all my troubles away
Like that lucky old sun, give me nothing to do
But roll around heaven all day