Dead Rabbi On A Stick Day

It's Good Friday, and what's good about it is that I slept for nine and a half hours last night. Went to bed with a classic stress headache, woke up with the end of one, but felt good about being on strike.

Yes, I'm on strike. At the end of yesterday's Rise and Shine we walked out in sympathy with our ASLEF brothers and sisters. I think it was the realisation of a militant tendency in myself which I have been encouraging over the past few months, knowing that it is the path to my own particular brand of enlightenment.

I'm sure that once the management meet our demands we'll be back to finish off the final week of the show - it's been a blast. But it is nice to have a three day weekend in praise of the dead rabbi, Jesus, and his unfortunate death by torture 2,000 years ago.

Now listen to the song we wrote yesterday, co-written and sung by the indomitable Danny "Peruvian Socialist Chocolate Hat" Brittain and his left wing army of reds.

Ten Years After

It is the last day of August and the ten year anniversary of my finest depression. It coincided with the death of Diana ex-Princess of Wales, and I wrote about it here.

It's no secret that I have suffered serious depression in my life, and I have no shame in telling of my journeys through the underworld of mental anguish; indeed I believe it is the duty of all sufferers to report back from the brink as best they can, for the benefit of those who need healing, that the light is still available to them whether or not they pay their personal electricity bill.

Knowledge of the underworld does bring with it certain responsibilities, the result of hard-won knowledge, not the least being that the darkness is only a shadow, and movement is inevitable, so that sooner or later, the obstruction between you and the glowing metaphor of contentment will no longer be there. Ten years on, I am much less susceptible to depression than ever I was, and less scared by the facts of the human condition. Fall seven times, stand up eight, goes the Japanese proverb.

I think I have just enough time to make another music podcast before I head off to Birmingham to celebrate being Deek Deekster.