Child 2, who is turning out to be a musicophile, showed me this tune about someone who is grateful for the sour grapes in their life. The lyrics include the following verses:
We had to work a bit more hard
Only just to get a little bit less far
We could laugh about it all tomorrow, couldn’t we?
When all is going wrong and you’re scared as hell
What you gonna do? Who you gonna tell?
Maybe a hundred bad days made a hundred good stories
A hundred good stories make me interesting at parties
It’s very fitting for my current state. After our house purchase fell through, we had to radically change plans, and find alternative accommodation. It has been extremely stressful, and costly, and disappointing (you really get to see the worst of people and of institutions, including those who claim to very much value you/r business).
Ah, well. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the stress won’t have impacted the teen’s A-level exams too badly. And, as the song says, hopefully, we will be able to laugh about it all at some point, and end up with a few good stories (even if the bit about parties does not materialise). And, for the time being, I intend to take full advantage of being close to this running track, again.
And walk past inspirational marks, like this one:
What is not to love about this?
With so much mayhem in my personal life, and a number of professional commitments that I couldn’t shift (like delivering an MBA module), I had neither the time nor the mental space for much else. So, the blog fell by the wayside. Sorry.
I did pick up a good habit, though! I installed the Kindle app on my phone. So, now, whenever I have a little bit of free time, and I have caught up with my blog reading on Feedly, I read a couple of pages of a book, rather than browse aimlessly through social media updates. I warmly recommend this. At the moment, I am reading Bella Mackie’s Jog On.
Oh, and here is that song:
What are you up to? I hope that life has been treating you well.
Ana Canhoto 
Glad to hear about the budding musicologist. Tell him he needs to study hard or he may grow up to be an economist!
The song reminded me of one from the 1990s. The band (The Supernaturals) came and went, but the tune Smile was used as the backing for a TV advertisement for a bank. The lyrics are probably even more nihilistic than the ones you quoted:
“Every silver lining has a cloud
And each piece of good fortune must be paid for by the pound
I’ve become so cynical these days,
I don’t know how it started but it won’t go away
See the lines around my eyes,
See the sarcasm in my smile,
You’d better smile
Smile
Cause that’s all that you’ve got left,
Your life’s a mess, you’ve been cut adrift
You’d better smile
I feel like a dalek inside,
Everything’s gone grey but used to be so black and white
See the lines around my eyes,
See the sarcasm in my smile,
You’d better smile
Smile
I’ve become so cynical these days,
I don’t know how it started but it won’t go away
You’d better smile
Cause that’s all that you’ve got left,
Your life’s a mess, you’ve been cut adrift.”
I used this piece of music as part of a study of music in advertising. Our hypothesis was that cognitive dissonance was in play here, as the lyrics are a long way from the values espoused by the brand (there were several other examples we tested). How can this work?
Here is the song, so the musicologist can compare: https://youtu.be/L_bdWVzTHIk
BTW: there is a very interesting display on the discovery and upscaling of penicillin production at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. Basement.
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This sounds very British to me! I have to show it to child 2.
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