Maiden Voyage

January is gone! We can have fun again. Gloomy, miserable January, with its perpetual cold and eternal grey skies, has wandered off to irritate people in the next dimension and we can start to live again.

I'm not saying there weren't some good things about the month. I had my birthday, and saw a lot of friends, and that was good. And got many wonderful gifts for said birthday. I am reassured that the presents I received for my 40th birthday included an awful lot of toys, films and T-shirts. Clearly maturity is still some way off.

In fact, I seem to be regressing. Thanks to an excellent documentary on BBC4, I have rediscovered my love of heavy metal guitar wranglers Iron Maiden and have bought myself a couple of albums I last possessed in the 80s - namely Powerslave and Piece of Mind, as well as the DVD of the live concert Live After Death. Really, really enjoyable. Clever, daft and thrilling all at the same time.

I'd like to say that my teenage interest in Maiden passed in a fit of growing up, but it is not the case. Sadly, my large collection of vinyl LPs and singles, as well as some very exciting T-shirts,  went onto a big bonfire in the name of over-zealous Christianity. It seems ridiculous now, but back then I was seriously convinced that owning merchandise made by these fun loving, tongue-in-cheek rockers might open up a portal to hell. I blame my church - a bit on the right wing side - and my own rather naive approach to faith. And maybe, just a little bit, Iron Maiden for calling one of their albums 'The Number of the Beast'.

Anyway, I'm better now. I'm sure there is plenty of music that might be unhealthy, in a spiritual sense, but it's more likley to be condoning the staus quo and encouraging an isolationist, consumerist hegemony rather than dressing in a scary mask and shouting 'Yaarg'. Chew on that, idiot-panicky Christians. Except you can't, because you already read the words 'Iron Maiden' and have run away to scrub out your ears, in case they get possessed.

Suffice to say, after a January full of being ill, feeling down and not really wanting to blog, I live again. Maybe it was listening to Maiden that helped. Maybe I just needed to get through the month, in which case thank you to those who helped. You are lovely.

Various things have vexed me recently, but I will come to them in due course. For now, here are two things which cause me inexplicable worry:

i) The suspicion that, even though I know it's OK to close the DVD tray by pushing it in physically, rather than using the button, I am somehow being cruel to it.

ii) An ungovernable fear, when looking at the recommendations on my Amazon site, that I must not lie about which albums I do and do not own. Yes, I own some Bob Dylan albums. But I know that if I say 'I own it', you will take this as a sign to recommend every album he has ever made. Which is loads, and I don't want any. So why don't I say 'Not interested'? I don't know. I feel like I'm being dishonest, and that somehow Amazon will know. And it will feel betrayed. And I've already upset the DVD player.

Sigh. Maybe when I'm 50 this will all make more sense.

See you soon.