Counting Sheep in 2016

 I found this scrap of a post today on an old external hard drive. Written 22nd November 2016.

On nights when I find myself tired but not quite ready to fall into sleep I have a number of little mind games to help lull me over. These vary from a winning the lottery fantasy (I never play the lottery) and how I would dispose of my fortune. I’d need at least £7,000,000 as I have a very big family. Sometimes, if I don't wish to excite myself too much I just try to remember all the 32 counties of Ireland.

Back when I was a teenager, I’d be deciding in which order I’d date the Monkees and which of them I’d eventually marry and raise children with. It was always either Davy Jones or Mickey Dolenz and I only went out with Peter Tork once and then we just held hands. You know, thinking back, I never once planned my wedding or thought about a wedding dress. It was always about what Davy and I (or Mickey and I) were going to call our huge family of mostly female children. Lord! I was so young.

Last night I found a new method of helping myself nod off. A fantasy of having Donald Trump killed.

I must have been feeling slightly better the following week when I wrote and posted this,

And what of my inner life? Well... I'm still trying to come to terms with what appears to be the new world order and the rise of the right. At least I'm not dreaming about killing that man any more. Negative energy Nelly, negative energy.

It's been a long four years.

Davy Jones

It's easy to mock the attraction that many young girls have for performers such as Justin Bieber. The fact is many of us not so young ones had our own version of the baby-face crush. Through the years there have been many of them - David Cassidy, Donny Osmond and way, way back in the day Davy Jones, the Monkees front man. Davy was a teeny-tiny English boy, trying to make his way as an actor when he auditioned for The Monkees TV show. The show was wildly successful and Davy became a pin up. I was one of his hundreds of thousands of fans.

In those days we didn't get to hear every detail of our hero's life. We only got to hear what publicists told us. Our crush was a blank canvas on which our innocent, or not so innocent fantasies could be projected. We did not have to deal with glamorous girlfriends, paternity suits or tales of drunkenness and debauchery. Davy and his ilk were the boys next door, the ones that could be introduced to Mum, who would, of course, disapprove of the long hair but would admire every other aspect of their being.

I bought the Monkees fanzine and relished every lying word. I was thirteen and hadn't discovered Radio Geronimo. Eventually my tastes changed and I transferred my affections to Mickey Dolenz. By fifteen I had outgrown the Monkees entirely.

Davy grew up, lost his teenage heart throb looks, got fatter and died. Those baby face boys don't usually make for handsome men. Donny Osmond might be an exception to that rule but that's Mormon clean living for you, or botox - who knows?