A friend commented recently that I was obviously in touch with my inner-teenager these days (to which, of course, I replied 'you just don't understand me' and ran out of the room, slamming the door). But there are advantages. Over Christmas, my 19-year-old niece put some of her music on my ipod, including the wonderful Snow Patrol and since then I've been a woman obsessed. The songwriter, Gary Lightbody, is a poet, and is quoted as saying he never wants to write about the nice bits where the relationship starts, but the chaos at the end. Who hasn't identified at some time in their lives with the anquished end to the line, 'You've not heard a single word I have said... Oh my god!' Or indeed, 'I haven't made half the mistakes/that you've listed so far.'
Look at the words to Run for a better idea of what I mean. The lines above come from 'How to Be Dead'.
Which brings me to the song titles, and how often they don't seem to resemble in any way the song they're attached to. I keep listening to 'How To be Dead' in the hope I'll work out why it's called that. If you've an answer, please put me out of my misery. But my writing prompt for today is going to come from possibly the bizarrest song title ever: 'Get Balsamic Vinegar ... Quick You Fool'.
OK, gush over. I am aware that this is a case of skewed priorities to be writing about a band on a day that has been apparently declared: 'The International Day of Anger'. But I'm not the only one. On the radio news this morning, without a hint of irony, there was a report about how Prince Charles had addressed an audience of mutton lovers at a London hotel, saying it was a 'tragedy' that we didn't eat more mutton. A tragedy? Really? Perhaps it's time we reclaimed that word, particularly when looking more closely at what's going on in the world outside our comfortable lives.
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