Discharged

Something that Dave said about the chap whose poem he has on his blog today reminded me of this.

When I was in my teens, among the people I knew was a family of several brothers - we used to all meet up at dances and suchlike. They were all at public school so I only saw them in the holidays. There was one younger than I, one about the same age and the rest were older - as time went by and one tended to pair up rather than get together in a gang, I saw them less.

One of the oldest boys had a serious illness in his teens and had to have brain surgery, and ended up with a metal plate in his skull, but he fortunately made a good recovery. Afterwards he dropped out somewhat, (in the sense that he became a drop-out as we tended to do back in the 60s. Some of us), and the next thing was that he vanished and we heard eventually that he'd run away and joined the Foreign Legion. A few weeks of the discipline there and he realised that maybe it wasn't the best move he'd ever made. However, he'd signed up and he wasn't allowed to resign, that had been made clear.

So he started to suffer from dreadful headaches. He put on a very good show and the doctor saw him, and the headaches got worse. Eventually, they were concerned enough to order an x-ray, and there was a piece of metal in his skull. He professed complete ignorance of it - he must have been good and they must have been pretty gullible - in the end they couldn't bundle him out fast enough.

Anyway. After church, a friend asked me out for lunch. I said that the Sage had been away and if he had arrived home in time for lunch I'd better be there. So we left it that if he wasn't home, I'd go and join the friend. I went back, the Sage wasn't there, I hung around until after 1 o'clock, then left a note and went. I cooked him dinner tonight though and he was not unhappy. Or maybe he hides it well... Anyway, he bought himself a present while he was away, so he's feeling cheerful about that.

Most peculiar - I'd put together a playlist on iTunes not long ago which I hadn't got around to labelling and, when I downloaded Mike's plinth mix, I found that everything had changed order on that untitled playlist. And now I can't alter it - that is, I can list it in alphabetical order by name, artist, album etc, but not in the random but carefully chosen order I'd put it in. I suppose I'll work it out sooner or later. Even if I have to do a new playlist and delete this one.