mostly david ephgrave

Yesterday, I took my dad to the doctors’. As we sat in the waiting room, my eyes were drawn to three noticeboards that were up on the wall (this being the best place to keep them). They were separated into three categories: Juvenile, Young Adult and Elderly. I was surprised by the pamphlets they’d attributed to each. The Juvenile board had the information you’d expect; leaflets on breastfeeding, vaccination and the like. It was the other two that bothered me. The Young Adult board was full of posters on chlamydia, AIDS and smoking - not for; against - while the Elderly board only had information on depression and losing weight. I didn’t like was the categorisation. Why suggest that only young people catch STDs and the elderly suffer from depression? It was great that they offered so much information and support, but they didn’t need to pigeonhole it. This could make those in difficulty feel they couldn’t ask for help, because they’re worried that they shouldn’t be in the...

Today, I’m finding it hard to get into a creative flow. I’ve spent the past hour working up a blog on the subject of a noticeboard I spotted at my dad’s doctors’ surgery. The topic is more interesting that it sounds. Despite knowing what I want to get across, I can’t seem to get past the first paragraph. That's the way it goes some days. It’s very irritating. I become obsessed with the structure of every sentence, constantly adding and subtracting words here and there, until I eventually lose track of the point I was trying to make in the first place. (I even did it with that one. Fuck off, David. FUCK OFF!) This happens when you focus too much on the mechanics. Most ideas are at their freshest and most coherent at the moment of inspiration. If you don’t get it down quickly, when you’re still enthusiastic about the subject, it ends up sounding forced. I remember this happening when Glyn and I wrote some material about a Dutch Phrasebook I’d bought whilst tour...