I can honestly say that there aren’t many weeks that go by where in my mind I don’t create a playlist that I want to contribute to @ablaze ‘s magnificent 3 tune Tuesday.
Unfortunately my thoughts and time tend to move faster than my ability to blog and before you know it, Tuesday is gone and I am ploughing deeper into the week with family and working commitments multiplying as I go.
However, this week is a bit different because I was unexpectedly admitted to hospital yesterday with a peritonsillar abscess and suspected early signs of sepsis. I’d actually had and recovered from a bought of bacterial tonsillitis just a couple of weeks ago but it seems like that infection hadn’t completely disappeared and returned with renewed vigour over the weekend.
Good news is that medical staff at my local hospital have been fantastic! They drained the abscess (I’ll let you imagine what that might look like) and pumped me full of all manor of drugs to stop the infection escalating which means I’m feeling significantly better than I was this time yesterday.
The other good news is that I have absolutely no excuse as to not having time to blog this Tuesday and in fact I’m doing so from my hospital bed while waiting for the ENT consultant to give me the all clear - I would love to spend tonight in my own bed as I seem to be sharing a ward with several medal hopefuls at the Snoring World Championships!
a view from my hospital bed. I’ve endured being prodded and cut with needles and scalpels on a variety of sensitive areas but pain wise what I’m dreading most is the nurse ripping off my IV needle which is taped across my hairy arms. That’s gonna sting like a mother fucker!
It also provides an easy theme for my 3 tunes - from a hospital bed!
Cold War Kids - Hospital Beds
Great band and a track from a great album (Robbers and Cowards) worthy of a 3 tune Tuesday in their own right (if no one has done it already).
I actually used to play this song fairly regularly with some mates in more of a jamming group rather than what you’d describe as a band. We were just a collection of expat friends living in East Asia and playing with whatever instruments we could get hold of with the occasional open mic night thrown in where enough of us happened to be at the right pub at the right time.
Best Lyrics:
I’ve got one friend lying across from me
I did not choose him
He did not choose me
In this instance my friend lying across from me was a similarly aged man who like myself enjoyed a bit of road biking but had, against his wife’s wishes, decided to buy a BMX bike. His first go out on the new bike he tried a wheelie and broke his leg in 2 places. There are 2 lessons to learn here. Firstly, your wife is always right and secondly, leave those kind of antics to the kids who tend to bounce when they hit the ground!
Pink Floyd - Take up thy stethoscope and walk
I’m a big fan of all things Floyd but hold a special affinity with their early work under Syd Barret as well as lot of his solo releases before he went completely off the reservation - turns out that LSD in your morning coffee is not a recipe for long term success even in the field of 1960s psych rock.
However, this was in fact the first Pink Floyd song to be written solely by Roger Walters who following Barret leaving the band went on to be their primary song writer.
Favourite Lyric: the opening “Doctor Doctor” to the first few lines that replaces the earlier beat. Simple yet highly effective.
The The - Heartland
Again a band I could write plentiful 3 tune Tuesday blogs on. In my opinion, Matt Johnson is one of the greatest singer songwriters of his generation and what is more is that his strongly political lyrics continue to hold such weight 3 decades on. In fact, in many of instances they are scarily prophetic.
This selection for my hospital beds theme comes from a slightly different angle and recognises the fact that my first admittance to a UK hospital since being a toddler coincided with the largest industrial action in the history of the NHS (pretty bad timing on my behalf) with many nurses and paramedics going on strike this week due to poor pay.
Best Lyric:
This is the land where pensioners are apes
And the hearts are being cut from the welfare state
Let the poor drink the milk
While the rich eat the honey
Let the bums count their blessings
While we count the money
Healthcare workers have been historically underpaid and the system as a whole poorly funded for generations. The NHS is arguably the greatest social welfare achievement of post war Britain and yet we stand a very real risk of losing it. If we did, I suspect that we’d never (at least in my lifetime) see a health care service that delivers free care at the point of service again in the way that the NHS does and that we’d slip towards a system similar to that in the US where access to care is directly related to your bank balance and that would be a very sad day indeed.
After all, as Johnson sings at the end of this song
This is the 51st State of USA