ALL IS ONGOING...

It's been hard to find time to update my journal entries of late, due to spending several hours each day with my mother who is still hospitalised and not very well. A couple of weeks ago she was transferred from Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield to a hospital in Dewsbury, which adds another half hour or so onto our travelling time, (depending on traffic,) for our daily journey from York, (and back.)

Mum has just about got rid of the infections that were left after her initial illness but is now suffering from the effects of being bedridden for the last seven weeks. This is not being helped by her reluctance to eat and drink, both of which she needs to strengthen her muscular system after such a long time in bed.

She is finally on a waiting list to be transferred to a rehabilitation centre on Eastmoor, (an area where she and I lived in during the 1950s,) but there are a number of patients ahead of her waiting for a place too. Hopefully, when she is finally transferred, things will be put in place to help her transition from there to her home environment.

It's been a very difficult and somewhat frustrating time as there have been various, inexplicable errors in the system which should have ensured the transition to the rehabilitation centre sooner. We've lodged complaints and received profuce apologies but, no matter how sincere these are, the problem has not been solved.

Perhaps this is all caused by the massive underfunding of the NHS due to Tory government indifference. (Which is only just one of the reasons why I will not be voting Tory in the upcoming general election.)

Anyway, the stress and worry of the last seven weeks is proving to be a drag on my own health, though I'm trying my best to hold up. Nevertheless, I'm finding it debilitating. The six hours that visiting the hospital takes out of each day means that I'm not only behind with my own work but behind with domestic issues too. I got a speeding ticket the other week and the convoluted paperwork with that, and other issues, has had to take a back seat. (Got caught doing 37 miles per hour in a 30 zone. Not exactly the 'boy racer' zooming madness of the kind we see around here so often.)

Apart from all these issues, I've been trying to deflect demands for me to travel to London to take part in video interviews for the re-issue of the 'Modern Music' album by Cherry Red/Esoteric Records. It's not that I don't want to help out by doing these interviews, it's just that I'm finding it difficult to find time, (and a certain amount of enthusiasm,) to take a day out from hospital duties to travel down to London to carry them out.

Ironically, whereas London seemed like a dream destination when I was a teenager, now going there feels like an unwanted, detested chore. The traffic congestion, crowds and hard-nosed attitudes of shop assistants and so on, seems to have little to do with the kind of world I dreamt of living in all those years ago.

Maybe the kind of world I'd like to live in is just a lost fantasy. But, I have to admit that the world of the 21st Century seems not to be in harmony with the projected 21st Century vision that was promised during my youth. The problem, as always, is with people and their reluctance to change.

I'm trying, despite the continuing preoccupations, to make inroads into recording new music. Not much achieved in this regard, but a new song ready to mix on my Cubase recording system, (after it failed me miserably for some weeks (before, inexplicably, starting to work again.) Still not happy with the system, far too convoluted. But, I guess I'll get more used to its complexities as time goes on, no matter how unwelcome they may be.

Now? I'm away to get drunk...

Bill at the 'Great British Music Festival' in the 1970s.

Bill's live performance equipment...

Bill's original Gibson guarantee card that came with his father's purchase of his Gibson ES 345TD guitar in the early 1960s.