Taking Back Control

In the immediate aftermath of the General Election, I should really be using this space to unload all of thoughts from my brain. Because I’ve had a lot of them. I’ve spent evenings sitting on the end of my bed having a silent conversation in my brain with an imaginary person who’s not so much conversing with me as they are being pummelled into oblivion by words.

Let’s face it, the whole thing’s a bloody mess. And one thing I’ve noticed myself doing lately is that when things are a bloody mess, you take every opportunity you can to remain optimistic or find some kind of positive. It’s all about positively controlling whatever you can control, while the out-of-control negative shitstorm continues to swirl with no sign of slowing down any time soon.

At the risk of sounding like an aging, rural, angry white man – who believes that all of his problems (and all of the world’s problems for that matter) are somehow the fault of immigration – it’s all about taking back control. Some of the things that go on you won’t be able to affect in the slightest, so why should the crap factor intervene with whatever you do have the power to affect? At least I think that’s the lesson two years or so of on/off mild depression is supposed to give you.

For example, the country, politically, is – ooh, how do I put this delicately? erm – “fucked”. But I’m not worried about the consequences of what will happen. They’ll happen anyway, whether I worry about them or not. I made my impact by drawing a cross on a piece of paper. I even scribbled the intersecting lines several times with a thick, near-blunt pencil just to make it clear where I put it. That’s about as much involvement as I’m going to have though. Why worry about it when it’ll only make you feel worse?

Instead, I choose to think of the more comforting thoughts, such as how much like my local Indian takeaway, or how the new Crash Bandicoot remaster is nearly ready to take me back to my childhood, or how I’m not Theresa May right now. Yes, things will probably go wrong. Catastrophically wrong. But if we’re all going to hell one way or another against our will, I’d rather go moderately comfortable with some semblance of a smile left on my face.


I don’t even like peas. But I sure do like this. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that they hail from the much underrated city of Chester where I spend most of my daily working life. Okay, maybe it does a little, but while these girls seem to be in second-EP mode, I’d like to get in there early before they break out and hit the big time.

Lightly straddling the border between sort-of-rock and sort-of-pop, it seems almost inevitable that larger success lies somewhere in the future. I suppose it’s just up to the general public and (arguably more important) radio playlisters to see how kindly they might take to a name that feels clever, playful and a little bit terrible. Because yes, when you say it out loud, it does sound like “penis”. That’s the joke.

Peaness – Same Place

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