Why there are no aspirin in the jungle...

I’m dreaming of parrots.

One of the consequences of having a head is that sometimes it hurts. Just what makes it hurt can be various. There are those headachy things that come on in warm weather, the bangers that you sometimes get after a late night, low doors, hammers, too much TV, cheese and puberty.

Teenagers seem to have a lot of headaches. As a teenager I remember life was either all headache or fun, there didn’t seem to be much in between. I expect it was all the new data hitting continually– school, sex, art, sex, art and sex, sex and school, beer, beer and school, beer and sex, beer and sex and art and school. No wonder I had headaches.

“Beer and sex, beer and sex.”

Later it was the stress of work and life traumas that gave me headaches. Rushing here, rushing there, meetings, food, travel, beer, mortgages, sex, wine, children, wine, divorce, art, wine, dating, wine, sex, travel, wine. It seems that the headache potential of my middle years was brain thumpingly good; one long headache really.

“Wine and sex, wine and sex.”

These days I don’t really get headaches, maybe I’ve grown out of them or perhaps I’ve become immune; too old to appreciate them so they’ve simply gone away. Of course it could be that all the years of storing up shit in my head means that there’s no longer any room for a headache to get a grip. New shit, old shit, denial, time passing, broken dreams, old lies, old cheats, bullies, old lies and liars, the treat (threat) of weapons of mass destruction, wine, escape from joy, memories, memories, wine and memories and not a flower, not a flower at all, something else, chop down that tree...

Dreaming of the parrot as it flies up into the tree – flap, flap, flap, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep.

I awake to the infuriating alarm clock with a headache. A headache? I thought I didn’t get them any more. A headache? Oh well, it’s better than feeling nothing at all I suppose.

So why are there no aspirin in the jungle?