You Know You're Tired When You Start Shouting at Traffic Lights

Problems are like buses except that they increase exponentially. You spend ages sorting out one or two and then suddenly 150 more come along at the same time.

I have been battling on a number of fronts recently, notably with the tax authorities here in deepest Bavaria, who also have an exponential touch with the amount of tax they expect people to pay, and with the Sphinx-like local council in Liverpool regarding my mother's house.

Then on top of that there are the 18-hour working days in which you try to catch up with the time you have lost dealing with all these people and problems so that you can earn the money you need to pay them in the first place.

This has meant that my poor old blog has been relegated to the less creative sections of my overloaded bonce and has had to do a fair bit of languishing in the doldrums as I have been too tired or uninspired to blog anything.

When you play music you often find yourself driving home from a gig late in the night when no one else is around. No pedestrians, no cars, empty deserted streets ... except for the traffic lights which keep on blinking their colourful warnings through the night When I lived in my old flat, there was one set of lights on the way home which I particularly loathed. A set of lights on a main carriageway at an insignificant side road where probably only three cars would emerge all day. You could see the lights a long time before you got to them and they would always be on green. Green, green, green, green ... and then comes that psychologically critical moment when you think you are going to make it through this time and start to speed up ... and just at that moment the lights start their arrogant, languid change ... green .... ah, well ... might as well go to ... ho hum ... hmm ... let's see ... oh ... amber ... no, not to keen on that ... how about ... um ... yes ... red!

And you screech to a halt in the middle of the night on a wide deserted road - not a human or moving vehicle within miles - and you sit in your car in front of this bloody red light, tired, irritated, just wanting your bed...

On occasions I have been known to shout and rave at these particular lights - and I realised it was always when I was particularly knackered.

And that was happened last night as I was trying to get home late in the night and all the traffic lights had conspired to play that game with me ... and then I realised "hmm, Neutron, old chap, all this is getting to you more than you think!"