It turns out that this is the 551st Self Distract. It was pointed out to me last week that I’d started it in 2006, but I know it didn’t become a thing for some years. But it’s been every Friday for a long time now so let’s say 551 divided by 52 equals ten and a bit. Let’s call this the tenth anniversary of Self Distract proper.

Funny that it should happen today, though. I mean, okay, we’ve just contrived the numbers to make it happen, but the numbers were there and they were there today, March 29, 2019.

Since whatever day it was that I actually made this an unbreakable weekly chat, I have broken it once.

Just the once.

You won’t know or remember the absence of a Self Distract, but you’re a bit more likely to recognise the date. It was the day after June 23, 2016. The result of the damned Brexit referendum was announced and I couldn’t move.

Well, I’m surprised I say that because moving was all I could do: I shook. I actually convulsed.

When I regained some discipline, the following week, I wrote this:

If you looked out of your window and thought everything seems much the same as it did, go out the door instead. If you think we’ll look back on this in five years and wonder what the fuss was about, you’re confusing things being fine with having no damn choice about it. I hope we will become inured to this result but we are permanently injured.

And here we are. March 29, 2019, the day the UK leaves Europe –– except it doesn’t. I no longer know what date to dread, but the effects are already here and I’m not over it.

I wanted to talk to you about music today. About how we can and can’t write to music, how it does and doesn’t help us when we’re writing. But then I saw the 551 number and then I realised that not only had I nearly forgotten to put the bins out, I’d also nearly missed today’s date.

i think I’m going to carry on missing it. Let’s put the kettle on, get back to writing, and try to do something good.