Dr. Brydon's Retreat

Don Your Suits

Sail Yachts

Earn Big Money

That Sweet Fruit

Will Rot

Inside Your Body

Doctor Doctor, I have what is popularly diagnosed as ‘man-flu’.

My long-suffering manager has begged me to register with a doctor. I have
wilfully avoided his counsel like the plague and yet, inevitably, it is the
plague that has now found me. I have paraded my influenza with a theatrical
melodrama that has inspired sympathy in my acquaintances and mild contempt
in my close friends.

Do not attempt to seek me out in my local tavern. You will find me wallowing
at home with only a radiator and a blocked nose for company. My signature
aperitif has been replaced with a cocktail of Berocca, paracetamol,
self-pity and regurgitated snot.

At least I can take comfort that I am not alone. Much of London seems to
have succumbed to this pandemic, which has stripped the capital’s nocturnal
hotspots of its mini-skirts, pukers and broken glassware. Weekend television
ratings must have skyrocketed. Pharmacists were probably celebrating record
profits as the city’s sick erotically smeared Vicks’ VapoRub all over their
breasts and chests. It has been a time of national crisis.

Ok, so maybe I’m overstating it a smidgen and magnifying the collective
sense of empathy. Such is my solipsism.

The point is, apparently I should not approach my ailment like a child
playing the central, terminally-ill, protagonist in a game of Doctors and
Nurses. Although my symptoms are unlikely to raise a concerned eyebrow in
the most compassionate medical ward, they do exhibit one crippling personal
defect: my voice. Or lack of voice, as any casual observer would note. It is
divine providence that Kites do not have a performance for another 12 days.

In future, I need to take better care of my greatest bodily tool. Alas, this
isn’t a pantomime featuring a prostrate Matthew Phillips. It’s the
difference between playing a live show and utterly humiliating myself.

No, I am not a polyrhythmic. So what?

If, like me, you don’t pretend to be an instrumentalist, you might be able to imagine the quandary I find myself in as a songwriter. You might also like to suggest that I select another profession.

Would you trust a surgeon whose medical training consisted of watching box-sets of ER and Scrubs?

Would you pay a lawyer who had perused a few John Grisham novels instead of attending law school?

Probably not.

And yet, I have somehow deluded myself into believing that the most rudimentary understanding of musical theory is sufficient to pursue one’s chart-topping ambitions.

I find this handicap particularly tedious when I compose melodies on the piano. I say ‘melodies’ because these childish jingles would be viewed with scorn by real masters of the ivories.

Although I sometimes fancy myself as a guitarist, I have never been taught piano. While the rest of my schoolyard chums were being rapped on the knuckles for failing to complete a recital of ‘Three Blind Mice’, I was strumming the power chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.

Thus, to find myself suddenly facing a piano wearing the sort of expression that a monkey would when encountering an iPod is quite a challenge. Attempting to perform and record 4 minutes of seamless piano - albeit piano of troll-like simplicity - is a frustrating and interminable exercise.

Ultimately, let me conclude this self-deprecating entry by stating that I believe an intuition for melody to be the single-greatest faculty that a songsmith can posses. In any case, I was under impression that session musicians could be hired to overcome any instrumental difficulties that might be impeding the completion of a masterpiece.

In time, I may employ one of these virtuosos but, by then, I’ll be able to afford piano lessons.