2016-08-01 – I wish I could play

My son is here for a few days.  He wants me to pick up the guitar and (try to) play again.  We spend much of the day listening to great guitar riffs on YouTube, and downloading guitar tab from the internet.  We don’t make a huge amount of progress, but we do listen to some great music – Joe Bonamassa, Ben Howard, Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters and so many more.  we also succeed in filling the lounge with guitars, guitar stands and amplifiers.  I struggle to play a sequence of notes with any fluidity, but it is one of the things that I’d really love to master.  I blame it on the Parkinson’s Disease, but perhaps it’s down to a complete lack of talent.  Whatever, there’s no denying that I do love to spend time mucking about with guitars and listening to great music.

I can’t find a good setting on my device at the moment.  Group ‘A’ is affecting my speech at the moment, making me slur a little – I can feel my tongue become more wooden when I change settings from Group ‘B’ to Group ‘A’.  Group ‘B’ was a more effective setting for tremor control, but it actually seems a little worse than Group ‘A’ today, and with the added side-effect of dyskinesia.  Difficult to know which setting to choose for the best result.  I put up with Group ‘B’ for a couple of hours and then revert to Group ‘A’.  No doubt I’ll change again in a couple more hours…

My son and I collect my daughter from Gunton Station, take the dog for a walk, and then sit and chill until my wife arrives home from work.  My wife knows which settings I am on without even asking.  Group ‘A’ settings make me quiet and withdrawn, monosyllabic and unsmiling.  They aren’t really offering me much in the way of tremor control, either.  I change back to Group ‘B’ until bedtime – hopefully I’ll be more sociable!