Something strange happened.

One of Pádraig’s friends told me he had the best two days of his life working up to 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, for more than 12 hours every day. For free! AND, he had to raise the funding for the job.

Surely, work is not like that. Think: Monday morning. The alarm clock goes off. You beat it into the ground. Somehow you don’t manage. And it goes off again. (Whoever invented ‘snooze’ for alarm clocks should be sent somewhere very far away and never be allowed to return to civilisation again, in case he’d impose another of his ‘brilliant’ ideas on us.) You can’t win this fight against technology, so you give up, you give in, and you get up. You crawl out of bed. You wonder why weekends are so short and working weeks are soooo long. Why holidays never seem to last longer than the blink of an eye, but work never stops. You’re overqualified and underpaid. You invest your life into this job but most of the return goes to your employer. You have no control over what you’re doing, but made responsible for the outcome. – That’s work. Right?

The reason why this friend of Pádraig’s had the best two days of his life, working, for free, was because he did something that he really enjoyed doing; something that had meaning and made sense to him; that he had control over and that he was doing because he wanted to, not because he was told; something that involved 40 other brilliant people directly, and many many more indirectly; something that was so exciting that sleep seemed just like a completely overrated waste of time. He made loads of news friends in the process and even got to know a second cousin of his who he had never met before.

The result of his work, and that of his new and old friends, will soon hit the charts. We got a sneak preview of the CD yesterday – it’s fantastic. Really. Just unbelievably good. It’ll take just a little bit longer, a bit more time, but I tell you: it’ll be worth the wait! Dreamboat!

Pádraig’s heart rate was quite a bit higher than usual yesterday. Today, Pat noticed that his left shoulder was swollen. Something that would, in a ‘normal’ situation, not really be a cause of concern – and did not seem to cause any unease among the pflege, or care team – does make us really really nervous, especially when we see that Pádraig really seems to be in pain. We became quite concerned and upset. There were also some yellow patches on his arm near the swollen shoulder that looked very much like bruises to me. So they took blood samples and did another set of tests on those sample which, as far as we know, all turned out ok so far. We wanted to talk to a doctor but were told, they had all left (it was after 4pm). Eventually, it turned out that there were doctors, only that they weren’t too enthusiastic about getting involved in checking out Pádraig’s shoulder. One surgeon was going to double-check the x-rays and possibly take out some fluid from the shoulder to get that tested too. We waited for him but eventually had to leave.

We should have the results of the tests carried out tomorrow, the next working day. There is work, and there is work.

Music tip:
Klaus der Geiger: Nein, nein wir woll´n nicht eure Welt
“Wir sind dem Leben auf der Spur”
Germany’s best known busker!