Cat Wars

Weapon of mass confusion.

There's a bit of an undeclared cat war going on around here. It started with a few meows and twitches but it's turned into a full scale, cat-flap battering, pissing and staring contest between cats that most likely have no balls but are desperately trying at act as if they do. Peace seems a long way from breaking out as the nightly skirmishes and tactical batterings run on. We're not sure but there may be up to six guerrilla felines involved, two of them being ours. One is in the secret service and a bit of a Mata-Hari character, the other, a bemused, reluctant and unhappy combatant just makes a lot of noise and wets his pants at the sound of gunfire. The other players are the local bad boy cutie, a stray lady with peculiar white paws, an old gentleman like Captain Mainwaring and a tiny boy/girl soldier of unknown origins. Anyway it's time for the humans strike back, anytime, anywhere and mostly in our pyjamas. Some time in the wee, small hours peace will surely come.

On Days Like These

Pre-retirement and the ghost of Hilda

Saving the pier at Culross from old age etc.

Spent today on a pre-retirement course in Glasgow, a city where, despite all the positive messages and health initiatives a high percentage of those on the street don't really look right or well. It's a curious mixture of tattoos, obesity, strange clothing trapped and moulded onto posturing body shapes topped of with a whining, chiming vocal din shouted into the battered microphone of a mobile phone. That does it I'm afraid and it's on every street corner. All acted out whilst smoking roll ups and drinking ginger, oblivious and lacking any self awareness as bemused tourists look on as they alight their coach bound for freedom. We breed our stereotypes so well, so consistently.

The course was like some precursor for coffee time in Hell or a shopping channel audience audition. Mature, wrinkled people like me, moaning, bald and swollen and wanting out of whatever they were in. I felt like I was trapped in an old people's home but one that, alas and alack, I fitted into perfectly. We were for a brief time a club. Our common purpose apparently being to get some cash, milk some pension funds, have some long and short term investments and then do what we like and "be happy but careful". It all sounds tricky to me but many have ambled down this care worn path before me and lived to be at least 64. There is hope it seems. The best part was the rather confused and well over 60 trainer who used the words "logistics" and "catalyst" to describe major lifetime events when she really meant "arrangements" and "epiphany". I just giggled as I communed with the ghost of Hilda Baker, prostitute on the floor.

Park and Tram

The Edinburgh tram riding experience isn't so bad, just forget the cost and the incompetence. For a few quid you can pleasantly slide for squeaky miles  across the industrial hog weed infested wasteland that eventually brings you the streets of the capital, abruptly. You pass beige offices, Aston Martin dealerships, the Krispy Kreme outlet, ruins and would-be slums, puzzled shoppers and students and scattered palatial dwellings. From the tram you see the backside of everything, raw, abandoned and cocky with graffiti. Edinburgh is a curious mix. When the sun shines and the grass turns brown, the wasps pretend to be bees and the family gathers there probably is no better place to be.

Worse than blowing up flats?

I'm actually quite taken by the Scottish Team's outfit for the Commonsense Games, unlikely I'll every wear one however (no, wait a minute, I don't like it much at all). The thing is, viewed with some detachment, the whole kilt, trews, bunnets, shawls and bagpipes things doesn't really add up to a great look. It's all pretty odd and I can say that as a kilt owner and occasional wearer. There can't be anybody who truly wants to wear this stuff, it's just...expected of us and we play up and live up to those expectations. That's what the Scots do best. All that will change post Sept 18 when Wee Eck's new Caledonian Hipster look and lifestyle is launched officially.

Things flying about

Today the washed out and broody skies were crowded with various flying machines. All of them (obviously) quite hard to photograph. They move too fast and high. I presume that there is a special technique for this sort of thing. Clearly I know nothing about it and I only own a £40 camera.

Meanwhile the big, cataclysmic voting day in September rolls inexorably towards us like a jam donut wobbling down the Royal Mile whilst chased by a hungry poodle. So now we find Wee Eck and Diddy Cameron getting politely booed by shipbuilders and the Queen's procession of minders close every road in West Fife, it may be the end of all reason and the demise of the M&S eat for two for a tenner offer forever. So as world peace gets no kind of chance the standards of media reporting and honest discussion seem on the brink of total collapse, here's a good piece about the Scottish situation and the tiresome and often inappropriate use of the term bully. Good on you Robert.

Seems like everyone is on holiday

Sandy, dry, warm tones and new ceramic surfaces, gleaming white and pristine, still unfinished but all there in the void that was. Cold and clean, dripping and gurgling and ready. Bright reflections and quirky space, hidden features and openings and the whizzing of fans and air and cold water turning hot. Unmarked and easy, strong, bold and compact outside of daylight. Picked out and slotted in, proportional and perfect in places and wabi sabi in others. Lazy and busy and hidden behind the anonymity of a closed door that you can peek around, squint and stare in but no key hole or latch as we await the compliant lock design. One hot and bothered question remains...who will the brave soldier and righteous warrior be, the chosen one who Christens and launches this spectacular and spiritual space?

Feckless Eejit

Here I am, a distant figure in my own head, captured by GG.

You (a person in the general sense) cannot help but see yourself in certain ways, some honest, some complimentary, sometimes self effacing and sometimes slightly romanticised to the point of being for a while a complete and utter nonsensical type of person. The key is not to be too delusional, pretentious or over extravagant. Just admit to yourself that from time to time you will behave like a feckless eejit and everything will eventually work out fine. Honesty is almost the best policy. Honest.

Jack White's Telecaster

As it's too early on a Sunday morning to go out and do the noisy power tool joinery repairs I need to do so  I'll pass the time writing more of this pointless drivel. Jack White's Telecaster was OK, made a lot of strange noises and there's no doubt went down well with the Glastonbury crowd yesterday. I'd have liked it better in a natural finish rather than faded Toilet Duck blue, my own bad taste of course. He's good but hard to watch or listen to for anything more than a couple of songs, I feel a headache coming on by then and the urge to channel surf back to the World Cup. I've no idea why I can only take small doses of him because I should really be able to just get the music, whatever it is. However I enjoyed Metallica's set and watched the whole thing. I didn't really expect to do that. They did blether on about "nice" things and some incongruous hippy drippy ideals between their tunes, all of which are about death, poison, horror etc. Nothing makes sense these days, heavy metal bands trying hard to please, whatever next?  Strangely entertaining in it's own way though, like watching a piano tumble down Ben Nevis and their cover of Whisky in the Jar was just right.

Change

Change has to be obviously; I think it was Donovan who came up with that lyric a long time ago. Change was something I reflected on yesterday whilst driving along in my stately and almost clean but battered old Volvo, tweed sports jacket on, grand daughters chattering in the back and Matt Monro's greatest Hits on the car stereo (even that kind of device now sounds dated - a CD player). I probably wasn't speeding either. Where has my former, inner wild child and socialist revolutionary gone? At least I was tempted to smoke a fag later on last night as we spilled out of a good humoured birthday party pub and onto the Edinburgh streets. The young lit up carelessly, giggling  and laughing. I just said no. Of course I'd only managed a pint of shandy and a bit of a Scotch Egg with a runny centre.

Henry Miller on getting old

"If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power. If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on the way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss — under your breath, of course — “Fuck you, Jack! You don’t own me!” … If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you’ve got it half licked."

OK, I don't agree with every word but I do agree with most of the words. I think that is perfectly reasonable. There's more of his hokum and such stuff here. Sometimes I sit down and wonder just what it is I'm looking for and what everything means or might mean and why so much in life makes no sense whatsoever. Then I realise I'm sitting down and I'm feeling neither anxious or sad, I'm at peace with myself and I'm actually quite happy that way.

Fails to disappoint

Today: Fife looking onto West Lothian, a long way from Fargo.

I think it was the Daily Telegraph TV critic that said Fargo had "failed to disappoint", an odd turn of phrase really. It seems like disappointment might have been an expected thing, a natural phenomenon, what you get when you regurgitate film onto TV and in so doing stretch a premise or an idea into 10 episodes with a different cast and plot line but the same frozen location . Whilst Fargo certainly didn't disappoint it did fail to explain itself. It all was pointless, nothing needed to happen, it was cruel and absurd. As Lorne Malvo put it his way a number of unexplained times as he repeated "is this what you want?" I felt those words ringing in my ear in the final moments as the cold water and ice closed over the hapless Lester. Here was an ending that needn't have been, this is true of so many things and almost profound but nobody is really listening anyway. "I used to have such positive opinions of people..."

Painting garden furniture

A day spent reasonably well, at work for the first nine hours or so as is the custom here in the western hemisphere, then home and after some early evening sunshine, blood, sweat and spilled Cuprinol the ceremonial annual painting of the rickety garden furniture took place followed by massive amounts of ice cold beer to celebrate. Now I feel a bit...

In praise of Shreddies

Before scoffing more bad food and over processed stuff, nature reminds us of our mortality via orchid flowers.

On rethinking the last jumbled up post I realise I'm no hipster. I lack the tattoos, the beard and a long list of other things, significantly I don't give a toss either. This is good news as it means I can now get on with the rest of my life without worrying about gaining and maintaining that particular stupid image, (me with that look). So it's back to concentrating on sorting a balanced diet involving wine and oil, understanding the mesmerising amount of options for Fender wiring systems and painting the slowly fading garden furniture. Before that some kind of second breakfast is required. It's necessary to fill a gap; earlier it was Shreddies and bananas, I have overcome the feeling of wanting to gag when encountering Shreddies, I'm free of that. It was partly a texture, partly an image thing. Turns out that mixed with a sliced banana they work well  as an early morning kick starter for the expanding man's digestive processes. Then the rumbles begin and you know it's a bacon roll you really need.

Home before the postcards

Hard to feel sorry for the England team (or anybody who gets beat at a football match). Anyway good to see the Messiah chose to be with those mortal fans in the main stand and then decided, as part of the divine visitation, very briefly to walk amongst them. Oh how they sang and partied.

I'm not sure what hipsters look like, what they do or where they go. So when I found myself in a bleached wood and chick pea cafe in Aberdeen I felt out of my depth. There were devices and teapots everywhere. Ugly people beautifully dressed, hip staff in black and conundrums played out all across the menus like entrance exams into some strange organisation. I didn't choose wisely. After the order of soups, breads, sausage rolls and salads c/w expensive juice in rat-proof cans it was cake time. "Four pieces of carrot cake." I said, squinting at the selection and nibbling on random samples and crumbs. "You are being boring" retorted the waitress like some female Jeremy Paxman interrogator. "You need some flour-free brownies." I was unaware of that and have been so for most of my life. I gave in and took a selection of their wares back to the table. It was all fine, in fact pretty filling and substantial. Lunch, queer cakes and modern jazz. Maybe I am an old hipster after all.

Black and white cat

Reflections in a marble worktop, born from primal volcanic fires and the magma from the centre of the earth a million years ago. Almost perfect and generally regarded as indestructible, just take care not to place a warm teaspoon upon the surface. Terms and conditions apply.

Tigger the cat, the local pussy bully and general bad, streetwise boy. He's wild, crazy and a little mysterious. He cares little for the World Cup, what we're having for tea, trivial affairs  of state and today's Daily Mail headlines. He's above and beyond all that, he's on the roof, on the windowsill and prowling around the garden. He's watching. He may not like cheese, he may love it, we can't be sure. He's probably watching you right now. Look out. He's watching me.

Queen's Baton

OK, I'm done. I cannot take anymore. I nearly cracked in 2012 over the ballyhoo for the Olympic Torch but the Queen's Baton has now pushed me over the edge. Have we all lost our fucking marbles here? Are we now under Cameron's benign nothingness transported backwards and  living in the 13th Century or the Dark Ages or something? How is it that a plain, inanimate object, a stylised golden baton in fact, can inspire crowds, lead baffled celebrations, hysterical responses, bring out brass bands and hot dog vendors and cause inappropriate expense and media attention across the so-called Commonwealth. Are people so desperate for some spiritual experience that they'll gather together and blindly follow this tin wedge of an item on it's busman's holiday across the globe and bits of Wild West Lothian? 

Well yes of course they will. You almost expect the sick and feeble, the poor and the infirm to be wheeled out by grinning social workers and activists so they can bathe in it's quasi-religious presence and so be inspired to compete in running, jumping and swimming competitions or more usefully be divinely healed and freed up from their compulsive personalities and attention seeking demons. It's just a gold stick FFS and this is the twenty first century. Stop acting like Saxon morons with pitchforks and straw sucking village idiots and take a good look at yourself. This is a meaningless charade that only exists to promote a puerile sporting competition, eh? OK, now I'm really done...back to the World Cup and a tin of golden, chilled to perfection lager in front of the TV.

Pictorial fillers

Cut a hole in a 2ft thick wall and...put in a window. 

Sad dog in the floor.

It's Father's Day today so I'm not doing much apart from laundry and sandwiches, so here are some pictures with which I will fill the space.

Tough Mudder 14

Just being a simple spectator at Tough Mudder is hard work. This year they seem to have imported a particularly fierce and sticky mud and spread it everywhere; from Dalkeith to the TM finish and back again, so spattering the countryside. Last year there were complaints that there too little mud (?). Anyway after a strong family challenge involving just running like mad at every obstacle our team completed the course, wet, muddy and happy. I came home knackered, sore feet, tired legs and collapsed (almost) on the couch. They of course ran 12 miles and took part in some risky things along the way, maybe I walked about 5 but in heavy clay and muggy weather, I'm not getting any younger it seems. I never new that. Now I'm home at last, two cold beers and a limp chicken curry later all is once again well in my tiny unmuddy world.

Deja Vu

Conclusive proof that humans (well this one) are stupid and learn nothing from either mistakes or experience or the searing pain of a fresh knife wound. I cut my finger in the same place cutting a tomato today, just as I did yesterday. To be clear whilst the same place was also the kitchen the precise same place was my left index fingertip. Darwin; you are kidding with that theory of natural selection and adaption! it was however a different knife but still from the same set. Maybe the lesson is to eat fewer tomatoes.