Waterfall Day

Today is Fraser Drummond's birthday, Fraser's no longer with us in person but his music has never left, nor has his soulful style and unique spirit. Here's a short video of Confushion in action, shared by consummate musician John Farrell, who's also featured on guitar.

Faces in things

Puzzled young tomato says, "how come you only water us once in a while, leave us out in the chilly weather and only give us plant food once a week? Where is this all going to end?" Me, "well Mr Tomato, the truth is that it's all going to end in a salad one fine day." (Please note that I deliberately did not mention his rather obvious blemishes, I've no wish to start some kind of controversy but he may well miss the salad part but hit the soup).

Artwork of the day

Virgin, by Joseph Beuys, April 4th, 1979.

This came up in my Twitter feed and, strangely for me, I really liked it. Normally this type (?) of artwork leaves me cold as a fish finger in a freezer. Today it's fine. The question is, if I saw this for real in a gallery would I feel the same as I do seeing it as a flat image?

Not from these parts

Porsche IMS bearing ex 2003 996 with a mere 84k on the clock. This recovered bearing is still running smoothly as is the new ceramic one now residing in the depths of the engine. So the old one has now been re-engineered into some kind of Darwin Trophy courtesy of Ebay and Gorilla Glue.

Burger me

Once I was a vegetarian, a drunken fish supper soon ended that phase. Now I eat meat, red occasionally, fish maybe once a week and chicken a little more (if I can get to it before the cats). I suppose a burger counts as red, this one is from FiveGuys or 5Guys or perhaps 5iveGuys. I failed to take in much information during a brief visit. It was pricey for a simple burger (IMHO) but tasty and the bun and the textures were right. Still eating meat bothers me a little, just a bit, there's a tiny voice telling me about animals and environment and methane and slaughterhouses and the future. There's also voice telling me I'm an omnivore and carnivore and crashing bore (a bit like the film). Bloody vegan voices and meaty choices and living things onwards ten times before. So if god didn't want us to eat animals why did he make them out of meat?  But then why did he (appear to) make them conscious and give them personalities and big soulful eyes and so on? Also why did he make the best hangover cure a chilly or reheated Big-Mac and not a hearty bowl of salad? Why is it that even in my maturing and slightly decrepit years these life long puzzles and mild sources of torment remain unresolved?

Aberdeen Fashion Week

Some conceptual art and artwork stolen from the fledgling Aberdeen Fashion Week and an empty flat in Dundee city centre. The East Coast holds all the best images but maintains them in a fashionably low key way.

Kimchi at Mamafubu

Mamafubu is a pan-Asian restaurant in Glasgow. It may be elsewhere. They do weird stuff. Kimchi is Korean pickled cabbage, very popular. Vietnamese coffee, very sweet and slow. Bubble tea and bubble cocktails, very bubbly. Chicken and rice, all very chicken and ricey. A wee, slow and reasonably priced treat that's almost exotic.

Cumbernauld

It's wrong to kick a town when it's down, I know that. So I'm not about to kick Cumbernauld, I'm just nudging and judging. Still this portion of a modern (?) building, as see from a passing bus, must be about the ugliest building anywhere. Of course the design may suit some function or purpose I'm failing to understand. Maybe it grew organically as needs arose. Whatever led up to this doesn't really matter, it just exists now. Some sort of tribute to what you get when you stop caring but still need a structure for your business. "Bravo Cumbernauld!" is the best response perhaps.

O Grade Dr Who

Usually physics leaves me flummoxed, even the most basic stuff. That kind of made last night's Dr Who a challenge. Of course I failed miserably to connect and had to sleep on some of the concepts. Stuck on a space ship 400 miles long and on the edge of a black hole. At the front of the space ship, nearest the black hole, time moves on slowly because of the intense gravity of the black hole. At the other end, further away from the black hole time runs at a different speed (more quickly) as the gravitational pull of the black hole is less. There is an ultra high speed elevator for transporting the crew that runs between both ends of the space ship. 

So I get what happens at both ends regarding time being out of kilter. (An interesting feature was that those in the rear end were able to watch those in the front end on TV and observe their very slow time in action running in parallel to their "normal" time). So then, what happens to those who choose to use the elevator between the two areas with their different times and journey either way? I'm sure the writers will either answer or ignore this query next week. One way or another it was actually a pretty good episode of a show that I seldom watch these days. Mind you I never liked the Cybermen, lame villains in my view, albeit this current story about their genesis has a bit of an edge to it.

On top of Fife

Sometimes I don't really know what I'm doing but just do things anyway. Usually that works out fine. Today myself and this old bird and some unafraid and precious passengers did a few laps of Knockhill, Fife's premier road racing circuit. It wasn't really a race, they weren't really laps and the weather wasn't very good but I liked the steady growl that came from the exhaust when a gap opened up and I challenged her to get in there. So that was that. Another highlight was a fine set of Stephen's filled rolls that we feasted upon will hiding out from the elements in the media centre whilst guzzling free coffee and watching Quentin Wilson rabbiting away on a big screen. Then back to earth with a bump as I came home and applied putty to the house windows as part of the lengthy summer maintenance programme.

Contemporary Arts

Something about the term contemporary arts has always made me uneasy, maybe I just didn't understand it or was not  sure quite what it applied to. Perhaps it was too vague for a person like me who likes his labels and genres to be neat and tidy. It could be a 60's BBC2 (as was) or Sunday supplement stigma of elitism that I've applied to it. It could be I'm just a bit dumb or stubborn when it comes to certain terms and of course the world of art is full of them and is up it's own arse for a great deal of the time anyway. My poor education hasn't helped. I strangled my own arts career at birth thanks to failing to listen and failing to act as a teenager, you don't easily get over that. Then, when I finally hit a college there was no art in sight, just the saner and steadier worlds of statistics, accounts and law underpinned by a dose of management theory and beer. In retrospect I learned next to nothing and relearned only how to be  comfortable in a cocoon of relative ignorance. There I was almost happy. 

Now I'm past all that, easy in my own skin and though not well read I'm slightly better read. Truth and knowledge have dripped down onto me like some steady Chinese water torture. All I had to do was be still and let it run past me. Time alive is the best education and so when I sat in a Contemporary Arts Centre yesterday, supping weak tea from a tiny cup and fancy little tea pot I felt no pain or shame. I just blended in, bemused by the backgrounds, the unfinished nature of things, the gift shop mentality, the posters and bills for shows I'll never attend, the glossy pamphlets and flyers, the eager young staff, the conversations and illicit encounters. It's all washing over my head like a life only dreamed and not lived but I'm comfortable with that.

Graduation day, Caird Hall Dundee. Last time I was there Led Zeppelin were playing and it was 1971. Time passes way too quickly I'm afraid.

There. Did it.

Eggs in coconut oil

After checking on Instagram, always a reliable source and sanity check for facts and accuracy I've established that some folks think coconut oil is brilliant and others think it's the same slimy stuff that passes through the Devil's genitals. Well I'm already confused but I actually quite like coconuts despite two of them diving from a palm tree in a Miami car park one day and trying to end by life, at a mere 56 years for what it's worth. I was only whistling selections from CSN's first album in a quiet and harmonious tone and minding my own business. So I forgive the coconuts and choose to believe that their oil (hopefully grown and harvested ethically) is an agent for good and good health etc. etc.

Various thought processes kicked in and  I was deciding on uses for it and came up with adding it to poached eggs, or put simply poaching eggs in a microwave with a little added coconut oil. It worked fine, that extra, tasteless lubricant allowed them to cook evenly, although it didn't tame the egg's normal explosive qualities. You need to err on the side of caution with eggs in microwaves. Never more than 30 seconds at a time or BOOM! The picture proves it worked. Can't explain why the eggs are square though.

Not the spot

I tried this chocolate beer yesterday. The chocolate was a subtle rather than strong flavour in the beer, dark with a hint of bitterness. It hit the spot but not the spot in the photo below.

Way out on the River Forth there's a spot marked with a G. A "G" Spot of sorts I suppose.

Five Bridges

Spent a nice evening out with friends on the River Forth sailing under (and very close to) the Forth Railway Bridge, the old Road Bridge, the New Road Bridge, the Kincardine Bridge and the Clackmannan Bridge. The weather was strangely perfect and the company fun and convivial. Other sights seen include the eerie and redundant power station at Longannet, the dead submarines in Rosyth Dockyard, the new aircraft carriers, grey seals, castles and harbours, the Ship Inn at Limekilns, Dunmore village (way up the Forth) and of course a very tiny glimpse of our own home. The vessel used was the old faithful Forth cruiser "the Maid of the Forth".

Hot & Clammy

Some key-note words for today in no particular order. Hot, clammy, cloudy, garden, apple trees, IMS bearing, exhaust gas sensor, Forth Road Bridge, Gorgie Road, root beer, olives, puppy, dog walk, dog poo, cats sleeping, big breakfast, holiday videos, Lionel Bart, coffee, Twix, water plants, feed tomatoes, chicken pie, Radio Scotland, black spaniel, blonde spaniel, shower, birthday gifts, Father's day, neighbours, broadband, cardboard boxes, knives, dishwasher, iron a shirt, sunshine, leaves, bottles, beach, tide coming in, cyclists, door repairs, olives, crisps, watering cans, stepladders, beds, Oliver, Animal Kingdom, sleeping pussy cats.

Edinburgh Daily Snapper

Some unloved property in need of...love, because love is all you really need.

Some graffiti on wall that's already covered in stylised graffiti artwork.

The top of an interesting building (noting that the people inside the building seemed unaware of how nice a building they were sitting in actually is but that may just be my imagination playing up again).

RIP Lionel Bart

OK, I know that Lionel Bart died in 1999. It's just I've be recently reminded of his own erratic genius as a result of seeing one of my grandsons star in a school production of Oliver. Considering that Bart couldn't read music his work in putting together Oliver and coming up with all those truly killer songs is amazing. These joyful, moving and seemingly unburstable melodies are as strong and timeless as it gets. Of course after watching the energetic school production and being drenched in those tunes once again, I was whistling and humming them like it was 1965 and back on the Light Programme. The power of memory and the prompting of music as a reminder of things past is scary. Maybe when I'm old, confused and decrepit it'll be Oliver that's on the padlocked headphones rather than Pink Floyd, Nico or Del Amitri.

Does everything have to be for profit?

Grenfell Tower did not belong to a private landlord but a housing association, how that's run I don't know but the scenes of horror reminded me of the awful consequences of putting things on too long a leash and that austerity measures inflicted on local councils have cut things back well beyond any reasonable level. It's all government policy don't you know. 

I've watched for years as public sector enterprises and systems have been sold off to the private sector by all colours of government. It's been labeled as a sensible, money saving thing to do. Look how well Amey and Bear look after our trunk roads, see any potholes or drainage problems? Services are now run by professionals rather than a bunch of lazy civil servants or idle union card waving workers and of course they need to turn a profit, a tidy one at that. It's not about the customers or the clients or even the service, it's just a dirty big business where the shareholders rule and ordinary people are the fodder. 

I've seen this first hand in my old life with the MoD, money allegedly saved by contractors coming in and of course "getting it right first time". Yeah, that'll be right. Profit and public service do not go together and much of the time they are downright dangerous things to put together. Will things change? Nope, they'll just rebrand PFI or Prime Contracts under some other label and carry on and, if anyone is likely to get the blame, it won't be the contractor it'll be the "Intelligent Customer" who was left behind to somehow make sense of the mess.

Eggy hack

The hidden hacks in poaching eggs methodology, number 12. Actually this one worked apart from my failure to add regular vinegar. All we had in stock was cider vinegar which I watered down but maybe that was a poor choice. So add a touch of vinegar into a dish, break the egg into it, loosely cover with cling film (or risk an explosion or eggsplosion) and microwave for a minute. One turned out a little better looking than the other but that's always the way of things. No messy pot to clean either, just a couple of messy dishes. So to sum up, works fine but cider vinegar does add a little extra apple flavour that you probably don't want with your eggs.