Old stories, old movies

There is no apocalypse now, there was one earlier however and there's a good chance there will be another along shortly. These are of course small apocalypses, tiny tremors and events of an apocalyptic kind, like gusty hurricanes or shallow floods, single figure epidemics, silent whispers and rainbows that avoid natural hues and concentrate on neutrals rather than actual colours. This page is set in black and white tones today as a reminder and a memorial to these things. Things that are not everyday things but small things that  happen somewhere almost everyday and then stubbornly fail to register with us.

From Iceland

Slightly confusing photograph shared by some of our friends from Iceland earlier today. No explanation.

Making plans

Life is filled with uncertainty. What to have for tea, what day to do the laundry, where are my favorite socks? Now those wise and insightful people at Gov.UK want to know if I plan to travel after 31st October 2019. Well I suppose I might but then again I might not. Until I know for sure my new formed preparing for Brexit Plan is in disarray, as is everyone else's. This finely layered piece of software takes the reader on a journey through various options on business and personal matters before revealing itself to be of no use at all (as if you ever thought it might be). A fine and indeed almost comical state of affairs but it's our elders and betters who have led us to this crazy point in history where "helpful" websites give poor and vague advice about things that are not fully understood by anybody anywhere. Your future is what you make it unless Gov.UK get in there first and mess with it.

Toyota Spoons

Toyota Spoons: Spoons by Toyota, the engineering and production giants of Japan, the inventors of terms and practices such as continuous improvement, just in time, make one sell on, one set of numbers, Kambans and so on. In many ways they are my industrial heroes but in my life I've only ever owned one Toyota car and the cylinder head gasket blew on it shortly before it was written off in a rear ending kind of smash. In many ways it was a great car, in many other ways it wasn't. Anyway I like their spoons.

Plumbers fixing leaks more likely to cause floods

There should be some text here, possibly a picture or two. At the moment there isn't. This blog is currently under maintenance due to (yet another) reasonably priced existential crisis taking place in my noggin as a result of performing a simple action, that action being indulging in the rather careless act of actually bothering to listen to/read some news bulletins today only to discover that a) there is a serious level of news distortion going on b) stories are clearly not fully understood by the reporters* and c) politicians are spouting incredibly high levels of complete rubbish. In other news the rain is now getting into my tinfoil hat and that is causing a certain level of discomfort.

*Actually they are understood, they are simply spun in perverse and damaging ways.

Duck and cover

Random ducks of Scotland: For you delectation a selection of random ducks parading around a local farmyard the other day making some kind of ultimately unsuccessful group effort to pursue me for reasons I can't quite fathom. Much easier on the eye than this week's news bulletins or headlines I think you'll agree.

If 6 was 9

Confused by recent events? Bamboozled by political chicanery and deceit? For many of us the threat of both real and existential crises looms large. The world (our small and unreasonably stable world) is turning itself upside down and what if 6 really is 9 after all? Does that really matter or is it just yet another dumb, open ended meaningless question? This very exercise is pretty pointless really, being confused and indulging in the perverse joy and mystery of confusion doesn't help, it's not real. But then what is real? Civil unrest, civil war, economic collapse, new orders rising, old orders falling, uncertainty rules and in any weak moment 6 may well turn out to be 9 or the other way round. It feels as if stuff is on fire, somewhere out of reach and beyond treatment. That's what new and unfamiliar words do when they salt up your life with a spicy piece of rhetoric ...prorogue. Suddenly a new term has been released on an unsuspecting public and the "old order" is challenged by the reptilian elite. A tactic, a smoke screen, a coup? Fuck this shit.

X Ray Specs

As I'm waiting for the chimney sweep's arrival and some cement work to dry I decided to X Ray my head during a lull in activities. It's all looking OK this afternoon, no obvious signs of damage or disease. The teeth look fine too, the £21 a month dental plan is worth every penny.

My old school

Fire from a safe distance: A great photo from JB junior with EB as a spectator.

God moves in mysterious ways: My old school (Woodmill High) burned down last night. I left there in 1969 but it was never a happy place for me (not that I ever wished for it to be burned down). The 60's were educationally speaking (?) a bad place; rampant corporal punishment, feeble teachers, a curriculum that was dull, unchecked bullying etc. etc. But I made it out alive as did numerous others all with healthy chips on our shoulders and a degree of bedded in trauma and anxiety. We were ill prepared for the outside world and it showed, the 70's were a proper mess of a thing as we explored that Brave New World. For kids there was quite simply a lack of preparation and mentoring, no warning or guidance as to what was to come our way via the injustices and vagaries of life, now we know better. Maybe we don't do much better though. The passes and failures are hardly hot currency, just dim relics on faded documents that are rendered meaningless by the passing of time and the growing up of spirit. It was grim but all we knew, such was a working class Scottish education and the then brutal and unfocused world of primitive academic ideals and targets.

Live the best

Live your best life, nothing else will do. Find somebody who looks at you the way Melania looks at Justin. There's also an interesting film script here if someone cares to write it.

Slow world

Slow internet. Slow world. Slow motion car crashes. Slow motion relationships. I've returned to the slow world. Been out in the regular world all weekend, jamming, eating, drinking, chatting, laughing with friends. Another world. Now I'm in the slow, tired world of internet stubbornness. Unknown squirrels eating at unseen cables, failures in the system; chug, chug it goes or rather doesn't. Perhaps it's atmospheric conditions, a neighbour's habits and consumption, magnetism and other unseen and unheard appliances causing undue interference. I've heard all the engineering excuses, black magic and poor design, low on the list of priorities, somebody else deserves it more because there are less of you down in that green rabbit hole. Oh well then...

Here's some weekend pictures to remind of some tiny details I might otherwise overlook or fail to recall.

These are not my beautiful shoes.

In the middle of these skis no one stands, sits or does anything. They are not a pair.

In life you will find that there are many test situations and many opportunities to fail.

You (person not named Martin or the formerly employed and trusted Davie) just can't go around altering things you know.

An empty box that once contained six wine bottles.

Three wise switches.

Tea and apple juice.

Too much meat

Too much meat and not enough pumpkin. Breakfast this morning was a "Down the Hatch" skillet special. Basically a hot frying pan for one filled with sausages, square sausage, hash brown, potato scone, haggis, black pudding, tomato, a fried egg and beans. Then there's toast etc. It's a round pan of a square meal. It brings on uncomfortable meat sweats and a degree of bloatedness, it's not really green or healthy and not what I'd want to eat everyday but if you're hungry ... it's a proper blast. I ate this lot at about 0930 today, now it's 1636 and I'm not even hungry at all. It's a cruel meat based world and that's set to change and I'm part of the problem that needs to be fixed and I suspect a more plant based diet is around the corner. I write this and so confess to being a conflicted hypocrite, just like the rest of you.

I did not write this

On #NationalBurgerDay, remember that the way a person eats a burger can really tell you a lot about them. For example, if they eat a burger using a knife and fork then they’re quite obviously a psychopath. From "The Poke".

Up to a point

Karl Marx, father of Groucho, Harpo, Chico etc, founder of Marx and Sparx, inventor of skid marx and some disruptive political ideas that only work up to a point.

It's official, the internet is bankrupt and broken, befouled by Trump, too cute cats and puppys, ludicrous algorithms, selfies, dumb opinions and REPETITION. That's right repetition (I had to repeat that), same old stories and ideas. Mish mash and trivia and blog posts that make no actual sense (?). Everything is ancient now. There is no modern, no novelty (other than in novelty shops and possibly in novels). I'm bored, I'm bored with Iggy and the Stooges, up to a point that is.

To sum up

I'm not really familiar with the work of Jenni Russell (she's a journalist you know) but her statement above (presumably pretty recent) nicely sums up how I see things at the moment. It's not complicated nor is it big and clever, it's a reasonable summary of how this country (?) is positioned at the moment. Sadly those that believe otherwise and at the moment appear to be pulling the strings are either a) delusional in a dangerous way or b) know this fine well but have other more sinister agendas. Oh, and they might also just be blinkered, stupid and unable to learn anything from history.

Rare events

In what can only be described as a rare and unexpected event three Dunfermline Athletic players feature in the BT Team of the Week. This despite actually losing  2 - 1 (AET) to Celtic in their  Banana Skin Cup of Scotchland cup tie match at Parkhead. I guess the moon is some pale shade of blue this week, must remember to check.

Boil on the boy

Green steps leading to a blue door in a photo quite unrelated to anything else.

As I slept a strange and not very wonderful thing occurred. I can't speak about it but I can type. An unwanted swelling on the back of my neck, possibly a member of the boil family (not Boyle) decided to expire. It did this without any encouragement but I remain grateful if bemused. It was all as painless as a chocolate fright in a faraway garden. As is usual in these cases clean water and Savlon was applied and so the fever passed into the night, into the darkness and of into and across the universe. And that my friends is how you deal with those odd medical and physical occurrences that happen from time to time unless you are completely sensible and go to the doctor's surgery. We shall not grow old, we'll just slow down a bit and log the changes as the batteries run down and steadfastly refuse to recharge as quickly as they used to.

Making a spectacle

Well I did visit Specsavers and despite having reasonably healthy eyes (two) the guilt of it all got the better of me and I invested in a new pair of glasses to add to my collection. As you can see from the results above these frames have more than enhanced my current appearance. The only draw back being that once the glasses are removed things quickly revert back to some kind of normal. Still it's been a worthwhile experience and by the time the NHS has made a contribution to the overall cost pretty good value for money. I certainly look a little more intelligent and not at all in a remotely sexist way.

Water flowing underground

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by, water flowing underground

Into the blue again, after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground.

Those odd people at "Talking Heads".

Alternate image

I picked this up on/from Twitter (I think), an old Czechoslovakian album cover for CSNY's Deja Vu. As sold I presume in that country at the time. Not sure how easy that might have been. OK it's an oddity, not really a thing of beauty, not better than the original but it's quite interesting. I guess it's nearly fifty years old. Time flies.