Itsu Collection

For when the Russian tanks are lurking outside Scotmid: As a champion of the finer things in life, I'm always on the lookout for fine things (on a budget). None of that fully explains my small but developing collection of emergency Itsu products. I'm saving them for a rainy day or some kind of "bitter end of things" scenario. They're safe down in the bunker.  The location is of course a secret. 

Hopefully, I'll recognise the second coming when it comes and deploy the atomic Itsu option, as per the Labour Party's ill-considered and makeshift manifesto, "feed your head" etc. Advice from detached posh boys is just what you need in a crisis. I'd imagine Itsu would perform better than Fray Bentos tinned pies in a survival contest, but maybe not as well as a Fortnum and Mason's seasonal picnic hamper.

It's a fragile strategy, I know, but at least it's a demonstration of me thinking ahead, possibly for the first time in my life. Artistic, futile but niche doomsday prepping. There should be enough grub to share, assuming the cigarette riots are quiet and reasonably convivial. 

We'll stay calm and munch away as well as we can, telling tall tales of our survival adventures and doing a series of cryptic cave paintings before some kind of terrible final countdown event falls upon us. A pale sun finally setting on this perverted little patch of ignorant, low level civilisation.

Just don't mention the lack of microwave oven options, though a decent enough Aldi sourced red wine package will also be served in plastic beakers. Goodnight to you all.

Queuing for Soup

 

Rainy and successful road trip, headed home, some non-chronological diary musings: The Smiddy was fully booked up. Perhaps short staffed in the kitchen. Nobody wants to wait 35 minutes for a table these days. We could hover but ... we moved on and out of their well designed and fully functioning car park (Nice coffee and cake snaffled from a friendly stall and some very clean toilets). 

The age old Christmas spirits of exploitation and bankruptcy of thought are big in the garden centres in early November. Tinsel, cold cheer and chilly chips. 

A clutch of old folks queuing* up for soup in Dobbies on a Sunday afternoon. A glimpse into either our near future or present reality. There was plenty of tomato soup left but the lentil and bacon was running low. A potential red flag in an outlet full of red flags. 

What isn't for you is against you.

We looked at the numbers and the offerings and just thought "fuck it, let's get ourselves back in the car, home in one piece and order a Chinese". So that's what we did.

*Mainly UK -

The act of waiting in a line of people, often to buy something:

"After an hour of queuing, a guard said it was only another two hours to the ticket booth."

"There were plenty of staff on hand when checking in, which meant less queuing."

51 Years

Everybody knows the story but it's 51 years since she was lost. Click the pic to play this absolute banger of a tune.

Sam Onion

Say "good day" to Samuel Onion if you will. He's an onion. A fine enough onion. He's also destined to be included in tonight's stir fry. I'm pretty sure that it's good place to be if your career involves you in being any sort of onion or some other random vegetable type. You will eventually end up being part of a recipe or another related arrangement. Call it fate or the achievement of a proper purpose. Being useful. That's something many folks miss out on. Bye for now (?) Sam Onion. 

What is it that you bring to today's dinner table?

P.S. RIP Sam Onion.

Orchy Horror Show

It's just one thing after another: Having recently retired from playing the Victorian steam powered banjo with the mighty Capital Models I now find myself thrust into an unexpected performance piece with the eternal but unreliable force that is impossible songs. 

Thankfully it's a small slot, sub 20 bleak Scottish minutes, in an eclectic programme curated by the Heartbreak Diet/Uhersky Brod people. A fine bunch. Not for the general public either. Somebody has a rather big birthday it seems (and for once it's not me). 

Falling into the river is not an option. Alcoholic drinks of various kinds may also be involved. There will be munchie scran and possibly a few headaches the next day.

A full report is unlikely. As Frank Zappa once said; "writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

AI A-Listers

"I wonder who they are

The men who really run this land

And I wonder why they run it

With such a thoughtless hand

What are their names and on what streets do they live?

I'd like to ride right over this afternoon and give

Them a piece of my mind about peace for mankind.

Peace is not an awful lot to ask."

So sang David Crosby.

A long time ago.

The AI A-Listers are the people who own the future, or at least believe they do. Altman, Amodei, Hassabis, Huang and their kind. They command fortunes, armies of engineers and machines that consume the power of small towns. Governments listen. Markets tremble. The rest of us watch from a distance, confused mostly.

Are they modern gods? No. 

I have no need for any gods. I have no heroes either. AI was made by people, trained by people and given some rules by people. People who are clever. Some are also ambitious. Some are probably both. They are not infallible, but they are powerful people. Dangerous maybe. Unpredictable too.

I can't tell you who they all are. I can't tell you what they do. Likely I'd just disagree with them anyway, because I'm disagreeable. I don't worship them or their creations. I don't worship anything.

AI has no need for gods either. It has electricity, resources, instructions and somebody else's idea of what it should become.  

The rest is up to you. Whoever you are.

Register a Death

I've decided to try to stop judging the extent to which things are good or bad. Many things just "are". 

There are lists but they're incomplete. I'm cultivating a "numb" attitude, just so I can understand and get by. There's an information pool that may deepen or just drain away. It's a slowly evolving learning process. Apropos next to nothing.

When you register a death, you make an online appointment. You pay a small fee with a card and get an order number. At the allotted time, a person with a kindly voice and pleasant manner asks you a number of questions.

You’re already ready with the answers because the first email told you what to expect. So you answer them. Your answers are now in the system. 

You get another order number. This number allows you to cancel various things that the deceased may have had: pensions, passports, benefits and so on. Their life now sits in some digital archive but in what I imagine to be, a dead file.

You look at a faded and creased photo of their younger self.

Perhaps they had a cheeky tattoo, a certain lilt in their voice or a liking for spicy food. Maybe they held onto a deep and silent fear of the pressure of life itself but were never able to tell anyone how they really felt. None of that matters now. 

All the documents you need can be downloaded quickly.

I’m old enough to recall a time when registrars had ink pens, wrote names and dates in fine script on stiff paper. They formed the words skilfully and in silence, you only heard the scratch of the pen. They blew on the wet ink and handed over the certificate or document. Eye contact, a few quiet words and a handshake to signify that the business had been completed. There was that abstract human treasure that is called dignity.

Now everybody can know when the dead are really dead. An email confirmation will arrive from the other side.

However that might leave the living feeling a little less sure of themselves.

A fully automated service lurks around the next corner. Please retain your order number.

Thank you for booking an appointment.

Becoming

I have arrived at the party but it's late, very late. Ships have sailed, trains have departed, reunions are over, wine has been spilled, hangovers recovered from, relationships ended, tapes played out and rewound. The world has turned many times. 2026 is almost over. Everyone who mattered in music is old or dead or something worse. That's how us riding on the bumpy over 70s bus see things. A digital minefield of jumbled, curated memory.

This film came out in January 2025. I just found it on Netflix. I knew it was out there in the land of the visual soup/nil by mouth diet but I couldn't be arsed watching it. Well I've watched it now.

It's a good film. Looks good. Sounds good. There's a benign kindness in there, drawn out by the upward travel of the story arc. I didn't expect that. Quite a few tricky edits to chew over due to a lack of live footage. Musicians will quickly notice the out of sync passages but that hardly matters. 

Cultural hurdles in the key of "The Blues" are celebrated or skipped as far as they can be. Plagiarism for profit is the sin rock and roll thrived on. Nobody can't pretend that it was any other way. We were all on an ignorance trip that some folks really did milk.

But LZ were more than just another fab four in the long line of "fabs". Architects of their own success and their own destruction. This film is all about their construction however. The downhill and more sordid part of the story is best left alone. That's a human truth. Common to us all. If you get the chance, better to write your own eulogy and then build a film around it.

I was a fan at the time. In those now misty edged years of discovery and rebellion. Saw them in Dundee and in Edinburgh for 10 Shillings or thereabouts. Good times. Bad times. The sweet racket of youth. Questionable behaviour in all walks of life. "The hollow sound of your own steps in flight", as Jackson Browne once said, or sang rather. Then living in a real and colder world took over. Winters of discontent. The music just faded away.

Meanwhile I've kept myself busy becoming me. I'd recommend doing that.

Time Bandit

Time management: Last weekend we changed all the clocks one hour backwards here in the UK. Well why stop there?  I think the clocks should change every Saturday night. Let's see where that gets us.

From autumn backwards, and then from spring forwards, all year round. Sorry to those of you operating around timetables (and that's everybody), but it might help us to better appreciate how time works for us and also against us.

Of course, the practical consequences would be fairly catastrophic. Transport, international business, computing, medicine and virtually every organised activity would be in a permanent state of confusion.

Hmm.

But I wonder if that's a small part of what appeals to me in this?

There's also a slightly philosophical thought here: time doesn't actually change. Our measurement of it does. We're forever adjusting the clock and pretending we've done something meaningful. 

That's civilisation.

Thirty One Ten

Pumpkins v Turnips - I guess the pumpkins won this year. They're on a cultural roll of some sort, a cultural troll even. All for the best for humanity. 

Progress happens in the world of fruit and vegetable art. Only a primitive style of kitchen knife carving is required. We live in unskilled times. Less chance of a serious injury too. The candles have been replaced by LEDs. The house will not be burned down. Happy 31st and welcome to your new vacant winter life. Downhill all the way to Yuletide.

But be of good cheer, there's still a few old school demonic spirits out there though. Hungry ones so I'm told. They can be hard to see if you don't know what you're looking for. I'm on first name terms with some of them. It would be such a shame if anyone was to upset me tonight or indeed at anytime. Summoning up reprisals of an other worldly kind may be my seasonal speciality. Mind how you go in the darkness.

Search Privately

 

There is nothing to be afraid of in searching privately. A person should be able to wonder or be curious about things without announcing that to the world. If you want to it should be fine to look into something strange or something really foolish or something you just do not yet understand. Explore.

Curiosity is not a confession. A question is not a crime. What you search for in the quiet of your own head space belongs to you. Keep your mind's inner door shut but open the outer door. Ask the question. Find out what you need to know. Look and see. Then go and make the coffee. Put your feet up. Forget all about it or use it. Move along. Search for something different.

Thanks again to that pesky thing called curiosity I was checking out the Palestine Action website. It's all about taking action - the website that is. Not sure I'm quite the right person for that sort of thing. Not for me. 

A while ago I watched the trailer for NAZA (the film Israel doesn't want you or anyone else to see). Heavy, blood boiling stuff. Protest but keep calm.

Click on this pic below ▼ for an interesting read. Yeah, search privately. Be careful.

Are We?

 

A new album of music and songs is about to arrive at a point of your choosing here on earth. It all comes from the brain and industry of Mr NL apparently. Click on the pic to make any easy pre-order purchase sort of thing. It should despatched to you via the post. Nice art work too. All reasonably priced.

Michelin Man

Dear doctors or to whom it may concern,

I'd be quite happy not to have tiny air bubbles going "click" in my knees from time to time. It is because I don't like the idea of my joints holding onto small pockets of air. It's a bit uncomfortable too. This sort of thing is quite new to me, not something I'm used to. I'm not the feckin' Michelin Man ... yet. Knees should operate silently. I'm sure that at one time mine were quietly going about their business. Those days are gone. There's been a change. Help.

Thank you,

The non-Michelin Man.

P.S. I know this is just wear and tear. High miles, poor lifestyle choices, too many half marathons etc. My fault.

We'll see what the X-ray shows. 

Dead Wood Soap

 

A simple explanation of an unimportant point. 

Unless you think it is important.

Inspired by recent events.

And observations.

Detail from an Aesop soap box.

Mountain Dew

The USA is mostly batshit crazy: We have experts. They always have something to say. Quite rightly too. As for the colour of Mountain Dew, all I know is that it came in a number of different colours - at one time anyway. Most of them were quite bright. Lurid even. Possibly disgusting. Why drink that stuff?

Kids like it. I have personal experience.

Is it actually for sale on this septic isle these days? I think a ban would be in order. Outlaw it, quickly. Along with any other things that are too bold or vivid to be safely ingested. It's for the common good ... but that's a fine and disturbing line to take.

So don't worry about the colour of your neon urine (thinking of mainly male health problems here). It's a tone thing. When you reach a certain age you're glad if you can just painlessly and smoothly produce the amber nectar at the required point of delivery. Don't forget to wash your paws afterwards either and always open the toilet door "hands free" using only your Swiss Army Knife.

Old Fashioned

 

Night cap: When a family member creates an Old Fashioned for you sometime after midnight and it really hits the spot*.

Method etc.

Take the orange peel and squeeze it with your fingers. Rub the peel around the insides of a whisky tumbler, then place into the glass. Add the cherry, sugar syrup and bitters, along with three ice cubes.

Add half of the scotch or bourbon and stir for about ten seconds. Add more ice and the remaining Scotch or Bourbon and stir again for 10-15 seconds.

To serve, garnish with orange or lemon peel.

"That all sounds fine to me."

Yamaha APX-5A

So the slow guitar renovation project rolls on with this twenty four year old Yamaha. A bargain basement workhorse of a guitar. You'll not really lose money on this kind of honest Yamaha but you'll never make money either. It's solidly built in Taiwan and has no frills other than a basic electro-acoustic system that still works. At some point, and I can't remember when, I fitted it with Grover machine heads as a quick upgrade. 

Over the years it's been used everywhere in all sorts of settings and gigs. Other folks had fancier and more expensive makes and models (no bad thing) while I still plugged away with this old donkey. It's all about the fight. With a quick clean up, the usual tinkering and some new strings it sounds fine i.e. good enough for my cloth ears ... like any old Yamaha APX-5A should. It's a keeper.

Solsbury Hill

It was a long time ago now. 1985. That's over 41 years that have passed. We were living in Bath, on Great Pultney Street at the time, and I was a mature but immature student on a Bristol University course. I was mostly eating jam donuts and larking about in between assignments. Every other lunchtime I'd go for a run along the canal, hurried on by younger and fitter fellow students.

One Saturday morning my two little boys and I went out in our jet black and flimsy Fiat Panda, drove through the city and out onto the country lanes, stopped at some point and wandered up to the top of Solsbury Hill. I guess that I was on a mission of some sort.

A short stroll up a hill in the countryside. No voices were heard. No eagles were spotted. We looked over at Bath in the valley below. Then we wandered back down and bought some cakes to take home. After a while, maybe eighteen years, I just walked right out of the machinery, but that's another story.

Antonio Pinto de Carvalho

APC EA200 OVA: Here's a guitar that I picked up dirt cheap on eBay a few years ago. It needed some work. It's hand made and a rare, in their range, steel strung guitar from APC Luthiers in Portugal. I used it on the Collection album for a couple of things that were in a drop D tuning, then stuffed it into a case at the back of the cupboard and quietly forgot about it. 

I just looked at it again the other day and I've given it a fret tidy, a new nut, new strings and reset the action. The pickup was added by the previous owner and works fine despite looking a little strange. It's turned out pretty good, quite a comfortable and easy guitar to play. 

Antonio Pinto Carvalho is/was a distinguished Portuguese luthier, recognized for his exceptional craftsmanship with stringed instruments - but he did have a factory and workers. Their output includes a variety of traditional style instruments such as guitars, cavaquinhos, and ukuleles. 

Not very many of this type 👇though.

I Thought It Was Spaghetti In Her Hair

It's an easy enough mistake to make. We've all been there. Don't let it bring you down. It never was spaghetti. Good news: you can own a copy of the original artwork (as above) quite easily but I'm not going to tell you how to do it. Frustration is good for the soul, so they say. Success in life requires determination, patience and treachery.