Sunday, November 27, 2005

Finavon Doocot, Fife and paths of glory.











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Finavon Doocot, Fife and paths of glory.

A weekend mixed up between family, fun and downright hardwork. Saturday saw us journeying up to the world’s end (as it seems) - Macduff in Moray. The waves crash incessantly on it’s permanently twilight shores, as a rolling thunder review of cloud antics pepper a grim and moody sky – oh and you can visit the Spotty Bag shop in Banff that sells just about everything and nothing. En-route we passed the legendary Finavon Doocot, resting place and mausoleum to the gifted but tragic Deke, the George Best of pigeon racing so brilliantly immortalised by Scott Renton. A moments silence followed for us all, Nintendo DS’s quite, KT Tunstill paused and the Financial Times shaken to the floor of our speeding car as we thought of both George and Deke.

The 1st birthday party of my first grandson followed, a fun but chaotic affair. Small children and assorted parents everywhere, presents, paper, party bags and a blinding array of video and digital cameras. Both my grandsons were there and in fine form, a third grandchild is on the way also (still in the early stages of production). We had a fascinating conversation with a friend of my son who manages the local football team. He was telling us that one team member has recently purchased a tattoo gun and now needs to practice a) on himself and b) on volunteers. You would have thought that tattoo guinea pigs would be hard to come by, but not up there in Moray. The younger lads (?) seem especially keen to have a (improving each time) version of the team crest cut into their legs (for life). I naively thought also that to be able to draw might be a pre-requisite of the fledgling tattoo artist but no, none of that. A steady hand, good enough to follow a template or stencil and the ability to pump the ink with your right foot at the same time is all you need. The ability to run quickly or own a fast car might also be useful. The unbelievable news that Dunfermline had beaten Celtic at Parkhead also filtered in during the afternoon; at 16 to 1 I wished I’d stuck a few quid on them.

We returned home late in the evening – more heavy rain and (as the road signs kept saying) extreme weather followed us. We did have a good game of “10 minutes from Fife” in the car. The game starts at Kinross just as you enter Fife; you have to imagine Fife is going to explode in 10 minutes so you have to be out of it by then i.e. half way across the Forth Bridge. An unexpected amount of roadworks at Inverkeithing meant we blew up in a violent, fiery mass just before the bridge.

Back for overdone pizza, wine and “I’m a celeb” for the kids. I slept like a smouldering log.

Sunday started with a late breakfast and ended with me making daal and vegetable soup. In between Ali and I constructed a new path at the front of the house and erected a bird feeder. The path looks great, I’d expected it to take two days to lay and we did it in an afternoon, how smug we both felt.

We also got a feedback email from the judges at the Emergenza gig a few weeks ago. It was all pretty good and constructive, they liked our songs, said we needed a drummer (hmmm…) and few other little details. Even if it was all bull it made me happy, (despite the dodgy Sunday gig the other OOTBer’s described) our Thursday night experience now seems to have been worthwhile. Having said that I may have beer glasses on a the moment and they could be affecting my mind and body…



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2 comments:

  1. Hey guys. ever thought about using a drum machine - a lot easier to rehearse than a drummer...

    I direct you to The Durutti Column's first LP "The Return of the Durutti Column" as an example

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:22 AM

    I'm sure Derek was grateful for the appreciation. He doesn't get many visitors these days...

    ReplyDelete