These are just fleeting thoughts from the heartland of the UK's colonial dustbin somewhere beyond the wall of sleep. Odd bits of music and so-called worldly wisdom may creep in from time to time. Don't expect too much and you won't feel let down. As ever AI and old age are to blame. I'll just leave it there ...
"My people were fair and had sky in their hair but now they're content to wear stars on their brows." Simpler times according to Marc Bolan eh? Hard to think of Glastonbury and not reflect on times past when festivals were a muddier, dirty mess where you bought your ticket from a farmer at the gate whilst carrying a ragged tent and six cans of pre-ring pull beer. From then on things just got more messy and disorganized but you'd eventually hear, perhaps even see Hawkwind, Gentle Giant or Thin Lizzy before passing out behind the burger van. Then the Thames Valley Police Force turned angry for no obvious reason.
Your mum and dad had no idea if you were alive or dead or even where you might be cos' you didn't tell them you were going. Eventually you'd hitch hike home, penniless and bruised but happy. Apparently now Glastonbury is full of shiny, privileged "Balsamic Vinegar" people waving flags at a stage a mile away, hoping for a glimpse of a legend and enjoying beans and pulses served in sustainably sourced containers but nonetheless having a good time despite the prospect of all the terrible traffic there and back again.
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The BBC screenshot above is from their main news page. Even in a crazy world like this there's something annoying about finding Glastonbury's "so called" news full and frontal everywhere at this time of year. Nothing else important must be happening on the planet. The narrative that's pushed of the over-egged social significance of various performances, statements and behaviours, is odd and to my mind totally misplaced. I say this as a pro-Palestine, pro-justice, pro-human rights, pro-whatever the fuck, old fogey. I just don't think Rod Stewart's remarks, Paloma Faith's views, Kneecap's stance or fan criticism about singers lip syncing or auto-tune use, warrant headlines and exhaustive coverage.
I will forever dislike the jabbering positivity and "in a bubble" antics of the well manicured presenters - we need a break from this. Just let the festival(s) be without all this exhaustive curation and analysis. It's obviously going to be good and bad in places and artists will act like dickheads but there's a least 60 million people on this scabby island who are not there and maybe not at all bothered that you missed Wet Leg or Billy Bragg because you were stuck in the queue for some hot stone, colonic meditation.
Yes, it's all pretty predictable stuff at this time of year but perhaps we'll get Glasto tickets from the festival fairy in 2026 and maybe discover what really goes on.
South Queensferry, some thoughts: The former council and registry offices now house the town museum. It's a dull and unloved old local authority building that I suspect Edinburgh Council isn't all that interested in. The museum is actually good to visit and holds a lot of artifacts and records capturing the area's history but it's typical of our times, run on a shoestring and I presume always on the brink of being closed or mothballed. Whilst the town prides itself on the older buildings, with their historical charm, connected by cobbled streets and lanes, there's little joined up effort to make the best of anything. Things look tired out, some closed up shops seem unloved and likely to be abandoned, all thanks to nearly twenty years of the austerity revolution.
On the outskirts of town smart new battery chicken apartments form a grey, steely and silent wall between the village and the motorway. Starter homes set up in military lines with hints of green growth and possibilities, their black topped roads still fresh and evenly surfaced. A new generation of younger residents move in, happy and unaware having already been failed by our statistically challenged and meaningless education systems, most with no clear idea of how finances or houses work or how to do the tedious but necessary things. They will learn the hard way as we all do. There's just a hint of "rat trap" about the place. Hopefully it won't come to pass.
Most traffic/housing schemes and road repairs are a cost compromise that just look like a shoddy, half hearted effort to appease internal pressure groups, but visitors still come because of the big red bridge that remains a UNESCO treasure and design icon. So if you can endure the myriad of bumps and potholes along the unloved A90 and all the unfit for purpose connecting roads it's probably worth a visit. I happily live here, it's not a bad place but I try to be careful about the roads and routes that I choose to drive on to come and go. Beware, they spent a shed load of money on a cross city tram system that works well enough but it was so badly managed as a project, along with outdated and grand delusions of civic pride, that it left little or no money for the wider infrastructure ... not all that unusual a story really.
Millar is an exceptional player and pulled off that rare live thing (in my opinion) of using just the one guitar for the whole set*. Players who change guitars for each new song really irritate me, they may well be pretentious twats, or so some might say. In two hours of solidly playing the same guitar I don't think he had to re-tune at all. The power, tonal range and stability of his either old or well reliced Strat was superb to experience live; a masterclass in working within a three piece band. He created so much space and colour albeit full credit to Andy Summers who did it all first.
Obviously my rooted to the spot photos are a bit rubbish but we decided to stick with our space and not wander about, though the crowd, all mostly of a certain age, wasn't densely packed or badly behaved. A fine rain began to fall about 10ish and that quietly wrapped things up and we trudged off to rescue the car from an Ibrox car park. Many thanks to the ever present God's of Cornucopia for the free tickets, now I can safely delete all those waggy finger Ticketmaster emails.
*On the final tune he used an acoustic to record a loop and then played over it using the Strat.
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Life is just wandering across the world in clothes without an occasional experiment to stimulate and spice things up. Experience a fresh taste or take a hit. I'm looking forward to cracking this open for a nip, maybe I'll just sit back and learn something in that golden glow of the amber nectar and a small set of revelations will emerge through the murky darkness of my mind. Could it be that we're just another of God's experiments stuck on a dusty shelf in a forgotten petri dish in the corner of the lab? - but we can still create good whisky.
Part of our cat facilities management duties or cat janitorial work as it is often described, are of course carrying out regular sweeps of the garden to collect and remove clumps of cat poo from wherever they may be buried. Naturally not everything is buried nor does it always stay buried. Activity is unpredictable. So it's sort of like an archaeological dig involving research and chance but in the end there's no real treasure to discover, just the mild sense of smugness that comes with having done some bit of insignificant environmental cleansing.
Today's impromptu rummage yielded about half of an asda bag of material, so that's not too bad though we've not developed actual KPIs yet. What's left will slowly rot away over time, so I tell myself, but with three active cats out in the garden and surrounding areas everyday, growing herbs and vegetables has become a thing of the past. It's just too complicated to police and the thought of actually eating the produce isn't a pleasant one for me. So ends another dream, silently but with, as you'd expect, an earthy and pungent odour.
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I see that Lego have started making Lego cameras that look very much like cameras but don't actually work. You'll fund them and numerous other things on the Technical Shelf. Lego also make other models of things, some that work up to point and some that don't other than acting as inanimate facsimiles of the original item. Some models are just toys really, others are complex machines or maybe, if taken too far beyond any of these terms, might be seen as just a bit pretentious.
Speaking of tech it's quite good that, at a certain stage of life, you send off a poo sample to a lab in Dundee and shortly thereafter they send you a letter back saying that you don't have bum cancer. I know that there are the other kind of letters that some people must get that are not so good but I've managed to avoid them so far. Don't knock the NHS (well not for this sort of thing).
1) The Marx Brothers.
2) Marks & Spencer
3) Karl Marx.
So despite various scandals and poor lifestyle choices I'd give top marks (groan!) to the actual Marx Brothers. The absurd (had to get that word in), surreal but often strangely conventional comedy family that still remain highly influential, copied and referenced within art and entertainment to this day. I was introduced to them fairly early on when their films were still regularly broadcast on TV in 425 blurry lines. Those films would have been almost thirty years old at the time but I didn't really realize their age because my own wee out of time world was completely monochrome just like theirs. I just liked them because they were stupidly funny and so different from the Billy Cotton Band Show, Come Dancing or whatever the two available TV channels coughed up at the time. I even enjoyed the ridiculous and hammy musical bits they added in.
Marks & Spencer - Mainly about the food but also for their trouser selection which for some reason seem to be made in sizes that can fit somebody like me. *I also know that this Marx was actually Michael Marks but who cares?
Karl Marx - Grizzled, misunderstood, often misquoted and a byword for a theoretical political radicalism that is a better model than many others. I can't completely disagree with someone who said "Keep people from their history and they can be easily controlled" (unless that's another misquote). The thing is we all know that Marxism will never work because amongst other things ... people are involved and human life is way too complicated.
"This egg tastes like nothing".
He shifted the white around with his fork, explored the smooth white surface that rested on the plate, casually probing it like a specimen. He added more salt, a little more pepper and moved the salad portion from side to side, as if exploring it for signs of life.
"Nope, it's bland. Like a black hole on my tongue, just nothing. I wonder whatever happened?"
I didn't bother answering. It wasn't even meant as a question. Yes there were eggs to eat but there were no chickens, they were long gone. They'd crossed over to the other side but found only a void. Now we had simulated eggs made up from some concoction of things that were not eggs. They had egg like colour texture but little flavour. It was a poor start and an unsatisfactory finish. Modern life eh?
"Time passes and you get used to things but memory plays tricks. We're old enough to remember an ancient world that doesn't exist anymore, it's far away and fading. Still I just can't escape the man traps my own mind lays out for me."
It had become a common experience for our generation.
Conversations about unsatisfactory food were embedded in everyday banter and the fodder of jokes. Complaints were voiced but just kind of floated and faded over onto some futile level of faceless authority before they were erased. The complaints became observations and then settled into something more to do with "at least we have ...". The slow acceptance, the lack of resistance, the carry on and keep drinking your prune juice attitude though no one under forty knows what a prune was or how you ever came by it. That part of history hasn't survived. I wondered what kind of history should survive; unending documentaries about real estate business from when it was "real", alien hoaxes, unsolved crime and extinct animals that we still think are OK and scratching about out in the wild somewhere.
I was brought up on the Lomond Books of Education, an austere set of school textbooks covering numerous subjects. It was a Fife thing, a Scottish thing in the mid 20th century. The Lomond Books on Scottish history were sparse on facts and speculation wasn't really allowed. Thin black and white illustrations of Wallace and Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI that told you nothing. Coloured print must have been too expensive so our historical viewpoint was like a brass rubbing extrapolated into an action figure but without the action or any drama in the narrative. Flat and grim, faceless people in armour and gowns who were long dead.
The historical text was the same, the human touch conveniently missing, just in case you thought these people might actually have been really flesh and blood. Births, deaths, castles, conquests and battle dates. Nobody ever said anything out loud unless they were a Shakespearean character traveling from A to B to C. Those "lines to take" had survived but no teacher ever explained what that complex dialogue might mean. We only had our uneducated guesswork to go by but were too bored to fully investigate it. The delete key had not been invented but they still knew how to use it.
So where did the chickens go? Like everything else they were replaced. They'd had a good run, however many thousand years of clucking and pecking but then along came a better, more cost effective, fully industrial and environmentally cleaner way of a) producing chicken meat and b) eggs, so they said. A few people spoke up for the chickens; chicken farmers probably and foodies and activists but "they" got rid of them. Quickly, quietly. The system works. Now we have a synthetic alternative but without any real alternatives.
I used to complain about having too much choice out in the world of modern retail. Too many varieties, too many products, all competing for space and attention, all getting in the way, all needing HGV transportation and temperature control and shelf life monitoring, crowded out with adverts and shelves and pop ups and fridges. Click and collect, delivery in minutes, everything there when you need it, food, drinks, clothes, anything. Well that way of being passed away. Things are still "available" but via ration, allocation, status and location. Not too much choice but it's all "good for you" and "good for society" now. Now a lot of the boxes to tick or click are greyed out.
The delays can be annoying but you get used them. We all keep emergency noodle pots in the bottom of our cupboards but I don't really know how we'll boil the water when the power is cut. Did I mention that I'm turning one hundred and four on my next birthday? I think they might have put something in the eggs.
