Welcome to the green world

A testimony to the power of time and a relentlessly damp atmosphere. Over there in the west things stay wet and rot and grow moss and slowly blend back into where they came from as the great green carpet covers over them and slowly strangles the life and the strength from their materials. One day they'll be gone altogether, drowned in the putrid cosmic soup of eternity. Well that's a nice wee thought then.

A path of silver jellyfish

So the unbridled outdoor life continues as the solstice passes and the midge bites irritate and the caravans trundle slowly, east to west like dying white elephants. The other night whilst almost relaxing and chatting to the locals I discovered a silver path of jelly pod bods littering the shore and generally disturbing my peaceful environment. How untypically sad is the passing of a jelly fish swarm and how pointless. Nobody mourns their demise, you just try to avoid stepping on them and looking at them too close.  Poison springs to mind and raw zombie brains. The thing is they are successful, they float around on the warm currents and most seem to avoid dying for quite a while and are content to look a bit like cat's vomit (another story). Perhaps, if my beliefs ever allow it, I'll return to this earth (or at least the watery bit) as one and just meditate around the Gulf Stream area for a period of time.

The bombing of Bing

I accidentally stumbled back in time the other day and crashed into Bing Crosby's image as he was enjoying a quiet half pint of Tennants at some point in the 60s or 70s in Central Scotland. Possibly on this exact spot. Time travel can be a little clunky and hard to control. Fortunately there was no serious impact on the space time continuum (I hope).  I can't explain it any other way really.

Swimming the Clyde

Crowds gathered by the abandoned crazy golf range in order to view the aquatic spectacle that was unfolding before our tired eyes. The sun shone and the wild applause was deafening.

Pretzel; little or no logic however.

OK, you cant see much really but in the top photo lots of people are swimming across the Clyde from Gourock to Dunoon in a race. My heart goes out to these exhausted and dripping heroes and heroines. Apart from thinking they are both daft and brave they are also inspiring, so much so that I have resolved never to attempt to swim across the Clyde, ever. Neither will I come down it on a bike.

I picked up a rare treat whilst loitering without intent, baffled and still within Dunoon's paved and crowded bosom. A super raspberry ripple 99 style cone accompanied by tasty bite sized pretzels filled with peanut butter. £1 for a generous portion in a paper bag. Old school. Few of my travelling companions were willing to share this treat so I ended up scoffing the lot pretty much alone and misunderstood. There were vivid dreams and few hallucinations later in the evening but no stomach upsets so I guess I got away with the pure random greed of it. 

The life of meaning

As I've failed to fathom much about the meaning of life, (mine or anybody else's) I routinely collect quotations that in some way provide some temporary meaning or that when added to other quotes as if in some kind of quotation bible make there own kind of cumulative sense. There are many more where this one came from and they are all as profound and sadly tend to be quite difficult to remember and therefore are hard to refer to or find comfort in during those dark nights of the soul that may occur from time to time.

50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums?

I do belong to that long lost and much lampooned generation who, for a brief moment believed that prog-rock was the unending answer to some kind of unending question(s) about life and more importantly music, hair and loon pants. After a while it turns out that nothing really happened and the albums were churned out in some self indulgent fashion and judging by the list here in Rolling Stone I certainly missed a few as they rolled by. Now I've a pile of virtual  catching up to do and of course I never will. I've still to read the full list but I do wonder what's better...try to listen to all of these (those I'm unfamiliar with anyway) or just try to catch up on Sparks' enormous and no doubt highly entertaining back catalogue.

10 Foot tall man

This piece of photographic history features my legs apparently but little else of interest. I enjoy playing the minor roles in these lifetime dramas. No animals or humans were injured during the process but there was a lot of rich sponge cake and pavlova consumed. The cart was unharmed.

I dream of Dreamies

 

I'm so easily by influenced by TV adverts. I'm a simple soul really. I blame the Discovery Channel (Turbo) and the advertisement segments during Fast and Loud. There, apart from PPI, shit loan deals and trailers for a myriad of other similar dumb ass pretending to be bad ass programmes I discovered Dreamies. There, on the silver screen where the cat jumps through a solid wall. It is the Discovery Channel after all so high quality educational images are regularly featured. Now there's no going back. I bought some and handed them out. One cat is already displaying the early signs of serious addiction and the potential to break bad, eyes spinning and mooning. The other is indifferent, like a Pentecostal Preacher at a Dundee strip show (?), or something. It seems that when it comes to peddling stimulants to animals or to specimens of basic level humanity there's no going back once you open the packet. The good news is of course is that they're all fit for human consumption...apart from Fast and Loud that is.

Puzzled

In many ways I remain perpetually puzzled by life and all that it offers, throws at, rains on, discharges or provides for me. Today it was a marvellous and unexpected piece of parking space design in a well known superstore car park. Complete with a jaunty curve, an immovable pillar and no obvious means of getting a normal car either in or out. Motorcycles and cars that have passed through a scrapyard crusher are all very welcome.

Mission for the dead souls

sometimes i wonder why i'm trapped into not writing things in lower case all the time like a proper artist or revolutionary politician or poet might do, there must be something wrong with me, unable to shake of the need for basic punctuation and the construction of 
sentences, 
usually as long as possible with extra words added in at the second or third edit and reread, i do all these things becos i take pride in what i do (like spelcqeking), however simple or off the cuff it might be, i wantthings to be right. i has standardz

Today I was reminded about my friends at RBS and £45 billion they lost and how that weighty sum of money will never return. I wondered how Fred Goodwin might be doing, what he's thinking, how he passes the time even, perhaps he reflects and perhaps he regrets. Anyway it's all going to be sold back now, back to the same regimes, old boys and mindset that ruined it and the rest of the world of banking. No local banks then, community solutions or nationalisation because you see we've all clearly learned some valuable lessons.

Warmest

On what has allegedly been the hottest day of the year (with many misshapen blokes spontaneously discarding their shirts and showing their tasteful tattoos as usual) here's some nice pictures of wrecked military equipment frozen to the ground somewhere in Siberia. It has been pleasantly warm mind you, the central heating was given a brief rest and we enjoyed a seasonal salad with the piping hot fish pie. Tar melting around the potholes and various dogs on the receiving end of a good walking. Nissan Micras are out in force traveling slowly and erratically and there are bikes everywhere. People put on shorts and buy those emergency barbecues that cook exactly four burgers before they die and I sip a warm beer somewhere in the distance.  That's summer for you. I wonder what the weather is like today in Iceland?

Squirrels

Summer has finally arrived in Scotland bringing with it those woodland vandals known as the squirrel contingent. When nobody is looking it seems that these uncultured squirrels get up to all sorts of squirrel type mischief and when they are doing that you may just capture some of the strange action on an apple device of some sort. Actually I think that somebody was looking,  it just wasn't me for a change. What you can't see in this image is the third squirrel who owns an impressive cloak of invisibility that he is putting to good use possibly just out of shot.

Banana disaster

Today has been the kind of day when you unpeel or unzip your breakfast banana and then promptly drop it onto the floor (in the kitchen at work). Even applying the two second rule and assuming you've no sore back so you can  pick it up quickly it has to go straight into the bin. It's a dirty, tainted banana and there is no nearby, easily accessible replacement. Oh how I cried (well inwardly) and how forlorn and half empty did my porridge pot feel. Is that a question of some kind? It seems to sound like one. Tomorrow I shall do better.

Sexual Healing of sorts

I woke up this morning to the strains of a marching band doing a perfectly loud and credible version of Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing. Maybe not the most obvious or sensitive rendition but they carried the tune well in a hummable way. After that it was downhill all the other way into a party clear up, dishwasher emptying and breakfast foraging kind of morning. Along came the lazy  the sun to provide a warm and pleasant surprise as we rewound ourselves back to normal on a hungover Sunday morning. There are no workable rituals here other than getting on with it and sensing an inner peace in knowing that you "made it". When I say "made it" I'm referring to more huge, bottomless pots of Stovies - the meal that keeps on giving, relentlessly.  I am now reflecting. I have eaten too much this weekend; cakes, chocolate, burgers and buns, cheeses, light and heavy beers, red wines from far away lands and occasional dollops of salad, greens and pulses. Now I'm ready to fall over and onto the couch and never write another word, compile another playlist or drain a tinny of IPA, till next time that is. 

Look somewhere else for your stories

Don't expect any clever or controversial opinions here, nothing is ever original, all I do is lift and plagiarise whilst carefully avoiding eating any of the bones from sardines; I've developed a slick technique you know. You should see how I manage to dispose of the oil and the evidence. I also try to work up a cryptic lyric now and then but that's just a dull hobby like hoovering or selling unwanted stuff. I also believe that playing music helps you to understand quantum physics a bit more easily, all the stuff about matter/atoms/tiny balls changing shape and nature; think about how you move between scales, change intervals and bend notes, it also guards against early onset brain damage.

Muddy Waters Monday

Shirley Bassey Tuesday

Wednesday Velvet Underground

Thursday Lynyrd Skynyrd

Friday Flock of Seagulls

Sat to Sun a Crowded House.

(Lynyrd Skynyrd is such a joy  to type, it gives you a headache. It should be compulsorily to use it at school for English class, in adult teaching seminars and in T shirt fronted Apple Stores).

Death walks behind you

I just ate an enormous slice of chocolate heart, a chicken curry and two glasses of red wine and apart from feeling a little tired I'm fine. I also did the Ubble mortality test and I'm good to go...somewhere. Thirteen strange lifestyle related questions if you are male, eleven if you're female and then your Ubble age (50 for me giving me an extra 10 years of something) and your % chance of living another five years or dying within them; 2% for me to die and obviously 98% to live till sunny 2015. I'm sure there's some bad science and dodgy algorithms in their calculations that have already been discredited in the media but if it makes you feel good then fine. Shame that there will be a few people who'll just feel bad afterwards. If you do then try to walk a bit more briskly and invest in a second car.

Everything is annoying

I need to let this go. Particularly annoying are the items of mismatched garden furniture lazily bought on-line that turn out to be a) the wrong size and b) damaged in transit and c) just plain awkward. Preparing for the oncoming advent of summer and the passing of El Nino  has never seemed so complicated. I am of course exaggerating this just a little, life's little inconveniences are nothing compared to life's slightly larger ones, few of which I suffer from. The problem is recognising them and dealing with them in a balanced and proportional way that avoids conflict of the inner, outer and elsewhere kind. Gumtree (plugging again) may be the solution, now what was it that I was preaching the other day about planning your happiness?

Thoughts from Saturday

Set up for the Nepal benefit gig in Joppa.

Five simple things that will make you happy or even happier:

Listen to a favourite piece of music.

Spending five minutes more with somebody you like.

Going outdoors - explore.

Helping someone else.

Having a new experience (presumably a good one).

Context for life. Design and live in an environment that makes happiness possible. Willpower doesn't work, make it easier for yourself by design i.e. make your bank password or begenerous1 or stopspendingcash1 Do things and have things that make you smile.

Lazy blogging

It's been too busy (almost typed too busty there till the spell check kicked in) a weekend to post anything coherent but it's Sunday night by now which will soon give birth to another sterile Monday. So this image sums up something, somehow.

At peace with the world

After an afternoon of filing away at stubborn Chinese metal I've given up; 48mm into 48mm doesn't go and never will (unless you do a whole lot more filing). So I have stopped trying, stopped fretting and more importantly stopped sweating. I bought another pole, one of a more suitable size and...relax. The 48mm pole is about to feature on Gumtree in some badly worded form. How old do you really have to be to stop listening to that stubborn, irritating voice inside your head that repeats various kinds of noisy nonsense on a loop? 59 and a half apparently.