A place to park those random thoughts, stolen images, hidden conversations and incoherent babble from 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.
impossible songs
impossible songs
Syrus.
Sad to say our beloved cat Syrus has been missing for a full week now. We’ve searched all his known haunts but in the large wooded and agricultural lands that surround our house it’s not easy to cover all the possibilities. We’ve knocked doors, leafleted and used various cat web sites to advertise our loss but nothing has come of it so far. Losing your cat or your cat getting lost is not good.
impossible songs
impossible songs
Climate change and the quest for a decent protest.
It’s not easy to make your mark in the world today without either falling flat on your face or flat upon your back (James Thurber: The bear who could take it or leave it). All good causes sometimes seem like lost causes and you have to think very carefully about what cause you take up and how you support it. My problem is that I tend to easily see and appreciate everybody’s point of view: Air travel is good; people can quickly and cheaply travel around the world for business or pleasure. Air travel is bad; great lumbering aircraft pollute the skies, burn fossil fuels and encourage no-brain tourists to pollute beauty spots. I haven’t the heart or conviction to complain about either position, I like to hope that one may cancel out the other in some piece of mathematical perfection and all parties will at least for a short period be satisfied. The thing is all our lifestyles and ideals have ratcheted up to some kind of unreasonable point now where it is difficult to remain comfortable on this splintered and unmaintained fence, where most of the time I want to be. I suppose it’s true to say that you can never really win an argument with somebody stupider or more blinkered than you, if they can’t get what your point is or they can’t accept it because they can’t grasp it what do you do? Pitch a tent at their airport or stun them with tasers?
Back to work.
Today I returned to work after two weeks of meandering, pottering, and walking with my hands behind my back and whistling. Doing nothing in particular, reading Harry Potter aloud, sitting outside pubs, scooping up kittens and kitten poo, nose to tail on motorways and lost a mile from your hotel, theme parks and sunny spots and rain battering onto your umbrella, home cooking and far away cooking, Pot Noodles and the greenest of salads, sheep and goats and paddling in a lake. So the summer has gone until the next Indian Summer and the bluebirds have ceased in their song, the house martins are tetchy and the thistles and plums are growing in all directions. The power and destructive capacity for nature is impressive: Flood, sun burn, cold nights and showers of meteors, what a marvellous climate we enjoy in this small corner of the universe. Life is seldom dull and going back to work wasn’t so bad, it allows another strand of purpose to unravel and then weave itself into some other unexpected pattern. Just glad I’ve avoided the M40 today unlike some of my colleagues.
http://normanlamont.typepad.com/lamontations/2007/08/8-random-facts.html
Norman Lamont asked us (using the link above) to list eight kookie (or otherwise) things about ourselves, clearly we did not have enough to drink but here’s a good stab at the list anyway. It’s not easy when you live on the normal side of a line that is not normal but is a simple continuum on a line from the place that is normal to the place that is not normal but may be natural and comfortable and is probably, depending on my mood and point of view where I may well feel most at home and that is not normal. The other problem is that we lack the requisite number of blogger types to share this shit with so it may go no further. If it works it works. Oh! and I have to do this today because I have to.
impossible songs
impossible songs
Aberdeen
Zipping into and out of the speed camera’s all seeing eyes on the A92 is now a routine for me on my regular trips to the other family bases in Aberdeen and McDuff. We had a couple of days there mooning around shops, watching DVDs and “Heroes” and playing with various grandchildren whilst the seagulls squabbled in the background.
The journey home focused on the search for a Forfar bridie, would this mythical food be better than the local Stephen’s steak bridie or a Gregg’s steak bake? Eventually after fathoming the Forfar one-ways system and high street glaze of charity shops and building society’s I found a baker. I ordered two of the mighty beasts (Joe and I were to partake but Liv only wanted a muffin): the result, not so good, dry short crust pastry and a pleasant but hardly world beating mince filling. The last time I was in Forfar, in the mid eighties at a football match, the bakers had all run out of bridies so I got nothing and have been wondering about them since. The subsequent twenty year wait was not worth it but it reminded me how good our own local baker is.
Newcastle
Friday saw me heading for that unfamiliar form of transport, the train. The goal was to meet up with sixteen other souls, most a lot younger than me for Guy, my future son-in law’s stag weekend in Newcastle. I was apprehensive to say the least but decided to enter into the spirit early on by clattering my bottle of whisky onto the rail carriage table at two o’clock and inviting those there to participate in its demise. Of course they already had a healthy supply of beer and the journey south became pretty pleasant and relaxed. Virgin trains (well this one) are good.
The “Toon” was jumping when we set out for the evening after experiencing a very generous couple of happy hours in a bar near our hotel, every pub and club was jammed and sweaty with various groups all desperate to revel for whatever reason. To be honest I felt like and alien intruder who was using a non-scientific method to study some new life forms, all of whom became steadily blurrier as things progressed.
Next day it was karting and paintball. The karting was manic and painful, 60mph karts on a 1.2km track racing for half and hour. The paintball was painful and manic. Bullets of paint slicing into heads, ears and mouths, incomprehensible games that ended in carnage and an unforgiving surface on which to fall when the bumble bee of paint bearing your name struck home.
After a shower and a decent Italian meal we were back into the “Toon” for more of the previous night’s random exploration and body limits testing. This time a few of our young soldiers were a little wounded from the previous 24 hour’s excesses and manoeuvres so the mood was calmer and the drinking a bit more controlled. The stag himself avoided any real torture, tattoos or ritual humiliation (apart from a ceremonial shooting at the paint ball venue) and once we’d picked up the pieces the next morning we agreed that the weekend had been a great success.
GNER trains took us back to Scotland in what can only be described as an appalling standard of accommodation. Crowded carriages, no seats, and toilets awash, no air-con working and the bar closed for stocktaking (?). Quite what tourists heading for the festival in Edinburgh think of this beats me, I’m sure the Soviet railways in the sixties couldn’t have been much worse.
Dalgety Bay
I visited Dalgety Bay a few days ago – (as a taxi driver for the bridesmaids who were to get their dresses fitted). My first thought on entering the sterile and manicured place was, “why would anybody spend good money on a house down here?” Of course me and Dalgety Bay go back a long way, almost 40 years or so to the time when it was a few new Wimpey houses, a shop, a kirk and a large abandoned airfield with a few factories. In those days kids (typified by me) did what we did, hung around, got drunk, listened to music and there was space in which to move and breathe. An unhealthy glow of unreal memory sits upon my recollections of this time I’m afraid, perhaps that colours my current view a little too much. Anyway now the whole Bay area has grown like the Simpson’s cartoon town of Springfield. An un-stylish mish-mash of property developments, council houses given the owner occupier glam treatment and an itchy rash of apartments and so-called waterside retirement properties. It’s taken it forty years to look like this; I wonder how it will be in 2047?
Home life
At a more cerebral level Dr Kawashima’s two brain training games are taking over our lives. Scores, ages and sibling rivalry competitions burn on through the various levels sparking minor quarrels and mini challenges. My own preferences currently reside with the more sedate and frankly less arduous activity of Wii golf. Of course I should really be writing songs about deep and meaningful issues or cutting the grass or making plans or putting up security lights but there will be time for all that.
Simpsons Movie
Of course it’s funny, witty and works on all the levels you’d expect it to. Small children laugh out loud, adults grin in recognition, those that don’t get it go to Evan Almighty (a film that looks so appalling I have to close my eyes at the trailers and turn away from the adverts) and then they eat in Pizza Hut. So the Simpson’s movie is really just three long, funny episodes stuck together and either enhanced or ruined by being viewed along with members of the public who laugh at different times from you and with the smell of popcorn and nachos festering in the background.
impossible songs
impossible songs
impossible songs
Confessions of a shandy drinker
Yes it’s true I do quite like a pint of lager / lemonade shandy now and again. Ok I know it may be a little Charlie Drake or Ernie Wise, British as a fish supper wrapped up in the Sun and eaten on a Brighton beach bench but it’s ok. Shandy is cool and, apart from the experience of ordering it, is not at all scary or unmanly (I don’t think). Last night I had two pints of the stuff without breaking out or breaking down. What I don’t much like is the way you get charged £2.70 for a pint of the urine coloured fizz, I just don’t get that at all.
Harry Potter and the flight of the phoenix five.
A visit to Edinburgh’s Ocean Terminal allowed us to view the latest HP adventure on the big screen. In contrast to the writers of some of the two and three star reviews I’d read I enjoyed the film. Nicely dark, stilted and jaggy in places, cut abruptly and too much plot for too little screen time but still pretty entertaining (I guess this means I didn’t fall asleep) and all at a crashing pace. The Irish mystic Luna with her continuity challenged hair extensions was my favourite character, brave, bullied and some where beyond the scale on the plain / pretty category. In cinema food terms Ben & Jerry’s strawberry cheese cake is good but doesn’t quite match Hagen Daas at the Odeon.
The owl arrives (late).
The Amazon owl delivery was 36 hours late but finally made it without crashing into any trees or slipping in the mud. I waved to the driver on a narrow piece of road and predicted the nature of his cargo. The avid reader devours the book in no time at all as the kittens look on in hungry, puzzled amusement. By six o’clock the Deathly Hallows was read from cover to cover and all the unanswered questions answered. I may trudge through the same 600+ pages during the next few weeks, you can never tell – It’ll take a few glasses of wine and some Fruit Clubs (Jacob’s) to do the trick for me.
Next Sunday...
...we pray the weather gods will let us of lightly as we participate in the 397th Aberdour arts, music, and donkey brae running festival in the picturesque Fife village of Aberdour. Our trusty PA and a tent as big as Billy Smart’s top hat will be on and in location from 1100 on Sunday the 29th at the Silvery Sands on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Fife’s No1 estuary, the Forth of Fifth. Playing along will be: IMPOSSIBLE SONGS, TOMMY MACKAY, CLOUDLAND BLUE QUARTET, UHERSkY BROD, JAMES WHYTE and BRIAN McGLOUGHLAN. A suitably harmonic racket should ensue in order to entertain all and sundry.
Cat mayhem.
Clint and Smudge have arrived to lodge with us until the end of time. At 8 weeks old these cheeky scamps are full of mischief and kitten biscuits and life will never be the same. A slight diplomatic incident did break out between Syrus and his new chums and the UN have sent in a special negotiator in the shape of “Coffee an-an Jaffa Cake”. Syrus tried to negotiate his own terms of endearment using the three blind (dead) mice as a bargaining tool (as he does most Sundays). Clint and Smudge were having none of that and continued playing with a feather on a stick and attempting back flips from the couch whilst ignoring Syrus – as if he really cared.
