Simple things are...

impossible songs

impossible songs



A week of unexpected shelves.

This weeks CD & DVD play list:

1000 years of Popular Song by Richard Thompson.
Remember that Night by David Gilmour.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
The Movie by Clare and the Reasons.
Unknown album by Josh Ritter.
Dirt Farmer by Levon Helm.
Presence by Led Zeppelin.
Shrek.

This weeks TV shows:

The Simpsons (various episodes but particularly the “Plough King” one).
The X Factor (I’ve no idea why).
I’m a Celebrity get me out of this banal TV programme.
Scotland V Italy.
Pop Junior and CBBC (whilst babysitting a 3 year old).














The family that eats together...

...performs other miscellaneous activities.

Most of this weekend has been spent cooking, doing homework (or helping with it in a feeble way), laundry, pottering and for once successfully putting up shelves in the kitchen. These shelves are up, level, secure and populated with colourful items that formerly had no place to go. These hitherto ignored items now look down upon us all from a new and elevated position as we go about our humble daily duties. Despite the pressure they place upon us we refuse to worship them in their lofty, cloudy and near perfect retreat (as false gods or anything else) and we simply enjoy them for what they are – random odd items now with a decent home.

Discoveries of the week.

Morrison’s at the Gyle are selling jam donuts, 10 for one pound Sterling. Nothing odd there you may think, but in fact these are the best donuts ever (as far as my extensive research can now reveal), firm, sweet, very jammy (jam in the middle, not on the edge Asda!), they don’t go damp; they are coated in icing sugar. As proof of their excellence even the totally carnivorous kittens were strangely drawn to them and smitten, this resulted in various emergency security measures being quickly taken to protect and preserve.

The kittens have now been outside in the garden a few times and are exploring very small parts of the big bad world with a great deal of nervous trepidation. Wet grass seems to be a particular problem, this hostile surface cannot be crossed by them and they view it like the Flat Earth Society would a trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Their use of the cat flap is a success however, it must seem to them like a portal to a new dimension, a bit like Stargate or the Time Tunnel, except it leads to the wide lands of the wet grass, the sharp edge of the world and eventually, as they will discover - tasty rabbits. Heaven is out there, in other words.

Always more

impossible songs

impossible songs

Always more brilliant ideas and the end of Christmas.

Every year the ideas just get better, the gifts more useful, attractive and shiny and you wonder how lived so long without these marvellous things. Then there are parties and meals and friends, things to say, things to do, jokes to hear and conversations to listen in to. Attractive couches on which to rest after eating too much and drinking too heavily and sleeping too late. Perhaps there will be something good on the telly. Drip, drip, drop and the damp and frozen postman brings more cards and seasonal flyers, all day and night Indian take aways, taxis to the airport, gas services and double glazing and teaser promotions for the summer holidays (just around the corner). Then comes the one and only ever, greatest Dixons, Currys, Argos sale and the two tone couch adverts mouthed by a familiar face from the seventies as the leggy girls relax in studio sized lounges. Looking forward to getting back to work and being surly and deadpan in the morning, if only for a break from the hollow celebrations that truly add up to nothing because we are all celebrating nothing much in particular. Avoidance of the cold and seeking out the vital warmth. Perhaps at this point the real world will intrude: a real wedding, a real birthday or two, being happy - that’s more like it. And the sparklers will sparkle, the wine will fizz and pop, the stars will shine and the many crooked paths to heaven will be strewn with leaves of green and it’s only still November fifteen.

And your toe nails wont hurt any more because they've now recovered from their vicious pruning.

Blade Runner & Buzz

impossible songs

Endless Flight.

Ever been on a flight and thought that horrible thought “There’s something not quite right here” or “What’s that squeaking sound? That’s not normal” or worst of all “why is the plane shuddering like that?” These were some of the unwanted notions that crossed my mind flying up from Bristol tonight, however I didn’t panic or even sweat, I just had a bad feeling that thankfully was completely unfounded and irrational as we ploughed into 150mph headwinds at 27000ft. Of course if the “vague notion that is God” had wanted us to fly he’d have given us rubber bands and propellers on our heads, doesn't help either, but it would have been an interesting evolutionary step.

Blade Runner.

Why are so many people fixated with Blade Runner and the Rick Deckard character? It’s a film about chain smoking robots and set in a dingy, dripping LA that probably looks a lot like the current LA and that has only taken 25 years. So why are there no Replicants out on the streets by now, driving cabs, directing traffic and flipping burgers? The answer is that it is pointless to develop robots to do really basic human tasks (as opposed to repetitive factory work) when cheap, desperate and exploited labour pours into the West and the US on a daily basis to plug the gaps. Cyber punk, science fiction, science fact and the wider world’s free market economy have failed to deliver the new reality that was promised and the bright and shining robots have not risen up to free mankind from the slavery of hard labour and polishing car windscreens.

Buzz gets easy bucks.

When Buzz Aldrin came back from the moon on Apollo 11 he filed an expenses claim for $33.31. Hard to imagine quite what it was for but if I was the clerk who processed it I’d have framed the form and paid him myself.

Remember Fife

impossible songs

impossible songs

A Guide to Fife.

Would Fife survive as an independent nation? This ancient Kingdom is surrounded on three sides by deep, sometimes slivery and often murky waters, connected by bridges and potential borders, steeped in a royal history and drunken left wing politics it has all the background and X-Factor. In economic terms it is rich in (well hidden) coal, tourism, has a golfing heritage, petro-chemical processing, remnants of heavy industry, distilling and farming not to mention having its own motor racing circuit and Deep Sea World: Fife has the resources and potential. It could be the Monaco of the North, the San Marino of Caledonia, and the Lichtenstein of the Lomonds or even the Falkland Islands of Falkland. It might just work with a little fortitude, brainwashing, back-stabbing and imagination. What would Mr Ecky Salmond say? “It is quite correct for every region/nation to aspire towards self reliance and self governance!” I think that’s on record as being his own spirited view and of course if all else fails Fife has the Singing Kettle, Burntisland Shipyard, Freuchie and the Fence Collective.

Remember.

Today at my son’s football match in Glenrothes the referee called for a minutes silence before the game. The two young teams and officials stood in a silent circle on the pitch as the November sun burnt low and bright behind some bare trees, the sun bathed them in a warm glow silhouetting their forms and contrasted with the bitter cold of the North wind. I’m not sure many of the boys grasped the significance of the event or understood the meaning; they all complied however making it a strangely magical and silent moment. I was double minded about pulling out my camera and snapping the event, so strong was the image, in the end however out of respect I decided against it and committed it all to memory. Somehow now, every 11/11 I think of my own father and recall how he always had a tear in his eye during remembrance services. His best friend died on HMS Hood along with hundreds of others and the loss, along with other unspoken war-time memories seemed to haunt him, now it has all been passed over and haunts me in a vicarious way I can’t understand at all.

This is not here

impossible songs

impossible songs

The middle of nowhere.

This is the most recent place we have been to in the ongoing (since August) search for Syrus our lost cat. Ten thirty last Tuesday evening found us in “the middle of nowhere” near a remote cottage on a hill top overlooking the Forth. According to a reliable source Syrus had been sighted crossing over the cottage’s garden a few hours previously. We spent an hour in the cold, dark and wet calling, stumbling and dish thumping in the wild and dark woodland outside the house whilst the sympathetic but bemused inhabitants looked on. Sadly the search proved fruitless, wherever he is, he is not wishing to be found just yet.

The Stag

Another QF Arts Festival sponsored open mike night took place at the Stags Head in the village last night. Norman, Tommy, Ali and I set up the PA and then sat around chatting for an hour whilst nothing happened and nobody crossed the threshold. Then on the stroke of nine a plethora of performers arrived including guitar superstars and journeymen Fraser and John (aka Confushion). Some of the other willing participants were complete strangers (always nice), with original material which was an added bonus. Thereafter the night fairly got going and we had a good, lively two hour session of songs, music and jamming that would have lasted much longer if not for closing time and the organisers well established early morning routines. Nice when things work out.

Lions etc...

impossible songs

impossible songs

Lions for Lambs

A cynical piece of Oscar angling, an honest wake up call, superstars reminding on and revisiting past glories, a left wing punch on the chin or Robert Redford playing god?

This film could be any of these things and more. It’s a rare thing in that it’s a film that leaves the viewer cold, hot, affected and dry-mouthed at the end – there are no cheap laughs or worthwhile thrills left these days. There is however hope out there, but not as we know or would like it to be. It’s a bleak and fragile hope and a reminder that all the “Eve of Destruction” rhetoric and posturing of the Cold War and the 60s hasn’t really changed much other than in image and location evolution. The stellar cast and their bright eyed intensity beguile the viewer and scratch the surface of memory, as if attempting a return to their halcyon days but are all ultimately, slightly beyond belief.

Robert Redford’s character, a caring yet detached college professor, is the most annoying and significantly thumbnail sketched portrayal within the film. The professor’s role in life seems to be to cherry pick and anoint his chosen movers and shares “for the best”. Redford plays the part like a flightless god, an observer and reluctant participant who’ll change the world through the longest game, a game he knows can’t ever be won.

Meryl Streep is the deeply concerned and conflicted journalist working for a news agency owned by a soap/hygiene company. She feels trapped in the narrow band of peak time news gathering and despairs over the lost integrity and shifting interests of both her employers and her audience. She also needs the money. For her any engagement with and spooning medicine out to the great American public is a daunting task, not even Mary Poppins could handle it these days. In the end she is just another butterfly broken on the wheel as the news story escapes her clutches.

Tom Cruise is the presidential wanabee, the slick grin and the language and the intensity are all picture perfect. His master military plan is clear, simple enough and to some believable, but as previous similar conflicts have proven, tragically flawed. People and circumstances quickly conspire to reduce a strategy that looks good on paper to yet another gung-ho military failure, the tracks of which will be covered by a blizzard in a few hours. Cruise’s character reels from the blow of the sharp reality of failure, but you know he’ll recover quickly. In payment an Afro/American and a Hispanic are the offered up to the mountain as sacrifices whilst the white middle classes ponder the future before scuttling back to their respective East and West Coast hideouts. Middle America is significantly missing in action in its lack of voice, opinion and representation here.

As a film it’s worth a watch, we caught it on preview earlier this week and it has held my attention since.

November Rain

impossible songs

Small cats caught on camera being cute while trapped on a window ledge by a cruel owner.



impossible songs

Bonfire night and I’m not, despite my love of bonfires, going out bonfire spotting or ogling. This is for a number of good reasons as below:

a) I’m tired and aching a bit thanks to last week’s ladder incident in the garden.
b) I’ve just spent a frustrating hour trying to install new Sony Ericsson phone software on the PC.
c) I’ve eaten one bowl of lentil soup too many.
d) I’m washing my good woolly jumpers on a delicate session and I want to be there when things, as I expect they will, go wrong.
e) I have a number of photos to sort out now that item b. has finally been achieved.
f) I’m determined to munch my way through the large bag of pretzels we opened the other day.
g) Ali is doing a cottage turn-around so I’m alone right now.
h) I have things on my mind and things I ought to be doing.
i) It’s been bloody cold outside and I don’t fancy standing in it.
j) We’re a long way away from the nearest bonfire and I’m not building any more in the garden until we host some appropriate bonfire type of event.
k) There is an N in the month and I have a fear of this letter.
l) I am ambivalent about fireworks and their users' motives.
m) The cats are being mildly amusing.
n) Going out would involve putting on shoes and I’ve had shoes on all day.
o) I need to look up a book, the name of which I’ve forgotten but it was mentioned in a conversation I had last night at a friend’s house.
p) I need a cup of coffee but I’m waiting for the right moment to arrive.
q) I’m fiddling with cables.
r) I have comfy trousers on that are not designed to stand the November blasts.
s) I’ve to check emails and accounts.
t) I’ve a slow burning, smouldering, almost going out but there just the same desire to do a set up quiz on Facebook, the result of which, if I get it wrong may land me in trouble.
u) My car is 25 feet from the house, too far to walk on an evening like this.
v) I’m holding out for Christmas and a holiday in Portugal.
w) Tomorrow none of this will matter.
x) I recorded some TV programmes and though I’ve no intention of watching them (probably ever) I should be making sure they are there.
y) I’d have to clean my teeth (again).
z) It’s not big nor is it, when you think about it, particularly clever.

Golden Dawn

impossible songs are at peace most of the time

impossible songs

The other Golden Dawn

The syndrome caused by broadband/sales/insurance/credit card call centre delays and looping, patronising programme advice, never getting a call-back, never talking to a supervisor, operators working to a script they cannot deviate from, operators with a poor command of English, being told to unplug and switch of and on, not being able to voice a complaint, getting put through to other numbers and departments having to start from scratch, not getting a fault number that can be used as a common thread on the complaint, not getting an engineer to visit etc. has no name as yet. If it did have a name (and it would end in –STRESS) more people in the Western world would suffer from it than flu, cancer, obesity or the thing that makes you want to throw bricks at your TV. Sadly this is, the modern world, how business is done, how margins are shaved, costs reduced and the customer is not king but merely a dot in a cynically mapped out process. Previous generations had words for these practices: Piracy, highway robbery and more recently fraud. Sadly the machine does not easily allow complaints or criticism; you have get underneath and attack the soft underbelly by subversion, trickery and the justifiable use of purposeful deceit. It may take time but the golden dawn is approaching when enlightenment comes and the downtrodden rise and start to fight back, just look at the recent Wispa example.


Need a polite insult or just fancy spamming an old adversary?

Some examples at http://www.someecards.com/


I’d like to be able to offer moral support on this but I have questionable morals.

Let’s catch up by asking mutual friends about each other.

It’s great seeing you a few times each year.

I’ve enjoyed this conversation - up to a point.

I really enjoyed waving at you whilst feeling slightly awkward.

Wanted to get in touch, in case you get rich.

Sugar Puffs

Probably the king of breakfast cereals and today I suspect a little unfashionable but consider their not so insignificant properties:

They can be eaten when fresh and crunchy.
They can be eaten when unfresh – they become chewy.
They are easy to eat if; due to logistics problems milk is not available.
They taste like honey but without the bother of sticky drips, jar rims and spoons.
They have their own monster.
They can be eaten on a sandwich or bread roll as a substitute for some other filling.

That’s about it...

The Search for the Grail

impossible songs on a virtual pilgrimage to Legoland

impossible songs

There’s nothing wrong with Bulgaria.

Thursday night and I’m at OOTB, my hip pain and various bruises not quite so acute and I’m hoping that a few hours of eclectic singer-songwriter mumbo jumbo will prove an adequate distraction. It’s a fair enough night with some older participants popping in: Fiona Thom, Roddy Renfrew, the driven Davie Watson and Ben Young to name but a few. Ben played a song called “Battle of the Bands” that stuck with me. One part of the lyric was spot on in its incisive observation “there’s no one here who’s going to remember what you played, singers singing with nothing to say”. The irony and pathos in that line and hopefully hovering it over the heads of the OOTB audience of songwriters, burn-outs, hopefuls, merry pranksters and me (I'm all of those and more a various times) was a magic little moment.

Ben's song did make me reflect again on modern music, entertainment, re-made films, covered songs, tribute acts, re-released albums and packages of work that are blown up to be “classic” when they are little more than regurgitated crap that was never really any good anyway. Wouldn’t we all give everything to just find something new to say, something in a fresh, unexplored part of the spectrum and then express it neatly, articulately and all balanced up on a good tune? That is like digging up the Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth and the lost Ark and then getting them rolled up into a golden three minutes forty seconds of timeless performance. Better to live in hope than die in Bulgaria.

Fit and knowing it

impossible songs

impossible songs

Looking on the Brightside.

Despite numerous personal setbacks, injuries, missed TV programmes, wildly clashing priorities, heavy work schedule, no garden progress, shorter than ever days and attention seeking cats it may have been a good week. I’ll know for sure once the painkillers, over eating and alcohol wear off. Constructive humour, cat licks and the wee men in the Nintendo Brain Training houses are decent diversions so I will remain confident that at the light at the end of the tunnel, there will be yet another tunnel. Built by a psychologically challenged engineer and bricklayer who knew his tunnels and the great universal purposes that they were designed for. Once you are in a tunnel just keep going, if it does not lead to the surface, it certainly will lead to another tunnel so at least you always know where you are. In a tunnel.

Fit against all odds.

So the choosing of incorrect foods give you cancer? Wine, bacon, ham, sugary drinks, red meat (and I suppose double cheeseburgers and anything Italian) need to be risk assessed and managed out of your life, your menu and your shopping trolley and replaced of course with green fibrous items that grow in the ground and are crunchy, full of watery goodness and eaten whilst breast feeding.

RECOMMENDATIONS INCLUDE:
Limit red meat
Limit alcohol
Avoid bacon, ham, and other processed meats
No sugary drinks
No weight gain after 21
Exercise every day
Breastfeed children
Do not take dietary supplements to cut cancer


I’m a little puzzled how somebody of my age can undo the “no weight gain after 21” advice, well meant as it no doubt is. I feel so cheated that this advice was not made available to me in 1976. Having said that I’ve only gained about 3 stones in the intervening years and I do practise a daily and religious regime of exercising – mainly based on fidgeting and climbing stairs many times over in order to get the things that I forgot to bring down in the first place.

Fruit from the Far East

impossible songs try Pocky but avoid admiring the cute monket design on the box...

impossible songs

Recovery

Despite my horrific injuries I slept most of last night, showered and shaved in the morning, squeezed my rigid body into my car and drove somewhat cautiously to work. My first day back in a week was bearable and for long periods of time I forgot about my various sore places and tender spots. Honourable toil and a hard day’s work are indeed a blessing from the various painted and gilded gods that orbit this scarred and abused earth. As it happens I don’t really toil, I sit behind a desk and click a mouse on email after email (well I did for all of today).

Feline Recovery

The naughty kittens aka Clint and Smudge paid a visit to the vets today to have their various little boy /girl bits done away with. When I came home they were looking well and fairly lively considering their ordeal, I can’t image I’d be jumping up onto tables a few hours after an encounter with the scalpel in such a precious area. Cats are made of tough stuff these days (cat meat I imagine).

Pocky Recovery

Pocky is a sweet from the Far East, a combination of chocolate and banana in the form of an edible straw that tastes like straw. Popular with kids, tourists, students, followers of strange beliefs, uni-cyclists, Pocky fetishists, double-glazing salesmen, employees of GAP, Subway and Marks and Spencer’s and the many fine people who run the Bangkok Gypsy floating water market. Buy it on EBay.

Autumn

impossible songs

impossible songs

Autumn Allman Brothers.

An autumn wide week of visits and gardening, roaming nowhere in the woods, balancing school holidays and activities, grandson baby-sitting and queues of motorway traffic has passed. Autumn also teaches us that a better name for Amy Winehouse would be Amy Winepuss (according to my kids). We are all getting fed up of any version of “Valerie” manifesting itself on the radio.

As easy as falling.

Today I suffered the injury and indignity of falling from a step ladder. I was cutting the hedge and tottering on top of the ladder quite successfully for all of five minutes and sniping the nasty spines of hedge, holly, tree or whatever it was, happily enough. Then I tried a slow descent in order to move to another patch and for some reason it all went badly wrong. I travelled from vertical to horizontal in a millisecond landing with a thump flat on my ear, elbow, hip and knee. Apart from pain in various places and trembles and shakes I became aware of warm blood running down my head. I lay there for a moment and decided not to crawl towards that white strange light or shout “help, help!” in what would have been a feeble voice. I also considered the “Working at Height Regulations” and whether or not I could sue myself and thereby gain some reward from the accident. Then I though of my own perilous finances and the gravy / vegetable stock train that is Impossible Songs and decided against litigation. By now the dull pains were getting sharper so I decided to attempt to stand up. Thankfully I found I could do so and staggered successfully into the open arms of Ali, (busy in the front garden) who administered first-aid, tea and sympathy. After that the kittens set upon me, purring their delight at my injuries and immobility as they showed complete solidarity by falling asleep on my heaving chest. I blame it all on on jet-lag and time-chaos caused by irresponsibly moving the clocks back.

Kitchen fireworks.

In what looked like becoming a day of household accidents Ali burned her nasal internals and both hands while slicing a red chilli whilst making a South American salad. It was innocently marked up with only two Tesco flames out of a possible five but still did some serious nose and finger damage and brought the kitchen to a complete standstill delaying the injured man’s tea. This prompted a discussion about the possibility of wearing a chilli helmet, gloves and mask to avoid further incidents. I myself was a victim of chilli burns a few months ago when I thoughtlessly wiped my eye while chopping one of those little crimson fireworks. It’s compellingly relevant and true that nine out of ten homes happen because of accidents these days.

Where are they now?

impossible songs & hispanic Goonie memories

impossible songs

Non-Goonie Wisdom:

You cannot escape the incisive gaze of those of us who like to watch you eat.

In some countries the advent of the motor car is known as “The invasion of the men with wheels who should have known better”.

There is a certain hidden catastrophe in all lives and we dare not discuss it.

Smart thinking should never be associated with the rather vague notion that is city linking.

If your aircraft crashes on a mountain in the Andes and you survive relatively intact then get away from the top of said mountain as quickly as possible. Never assume that they are “coming to get you”.

There is a man in India who lives on a diet of nuts and berries that are gathered for him by wild squirrels and tame racoons – why not try that?

Scotland’s national dish is a pie on a roll with brown sauce and tragically has been completely overlooked by the wider world of fine dining.

If you are poor, recently divorced or down on your luck then finding hidden treasure can be easy, provided that you have followed the map and all the clues correctly. Ask the Goonies or Scooby-Doo and Shaggy for some tips.

Mobile phones, ankle socks and moustaches were banned in Romania by Calvinists and the Papal Guard as early as the late seventeenth century.

Just where exactly has a cats paw been when it comes out from a litter tray?

In Morocco it is possible to obtain a licence to fly a magic carpet.

“There is no red meat or white meat, only meat.” Yoda.

Everything is just copied, cut and pasted from somewhere else on the web. Art is simply research and repetition.

Francis Vincent Zappa did not outlive Leonard Cohen.

What is this strange and mystical power that cheese has over us all?

We all aspire to retire and live comfortably on a decent pension in a warm, hospitable and familiar country where only a very small percentage of the population are mad.

Once a decision is made about the new crossing for the River Forth I’ll be able to relax.

Mr Bing Crosby had a fine voice.

The Goonies begat the Fratellis in a strange but wonderful moment of madness - but it seems like a long time ago now.

Every post is a question

impossible songs are troubled by great works of art and their hidden meanings...

impossible songs

If I had an answer I’d write it down but I’m as stumped as a one-legged lumberjack.

Slow boat to Linlithgow.

Today we wandered the shores of the silvery Forth, through leaves, mud and burn jumps up to Blackness, a village without a shop or pub but with a pretty decent castle. At one time in Scottish history this must been the main route by water for the Royal Family’s travels from Edinburgh to Linlithgow Palace - for a quiet weekend now and again. Hard to imagine travel round these parts in times before the A8000 or the M9. It was also strange that when talking to the Historic Scotland rep at the castle the old abandoned building at Midhope came up in conversation. Is this Scotland’s most forgotten piece of epic country house architecture from the 17th century? Why does nobody really know anything about it? Are there more of these mad and odd cousins hidden all over the place, in the trees and bushes, decaying away while we polish the stones at Stirling and Edinburgh?

Zombie Sports

While walking in the woods we had a long discussion about the status of zombies, their souls, our souls and zombie animals and related aberrations. Zombies are undead people and I have a problem with that, it’s just not black and white enough, you’re either dead or alive as far as I’m concerned. Unless of course you are in the TV show Lost which is in a different place altogether. The truth is I don’t understand zombies as a concept, how do their motors really run? Where is the conscious mind of a zombie? None of this is worth bothering about so I'd rather think about plots involving zombie animals, zombie seagulls and rodents, zombie dinosaurs, zombie penguins etc. all fine as long as they stay within video games or daft movies.

Mona Lisa smile

The Mona Lisa, just how hot is she really? A girlie painting stuck in a room in France but painted in Italy, not much bigger than an Arabic postage stamp, no clear or understood facial expression and surrounded by Japanese tourists trying to snap her with their mobile phones, oh and painted by a gay genius who also invented the helicopter, various codes and heavy rock music. Queues gather every day to observe her image hanging upon a golden wall and her face has been used to promote everything from cheap fireworks to chewing gum. Now in the final dirty deed she has been exposed, only for having shaved her eyebrows and singed her lashes, all for attention and as a hedge against possible blackheads (just like our own sweet Lana Lang). Whatever these all add up to I don't care and I can forgive her everything and still love her.

Back to the garden

impossible songs

impossible songs

Don’t fear the bleeper.

Another birthday has passed and today I feel normal again. For one thing I’ve not died on my birthday, something I don’t fancy doing, especially early on in the day before you’ve received all your presents, that would be pants. I suppose a bit like dying on Christmas Eve or just before you go on an expensive and well planned holiday. I’m sure views on this vary depending on religious and philosophical beliefs but I’d much rather die on a day when I’ve nothing special planned for the next. It would minimise any feeling of loss or being cheated out of something and I guess be less of an inconvenience to others.

Having wrestled with the controls of my funky new phone and in true baptism of fire style texted hurried and essential messages (beyond normal new phone training) to practice using it, I’m now finally getting there. This means that I have now forgotten how to work my old phone - but he/she won’t let me go, oh no! (a potential Steven King script idea?). My old phone woke me with a 6.25am alarm yesterday from deep within my briefcase and then asked me if I wanted to switch him/her back on. I did the only kind thing and said an emphatic no. I hope he/she didn’t have too many elaborate plans for the rest of the day.

My birthday was a very pleasant affair (apart from a certain 0 – 5 football result due to bad Karma over my a views on English rugby), quite a few family members flitted across my day and Ali produced an excellent surf’s up meal that seemed to last all evening. Cards and presents were duly received and appreciated and I had no hangover at all on Sunday morning.

We plough the fields and scatter in all directions.

The new electric rotavator had a trial run around the garden this afternoon. Ali remained at a safe distance on top of the hedge doing a fly past with the Black and Decker trimmer while I wrestled single-handedly with the banana coloured ploughing machine. Like Luke blipping across Endor on a speeder bike I cut through the weeds, soil, grass and rubble. By next year this brown field site will be a cricket pitch surrounded by palm trees, orchids and other lush vegetation. It proved to be an exhausting couple of hours work mind you, I’d spent the morning erecting goal posts and then taking them down at the boys football so that’s two sessions of actual physical labour to endure today. My soul however felt pure and satisfied afterwards and I fell into a smug sleep on the couch watching the end of the Brazilian Grand Prix (yawn).

B52

impossible songs v the B52s

impossible songs
B52 forever.

Today I am 52 years old and it’s been a nice day and a feeling so far. By and large I am however finding that 52 is not all that unlike being 51 and 364 days. Of course I have only ventured out so far, so far anyway, but later I intend to venture even further. I am also trying to avoid any mention of rugby, Paris or England or English fans or glorious or Jonny Wilkinson or sports commentator, it is not easy today, on my birthday of all days. One solution is to fill part of the day with watching Dunfermline take on the stripy shirts and weegie accents of Hamilton Academicals at football – a decent alternative to rugby I say. This evening I’ll eat, drink, daydream, muse and maybe watch cartoons or read the paper.

Life in general.

Some tips / suggestions on how to behave and some actual conversational examples:

When asked I replied “I was just in that kind of mood at the time”.

When approached I said “I’ll do that because I think I should”.

When ignored I said nothing that is repeatable here.

When invited I said “I’ll certainly be there”.

When offered a seat at the table, I took it quietly.

When offered the cash I said “Thanks very much”.

The fat shall inherit the earth

impossible songs & the obvious picture

impossible songs

So it has been confirmed that by 2050 the diet dodgers of the UK, the obese, the corpulent and the clinically overweight will be in the majority and a threat to all other life forms on the planet. Well I’m not bothered; they (the fat people) can take pride in their evolutionary success and at the same time take responsibly for their own size and the running of the world (or UK) as well. That’ll teach them, some decent real life stress and having to think about problems instead of puddings might just help shed a few of those precious pounds. The rest of us may now have a fighting chance of getting a shot of the arm rest on a flight and a reasonable increase in private personal space at the same time. Of course if the government was serious about this they’d treat fat people in the same appalling way they treat smokers, gum chewers and TV personalities. All you do is ban fat people from restaurants, cafes, burger bars and the sweetie counter and Pik-a-Mix bar at Woolworths. That way, using the proven road of social exclusion, you will drive them back into conforming to the states’ desired eating regimes. The only problem is that in order for social exclusion to work you have to have created a society that people actually want to be included in. Me, I’m with the unreal Vikings, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, onto this in an unscripted way.

Other things you won’t be able to do most probably before 2020 or by the end of the next Labour government's reign:

Smoke tobacco unless in a private submarine, a barrel going over Niagara Falls or on the moon.
Buy alcohol in bottles/units bigger than 50ml and certainly not at all in a Scottish supermarket.
Carry a Mars Bar or Twix onto an aircraft.
Have sex up in a tree unless wearing a harness and safety helmet and the tree consents.
Urinate into bushes unless involved in a near death experience.
Say anything at all about someone else’s religion.
Tell jokes about fellow human beings or snigger to yourself.
Drive a car above 20mph or anywhere on a road without traffic calming measures (eat that Subaru boys!).
Have zips on your trousers (just too dangerous).
Squeeze spots while looking into mirrors in toilets at Motorway Service Stations.
Criticize the wisdom of having street furniture and warning signs that are in ten languages including Welsh and Polish. This includes multi-lingual signs saying “caution scalding hot water” on all scalding hot water taps.
Be in the same town as a product containing traces of nuts.
Use cash to buy anything other than drugs or sexual favours.
Wear odd socks, hats, checked shirts or a loud tie.
Kick dogs or squirrels if they bite you.
Not wear a condom at all times - just in case. (Applies to both male and female.)
Blog any weird stuff like this.

A passive pot at clouds

impossible songs

impossible songs

Weather Report

It’s the time of year when cheese puffs are rebranded as Witch’s toes and innocent pumpkins are gouged out by reluctant adults and turned into repositories for surplus IKEA tea lights. Nobody ever eats the inside of the pumpkin but we all say “I’ll do something with it this year, perhaps make a pie, that would be nice”. Poorer people break their knives and skin their knuckles and bellow at their impatient children whilst hollowing turnips out for the same smaller effect. Their tea lights come from the Co-op. Yes! Halloween is upon us, the nights are drawing in (yawn) and the great bonfires are being built on green areas and recovered land on which to burn the bodies of unbelievers, adulterers, doorstep Mormons and Social Democrats. It is of course a metaphorical bonfire but it can still be viewed through any housing estate white plastic lounge window on a flat screen TV set to BBC2 or the History Channel (this is a type of modern suburban irony). After these events a long winter, mainly a mixture of floods and frost follows.

Weather in the UK is apparently very similar to that of Patagonia on the southern tip of South America. Nowhere else in the world is there such a volatile mixture of climatic extremes it seems. The thing is nobody lives there so they don’t whinge about it the way that we do, particularly on Tuesdays and when subsequently comparing the real weather with the Technicolor weather icon that sits with your postcode on your homepage or to the right on the BBC website. I think that’s enough of this for now.

Weather Report were/are a tedious jazzy rock band made up of fine players who floated like a fat, passive barrage balloon across the musical skies of the late 20th century. Good luck to them anyway.

We can bee strong

impossible songs

impossible songs

Homes fit for Bees.

Despite taking a battering from mobile phone signals, poor weather, pollen pirates and aggressive shell-suited wasps, the bees are fighting back. Clearly some government minister (from an office near Mr Prescott’s former stomping ground) in association with lifestyle style gurus and marketing giants “Dobbies” has decided to tackle the bee decline problem head on. Now you can adopt a colony of the furry bummers and house them in these neat bee condominiums. They can be dotted around your garden or anywhere not too close to a mobile phone mast or bonfire. Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer and the many English kings who shared that great name would be proud at how this proactive purchasing and bee breeding action may save the civilised world. It is important that in your enthusiasm to begin a bee colony that you don’t make the possibly fatal mistake of attracting a group of African Killer Bees into your garden. No matter what type of political system they may say they are fleeing from or how oppressed and persecuted they might say they are, don’t believe them. NIMBY.

Smile please

impossible songs

impossible songs

Laser Lollies.

Invention is the mother of necessity and so it was only a matter time before one of our highly skilled researchers here at the Abercorn Institute of Naval Gazing Medicine came up with a white chocolate lolly that incorporates a strawberry laser centre. We’re hoping to market these items around the Balearics all next summer long from a well pimped Ford Transit ice-cream van. Packed with a certain bohemian punch it certainly beats 99s and Mr Whippys into a cocked hat.

A frog of plagues.

There’s nothing quite like coming home from work to find that one of the cats has peed by the back door and that a small frog is happily paddling in it. The orphan frog is removed and returned to the wild in what has now become a well practised ceremony and the yellow stream of territorial marking is wiped up and disinfected. Life then resumes.

She came in through the drive-through window.

Dumb. It is dumb to eat two McDonalds sausage and egg McMuffins back to back, or in any other less than normal seated at a table physical dining position. And another thing, why are there no Taco Belles or Wendy’s in the UK?