Scrubbed Up

impossible songs

impossible songs


A rare moment showing us scrubbed up rather well and with a certain amount of welcome bling-bling things going on. The occasion was Kate and Les’s glorious winter wedding back in December – on the 27th to be exact. The wedding was one big party and we all had a great time with many new variations on Scottish celebration themes being successfully explored. The many music stands are not part of our equipment.

London & Take That

impossible songs

impossible songs

Above is a marvelous picture of London, layer upon layer from the cold water to the blue sky. Taken by Ali one bright and chilly January Saturday morning (Ali having spent the previous evening in the company of Take That and a BeeGee and various other celebs). I naturally stayed home and kept the cats and various vagrant mice company whilst dreaming of a Ford Cougar 2.5 auto – a car that will never be green but always cool.

Speaking of never being green (and I am a little) I refuse to wash out empty salad cream bottles (we had some and consumed it at Christmas) and mayonnaise jars and thereafter recycle them. Has anyone ever tried this? It takes enough water to irrigate the Seringetti just clean the rim, so I’m sorry but these have to go straight into the bin. I dread the day when this kind of behavior will become a criminal offence.

If we are to teach our children that Middle Earth’s history is in fact that of (central) Scotland then I think it important that for anthropological and archaeological reasons we agree on the locations of the various key places. The Shire is of course most of Fife, Rivendell is Dollar Glen, the Grey Havens are Cellardyke Harbour, Mordor is somewhere in a the area of Falkirk, Armadale and Bathgate, the Dead Marshes are by Grangemouth, Minus Tirith is Limekilms/Charlestown and Smaug the dragon’s lair is up the M90 somewhere after junction 4. I hope this will help puzzled school teachers every where get their facts right, they (and their unfortunate pupils) know little of Scottish history or WW2 but loads about the unification of Italy, the beers of Belgium and the Great Fire and pork shortage of Peking in 1908.

Heavy Metal Guilt

impossible songs - Lost again

impossible songs


Presbyterian Guilt amongst other things.

Scratch an East coaster and you’ll pretty quickly get to the engine room of the Scottish psyche, the one and only inbred little time bomb that controls and cripples half of this nation, Presbyterian Guilt. An invisible, mighty and misunderstood force that creates and promulgates impromptu and automatic apologies for living, breathing, eating, sleeping and taking up valuable space on this earth. If you are doing anything beyond these things it’s even worse because you "don’t know your place" and slightly beyond that "you don’t deserve to be there (or here)". This extreme behavior is triggered by illness, success, winning the lottery, being on your deathbed, getting caught out at something and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Guilt is the great corrosive cancer of our time controlled by the SMG, BBC Scotland, the Daily Record and some of the more agile minds in Holyrood. It’s been with us since the Reformation, having it’s first full guilty piece of incendiary bombing in the burning of a few thousand witches, imagine having that on your conscience. Let’s hope that a few more generations of Polish, English and Asian immigrants dilute it all down a little. It is understood that the Church of Scotland is squeaky clean on this, they are so detached from seeing any meaning in modern or ancient religion that they would never try to capitalize on it… or have they by stealth?

Rumour also has it that there is an independent primary school in West Lothian where small children are being taught from the Lord of the Rings and told that it is ancient Scottish history. Copies of Oor Wullie, the Broons and the Dundee Courier are regularly burned in the playground. It will be interesting to see if their levels of guilt are reduced over time compared to those who have stuck with a more traditional educational path.

For West coasters I should also say that they are not without the somewhat significant equivalent, namely Catholic Guilt. Possibly more extreme and abstract and quite worryingly a worldwide phenomenon that knows no bounds, just imagine half a billion guilt ridden Hispanics and a few hundred folks from Motherwell purging themselves after watching an episode of Ugly Betty. At least Presbyterian Guilt is limited to our green and pleasant land and shores, bits of Germany and the buckle of the Bible Belt where it seems no intelligent human life has been detected so far. I’m surprised they haven’t started a heavy metal chapter yet that could tour Scandinavian in the summer illustrating their points with pigs heads on stakes in an attempt to win converts amongst the young and the bewildered.

Just in case you’re wondering about me, (and I am wondering about me), I don’t really believe that there is a great sectarian or tribal dotted line that crosses Scotland with age old rivalry and a territorial bias. That would be ridiculous though it might be wise to check now and then on Google Earth in case the picture ever changes. Someone might have a new satellite fitted with different and more sophisticated sensors financed by the people that gave away the Nobel Peace Prize. The whole idea of visible particles of division and ways of seeing them is a crazy flight of fancy and totally unacceptable in our modern, enlightened, Adam (bloody) Smithed, New Labour infested heartland. It’s all just another heavy metal guilt trip.

Ex-happy mouse

impossible songs

impossible songs

The unhappy modest mouse

Today a local mouse was made rather unhappy; firstly by two kittens who were rather unsure as to why they were picking on him, other than some basic instinct was at work. The other reason being that these kittens had panicked him into running into even more danger (our house) and therefore far away from his own natural habitat and a place of comparative safety. The kittens really have no idea what to do with a mouse once they’ve cornered it. Killing it is a possibility (this was tried on Monday and seemed to work), but as their concepts of life and death are vague they preferred on this occasion to have some kitty fun with the mouse. At the moment the mouse is seeking political asylum beneath the washing machine (formerly known as the great white robot). In what may be the beginning of a long running Mexican standoff, the kittens are standing guard, unsure as to what may happen next.

I should also mention that the mouse first appeared in the house just as I was about to dish up a late tea for myself. There was a sharp squeak noise followed by a kitten carrying a complaining mouse through the kitchen cat flap. The mouse then escaped from the cat and tried to hide under a curtain, this confused the cats (the other was by now on the scene) and they were stuck without a plan. I had no option but to ignore my meal and try to rescue the mouse, however my attempts failed and he fled deeper into the house, all the way across it to the front door. Alas then he was caught again by a cat and I managed to chase both out of the house through the back door. All went quiet for a few minutes until in an act of wanton insanity the mouse ran back into the house (under the back door) and headed for the laundry room. It was some time before the puzzled kittens realized what had happened and came back in themselves. Somehow they sensed the mouse was under the washer and now the psychological battle between rodent and feline minds has begun.

I ate a late tea and closed the kitchen door; I’ll pop my head round later this evening to see what progress has been made. (In the end the unhappy mouse sadly became even more unhappy and "disappeared" dispute my efforts to rescue him).

A trampoline walks.

The recent high winds moved our large trampoline completely across the garden, a distance about fifty feet onto the middle of the lawn. There it now sits, a little bent but in an upright position and ready for the first springs of spring. The strategy to move the trampoline back to it’s rightful place has not been formed yet. As I recall it took four strong men (none of which was me) to put it in place when we moved house last year. It strikes me that another strong wind blowing in the opposite direction might do the job and so confirm to me the existence of a natural cycle of and for all things. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait for this to happen.

Building a better Nintendo

impossible songs

impossible songs



Nintendo Repair Course

Today I’ve discovered a new game to play on the Nintendo DS, namely taking it apart and putting it together on a regular basis. After the first three hours of fiddling however it does get a bit tedious especially when you make no progress at all in fixing the defect, in this case a damaged top screen. So I’ve taken the bloody screen out and reconnected it, at all three points about fifteen times, I’ve screwed the whole thing back together and fired it up but the newly purchased replacement screen refuses quite steadfastly to play. Probably if I were a Chinese 11 year old the repair job would have taken few seconds but for the likes of me, middle aged and cack-handed it is simply too much. It seems that even my wide ranging experiences gained in my teenage years of working within the emerging Scottish electronics industry (Bournes potentiometers 1973 –1975) has done me no good at all. It looks like it’s back to Ebay or Amazon for a replacement and no capable dad brownie points scored whatsoever.

Gay Boy Chilli

Take a pot of red meat mince, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, onions, various elements of sauce, rice and a generous portion of carbon footprint and you have the newly introduced Gay Boy Chilli. The secret ingredient in the actual Gay Boy Sauce, about which we can say or reveal very little other than it is primarily vegetable based (thankfully) and is tomato orientated. After 8 hours of rampant hunger and unsuccessful Nintendo repairs it works a treat with bottle of Sicilian red wine, a cat staring at you and a portion of boiled rice.

Hospital pass

impossible songs

impossible songs




Hospital

The basic problem with visiting hospitals is that everybody there (including some of the staff) always look so ill, displaced and worried and down in the mouth. In a way it’s like going to court and thinking that everyone there looks guilty of something (again possibly true depending upon your theological notions) or a bank where everybody’s plotting fraud. Hospitals are of course necessary and useful places but they have a funny and unique smell and the entrance halls are filled with people who seem to act like human flotsam and jetsam, confused and faltering, not sure where to go and peering at the many signs and arrows with saucer like and sunken eyes. I don’t want to ever end up in hospital - although I am confident I would make a good compliant patient, most of the time anyway. I’ve decided that my next twenty-five years or so will be spent energetically dodging hospitals and the like. I can just about manage the odd visit to the doctor’s surgery for advice and quick fix of antibiotics but the big bed and the thumb curling and acronym whispering of the young doctors is something I must avoid.

Standing in a hospital foyer observing the smoker traffic is like watching wounded salmon leaping up a waterfall. Twisted and crippled individuals helped by sticks and contraptions try to get across the wide space from the wards, past the shop and the desk and the cash line, to the open water of the front door where they can puff for five chilly minutes upon a cigarette. Some make the journey in wheel chairs, they have one leg or no legs, are wearing bits of pyjamas and remnants of clothing in no obvious style, there only goal is a quick smoke. You feel that these folks have been reduced to some awful, pitiful level of desperation and need where this long trip to daylight from the canteen like wards forms the highlight of their every waking hour.

In hospital old people give themselves a tough time, everything is strange, with the toileting, tea and the food coming in for unjustified and unfair criticism. It is as if they had enjoyed only the best when in their concrete homes and now that they are here in a sanitary prison nothing is to their taste. Brews of tea are too weak, milky or strong. Food is tasteless, cold and never what they fancy (but they don’t know what they fancy). That they are ill and their taste buds may be a little askew and bitter seems not to dawn on them. Showers are ever so hot or very cold, never quite right and toilet routines are far from satisfactory. The staff however rise above these petty complaints and get on with looking after patients who act as if they should be in the Ritz Carlton when they are safely billeted in the long suffering and withering NHS, (which is an OAP itself now – sixty glorious years on).

Favourite Transistor

impossible songs

impossible songs




Favorite words – part of an occasional series.

Functionality – not a proper word but a good one to use at meetings to describe IT or systems problems and set-ups. Rolls nicely over the tongue and in the correct context can cover a multitude of meanings when you don’t know what you’re taking about.

Transistor – a bit of a retro word but as a child one that caught my imagination and seemed to signify space travel, miniaturization and the promise that in science anything is possible. Printed circuit or silicon chips never had that same magic for me.

Heresy – In some ways it’s odd that a word like this should ever have been created. It can only exist in a world where absolutes are believed in and fought for. When you have to be right all the time and defend your cause life can be pretty tough; you need strong words and methods. Heresy is one of those words nobody would use in a normal voice; it has to be screamed slightly insanely accompanied by a pointing finger and a sneer of self-satisfaction.

Cookie dough (as in ice cream) – I know it’s an Americanism and two words and therefore slightly flawed but cookie dough is a great combination of unhealthy eating sounds and images.

Appaloosa – see previous post.

Snuggle – a word that simply sounds like it is, conveying warmth and safety.

Turnip – an unsung vegetable and a word that for some reason is currently being edged out by "Swede", a name that may seem more sophisticated to the consumer. There is something honest about a plain sounding word like turnip, as if it was made up by a farmer or somebody in the fields and it describes the thick, unyielding vegetable very well.

It's people not animals who farm

impossible songs

impossible songs




Snow bother

The TV weather girls and men are in hysterics because a small amount of snow has fallen on the East Coast. It’s hard to imagine them getting any more excited if UFOs had landed instead of the snow. As usual it’s the pale, watery, unusable snow that we always get stuck with in this country – not that I’m complaining about snow, just the slow news day faux-excitement. In Ohio or Idaho or Fargo a fall of snow means 10 foot drifts for weeks, if that were to happen here it would require a completely different winter lifestyle and a better standard of news reporting.

Tree

Yesterday morning was taken up with the surgical removal of the Christmas tree, firstly from the safety of it’s base and then from the safety of the house. Both departures were greeted with disapproval by the poor tree, now past its best and so it showered me and a vast area of the floor with green spines in silent protest. It is now deep in the forest ready to be called upon to play its final role in some family celebrations by getting chucked onto an early spring bonfire. It was a good tree but by the 3rd of January, Christmas is a distant memory and the tree is well and truly redundant in our lives.

Diversion

I’ve ordered a new flat screen for a Nintendo DS, a New Year casualty that was brought on by a sudden impact with the tiles of the fireplace. Now my full range of electrical skills will be put to the test once it arrives, much fiddling, squinting and swearing will also follow. The (good but broken) PC is next on the list of things to repair – or contract out as the case may be.

Animal Farm

The old fifties Halas and Bachelor cartoon version this story was on TV over the holiday. As grim and as stark an adaptation as you’ll get, almost in the minimalist style of some Ministry of Information film but powerful none the less. I wonder what today’s students make of it’s eternal messages of revolution and despair, of triumph over oppression succeeding only in oppressing others. A wise man once said, "all power is tyranny" I wonder who he was? By the way the illustration above is (sadly) not the actual book cover but a funky little piece of re-realization that takes a completely different view of the title’ s meaning.

Appaloosa Christmas

impossible songs

Appaloosa

It was Joni Mitchell who first made me aware that there was such a thing as an Appaloosa horse, the song "Coyote" mentions one in no particularly meaningful context other than you’d imagine she had such a horse because of the illusion on truth embedded in her lyrics. These beautiful white and grey spotted horses come in nine basic coat patterns .The patterns have names given to them by the Palouse Indian tribe who are credited with breeding them in the Palouse river valley in the USA. If I ever get a horse…I could include it in a song, then I’d have to write one, not an easy thing to achieve these days.

Christmas is over and I for one say "thanks goodness". It lasts too long, one day would be fine, a big festival and then recovery time from all the self indulgence and rampant greed and spare time dozing in front of the TV. On the plus side I’ve found out how to roast pork and make crackling, how to roast chicken, bake onions and mash all sorts of random vegetables into a buttery pulp. We’ve also started baking bread and then eating the whole loaf immediately thanks to the novelty of a bread-maker. My trousers still fit, I’ve had quite enough sleep and strangely enough I’m looking forward to getting back to work.

impossible songs

Facebook still sucks

impossible songs

impossible songs

Facebook sucks like a leech

The tedium of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and life on line in general is getting to me, or is it lack of a fast PC and not ever feeling hungry in the last few days? My systems may simply be in New Year overload or in rebellion inspired by the Ricky Gervais Big Brother rant on Extras earlier this week (or last week). If life is a long, protracted illness ended by death (said Mr. S Milligan) then blogging, blethering and social networking on the web are modern forms of a part of this illness that defy definition and frustrate with their "next big thing with no shelf life" appeal. . Some might say they are desperate attempts at achieving a sense of permanence and significance in the (generally) normal, dull lives we lead. Tell the world what your favorite movies are, what you are cooking and what things you support. In return get requests to join fringe groups, minority groups and get pestered by a selection of other (sad) weirdoes that are desperate to have you join their cause. "It’s life Jim, not like ours and I’m damned if I can make any sense of it". The thing is once your profile is set up and out there, nobody ever reads it and it just hangs on in eternal limbo. Of course this reaction may be part of some seasonal cyclical behavior running within the cosmic wheels but I think for the mean time my Facebook and Myspace will be allowed to languish while others snipe at them from a safe distance – I can’t bring myself to take them down altogether. In life everything is about maintaining a proper sense of proportion, most of the time, if you can crack this then your judgments and subsequent decisions will be close to being decent. I choose therefore to drift away from on line social networking for the time being. Goodbye cruel cyber world and for how long will I hold out?

Songs in the key of blackbird

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impossible songs


Songs in the key of blackbird

Christmas Eve found us in the local church experiencing our first Nativity service in years. Sadly it was clearly a case of song density over content and substance. We sang every carol in the ragged little book and all were pitched in that weird church music key that only little old ladies seem to be able to sing in. Oh how we whined, croaked and failed to hit the required notes. "It’s in the key of blackbirds," said Emma quite correctly. As we struggled to rise to those elusive notes the landed gentry looked down upon us from a private box in the "gods". Sadly their benign and aloof staring into space was never translated into words or deeds. No alms, goodwill wave or message, no free Christmas trees or turkeys for the poor of the parish this year apparently. The presiding minister then produced an ill conceived and frankly awful message that referred to Princes Diana’s soul flying above that "lonely island" and some references to Glen Affric and the light pollution caused by street lamps(?). No wonder the chattering classes are confused by organized religion and the antics of its leaders and simply settle for the greedy, materialistic Christmas model our society has constructed. We trudged home, cut up by the midnight headlamps of various Range Rovers and Discoverys slewing away from us, we opened our nice little presents and drank a little more wine.

Boxing Day was interesting, no trains and few buses but Argos and Sainsburys at Linlithgow were open so we could stock up once again will more alcohol and purchase some vital birthday presents, all required for consumption over the next few days. Linlithgow is a grey and cold town and is a contrasting oddity with its magical classic Scottish organic architecture of the 16th Century quite distastefully melded with the heavy concrete and clay schools of design so loved in the nineteen sixties. At least the (big shed) shops were open. I do get the irony in this.

Currently playing: Amy Winehouse – Back to Black (special edition), the Eagles – Long road out of Eden and the Dr Who Christmas special, thanks to Sky plus.

Neon Christmas

impossible songs

impossible songs

No blogs go

I wish I could list or even remember the things I’ve liked and listened to this year, the films I’ve watched or the places I’ve been. It’s in there somewhere but on Christmas Eve impossible to extract. I may have discovered Ernest Hemmingway, the joys of orbiting London in the tube, special Coca-Cola, log fires, excessive use of the word "however" and become an expert at fidgeting in airport lounges. Sandwiches have not figured much this year but it has been a good one for pasta and chicken and yum yums from Turrif.

Recent listenings/ viewings that have taken up my time and a little attention:

No cars go – Arcade Fire, Don’t lose yourself – Laura Veirs, John Barleycorn – Martin Carthy/Eliza Carthy/Paul Weller, Philosophy – Tommy Mackay, Submarine Girl + Christmas Revolution – Norman Lamont, Dickhead – Kate Nash, Valerie – Mark Ronson, The beauty of a foreign land – CBQ, On an Island – Dave Gilmour, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, War of the Worlds (repeat), The Pink Floyd Story, Life on Mars, Smallville and the Old Grey Whistle Test, the Simpsons (like every year). There were a few decent football matches also but that was a while ago.

It’s nearly Christmas, the turkey is ready to fly, the sprouts and swedes are clean and soaking and food and shiny things seem important. Another milestone will pass and soon it will be tomorrow. Whatever your passion and what you choose to believe, enjoy it.

Angels and saliva

impossible songs

Strange angel picture or what?


"Angel came down from Heaven yesterday, she stayed with me just long enough to rescue me, and she told me a story yesterday, about the sweet love between the moon and the deep blue sea.... " James Marshall Hendrix - a long time ago.



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A tidal wave of Christmas cards have landed on my office window sill, a bumper crop of random Santas, angels and snowmen from colleagues and friends and the wider world. Even at home our cards are building up and CDs and odd other things either sent in error or with some sense of guilt and purpose. Whatever I believe, I believe in the mid-winter festival – it has to be a good thing. A portion of light and warmth in all this insipid fog, cold and road dirt that threatens to cloak and choke everything. Light, from whatever source is good, warmth is better and bonfires are the best. I’d like it better if it was early Spring however.

Saliva ducts, glands, jets or whatever you call them are fine when they are working properly, get a tricky little infection in them and it’s no fun at all. A bit like putting methylated spirit in your car’s screen wash. So now my faith has been firmly placed in the power of antibiotics to make this Christmas bearable. I am a rubbish patient and a frustrated eater, sleeper and salivator. I also hope that the infection doesn’t turn out to be stones (how do you get stones in these tiny ducts and how do you get them out again?). So one more time "Roll away the stone, sha la la la la push, push!"

Newspapers

impossible songs

impossible songs

A man sits on an aircraft, he is reading a paper. When the plane lands he removes the TV section, folds it up into quarters and puts it in his inside coat pocket for later (one assumes). He discards the rest of the paper, leaving it in a seat pocket. The time is 2035.

Six older people (all in their sixties) are in the lounge of an airport, clearly they have all attended the same funeral that day, possibly a friend or a close family member. They huddle together and all attempt to complete the crossword puzzle from the Daily Mail. One man goes away to the toilet, when he returns 10 minutes later he has one of the answers - the one on which they all had been stuck.

In the bar upstairs a dog eared copy of the current Times is on a radiator, nobody picks it up. It looks dirty.

A man is snoozing in the same area, his newspaper is spread across his lap. He sleeps through his flight announcement and misses it. He does not react when he wakes up and realises what has happened.

A woman reading the Times is also eating crisps, her paper and her fingers smell strongly of cheese and onion.
I keep my distance.

I read the Scotsman almost from cover to cover, I miss most of the ads and a section towards the end. I don't bother with the rugby but I read the football pages. I read all the letters and all the editorials. I like to know what people are thinking. Much of the actual reported news is not news at all but seeing it in print it takes on a strange kind of relevance.

Today has been and ordinary day - most of which was spent in Southampton airport departure lounge.

7 Days

impossible songs

impossible songs




I can't quite remember much from the past seven days or so. No blogging or writing. Some playing songs at SQ arts open mike. Some flu bugs, sore throats and general bouts of ill health. Getting frostbite from handling goal posts on a freezing Sunday morning. De-icer on windscreens and roaring coal fires - thanks to the chimney sweep's hard work in removing the squirrel who may have been a bird.

These winter weeks are tough on the old body put still inspire with the strange beauty of the cold and the dark and the sparkle of the frost - oh and we did some shopping. One more thing, our Christmas tree is the best in the village by a mile and few stray fir cones.

All in all it's an uphill struggle to meet the inner hysteria that Christmas brings: Perhaps the rubbing on of some pure duck fat or goose grease, to the forehead or around the shoulder blades would ease the seasonal stress and also aid the cooking process. Not sure if it's worth the try.

Our regular PC has died and our ancient digital PC has been brought out of retirement - also meaning that the broadband has been reduced to dial up speeds but the old PC (like an old fiddle some may say) still can manage the odd decent tune before falling over after 5 minutes.

Thank you

impossible songs

impossible songs

Sometimes in life, just a few words are quite enough...

Insolence for the indolent

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impossible songs

Insolence for her?

Surely this has to be the best / worst / most awful product ever, as advertised on TV by a pouting, sneering blonde - an image we all aspire to. This Christmas give her some "Insolence", then on her birthday surprise her with a little "Petulance" and possibly for your anniversary a nice bottle of "Stroppy" or perhaps the cheeky aroma of "Huffy" or just plain old "(In a friggin', don't even talk to me, bad little number called...) Moody". Can you imagine being in the brainstorming session that came up with this as a marketing idea - aimed squarely at Ned Girls, hormonal and hyper teenagers and bunny boilers of all sorts. I hope it smells like a French rugby team's armpits after a night out in a Scunthorpe curry parlour.

I guess a male range will follow in due course: "Diverted Flatulence", "Ignorance (is complete and utter bliss)", "Selfish Lazy Beast", "Greedy Fat Bugger" and of course "Uncommunicative".

Good cat bad cat

impossible songs & the bad and the good




impossible songs

The unbearable lightness of heavy responsibility.

Friday evening was spent in panic and crisis as our cats displayed for the first time the darker shades of their characters. Clint (the naughty kitten) disappeared into the West Lothian darkness at about 7.45 pm. He failed to reappear by 8.15 unlike his (good) sister Smudge. Having recently lost our long term cat Syrus we called out a two person search party straight away - in the rain. "History has repeated itself yet again" was all I could think as we staggered around in the fields, woods and roadways in the dark and cold, banging on a feeding dish and whistling and calling. At about 11.30 we abandoned the house to house, hedge to tree search and came home, tired and well and truly down in the dumps. Our little cat was lost and the feeling of being powerless and unable to search further was awful.

Then a miracle: It came after we'd gone to sleep thinking about how we'd have to tell the kids of how yet another cat had disappeared into the Hopetoun Triangle. Clint trotted in at 5.00am, clean, alert, dry and warm - where had he been? What had he done? Did he care or show any sign of remorse? Well no he's a bloody cat and doesn't bother in the least.

A few theories have been floated on this one: Parallel worlds, kidnap, rabbit hole, chimney, UFO abduction, hiding under a strangers bed, exploring the fields, wandering into another house - none can be confirmed to explain how he (a small and timid kitten) effectively vanished for 10 hours on a cold and horrible night - at least he's back, we're sane again and the squirrel soup is on the cooker.

Dusseldorf

impossible songs

impossible songs

Too much red meat is murder

I spent a couple of days in Dusseldorf, (the airport is featured in the picture) went to a meeting, drank some beer and had a large steak in a traditional German Argentinian Steak House. The Euro weather was as weather is most of the time and the traffic was as thick as it is at the Maybury at 1700hrs on a wet Friday. On the way home many a happy hour was spent at Heathrow meditating in between delayed flights, staring at the ceiling and reading and eating more processed meat and milky coffee in an unconcentrated, uncontented way.

Today (Friday) it was two steak pies from the Gyle and a rhubarb pie from the Coop re-steamed in the microwave to retain the flavour. Then I prepared a tasty pot of squirrel soup complete with a full range of imaginary ingredients. This was followed by no more pies or meat but an unplanned cat hunt - more of which later.

Not so secret squirrel

impossible songs

impossible songs

A shot in the dark

A squirrel appears to have set up home in our chimney, a better and warmer home in winter than some bare tree out in the woods I suppose. The actual chimney is the one in our bedroom unfortunately, the net result being a series of wild and unexpected scratching noises that occur in the middle of the night as he/she stores his/her nuts in the space behind our blocked up fireplace. These noises are about three feet from my head. This nocturnal lodger did freak both of us out to begin with but we have now settled down a little and are coming to terms with the new visitor (we don't run out of the bedroom screaming anymore). His timing and his habits leave a lot to be desired however, the 3am scratch and sniff session being the most irritating. Next week the cheeky Cockney scamp of a sweep from Mary Poppins (Dick van Dyke no less) is due to sweep and hoover our lum, we'll see how Mr Squirrel likes that. In the end it's live and let live I suppose, I'm saying that and feeling rather guilty because I ran over two poor little rabbits this morning - by accident.