Death of a lifelong Socialist

It seems that the now completely delusional Mr Brown began his key-note speech by telling Labour members they were "the fighters and believers who change the world - we have changed the world before and we are going to do it again". I pity any sane person who paid money to attend this conference and listen to this rubbish, they deserve their money back. More free flowing pish followed:

Mr Brown announced a string of new policies, including:

• Ten hours of free childcare a week for 250,000 two-year-olds from families "on modest or middle incomes" - paid for by scrapping tax relief for better-off families
• A plan to house 16 and 17-year-old single parents in state-run shared houses rather than council flats
• A £1bn "innovation fund" to boost industry
• A new National Care Service to "provide security for pensioners for generations to come"
• A commitment, enshrined in law, that allocates 0.7% of GDP to international aid.

Nothing like fiddling in the margins whilst the country goes down the tubes. How about:

• Ten hours of free childcare during the stupidly planned "in-service days " that compromise the lives of every parent with schoolkids.
  
• A plan to house 16 and 17-year-old single parents in supportive family environments.
• A £1bn "innovation fund" to invest in some much needed public sector projects - filling up bloody potholes in the roads.
  
• A new National Care Service to "provide the offer of a £75k grant (paid at age 65) to those who volunteer for euthanasia at 75."
• A commitment, enshrined in law, that allocates 0.7% of GDP to UK based charities and not corrupt despotic African governments.
• Getting some adult level of responsibility, honour and accountability back into politics and banking for crying out loud! (I sneaked this extra one in).
  

I find it hard to stomach the car crash that is the current Labour Government, ill fitting, talentless and ill informed and sadly led to the edge of this sorry precipice by a Scotsman - that's the part that hurts the most. It should've run to a completely different script but it hasn't, come next June we'll be plucked from the drab despair of Labour into the eager and waiting arms of the glib, inexperienced and arrogant Conservatives: Abandon hope here and as for the Liberal Democrats, their naivety and their stupid policies are even harder to take, a vote for Mussolini would seem more relevant and worthwhile albeit he never did get the trains to run on time. Time for revolution methinks.

The perfect scone

A walk across the rooftops c/w the blue Forth (not the Nile).

We spent some time yesterday on the roof of Hopetoun House, looking across at Fife and the bridges and fine selection of period chimney pots. Despite staying in this area for years it was the first time we've actually been up there or inside the great house and it is well worth a visit. Once we'd fallen back to earth it was into the old stables, now a tea room: The scone score was 5/10 from Ali and 7/10 from me. The kids declined to mark the Brownie and ice cream but managed to force it all down just the same. Turns out that they make all the stuff on the premises so no white vans and pre-packaging, in the light of this information and a brief tour of the kitchens (I was chatting to the waitress) I revised my score to 8/10. The problem with that being I'm not sure what a 10/10 scone would be like or if I ever will find one, it could however mark the start of a new purpose and mission for me as the twilight years of pension and coffin dodging approach.

In the evening it was home for a huge meal back here at the ranch with Fraser and Karen followed by a jam session and impromptu concert featuring Fraser's shiny new saxophone. The material being a lively mixture of both of our songs conveniently extended, this was followed by some decent conspiracy theories were being well and truly explored. Despite these fresh new sources of worry I slept well - with a cat under my feet for some reason.

Giant sleeping (underfoot) cat face from earlier this morning.

Psychic spys from China

Spent another Friday night in the company of Derren Brown and a bottle of red wine. As per previous weeks I remain unpsychic, uninspired and not connected to the great astral spheres turning above and the flickering and focused mind games playing out. I am however duly entertained and I like the adverts and the anticipation - often the best thing in life. One day I'll see Stonehenge clearly or stick to my chair for the weekend but for the mean time I'll walk around the room and scribble images of pots and kettles. The rest of the family's attempts were more abstract than mine and open to interpretation...they're all more insightful, potent and sensitive than I am, so perhaps much closer to the target.

Today we welcome mini Shogun "Messy" into the family, charcoal black, rugged and ready for the fields, the ditches, the potholes and the motorways - all in real time 4WD and black leather.

My plastic Bambi

Just sitting at home, feeling peaceful, surrounded by furniture and in a perfect abstract ambient mind-set whilst listening to a little soothing music as my Haggis and Neeps ready-meal cremates nicely in the oven. Then a carton of overage pink yogurt before screwing up my eyes and polishing my lenses to see and hear the belated news on Channel 4+1. It doesn't get better than this I tell yah.

Walking in the clouds

We need all the help we can get.

Nothing like a day spent in and around airports to remind you of the absurdity of life and the pain of modern travel. Observations abound as these travellers run like plague victims, delusional over their need to travel and pained by the stress of getting nowhere:

Chavs and their out of control off-spring, shouting instead of talking and making little actual sense.
Successful looking people chattering loudly on their phones, tapping their laptop keys and supping poor quality cups of coffee.
Air line staff clattering like iron flamingos, looking for a place to perch and park their 4x4 travel bags.
Bargains that are not bargains cry out to be bought by the drunken traveller who is too bored to resist the lie.
Old and tiny Irish nuns, baffled by their position, frozen in their tracks and anxious for help.
Dan Brown books in ugly piles.
Food that is unattractive, over priced and served and swerved at you by Polish assistants.
Security staff, glazed over by their trained up state of alert and lack of common sense and manners.
Unexplained delays and pointless apologies.
Idiots with huge bags squeezed into small spaces.
A seat next to fat man reading a broadsheet.
The scramble to retrieve bags from overhead lockers.
A plane that tries to land, aborts the landing and then provides an unscripted flight over Fife, into the sun, into the clouds and finally onto the runway.
Japanese tourists in a huddle, burdened by their need to take in details and unfamiliar with enjoying themselves.
Speed bumps and traffic management systems that slow everything down.
Building works that last forever.
Evidence of bad design, screwy thinking and uncomfortable interiors - everywhere.

The good part - getting home eventually.

Magnolia

She comes in colours

The good news is that I am no longer angry nor am I a young man. Two kinds of conflicting stat us worth avoiding and ones that if brought together can be disastrous. I put my newly acquired peace of mind down to downing large quantities of blue milk, red wine and green vegetables. This colourful diet is also supplemented by eggs (whites and yellows) and more of the ubiquitous Muller corners. You are what you eat - I am not referring to the famous Bernard Manning joke here either.

Magnolia

I spent some time reading a few essays and extended reviews about the film Magnolia. I watched it once some time a go and naturally missed a few of the connections. I may watch it again - there is something interesting about the range of modern films that have been set in the San Fernando Valley: Crash, Boogie Nights and 2 Days in the Valley but I’ve no idea what it is.

TV

Kids let loose with shouting presenters and multi coloured puppets that belong to no recognisable species and behave in alien ways. News and weather that repeats and repeats interspersed with novelty items, most of which are a week old and have been battered to death on the web. Advertisements for dubious services that can only be required by a minority of viewers, it can only be early morning weekend TV.

It’s the end…

Lehman Brothers massive risk taking come unstuck a year ago. Where did that year go and how come are we still alive, shopping and functioning?

Dangerous fixations and unhealthy fascinations

Dangerous fixations and unhealthy fascinations

I heard this phrase last night as a part of a trailer for the show “Medium”, a show I’m highly unlikely ever to watch, however something in the trailer recipe worked because the phrase has stuck. All I really have to do is find somewhere or something in which to use it. It also set me thinking as to what “Dangerous fixations and unhealthy fascinations” I might have. This could see a return to another stupid “things I like” list or it could be a starting point for something more sinister and darker altogether. You might also expect to see it, signed in neon in the underbelly of Gotham City or dripping with water down in the lower reaches of the Bladerunner set. It’s comic strip stuff, sixties Detective comics, with blue and purple inks, yellow searchlights and headlamps and red lipstick that has that white, uncoloured sparkle.

It could sit nicely in Film Noir, cheap and roughly cut, sweaty and unforgiving, a self centred and punishing description of some monochrome lifestyle, spattered on the edge of the edge itself, a cliché for the exhausted genre, framing it nicely. Then it came to me, epiphany, revelation or whatever you may want to call it, my own, best dangerous fixation and unhealthy fascination - scallops . They just made it, edging into the number one spot in front of onion bhajis and the questionable but satisfying practice of numbing mouth ulcers by gargling with mouthwash. There is of course room now for free-fall parachuting, train spotting, waterfall jumping, daytime TV and shouting out rude things at traffic wardens and Conservative candidates and smartly running away.

So exorcising these primitive thought processes has cured/relieved/ unleashed/ crushed/ illuminated/ motivated / spiritualised/ depressed me up to a point. I’m now looking forward to the next exploratory phase generated by the trailer scriptwriters, sometime next week between 9 and 11 on the Living Channel.

Things I like

This Antoria is made in China as a part of some revised badge engineering stunt so it is really something other than what it seems to be, like many things but it's a good, cheap, tacky guitar - I tell myself.

1. Looking over the top of my glasses.
2. not using capital letters or punctuation
3. Making fun of the Edinburgh Trams.
4. The East Coast.
5. Guitars that are quirky or unconventional.
6. Haggis, neeps and mash.
7. Skyplus.
8. Lightscribe as an idea but not in practice.
9. Feeding the cats.
10. Expecting the disappointment the Sunday papers provide.
11. Not checking lottery numbers.
12. Not having to be right all the time.
13. Lists of 13.

Ditto to Beth

Fat girls all dance the same way.

Watching Beth Ditto on Jools Holland it was difficult not to note that she danced just like one of Viz’s Fat Slags, you have to imagine a still cartoon image dancing of course. That characteristic lift one leg, put it down one leg then lift the other (ditto!) and so a primitive and clumsy dance step is created. Expressive? Not really. What you’d expect? Pretty much. In case you are offended by this then of course I would agree that all generalisations are wrong, generally. Florence and the Machine are more interesting, “the Machine” is good band name unless coupled with Miami and Sound, works well with Soft also. The always flawless performances have however got me puzzled, five or six live acts every week and no bum notes, twiddles or forgetting the words. Some musicians clearly need to get a life, either that or they are in fact superhuman robotic freaks - something I always suspect when making comparisons.

Afternoon.

Today the sun has been beating down, pulsing and stretching and finding a way through the near perpetual East Coast gloom and into our chilly lives. I celebrated with some free form strimming, avoiding the manoeuvrings of a dying pigeon and covering myself from head to foot in grass and weeds, quite unintentionally.

My parents may well have been aliens

Completely predicable alien image used, one that has no real relation to the text that follows, typical.

My parents were aliens but not from Toronto

A wise young son of mine once said “there are some things you just don’t want to know about your parents”. He’s dead right, parents (the living ones) occupy a strange, mystical, terrifying and unrealistic place in the hearts and the childhood memories of their offspring. In many ways they should correspond to some Enid Blyton model, caring but remote, sending you of to school and then not really meddling in your world unless to provide food, money or rescue from immediate disaster. These parents don’t exist but if they did etc. etc. As children grow up the mask slips and they see their parents as they are, that can be good or not so good but it is inevitable, like getting to the bottom of a beer glass on a sunny afternoon.

It might sound crazy but I’ve only come to appreciate and (almost) understand my parents now that they are dead and gone. They occupy a new position in my life and memory, above the petty wars and issues, the mistakes and the disagreements. Now they look down like Obi Wan Kenobi or Anakin Skywalker, from some high and starry place, smiling and waving and not really interfering at all. This of course is part of an ongoing mid life crisis that I suffer from coupled with a perpetual state of bewilderment that produces golden sun flakes around the edges of things long past and completely blots out other less savoury, darker incidents.

My father and getting to know him has become a strange and occasional obsession for me. He died when I was 19 and we never really had a level, man to man relationship. The years from 16 to 19 were spent for me in a bit of a blue haze (1971 onwards) that made our disconnection and mutual frustration complete. Once he had died I felt a sense of obvious loss but I couldn’t put it into words or even acknowledge it. Now I understand that feeling is simply one of being robbed unfairly and immeasurable missed opportunity, the paradox being that even if he had lived on I might have never had the imagined relationship that now occupies my thoughts. In the competition between the real versus the unreal, the unreal wins most times. So now he’s a war hero, a loner, a traveller, a smoker and drinker, a troubled soul affected by personal loss and an inherited sense of duty that made him settle down and try his best to manage a small and insignificant family. When things failed to work out perhaps he didn’t understand and no doubt blamed himself and held onto some deep disappointments. Then a cruel illness came along and quickly killed him at roughly the same age I am at now. Nothing makes sense and neither God nor Karma or fate can explain the small hole that I observe in the universe that surrounds. Now I struggle to recall the sound of his voice, things he did or even remember quite what he looked like - tricks of light and mad shadows.

So enough of this tiresome reflection and sentimental circumnavigation, the next question is of course, as a parent and well rounded individual myself (apart from the occasional, minute flaw), what kind of alien am I and what would I wish to be remembered for?

On the margins

Sleeve design, wabi sabi awareness and the art of motorcycle mechanics. The haze of evaporating creativity, the intoxication of experiencing a flood of free downloads, the possibility of things being possible and the thought of fiddling with amps, equipment and those temperamental monsters known as foot pedals. I am ready to strike.

Another weird scan...

Dumbed up and then dumbed down for your reading and viewing pleasure.

WHAT IS WABI-SABI?

The Japanese view of life embraced a simple aesthetic
that grew stronger as inessentials were eliminated
and trimmed away.

-architect Tadao Ando

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered - and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent. Read more here...thanks to the author for covering WS better than I ever could. There are many books, many hidden gems and many tiny examples...

If you are bored by any of this please try saying "blue bug's blood" four times - at least. The rapid consumption of a double chicken burger (no lettuce, no mayo) may also improve your diction.

Urinal this way

Up with the lark this morning and over to Fife for Sunday football in the sunny grotto that is Glenrothes. Breakfast was a can of nicely chilled Dr Pepper and a Stephen's chocolate donut (24 hours old but none the worse for that) whilst catching the rays from a watery September sun. The signing information in the football facilities (changing rooms) bore a strong resemblance to some old Far Side cartoons that you may or may not recall. Everything was nicely marked with magic marker pen and block capital letters, just in case the casual visitor failed to mistake "home" for "away" or in the worst case I suppose "shower" for "urinal". All in the Far Side spirit of "let's get a few things straight around here", something that at times can be a great help in this modern world. Anyway we won the match 5 - 2 with Barclay Jr. getting the fourth.

Next it was back to the Auld Grey Toun where Tesco have expanded their premises but unfortunately not their ideas - so the oddly named Carphone Warehouse came to the rescue. Don't judge a book by it's cover or a superstore by it's advertising or it's relative floorspace.

Find value in the uncomplicated

Create beauty, value imperfection, live deeply. You will always have problems, and you will always have joyful times, but once wabi sabi becomes part of your awareness, you will have perspective.

The secret of happiness

This so nearly could've been Ali and I

It's out there somewhere, possibly hidden in this bizarre website of odd album covers. Thanks to Tommy Mackay, enter at your peril, adult themes are contained therein.

Apart from the few crimes that I regularly commit against food and fashion nothing unplanned or illegal has taken place around here today in this island of peace and civilisation. Hopefully that will remain the case as we lurch into another weekend. I've lost count of the times I've lost count of making plans only for them to be high jacked by the wind and weather (much of the same thing really).

So the secret of happiness? Flat sausage, two fried eggs and brown sauce I'd say.

Burglary and reflection

To catch a...

There is nothing like the demystifying of crime and an encounter with the hard edge of abrasive human nature to cause you to pause and check your relative position in this cracked universe. Loved ones and family always comes out on top, friends and employment follow, leisure and creative impulses fill the next few carriages of the derailed, steaming and hissing train wreck. Then it becomes a scramble to make sense of possessions and objects, tools and toys and knitted things we might use to keep out the cold. There in that new and sanctified panic room of refreshed learning and enlightenment you can give a clear and concise statement and let it hang in the moist air. Probably nobody will be listening but that doesn’t matter, it’s a reconciliation exercise that you need to undertake, more within than without, more found than lost, something, something, something. (I intend to keep my laptop in my cavernous boot and there are guards everywhere.)

So the bags of spoil and evidence were piled up on the table, sad and muddy after their ordeal, time out in the wild, unloved, rejected and almost returned to nature except for the intervention of Linlithgow’s finest. Our shopping list has diminished but the electrical goods remain out there in pubs, on eBay or Gumtree and the Sky card is in the back pocket of someone’s jeans. They were promised Sky Sports, Movies and all the good music channels when they handed over their forty quid, sadly all they got was Living, Sci-fi and Dave. He-haw.

So what’s done is done and I console myself with bottle of cheap red wine, a smoked sausage chopped up and basted in pasta sauce, eyeing up evolving plans to buy big dogs and bigger jeeps, because we can. There is no doubt we are where we are meant to be, I’m at a fizzy point of peace and I can load more free music up onto Jamendo as a charitable gesture of thanks to the rest of Europe, for still being there.

Motorcycle Diaries

Finally got round to watching this film, a marvellous experience, filled in a few gaps within my knowledge and romanticised a legend a little more. Nothing wrong with a dose of that.

Meanwhile various crimes and misdemeanours have been committed on our patch and the beginnings of a new and brave new world of siege mentality are building up. Then of course it will diminish as time passes and other experiences build up in their place. The tide forever turns...and we need a dog and a flock of geese.

Great to hear that the UK Government and big Gordy will pursue the Libyans for victim related compensation for innumerable IRA crimes. Then of course we'll need to pursue the various US groups who financed the procurement of bomb making materials and then we can follow that up with rearresting the many guilty terrorists and extremists released as part of the NI Peace Process. Bloody Sunday marvellous - an exercise in double standards that must be the envy of the rest of world. Were is Bono when you need him?

Sunday PM

Typical countryside scene in the Hopetoun Woods area.

Often on a Sunday afternoon the mind turns to bigger questions, we reflect, he hope, we consider...we also peel shed loads of apples and take long coffee breaks in between flicking across the acres of available Sunday news print. Slow news day today it would seem.

Pickles & Beatles

Raw materials patiently await their fate.

The chutney diaries

There was a certain air of cottage industry in the cottage yesterday. The effort began with some strenuous stretching and pole dancing in desperate attempt to pick apples from the apple tree and a few odd plums from the plum tree. So using a combination of a step ladder, a pole and a picking head we harvested about six pounds of apples in the rain and also in buckets. The procedure was reminiscent of something that might have been depicted in a Spike Milligan cartoon, all spiky lines and scaffolding. The apples and plums form the base ingredients for the chutney, other herbs, spices, vinegar and mysterious substances were added after the marathon peeling session was done. Then a handy cauldron was placed on the open fire and we allowed the mixture to stew and simmer. In a parallel exercise glass storage jars were sterilised, castrated, vulcanised and baked in the electric Aga in anticipation of being filled with the brown boiled broth. Once two months have passed we will know if we have succeeded.

The Beatles etc.

The Beatles work, play and general level of exceptional genius is being celebrated mostly in black and white on the BBC. 40 years since this and 42 years since that and time has passed we are told. Everything is significant and everybody involved had a hand in changing popular culture as they built a chain smoking road out of the sixties that funnily enough got us into the seventies. They regularly remind us of these things when wheeled out on chat shows and chatting interminably in the Sunday supplements. John Lennon had a blacked out Rolls Royce which was understandably very difficult to steer from 60 to 70 or even at relatively slow speeds. All of that made getting out of the seventies a bit of a struggle but eventually pop music made it to the eighties: good in places I‘m told, some remarkable births occurred and stray mullets were contrived before surprise surprise along came the nineties. Disappointment was all around and unbridled up to a point. So I’m not sure about this at all and whatever happened next had a smiley face, big films, drug references and air conditioning attached and sadly a number of good people didn’t quite make it.

Back in the sixties things are still the way they were and that’s relief to all of us who remain resistant to change and move outside of time, according to the BBC we are somewhere in India. I believe Ringo owned a special Mini filled with drums but not oil drums, they don’t make them like that anymore. Still we listen to Sgt Pepper, the album and the stereo sound, perhaps not appreciating the music and invariably misunderstanding the lyrics, but I am constantly reminded that nothing is real and I was rather immature at the time and so were you. Some say that Abbey Road is a better record anyway.

The chutney diaries again

The chutney is now in the jar(s). The diary is closed for the time being.

Perfectly poised, posing in their pots, the chutney sets and hibernates till ready.

Motor Museum

Sometimes our house is quite busy, full of friends and family or the same but in the reverse order. It’s nothing like this photograph however but I’ve taken to being rather fond of it (the photo), a feeling that will rapidly pass. I quite like the horizontal figure in the floor level basement beneath the mock-Tudor Chapel.

So we trailed along the trail that is known as the Fife Coastal Path and came upon the fine West Lothian town that is Borrowstone Town Nessnessness or Bo’ness for short. At that point we realised that we had strayed quite away from the silvery Tay and had little alternative other than pay a visit to the motor museum, mostly on account of the incessant rain (see previous blogs) and the need to chat. It was well worth the loss of a fiver to see a fine line of James Bond vehicles, 50’s relics and a shining example of my favourite car of all time, a Delorean. These magic beasts could have been all over our streets and motorways had it not been for the buffoonery of the UK government, the failure of the tax payer to stump up some cash, the Troubles and the uncovering of one or two of JD’s more unfortunate and ill conceived business practices. I’m sure that in some parallel universe the venture succeeded and that gleaming Deloreans are out there now, cruising down leafy boulevards, hogging the fast lane, school running only and petulant children and taking a bashing in ASDA car parks.

Front ended Delorean that may never quite recover from it's car park bashing.