Shortest Day

Baltic

Carefully chosen seasonal lighting effects hang in each window, orifice and portal.

Tis the season to moan about the weather, something that you'd think we'd have learned to put up with by now but no, it still makes the headlines. It was so cold this morning I had to scrape the car three times, first to find it, then to clear it and then to clear it again - as the ice and snow had re-formed in geological type layers inches deep across the frozen metal. Apart from the fact that I was wearing my "all year round, never mind the weather" regular clothing ensemble I felt like some nutty Polar explorer about to head out onto the glacier to search for his lost colleagues. As it happened I was over the Forth Bridge by the time the windscreen had fully cleared, at least that's where I think I was. The Baltic weather continues which makes me wonder what the weather is like in those often cursed Baltic States.

Another tedious but cute cat picture illustrating one way that cats keep warm, mainly by following a 23 hour sleeping regime.

Holocaust Food

A portion of mashed potato as seen from the Robot Base on the Moon.

"It may be humble mashed potatoes but it is also now a member of the newly formed Holocaust Food Group. These are the foods that we will live on in the long nuclear winter caused by the heavy bombing from the east or possibly the west - the aftermath of Obama & Brown. Then our robot lords and masters will subject us to severe dietary restraint and we will have no choice other than to live on petrol station rations and foragings. This means logs, Pringles and jars of petite pois and carrots will form up as our staple human diet - all across the great European Plains. On a good day we'll get a can of Irn-Bru, a Snickers and a well aged, oak ham and cheese sandwich to enjoy around the bonfire. On a bad day we will eat our horses. Hopefully the evil robots will pick none of this behaviour up on their CCTV, from their helicopter view points or with their mind reading rays." Nostradamus 1661, 1961 or thereabouts.

As you can see an afternoon of furious present wrapping and sorting has left me addled and ready for a long hoped for shepherd's pie themed drinking session. Those mashed potatoes were calling me from deep inside the fridge, now they are deep inside the oven hovering over a rich seam of oniony mince. If only Christmas would come upon us all, destroy us, have it's terrible way and then rescue us from this seasonal happy madness - and it's only the 20th.

Catsnake v Chic Murray v reality

A furry snake with (hidden) legs.

A big thanks to the Scotsman for remembering the great late Chic Murray. A much missed surrealist genius who died about 25 earth years ago. Sadly missed.

"I knocked and the woman answered the door in her night dress - a strange place to have a door."

Like many comics of the monochrome generation most of his material hasn't survived or remains a little too un-PC, slow and abstract for today's complicated and messed up media circus. There are of course quite a few other funny people still doing the rounds, some even younger than 25.

I artificially narrowly avoided artificially buying an artificial upside down artificial Christmas artificial tree yesterday...keeping it real with a real (dead) one, correctly orientated and suitably decorated. Phew.

Cellardyke

The top window on the right was the window of my first bedroom, circa 1955 in Cellardyke, Fife. Everything then was of course set in black and white (425 lines) and mono, today we live in a far more colourful but also more confusing world. Many things have changed since those days, I certainly don't recognise the washing in the foreground.

I thought that the bacon that I had in the George Formby was sizzling nicely, then I realised that it was the cats spitting and hissing at one another. I've decided to rename them for the festive season: Silly, Goody, Oldy and Baddy. Strictly speaking Baddy is not our cat, he is a stray who sneaks in through the cat flap in the wee small hours and eats up all the remaining cat food in a feeding frenzy, a bit like Goldilocks except she was a fictional girl and not a cat. Baddy also has the other cats terrified because of his stealth, his trickery and his sophisticated psychological ploys and plots, like eating all their food.

Cellardyke photo courtesy Ali Graham Photo Torpedoes PLC.

A country without a King

Avatar and the Princess

Ready for another stunning visual experience.

I’m quite looking forward to seeing Avatar in 3D, or 4D or E-motion or Supermarionation or whatever. As someone who still thinks stereo is pretty cool, in particular simple pot-pan ping pong panning, then anything beyond that is far out science fiction. The only problem I have is that the blue people all look a bit like that guy who played George of the Jungle and the rip-off Indiana Jones in Egypt. Something in the lizard eyes and pin point pupils that strikes a distinct chord. If it all turns out to be some Vietnam or Afghanistan guilt trip allegory then I’ve already decided not to make the connection, that’s half the trouble with Hollywood, intellectual credibility has to be built in like the keel on a ship so the project stays upright. Quite unnecessary.

When its minus 3, foggy and gloomy it’s hard to mount a convincing argument for global warming far less start a good riot in Copenhagen to try to make your point. The people who feel guilty about picking up a plastic bag in a supermarket will casually board a jet to Birmingham or Bali without a single thought, I should know I’m one of them. Sobering then to think that one decent volcanic blast pumps more CO2 and resultant earth excrement into the atmosphere than any Ford Zetec or BMW V8 could do running up the fast lane of the M6 at 95 for a year. Why don’t we just dump the rusting fridge mountain into some hyper-active crater somewhere and so neutralise and short circuit the whole process.

And so another Princess Diana moment comes along. That golden time when you realise you are out of step with popular opinion and interest, you are out there, on a limb, aware but uncaring as the awful mess of mediocrity that is the current X-Factor washes over the nation like a cocaine and morphine syrup.

Sensible Shoes

It's hard to stay on the side of sensible when nonsense reigns supreme in most walks of life. I'm currently watching the X-Factor (in the TV background) and reading today's blogs on the Daily Telegraph. Neither position can be correct, the pushy despair and likely truth of the Telegraph's wry opinions and the grinning and smug optimism in X-Factor's all possible but not likely world of recycled pap. The British public's voice must be heard, we just can't quite understand what they are saying and we can't really credit them with thinking because that's slowly being educated out of them - but they will posses a number of useful skills suitable for a long career in the service sector.

2009 has been the year when the collapse of good sense has left us all sitting on tinsel couches angry and disaffected by the puzzling images on our old-style TVs, feeling guilty about sipping one too many unit of wine and refusing to phone the latest telly-vote number. The good news is that you can still lounge back at the end of the working week and laugh at the pompous madness that passes for government and authority and plan to vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party in the new year. Hopefully there will be such a candidate running in West Lothian, the only place in the UK where 2 miles of dual carriageway by-pass costs £200m compared to £12m anywhere else it seems. I'm referring to the HGV beleaguered village of Newton, 8 miles away from the Scottish Parliament but seeing only six buses a day and without a footpath or cycle path to connect it to the apparent but remote civilisation of BP M&S and Burger King, shame on you Alex.

Earlier I watched Tony Blair grin and (virtually) defend everything he ever did in one soundbite, believing his conscience to be salved by revisiting the tattered mess he allowed poor Gordon Brown to pick up and then make worse. No memory, no responsibility, everybody must be right all the time because we can't quite bring ourselves to push the red "no" button. Perhaps Simon Cowell should run the country after all and I'll vote for the vacuous but talented Stacy Solomon and her sensible shoes.

Nantucket Sleighride

In the great gloom, frost and the fog I have discovered that you can listen to the track NS continuously (not the album pictured) all the way from Fife, through Kinross and Angus all the way to Aberdeenshire in a motor vehicle. I achieved this amazing feat whilst eating four Scotch Eggs, one at a time of course and not using a mobile phone but my hands were not free. Should the Labour Party who I believe are having a good go at governing our nation these days find out about it they will naturally make it illegal. The blunt instrument and tired rhetoric school of government applies in all departments. The control freaks have taken over the asylum.

Eventually I made it home and then proceeded to set fire to some sticks and fossil fuel but still the fog prevails, roll on you longest day you.

The shadow of a Christmas tree...

...has not appeared in our house so far.

I remain confused

I'd be a mess without my...

...Chinese Wish Balloon. Yes they fly and of course your wishes do come true eventually. All low tech and pretty simple and primitive but hugely satisfying. Simply light the blue touch-paper, struggle for a few moments and then let it go, and it does fly and you get a rush, particularly so when it floats into a commercial flight path, ("but we are five miles away!"). Somewhere in the distance I swear I could hear Simon Dupree and the Big Sound.

Thankfully no cats, passing rodents, teenagers or concerned adults were injured or overly upset during this historic event. I want to do it again.

Reading is bad for you

It's official, even Scottish rodents don't do reading very well these days.

It's not been a good day for Scottish education, 20% of school leavers have serious literacy problems it seems. Once again Scotland is set in the lower performing scholastic leagues, our once proud systems breaking down like a nine year old Nissan. The modernising views, the well meant but ill conceived initiatives and the lack of governmental backbone has denied a generation basic levels of schooling - we've failed. Thank you Mr Salmond and all your incompetent colleagues and also those that governed before. As if to prove a point I returned home to find a poor mouse dead on the bookshelf, obviously overcome after an afternoon of studying Japanese, poor timorous beastie, (yes and it was on the third shelf).

Homecoming and the RBS

...is not where i'll be stuffing my great wads of cash.

At the most basic level we all want to be proud of our country and feel good about our homeland and the mark we make on the world. How does Scotland look, what are we all about? Sadly the institutions and the events we'd want to succeed and be identified with let us down again and again. The Homecoming wasn't a bad idea but it was hijacked to score political points, as a result it was misunderstood and shunned by most "normal" Scots - we failed to engage. Then to underline the negatives the main event ends up in debt and recriminations but no one is to blame and no one rises up to take responsibility and square the losses. The problem is that the politicians can't see the disconnect, their world, their homecoming and sadly their values and aspirations don't match with ours.

RBS directors want the right to pay bonuses or the toys will be thrown out. Of course they are right to want to be able to compete with the other banks who pay big bucks for high risk but how big and credible are they now? I cringe at every soft focus highland home commercial they run on TV and their blatant blanket sponsorship of international sport with their ubiquitous logo sitting sun kissed miles away from the driech centre of Gogar. It's time the plug was pulled and the teeth of reality allowed to bite. Honour the contracts if you must but just for once take a good look and see how others see you and reconcile yourself with public opinion. Banks actually need punters and positive spin more than they seem to realise. Meanwhile Gordon and Alistair will be doing everything they can...except putting the boot in.

A typical West Lothian street scene.

Banana

Whilst rummaging in my backpack at the airport yesterday I found a banana in one of the pockets. It had been there a while but it's not there anymore. Messy and mushy and a little smelly, other than that an uneventful flight and onwards journey.

We drivers cannot be trusted, we are evil and uncaring and do not obey signage and speed limits. So roadways and car parks are populated by friendly bumps and obstacles, to slow us down from our mad pace and keep us in our place. A big thank you also to those Islamic extremists who have forced the splendid redesign of our airport approaches, nicely concreted and inhuman in the extreme. You have won, your designs have brought us to our knees and so we admire your god and your godlessness but that is about it. In the grey winter the concrete barriers compliment the fine, ignorant and stupid anger you choose to force upon us.

Two nice poached eggs to start the day. Simple things.

Burgers

Ah, the nicely dated sounds of those good old West Coast boys, Jack and Jorma. Gone (on vinyl) but not quite forgotten for the middle aged teenage dreamer.

So far there have been none of the customary weekend burgers this weekend, mainly due to random tree purchasing exercises and erratic football match cancellations. Yesterday it was an extended fish and chips party at a huge family gathering in the very wet city of Aberdeen. By the time we'd made it to the pub the locals were already in fine voice celebrating a rare fitba' home win over the ugly blue, ineffectual and broke Huns. Hee Haw.

Earlier we did some research in finding the "one great noise that everyone has hidden in them". A new and exciting quest and not, as you might think a karaoke or Mariah Carey based PlayStation activity. It has a much rougher edge to it than that. Anyway it turns out that the "one great noise" does tend to be a deep, sustained snort generated only by creating some unnatural internal pressures in the nose and cheek cavities. How odd, what turns ands twists and dead ends on the evolutionary path led us to develop this way?

Burj Dubai intrigues me as it rises far above the troubled palm island crooked fairyland that is Dubai. The views and the statistics are out of this world impressive, everything else to do with it is much more flaky, tacky and worrying for the investors.

Songs they don't play on the radio

A busy week socially, mainly hitting the high spots and mingling with some fellow debutantes in D.C. Ali chose to wear a nice red cocktail dress, some eyeliner along with a blond wig, I stuck on a cute little toupee, a sickly smile and a false nose. Oh what a laugh, dining out with the strange freedom that goes with assumed names and identities along with the thrill of gatecrashing. Then it was back to reality and a 7/11 in Crystal City for a slice of warm four cheese pizza and some Welch's Grape Juice.

Meanwhile Christmas looms like a grey cloud of confusion on the rainy horizon. Susan Boyle will compete with some X-Factor shadow for the No1 spot and Christmas specials and four year old films will block the schedules. I'm already planning my holiday, sitting in a corner drinking Pepsi Raw, eating Milky Ways and watching Gary, Tank Commander on i.player. Simple things etc.

A message from Cellophane Land

It came down the chimney, silent, unexpected and covered with soot, a message sent to us here in the Substantial World from those in the Cellophane World. A flimsy cellophane explorer and ambassador sent out in the wild weather on an impossible mission it seems. What did the message say? We don't know and never will as it burnt up on first contact with the Substantial World atmosphere. Jings and Crivens! The loss is almost unbearable.

Smucker's Goober (Grape)

Note the prefect colours and textures mingling in the highest form of open sandwich art.

Many Scottish people are naturally suspicious of normal and benign American products, often viewing then as either some cultural threat or a subversive attempt to Americanise the stalwart if little retarded Scottish mindset. I have no truck with this piffle having decided many years ago to like what I like and dislike what I dislike regardless of petty boundary issues. Seems simple enough to me.

So (this is of course a boring bit of idealistically bankrupt food blogging) today I cracked open a jar of Mr Rufus T Fireflies' finest Smucker's Grape Goober. The jar was purchased in some PB&J emporium in the US a few months ago and smuggled across the border under cover of darkness in a well constructed carpet bag with a secret pocket.

Spread generously on some of Ms Graham's stylish almost warm home made bread accompanied by a thin layer of yellow spreading buttery stuff it made the perfect lunch for a hungry young buck such as I was, or may have been at the time (M'Lud). This experience reminded me of some of the great sandwiches of the century (not sure which one) and creates an excuse for another dumb and self indulgent list. For the purposes of clarity and the relief of the young pilgrims' reading I'll leave out the Smucker's PB&J:

1) (Cheap) Strawberry Jam and Digestive biscuit on Scottish plain bread. A classic, needs to be well lubricated with butta'.

2) Pret a Manger's "Crayfish and Rocket" - a regular diversion for me when travelling through Stanstead Airport and proof that I'm not mean and that I don't eat pish, working class food all the time (sic).

3) Fried egg and brown sauce (egg not too runny either) on white pan loaf. Place an open Daily Record, the Queen's Speech 2009 or a copy of the Koran in your lap in case of yolk spillage. Fat chips can be substituted should a suitable egg not be available.

4) Lightly toasted brown bread with a thin scrapping of spread and Marmite. The hippie's delight as a late breakfast piece, the ensemble completed with a screw-tap of Irn-Bru to help reduce the tremors, boost energy levels and ease possible flashbacks and paranoia attacks.

5) Shell pie on a roll. Never an easy feat to accomplish as there are significant logistical problems to resolve primarily involving being near to a reputable baker's shop and then sourcing the two main ingredients at an appropriate level of quality. Once this has been done they need to be carefully mated in a similar way to a live warhead and a missile. One slip at this tricky stage and a snacking disaster or possible pie based explosion can occur. Not to be attempted whilst driving or as a passenger in a white van.

End of lesson - go forth and snack.

2012 and beyond

As I expect to retire around 2015 I'll still be pension dodging in 2012, sadly now a likely date for that old chestnut, the end of the world. Luckily we've conceived a clever plan to meet up on Arthur's Seat along with our trusty waterproof torches, that should avoid any rapture or raptor or respite complications. Just remember that no one knows the date or the hour and that the lightning will flash from the east to the west so it could all get a bit messy but we'll be the ones signaling across the Forth to our friends and family in Fife come the big wave.