Leftovers

Nice to see the corporate presence of Mastercard dominate the BRIT awards so serenely as if to remind us all of evenings spent drunkenly ordering pap on itunes and play.com. The event is mostly an unpleasant endurance test for the disconnected and middle-aged viewer apart from the shared experience of marveling at Lady Ga Ga's drag show and Robbie's greatest hits medley. That's him ready for his pension and a few weeks worth of work in Las Vegas followed by a summer season at Butlins whilst being poked by the tabloids. We stretched the credibility of the whole evening by violently hoovering and dusting quite religiously before sitting down to a late great supper formed from leftover Shepherd's pie and miscellaneous vegetables gathered from the bottom of the fridge as Robbie avoided the inevitable Take That reunion. Typical Tuesday.

We mean something

Cat's bored with a pedestrian and dull diet of processed and dodgy cat food products? Neither are ours however I chose to funk up catty tea-time with a nice piece of post modern, novella cuisine kitty catering, the recipe is:

Fresh Tyne salmon boned and chipped, rabbit jelly baby, scrapings of grass, Walls pork sausage and a garnish smokescreen. Bind the ingredients in a deep microwave arrangement and allow to hover. Then upturn into canned receptacle. Blanche and pirouette (carefully), hands behind the back. Slowly stun for the rest of the afternoon and then leisurely plop. Garnish with an exhausted prawn arranged into the foetal position. Cats love it. (So they tell me.)

Sunday morning found us once again lost in Glenrothes, searching for the centre and reading aloud confusing place names, the sat nav conveniently in another car. As a child, when I heard of the "new town" in central Fife I imagined some kind of space-city full of glassy buildings, paved walkways and bright, shining things - the like of which were unknown to me. Sure enough that's how it has turned out and I actually have a soft spot for the place despite my lack of Glenrothes based navigation skills.

It is strange also how some parts have become oddly overgrown and unkempt, as if the town was slowly sinking back into the Fife jungle as part of a failed great green experiment now having passed the peaks of interest and investment. The future is here but it's not the future we were led to believe in. In those days (1969) we imagined one that would unroll out smoothly before before our dazzled and expectant eyes producing a promised land of urban perfection and industry. That's not quite what we got. Meanwhile we beat the locals 6 - 2 in a fairly uneventful football match on a cold, muddy and unforgiving pitch.

The best and most profound bit of graffiti ever.

Love is a serious business

Tesco daily photo Valentine's display #2

...and a lucrative one but who can live without it?

South Queensferry daily photo

Just noticing how local businesses are picking up and really doing quite well again these days, there are many small firms that remain recession proof in West and Mid Lothian. The service sector grows stronger by the hour. So pull up your socks and be of good cheer, it's not all doom and gloom out there or wherever you are. Don't believe the lies that the SNP and BNP peddle or piddle.

Real onions that come ready chopped in packets and all for 50p, just pop them in the pan and away you go. How do they do it? I'm learning to love capitalism and the spirit of free enterprise.

Avalon

Sublime

I heard the title track of this album on the radio tonight, first time in years. This record was one I played to death back in the 80s. Funny and poignant listening to it again, powerful, scary and strangely timeless, probably the best thing Roxy ever did despite their powerhouse 70s material. I'm no purist, I just like what I like.

Ridiculous

Bishop Desmond Tutu on TV, what a complete grinning and laughing lunatic he is.

Scary

Everything Nicola Sturgeon says or does. Poor misguided woman, Wee Eck's right hand lady and ultimate fall-gal and political buffoon . "Save us from these crazy people Oh Great and Noble Pumpkin."

Hair today?

Good picture of potential, thoughtful world leader type. Take note.

So how has today been for you? Good hair day or bad hair day? For me it's been mostly a soup, hot cross bun and various bits of erratic nibbling day - my hair however remains pretty neutral and generally goes unnoticed in most respects. I am content with this.

Your mum eats straw

DAFC line up against a makeshift and under performing Celtic side in the cup, the eventual outcome was inevitable however.

Fitba

There's nothing quite like a good blood and snotters football match to keep you connected with real life and real people. Not that I feel particularly disconnected at the moment but a Sabbath Day session on the H&S sanitised concrete terraces allows you to catch up with Central Scotland's best banter and most oblique opinions. So as I watched what turned out to be an entertaining game I re-learned the numerous sharp and ingenious terms used in current racial, religious, gender and political verbal abuse. The killer guilt punch in this experience being that mischievous and ruinous feeling of inner conflict enjoyed when quietly laughing along at the various chants and one-liners that floated across my head and into my brain. Our senior politicians, social commentators and moralists should sneak into our football stadiums now and again and mix with the underclass (the one that most of us belong to) in this boiling pot of magnificent verbal colour and general wanton incorrectness - just for the fun and hell of it.

Diet

Does this count as five pieces of fruit a day? 3 Bounty bars, 1 red berry muffin and a half glass of pineapple and banana smoothie - in my re-engineered, brave and surreal new world it certainly would.

Bountyfudge

I gave the birds a nice early breakfast: Seeds, bread, bacon rind and nuts bound together with lard and various frying pan bits of run off. After a complex scientific process it's bound together in a coconut shell and strung out on the bird feeding pole. Meanwhile we humans breakfasted on bacon bagels and real Bounty bars, leftovers from a failed experiment in amateur social services and educational advancement - it would have been mostly based in Fife but died from lack of interest. Ho hum.

No junior football tomorrow, instead we've an appointment with a Stephen's Bridie and the legions of DAFC faithful at East End Park round about 12:15. I hope they've got the under soil heating switched on for a change.

Toy Town Express

72 years of continuous improvement and what do you build? Cars with sticky accelerators, eight million of them or thereabouts. It confirms everything I've ever thought about ongoing business improvement, quality circles and the power of over designing. I'm staying with Fairytale Management Theory.

Shame really, they do make really nice little cars. I had a brown one once. It's nickname was Toy Town Express and the accelerator never did jam, however the cylinder head gasket didn't quite make it.

Becoming invisible

It's an eerie feeling, I used to get it now and again but I've not had it for a while as far as I can recall. Of course it's not quite the same as actually being invisible and then going out and about. I do that from time to time, mostly just driving around, kind of freaks people out a little.

Hyphen products

Before the snow came, the cat carried out a thorough roof inspection on behalf of the estate.

As I laze upon a cat scratched leather couch and sip my Irn-Bru and munch my light weight Kit-Kat, my mind naturally wanders onto, across and into other food and drink products with hyphens in the names. Then it goes a blank. After a few moments of this I fall into a deep sleep and dream I'm catching hamsters which are then sticking to my palms. Not so keen on that idea. Clearly it's the middle of the week and the last three days at work have taken their toll. Having said that my happiest memory remains the one centering on those olives that Ali purchased in Sainsburys, they were rather good, quite unexpectedly. Simple olivey things a thousand miles away from the news and the lies and babble of the political classes..

Angeldarkangelbuffy

...and the bloke from Bones. It was so cold today we had no choice but to eat the last of the last fish pies, an Abercorn salad and copious amounts of the Vinest Vin rouge. Meanwhile a brightly coloured box in another part of the room was making a strange noise. It was either the coal fire or the television, from time to time we run down the lazy hours staring into one or the other. Oh, here comes an episode of 24 and a course of steamed pudding. All I need now is an ambient sausage roll and a hard rock rock cake.

Ambient sausage rolls

Improvised bird feeders

I am not worried about wasting time though nobody has ever accused me of doing it. It is just a deep feeling I get every so often and then deny. Then I heard, in an inspirational message about a labeling error that had resulted in the Coop selling ambient sausage rolls to innocent members of the public and miscellaneous passers by. Food fit for the gods by any standards.

I think it was the young but very wise Gary (Tank Commander- my brackets and those of no one else), who described a secret sausage roll recipe thus: a sausage wrapped up in pastry and baked. Bake that and eat that irritating, self important, TV school dinner cooks and twats Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Gary Rhodes etc. etc.

Cat on a cold slate roof

Missie the cat scales the heights looking for opportunities. I chose to remain on the ground.

An offensive plant cut back to basics.

Today we removed two offensive house plants that were causing offence and artistic grief by blocking the staircase and carrying strange and un-named viruses. Now they are outside and will be dealt with quite harshly by the wind and frosty weather. That'll teach them a lesson.

Some time in New York City

J D Salinger: I read “Catcher in the Rye” once, sometime in the eighties and when I was a long way from suffering any kind of teenage angst. I think in fact it was mid-thirties angst and self worth problems I had at the time and I'd not been to NYC. I read about half of it in one sitting, alone on a bench on the seafront (?) at Kirkcaldy as I recall. I’m not sure why it missed reading it a secondary school in the late sixties, it never figured on the approved list of my young Socialist English teachers along with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell and it didn’t seem to strike the same chords as Kerouac or Tolkien. Salinger and Kerouac both managed the same trick, one big blockbuster book that outlived them and outran them, everything else becoming second best and they were left waiting for the next big wave, a wave that never came. Last year I did think about rereading Catcher again, possibly in some bid to either catch up with myself or relive in these silver years a stolen teenage moment I managed to deny and miss. Maybe.

Maggie: I was greatly encouraged to hear the news that at one time Margaret Thatcher ate 28 eggs a week. This is of course because I like eggs not MT. These were key items in her victory diet of 1979. I recall at that time I was on a similar but possibly less effective or successful diet: This was the chip piece and brown sauce diet. It consisted of real i. e. Mazola deep fried chips hand chipped from actual potatoes, plain bread (well buttered) and HP sauce. This dietary supplement was generally consumed 7 times a week, every day usually about 2100 hrs. I lived to tell the tale but failed in my low key bid to lead the Conservative Party. True.

Tony Blair: I’ve never been a fan of his and I disagreed with the war in Iraq and various other Nulabour pieces of work and control freakery. What I dislike however is the desperate raking over of ashes we see in the current spate of costly inquiries that are peering into things in general. In the Iraq Inquiry anyone who expected any other outcome that the one we are seeing played out is seriously deluded and bound to be disappointed, it‘s always the way. The injured families’ hurt, the political damage done and the frustration expressed in howls for signs of regret and heartfelt apologies will never be satisfied or be provided with adequate closure. Protesters can protest, that’s easy, all you need is a voice, some spare time and a bus ticket to London or an Internet connection. Families must mourn their loss and no amount of anger, pained frustration or half hearted acknowledgement brings back a lost loved one. Whatever you may think presidents and prime ministers are there to make decisions and then take action. They will be of course motivated and influenced by all sorts things and will play long and short games in the process - but awkward, unpalatable and ultimately unpopular decisions go with the job - and we put them there to act on out behalf and we have to put up with their mistakes, up to a point. So we learn a lesson and elect some other party, hope for a better set of foreign policies and settle for defending our own small island and not some barren and dusty far corner of the world. Unlikely.

All day pyjamas: Who does this in public? It doesn’t happen much around here as far as I’ve seen though I’m maybe failing to visit Tesco, the school gates or various petrol station forecourts at the proper time to witness this modern phenomenon. Presumably it’s an inner-city problem based around the last minute needs of younger and style challenged parents (mostly young mums?) with a bias for leisurewear all so desperate for their 28 eggs and an emergency copy of the Catcher in the Rye - or just a packet of fags and a can of Pepsi? Actually I think I once went to France without a jumper and with my pyjamas on under my jeans; it may have been just a bad dream.

Spells and Alliteration

There's a lady who's sure she's got the keys to Headley Grange somewhere at the bottom of her handbag.

It might get loud has now been viewed, paused and digested. The best bits were/are the languid guitar boogie outtakes. First time I've watched a DVD in which the extras are more interesting than the main feature albeit the main feature is good in a fiddly, historical and obviously documentary way. Things of note: That old gent in the black suit, James Page has a solo run through of Kashmir on that black and white Danelectro using DADBAD tuning that will have those guitar values going through the roof. Edge's Gibson Explorer looks fantastic but sounds crap despite being run through what looks like the Son of Big Blue on steroids. Jack White is interesting and enigmatic, wearing lipstick, smoking a fat cigar and driving an old Ford Thunderbird with a small version of himself imprisoned in the boot. He can also sing a decent vocal on an oddly chosen version of "The Weight". It's not a song I'd have expected these three to cover, perhaps there is some geometric explanation based on graphs of their respective careers and the tumbling of rare ivory dice that brought them to that point.

Want a quick and easy recipe for dahl and so use up your surplus lentils but afraid to ask? Here you go.

Homemade spells that use a degree of alliteration are currently being used as trial lyrics in the great lyrics trial. Guilty or not or not even proven, a verdict will be found, as we are in Scotland it may well be not proven.

Dream v Curse

A big empty room in a big empty house, walls white and floors clean and shiny. In the distance far beyond the trees there is traffic and the noise of a small town but it's easy to shut it out, easy to concentrate, easy to drift away. Somewhere else.

And there is time, time to practice, time to remember, to try things out and start over. Round here the time crawls, knows its place in the great order of creation and a hovering spirit of serendipity is in the air, brooding, a little beyond reach and questions. There is traction.

The other isn't heaven because heaven is about people, creatures creating gods and guilt and not the inner, hidden things; they pay no heed to them. Heaven is an outer realm built by persistence and determination, where necessary performances are celebrated as they occur and pass on- but this is not for me. My dream is out there beyond heaven, rising in the long curve that separates the eternal, the practical, the ideal and the imaginary. A dream and a curse forever.

Looks disgusting

Is it the finely chopped parsnip, the diced carrot, the shredded French onions, the secret recipe stock, the seasoning, the herbs or the actual cooking process? No idea.

Is it the Bird's Eye waffles, the crispy fish fingers, the three day old mixed bean salad or the bread with a thin scraping of some yellow goo from an anonymous tub or is it the HP brown sauce spattered across the plate in a style reminiscent of Jackson Pollock? No earthly idea.

Is it the microwave apple and raspberry crumble, the week old Ambrosia custard rescued from a dodgy carton or the addition of a good slurp of Tesco evaporated milk? Not a Scoobie.

Is it a three course meal fit for a hungry family? Possibly. Welcome to Scotland, existential and essential tea-time catering in January.

To another mouse

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle at me,
thy poor earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

Robert Burns' day and subsequent night, 25th January 2010. I'm not a big fan of his work but I found this expired mouse on the shower mat in the bathroom and a little while later heard the words of his poem "Tae a moose" on the car radio.

Steampunk Holmes

The slow and well scripted exchange of many a meaningful glance:
"Ella Fitzgerald my dear Watson." "Harry Belafonte my dear Holmes."

The end of a busy and fairly satisfying weekend, most of which is now a blur and some of which is actually quite clear, mainly because it's still happening. Sherlock Holmes v Hollywood is a good diversion; tongue tied in cheek, campy and action packed in that strange blurry way that modern action is currently being vacuum packed. Not a great advertisement for revisiting Victorian lifestyles or values, the joy of Steampunk or the inevitable plot device of multi layered secret societies trying to take over various parts of the world. Sir Arthur may well be spinning in his grave, that is of course assuming that the effect of all that legal opium has finally worn away. I'd give it 4 out of 5.

Twitchers please note something you already know: The George Formby breakfast run off is the perfect medium for binding birdie snacks together in order to make cheap and improvised winter treats for our chilled out feathered buddies. Square sausage works best and you need to provide a neutered coconut on string. Hang outside and stand well back whilst restraining wide-eyed cat(s).