How to iron a kilt

Stage 1 - on the table (almost).

The first in what may well be a small series of helpful household and lifestyle hints for the man or woman about town or as in our case country. The Kilt ironing exercise:

Materials.

A kilt - preferably a decent tartan one that you have good reason to need to wear.
Iron - not too clean.
Ironing table - with a soft cover.
Dish cloth (non greasy).
Copious amounts of clean water and a first-aid kit.

Kilts are notoriously difficult to iron with the feared Black Watch design being the worst of the genre. It takes courage, patience and at least the consumption two BLT bagels to even consider approaching the un-ironed kilt in it's naturally wild state. So by using a handy chair as a support (lion tamer style) I managed to get the kilt half way onto the rickety table, thereafter holding it in a Half-Nelson with a dish cloth and hot iron (in the right hand). A Full-Nelson would also work if ironing a larger size of kilt. The first hot thrusts (?) took much of the sting out of the beast and I knew a corner had been turned in the project. I also knew this because I was at this point standing in the dining room and not in the lobby. As the struggle wore on I was sweating profusely and one eye was twitching in a funny way but had the marker on the wrinkled kilt and was ironing the flat bits and those wretched pleats with gusto, like a man on fire in fact. Twenty minutes later it was all over, the finished product is shown below. I followed up this traumatic exercise with a well deserved flagon of Lucozade and a full rub down with a rusty wire brush. The next challenge will be a simple one - how to remove a festive rats nest from a damp garden shed.

Stage 6 (you have to imagine stages 2 to 5) - all over bar the shouting.

Primitive Machines

If I do what I have to do, no matter how difficult will I somehow be a better person? Or am I just going through the mechanics? There are more questions than there are letter combinations in the English language...and there are no clear answers.

Late lunch was a vintage curry from the icy depths of the freezer, possibly not from this decade, possibly not from this century, possibly poisoned or at least deeply harmful but delightfully tasty. This is the way we live.

Joke

I'm talking to this sad looking guy in a pub and he says; "My wife left me, she took my Bob Marley collection and the satellite dish, no woman, no sky."

Rediscoverin'

Various things of varying degrees of quality:

What's new in country music.
The magical healing properties of Rocket WD40.
Toast, fried eggs and sausage.
Haulin' logs.
The terrific worlds of those underground people you see everyday.
Writing imaginary songs.
Heater on full blast.
Politics and the rise of the Occult Nazi Parties.
Carrying a book.
Non-scientific research.
The corruption of the media by degrees, over time and in your face.
Use of the word "splendid".

Pirate radio.
Staring into the tumble drier.
Holiday explorations and machine coffee.

Good luck

These happy cats look down upon our kitchen space and administer the good luck necessary to lubricate all our cooking and rudimentary cleaning arrangements. Our real cats look up and admire these tin and china gods, lofty and distant rulers of the pussy and scullery worlds. Shiny icons, unknowable and staring, described in hollow books and spoken of in hushed and primitive tones, as good as any other popular god these days. Also able to stop the fish pie from burning and the pasta from boiling over with a single withering stare.

"The kids think that this is all vanity, but I really need the surgery...doc". Grey's Anatomy 22.25 17/02/10.

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.