Willow

Willow: Born today at 3am, congratulations to Erin and Guy...

Art v Alcohol

Could be a White Russian, a Pimms, a Brandy or a nice relaxing G&T.

Some kind of grape based liquid, petrified, certified, quaffed and quaffed again and then subjected to microscopic double exponential smoothing, unless I'm mistaken.

Today it was 28 degrees in some places, I visited those many of those god forsaken places wearing a tie and a tight collar (because I have a neck that refuses to stop growing outwards) but I am not complaining (I am complaining about having an inflatable neck however). I clearly need to get some clarity on the true nature of my numerous complaints and focus on them a little more. Meanwhile the cats are lazy, confused and wandering: respectively. It's not even summer yet as far as my body clock is concerned, that's still weeks away. I relieve the pain of it all by burning pasta, staring at "image of the day" images wishing somebody would settle on one simple image and looking forward to football matches I probably wont watch because of my chronic attention span problem, the one I never speak about.

Whilst we bake slowly and simmer here, some 109 miles away (as the crow might fly if it could be bothered) a fifth grandchild is about to be born. Tonight's football may be the perfect distraction; most likely not. My mind is quite naturally - wandering.

St Paul's Cathedral

If I was a human sized flea I could jump over St Paul's Cathedral. Alas (or thankfully) I am not.

Today I went to Southampton and now I'm back home, travel of this type however does not really broaden the mind, as I experience more of provincial airports and so called security measures I remain a complex, ranting, irritable bigot. In my head anyway.

Special thanks today go to Dr Pepper, Hertz, Ford, king prawns, comfy chairs, the Spanish football team (not really), nan bread, the number 665 and the letter Q.

Beep

Never was a fan of the Wild Bean Cafe and their petrol is always 2p a litre more expensive than anywhere else. Then there's that surly old woman behind the till...

They do have M&S stuff but it's a box shifting franchise, the car wash is OK and the shop is nice and clean. The only the other thing is that faraway oil spill...Beep Beep.

World class spuds

Even more vegetables than you'd find every other weekend at Ibrox (see the bit below).

World Cup fatigue has already set in.

Sports fans of South Africa and anywhere else: Why don’t you just shove your vuvuzelas up your arses and see what kind of other infuriating noise that act might produce?

I’m spending too much time at work these days. There are other things I should be concentrating on and the work/life balance needs to be more in balance. That of course has never really happened and probably never will, at least not until I get my bus pass, an event that I’m almost looking forward to. On reflection I doubt that the free bus pas will survive the current range of spending cuts and why should it? I’ll carry on working and driving. Speaking of driving my current affordable fantasy vehicle is a 1994 or thereabouts Lexus Soarer 4.0 in silver. Something of an unfortunate piece of naming (sounds like a malignant skin disease) and certainly an extravagant bit of engineering but it looks like something straight out of Thunderbirds.

Meanwhile in the world of music I’m discovering the pure and innocent pleasures of listening to the mature, developed yet strangely naive sounds of Teenage Fanclub. Relaxing and for a Scottish band oddly joyful and not bleak at all

So back to the World Cup, building nicely, TV coverage patchy with ITV being more irritating (despite Adrian Chiles almost unpalatable honesty) than the BBC. With ITV it’s really the commercial breaks with the same sponsors fighting for your attention and money that exhaust me, you don’t notice it quite so much with Sky or even the Champions League. It’s the sustained relentless push over long periods that erodes any sense of appreciation and ultimately dilutes the experience. None of that matters because the channels aren’t in conflict (yet) so if you want to watch you’ve no choice or you walk away. As far as the office sweep predictor and the family fantasy league are concerned I’m nowhere.

Perception Filter

Great when it works, not so good when it fails. Then of course there's the self-awareness filter, the existential filter, the just out of my field of vision filter, the invasion of personal space filter and the I never did say that filter. Whatever gets you through your life.

I am the potato king, I am king of the spuds, I am the regal, royal ruler of the tattie patch. The weeds and duds and daisies have been removed and huge vegetable crop has been exposed for all to see, looking good so far.

An open to all question: Has anybody ever seen a cat catch a fish? Cartoon cats do not count either.

Cup of World

A few minutes into the World Cup I’m already dreading the next four weeks, its not the football, the media or the relentless advertising, it’s the vuvuzelas. This pointless plastic drone acts as an irritating background for matches it seems and that may be a mildly amusing diversion or somehow entertaining if you are in the stadium. Watching at home it’s akin to having either a wasps nest in your TV or a dead cow lying underneath your Hifi unit. Curb your enthusiasm please. Hopefully the host nation will be quickly put out of their misery by teams with less noisy fans and the spectacle may become less sonic and more enjoyable. On the other hand it might be interesting if the plastic horns met up with the Samba and Oompah squads or the occasional itinerant drummers that attend these affairs - they may all cancel one another out in an orgy of unmusical noise, then the singing could break out perhaps.

France v Uruguay = boredom and nil points in the office sweep.

Holes

There's a big hole in the sea, somewhere.

Due to a day spent working, traveling and attending parents' night the power of the sandwich has had to prevail. Always a challenge to keeping metabolic rates steady, hopefully high, the great bread barrier has to be overcome but was not. So today I failed badly. It started with two poached eggs and some toast in a hotel by the M40, then a WH Smith chicken salad mix and finally an ASDA egg salad (from the out of date pile), very cold. Not a good 12 hours for the digestion, waistline or self respect. I need a sliced of chilled pineapple and a Greek yogurt.

Non-directors cut

After over coming some struggles with time, software and the usual age related span of attention problems I suffer from, our Marryoke video has finally been put together, at least this version has anyway. Another 56 minutes of unedited and unused material remains and will at some point be cobbled together to form a directors cut type special edition.

Derren Brown don't let us down

He's an enigma alright.

Enjoyed a mind boggling evening in the company of Derren Brown. I figured about three tricks out of about twenty. The final enigma trick took a while to get going but ended up in a total blitzkrieg of visual punchlines and slow burning pay-offs. Highly entertaining and bewildering but try as I might I can't seem to get myself hypnotised however.

Should be doing something else, not blogging.

Hammer of the gods.

For some inexplicable reason I stayed up to watch the Beeb’s “Greatest Rock Band” finale show last night, I never did see the other five episodes (phew!). Like most great rock stars hairstyles it had now shorn itself down to various three horse races to find the best (favourite) bands and players over the last forty odd years. That in itself is a strange fact as is hearing a wide age range of young and woefully inarticulate celebrity fans arguing about the merits of rockers their parents would know much better. And then there were the celebrity arguments, most of which were along the lines of “I really like him (no hers here) so you should vote for him”. Each time the name was mentioned a block of stock footage was shown just to add to the now indistinct and pallid world of hazily recalled greatness these guys live in. Page nursing the double neck, Slash with a top hat and fag, Hendrix on the Lulu Show, Freddy Mercury in drag and so on.

Of course this kind of for fun competition never works and really only displays the gulf between genres, the variety of style and the disparity of contribution between the exponents, particularly when you get into the “who invented the riff” or who first used the mike stand as a “phallic prop” arguments, as if they were discovering X-Rays or landing on the moon. Even the terminology is completely misunderstood, Slash’s (orgasmic (?) as it was described) intro to Sweet Child of Mine keeps being referred to as a riff, eh? whilst Flea’s bass playing is “orchestral” and nobody really understands what drummers do because its all just an “engine room”, a bit like going below on the Titanic and having to wear ear defenders then?

Queen of course featured strongly, they however inhabit a unique place in the land of the cartoon undead owing more to pantomime and camp cabaret than actual grimy, grungy rock. or the mean blues that it sprang from. A few great singles, six shite albums and an overblown stage show, really they were the UK’s Kiss but with a bit less make up and they have aged and died out rather badly.

So we had the usual suspects but no keyboards section, a glaring omission which may have been explained or simply didn’t work within the “power trio or front man” structure that the show seemed to be stuck with - the truth is that apart from the odd Hammond heavy chord, Rhodes fill or a few synth pieces I could live without rock keyboards quite nicely as could the rest of the world. They should’ve been in there however if only to maintain some proper balance.

So however irritating it may be to reduce thousands of albums and performances down to a ridiculous short list a winner eventually arrived, thanks to numerous drunk punters phoning from the pub, in Led Zep being the best band ever. The space between the 70s and the present day seems now oddly devoid of a brute force in music, that can’t be right, where have all the big bands gone wrong? We need to move on. Anyway the result is ok with me albeit it’s guitar players I rate and for the record my current list would, in no particular order be:

Jeff Beck - technically brilliant and innovative but always in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong combination of musicians and so criminally dodged the massive career he deserved. Not strong on personality or self awareness I fear.

Jimmy Page - did everything except sing which is probably just as well, stole riffs and developed them, wrote 20 killer originals, explored highs and lows, did the twin mike ambient recordings, used little amps, invented forward echo and played a Danelectro live. Just don’t describe his playing as “strident” please, we’re all fed up with that. He virtually make it impossible for any average player to pick up a double neck and look cool or comfortable.

Joe Walsh - in the James Gang used power chords brilliantly, did slide and echo better than anyone and had a perfect sense for build and dynamics, lost it eventually but a truly great early player. Three fine albums and then the smoker you drink etc. Not a bad career.

Jimi Hendrix - a gentle, spaced, fruitcake feedback genius who made the perfect 27, if only a wider range of his material was played and remembered rather than just Purple Haze or Hey Joe. The Experience were the ideal power trio.

Steve Howe - not sure why but he seems to get more tonal variation out of his guitars so has no distinct signature sound but still is unique, surprisingly melodic, not blues based and nicely unpopular and unfashionable, or so I’d imagine. Shame he didn’t like “Owner of a lonely heart” though.

The James Gang Rides Again - and in style.

Feels like summer

We spent most of today on another continuous improvement project, the garden. Today's sun baked and sweltering milestones were slightly more creative than the normal regular battle to keep down the weeds and control the great Serengeti like grasslands we look out upon. The new Zen Garden of Delights (as above) now has a compact and bijou water feature to soothe and calm our over active minds. It resides in a tranquil corner with numerous colourful blooms peeking over and anxiously developing their space and rooting out like some miniature version of Babylon's Hanging Gardens - well almost.

Then we painted various stationary artifacts but mostly the popular and practical Steampunk inspired chimney thing. Strange, curious and unknown flying insects visited the scene and stuck to the wet paint whilst I drank shandy and Ali supped long cool spritzers.

The once sad, faded and somewhat neglected wooden grey squirrel has now been painted red and that may result in us receiving a handsome support grant from the WWF or Blue Peter, you never can tell these days who'll latch onto a good piece of work. So that was that until the rains came down about 5:30.

Shelf

Nicely enigmatic, imagined sketch, much appreciated.

Wobble on here for more.

Solar power

"Where the earth and sun meet, in the perfumed gardens of the busy mind there is forever the mystic promise of a sparkling, peaceful, neutral water feature to soothe away the cares and pressures of all of this world and possibly the next..."

Top tips for a long and pointless life.

I keep myself looking young and cheerful by regularly stretching my back and shoulder muscles whilst sitting upright in a wooden chair.

I eat a strict diet of blueberries, cream, corned beef and bananas.

I regularly listen to Radio Scotland but with the volume turned down.

I sleep with my head under the pillow and use a soothing alarm tone to wake up each day at 6.20 AM.

I regularly master complex mind puzzles such as Microsoft Movie Maker, cardboard box collapsing, frittering and the sorting out of odd socks.

I leave doors open (slightly).

I rotate shoes.

For relaxing travel, drive with the passenger window half down, the A/C off, stay in the outside lane and suck a strong mint.

Mimic things.

Acqua Panna

Acqua Panna = nice, clean, refreshing water.

Home late, nice baked cod and mushroom left simmering for me, boiled spuds and a green salad, late tea at 2115 but much appreciated. Meanwhile Firefox has let me down for the last time, I thought it was indestructible and eternal but it failed me and I cannot forgive. Hello Google Chrome, how long will this new love last?

Good day yesterday: Sunny breakfast, F1 on the telly and then an unusual version of the same live at windy Knockhill. Knockhill is one big hill that has wrapped a racing circuit around itself perching pits and a start/finish at the top and a snake of road running down and away through some scary curves and turns- nice cheese and chips in the cafe too.

House where the dead live

A the foot of the garden is a mysterious house full of dead people, we were happily unaware of it being so close until quite recently. It's been a busy week, too busy for this blogging nonsense.

"Why the long face?" It's horsey weekend around here so there are a large number of horses and horse related activities taking place. Wandering around narrowly avoiding horse dung and drinking beer gave us ample opportunity to discuss the final episodes of LOST and make nonsensical RV related purchasing plans. Then we watched Eurovison and ate and drank from a sumptuous and surreal Eurobuffet. The UK was well placed - last.

A local lane and in my view a decent photo: meanwhile Dennis Hopper died aged 74, not much I can do or say about that.

Unconventional laundry measures #1. The Improvised Victorian Drying System.

Circles

This circle, which is more than 300ft in diameter, was cut into a field of oil seed rape by Wilton Windmill at Wilton near Marlborough. Experts say that the design may be connected to Euler's Identity, a complex formula devised by the 18th Century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler.

Meanwhile the final episode of LOST has taken this viewer and the series in a full and frustrating circle. Now I understand everything and nothing, have developed my own point of view despite the actual storyline and the huge body of swelling, frustrated opinion bubbling out there. I guess if you are going to follow a TV show for six years it may as well be one that provokes and tantalises even if it fails to deliver the sucker punch, it's the journey not the arrival that counts - some may say and I may well agree.

LAST LOST

A common media experience beckons...we join the tribe...we leave the tribe...then we go the dentists and possibly on to work. Then we return home and enter a period of reflection.

Poached Eggs

Birdhouse now in place, in the afternoon...

...breakfast scoffed in the morning.

The unexpected heat wave found us breakfasting alfresco in Dunfermline. A fine opportunity that allowed me to renew my relationship with poached eggs, Parma ham and coffee. A warm, satisfying if a little inconsistently served breakfast, yum.

We returned home and then like mad dogs toiled all afternoon in the peculiar and ever increasing heat, squaring off numerous gardening and outdoor tasks and exterior odd jobs. A very satisfying day that passed quickly and thanks to sugary drinks and some alcohol without any adverse dehydration taking place...all this as we count down the hours to the final moments of LOST.

Walk away

I'm not much of a blogger really, I can see by the overall frequency and patchy quality of my posts. Often they are indistinct and often they exclude altogether major life events or occasions (those may appear in pieces on Facebook or more likely nowhere at all). Then again there are no rules, it's all vapour, vacuous and variable stuff, life passes by and we pass through it, somewhat bewildered but happy in that questionable and cosy state. Many things happen to us, planned and unplanned, exciting or routine and mundane. Whatever goes on or in here I'm glad I have family and friends to rely upon and daft projects to pursue and at the end of it all I can walk away with Ali beside me.

Thanks again for all the wedding wishes, the unexpected gifts and the special way you made us both feel. You know who you are.