Wasp alert

We are now on full, code red wasp alert. 20+ dead bummy furries hoovered up in the bedroom, one stung toe and a new awareness of the irritant force and sweet summer destruction that wasps produce as they (innocently) go about their business. That of course begs that eternal seasonal questions, "what's the point of wasps?" or "what was God thinking when he created them?" or "are wasps are in fact the Devil's own flying sperm" (I've never really heard that as a serious suggestion). The unprovoked wasp attack led to a few hours of cleaning, dusting and wasp's nest searching, alas no trace of one was found and we remain perplexed as to why they have chosen our bedroom as an appropriate place in which to die quietly. Little pests.

More wild strawberries, growing fat and slightly diseased in the July sun and rain. Popular with the local wild birds as a quick and tasty snack.

More moon cake

It's neither a cake nor is it a moon, it's an enormous piece of wishing and hoping rendered in the classic materials of a big bright day-dream. Then it's put on display.

I like the idea that the moon is a cake, or at least that it might be a cake. Makes more sense that it's cake than a large circular piece of cheese. Then again in the past, when the moon was misunderstood cheese of that kind was probably more common than cake, in a more primitive world you'd pull your dairy resources to make a nice cheese rather than waste them (and all your neighbours') on some extravagant cake. This is the age of the cake. Well it was until the Western Finance and South Sea bubble burst and the coalition came to power. Now it's back to the age of cheese.

Detail: Cat narrowly avoids serious collision with mobile phone camera. Cameraman escaped with minor cuts and bruises and mental trauma.

Of course we are not screwed

There are 52 yummy varieties believe it or not...

De-clutter bulletin No1: I've worked out that if I fill a bag with rubbish every week and dispose of it in the correct manner then a year from now I will have removed 52 bags of rubbish (approx 1000kg) from the house and from my life. This epic exercise began tonight when I systematically de-cluttered our heaving freezer. Farewell to bargain pancakes, weird pizza things, loose chips, a loaf, a gateaux and various unrecognisable bags of icy substances. It felt good and I still have a few bags and kgs to go to meet my weekly target. What will be next? Dry provisions, socks and t-shirts, books, electrical items, worn out towels? I'm salivating at the thought and looking forward to walking tall, lean and mean, unburdened and stripped back, like some rally car or athlete...we'll see. My dear wife also has to have a significant say in this matter.

Nothing can be held sacred in the relentless pursuit of simplifying your life, imagine not very many superfluous possessions, easy if you try, no crap left in the freezer, not even Eskimo pie.

Screwed

There is no doubt about it we are screwed. The roof has fallen in and chickens have come home to roost and the Home Secretary isn't pulling any punches anyway. Pensions and savings are eroded to the point of pain, they've taken the chocolate out of chocolate and my brain has apparently turned into 55 year old vintage custard. Swimming pools are closing and England are out of the World Cup due to the criminal disposal of playing fields and the promotion of non-competitive sport. I've also stopped liking Dr Who, missed the last 5 episodes and I can't see any difference between HD and normal TV. The good news is that there are 18 sausages left over in the fridge that must be eaten soon.

Moody pop stars of the 60s

Bitch Boys

Surly Bassey

Petulant Clark

Huffy Springfield

Coy Orbison

Laugh?

I nearly paid my SKY HD subscription.

Irrelevant quote of the day "John Terry has stormed into the penalty area".

Moon Cake

The Moon Cake or possibly a Moon Cake recipe:

16 oz of desiccated moon

1 (American) cup of weird superfluous wax

miscellaneous candles in various shape sand sizes

love & varnish

the fabric of the universe

pearls from the deepest ocean or maybe Majorca

Junk/Charity shop sourcing

IKEA bottomless coffee

a large shiny metal circle

(a) Gather the ingredients together and burn slowly, then turn out the contents. Remain horizontal for a few hours and allow to set whilst reading some appropriate literature

(b) Live your life for a while rotating 180 degrees whenever possible - install HD TV services

(c) Furnish

(d) Using simple screwdriver and brush technique apply the uncredited varnish in a liberal coalition manner of speaking

(e) Have good idea

(f) Go back to (a) and get married if you forgot

(g) Check that the matches have all gone out and make a 4" hole in the wall at height

(optional: add some punctuation but don't look back)

(h) Get safely down from the step ladder without entangling the entire area

(i) Stare at and serve / or vice versa

That completes the process almost safely and in the comfort of your own home or elsewhere, however you are advised to carry out your own risk assessment, one at a time. Beware the uninitiated, the Moon may taste surprisingly good and you cannot give it up.

Strawberry Hill Boys

They may seem to be clinging on for dear life but they are thriving.

When you are in a nice restaurant and enjoying cheesecake with wild strawberries, be aware this is where the red part came from. They are emerging on a seasonal basis from the stone on top of our dyke in fact. £7.50 a punnet, form an orderly queue please.

Alternative postal system utilising only natural ingredients but with occasional assistance from a high speed Vauxhall van.

Google Street View

Thank you Google for yet another surreal moment captured in Aberdeen. The ongoing bizarre and absurd nature of so many aspects of our existence never ceases to amaze me.

Retire at 66? As a confirmed pension dodger and one who does not fear the Reaper (yet) I'm determined not get bothered about any of this. I'll be 60 in 2015, I may get a bus pass then and I'll possibly get a diluted 40 year pension at 61. If I work on what have I got to lose? I can cash in my pension and draw a salary, well maybe. My kind of work is not a burden to me either, I'm hoping to remain on top and I'm realising that the older you get the more you appreciate that nobody really knows what they are talking about anyway and it's always going to be entertaining to see the young and enthusiastic crash and burn as their "original" schemes and ideas falter, in fact it's already happening. Continuous Improvement? You are having a laugh.

In England

I wouldn't normally bother but I did. I spent a chunk of the afternoon (but they may do an all day breakfast) in Wetherspoons Birmingham Airport watching a lacklustre England side struggle to beat Slovenia. Of course the assembled travelling masses seemed to disagree and cheered their heroes on through 94 minutes of stressful TV time. Meanwhile friendly Polish staff handed out plates of chips and salmon fish cakes, passing through the multitudes, those lost and confused nomadic multitudes. The same people that Jesus said he loved and that he believed wanted to listen to him. Trouble is that now all they want to listen to Gary Lineker's one liners, have a cheep pint and a side order of garlic bread and then get the hell out of Birmingham.

Eventually the final whistle blew and the magnificent horns and vuvuzelas ceased their free form idiotic blaring and I supped the last drops of a dark brown beery pint. Gradually the crowds parted and drifted from Wetherspoons, shifting over to Costa or Coffee Republic or towards the promise of a blinking departure gate light. The match is over and consigned to to some blurred red and white memory vault and the plates have been cleared away. Germany on Sunday as it turns out and more food will be prepared, consumed or abandoned as jaws drop.

It's easy to feel like a king in another man's country but it's not healthy.

Longest day

gArDeN: iN DeTaiL oN tHe LoNgEsT dAy So FaR.

In a futile bid to shorten the longest day I fell asleep during the Spain v Honduras match, a few moments after the first goal, I awoke with a start and a strawberry Milk Tray. It doesn't seem to have worked though, however my usual Solstice rituals will now carry on into the wee small hours. This intricate and primal rite in celebrating the passage of the sun over the earth (and it peering through various standing stone arrangements) involves me sleeping soundly for about seven hours - mostly in a pagan style. ZZZ.

Some people are also skiing on the longest day. Why? Must be more unreliable evidence of global warming.

Ex-Karma Police

For more information information click onto the point of this tiny invisible needle.

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.