Secret room

So today I am in a 15th century tower in a room with three doors, one leads out into the hall, the other two are locked and seem to lead nowhere. I suspect that one is in fact an old shallow cupboard. The other however hides a dark secret, a very dark secret. Behind that door a game of cards is taking place and there are three participants: The Devil, a white bear and Harlequin. The game began many years ago, nobody is quite sure when but the game has gone on for centuries and still does.

As the game progresses the scores charge, they ebb and flow. Sometimes the devil is winning, sometimes the bear, occasionally Harlequin. The Devil tends to get the best hands but has a poor playing temperament, the bear is naturally clumsy but has a strange and high degree of skill when the game becomes intense. Harlequin trusts to luck and has no clear strategy, he either loses heavily or has spectacular wins, you never know how his game will go.

I believe the staff in the kitchens keep them well fed with whisky, cakes and scones and venison. They need to be sustained as they play. They may play on for another five hundred years or, some say, until doomsday. It's peculiar to think that this is happening only a few feet from where I'll be laying my head and after one or two drinks sleeping soundly and peacefully. I also believe that Shakin' Stevens recently stayed in this same room also. I wonder if they are listening to that forgotten classic album "then play on" by the original Fleetwood Mac?.

We need...

We need to think (as I was considering yesterday) about a lot of things. We need to sit back or perhaps step back, review, ponder and have a good think to ourselves. Clearly we need to think about things, specific things. Arguably things that will do us, or family and friends and our peers some good. Something good for the rest of society and the wider world would also help so they say. So that's what we all need to do, according to the thinking experts on TV, on News Night, in government and in various editorials. We've all got a busy few weeks ahead and some very furrowed brows and sore thumbs. Good luck with your thinking one and all.

Oh and when you are not thinking please spend some of that spare cash and so stimulate the economy if you don't mind. Remember that the Pope has said, on many occasions and in various Third World locations that Jesus ans Buddha both love an irresponsible and reckless spender.

Chair on fire

The occasionally busy River Forth as seen from a rather high place. I've also been doing a lot of thinking in the odd gaps that have opened up this rather busy weekend, unfortunately that seems to get me nowhere. No thinking for me from now on, I'll just get on with things.

Although it's not been a particularly dry summer every so often you get one of those days/nights when, for no reason surplus wickerwork furniture just spontaneously combusts, as it were. There is no rational explanation so I have none to offer.

Today was a quite nice one weather wise and good for gardening but challenging in numerous other areas, I may have to resort to thinking once again. That is the end of the thought forecast.

Pleasure

The impermanence of pleasure

"This most recent study inquired into the well being of 136,000 people worldwide and compared it to levels of income. It found, overall, that feelings of security and general satisfaction did increase with financial status. Money, however, could not lift its possessors to the next level, and was unable to provide enjoyment or pleasure on its own. The survey, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined large numbers of people from almost every culture on earth, and found much the same thing. The stereotype of the rich man who finds life savorless and without pleasure was not invented simply to keep the poor happy with their lot.

Opinions and this enormous survey, however, concentrate on status and on the moment of possession. Are we satisfied and filled with pleasure when we have what we came for? Some, looking at suburban cannibals and eager consumers, would say “yes”; the survey tends to say “not necessarily”. There is a significant question to be asked about enjoyment, which we ask ourselves all the time when embarked on an enterprise of pleasure. It’s rare that we can actually pin down the specific site of pleasure; the specific moment where what William Blake called “the lineaments of gratified desire” are at their clearest.

Take the teenager determined to buy an iPad, a woman setting out to get a new handbag, a prosperous businessman who wants to add to his collection of sports watches. The setting out with the happy intention of spending; the entering of the shop; the examination of the wares; the long decision; the handing over of the money; the moment when the ownership of handbag, watch or tablet is transferred; the gloating at home; the moment when the object is displayed to others. All these steps form a process in enjoyment, but almost all of them are redolent with anticipation or with retrospective glee. The moment where bliss is at its peak, as with other pleasures of the human animal, is over in a flash, and hardly exists at all. Everything else is foreplay and memory.

Composers have always known this simple, basic truth: pleasure is half anticipation and half blissful recollection, and hardly at all about the fulfillment of the promise. The great musical statements of ecstasy, such as Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde or Schubert’s first Suleika song, are literally all half crescendo and half languid recall. We look forward to pleasure; we look back on it. The moment of pleasure itself is over in a flash, and often rather questionable. The sulking child’s question, guaranteed to destroy any outing, “Are we having fun yet?” is an irrational one; because we are always looking forward to having fun, always knowing that we have had fun."

Stylish clock

Stylish clock says ten minutes past some time on Wednesday or thereabouts.

Doing OK

relaxation exercise

1. Sit or lie down comfortably. Properly comfortably. Straighten your back, put your shoulders back to open your rib-cage.
2. Relax your shoulder muscles particularly. Relax your whole body, and empty your mind.
3. Close your eyes (obviously open them when you need to read the next stage).
4. Take ten deep, slow breaths. Breathe from the pit of your stomach and feel your lungs filling.
5. Focus on your breathing. Feel it getting deeper and slower. Feel yourself relaxing and any tension drifting away.
6. Relax your shoulders and neck again.
7. Visualise yourself being happy, succeeding, winning, being loved, laughing, feeling good.
8. Relax your forehead, your mouth and your eyes.
9. Allow a gentle smile to appear on your face as you feel a calmness enter your mind.
10. Then say (out loud ideally) the words below (a script for personal change) to yourself:

"I am not a cat but I'm ok just the same...I am ok just the same...I am doing ok and everything is fine...just fine."

Jungleland

Waterfall Adoption Programme: To adopt this simple Scottish waterfall or one very like it simply click here and leave a comment and an appropriate donation. Many thanks.

Back to work today, for a few blissful hours (?) anyway. A farewell then to open roads, closed shops, abandoned petrol stations, forests of for sale signs, wooden cafes and a trail of cream coloured caravans and the motley crew of cycling youths that splatter across the common holiday experience. At times I'm not really sure quite what you are supposed to be doing on holiday; walking, eating, swimming, looking at things, visiting places but not ever taking anything in, waking up a little more tired in a strange bed, feeling that this must be doing good, in some way. I think that's it, some good is done but it can't quite be understood, measured or maintained but there are positive benefits in there, though not the feeling of being simply exploited inch by penny by the big bad operators, no not that. Who needs a 24hr 7 day swimming pool and sauna complex these days?

The highlands of Scotland are well worth a visit at this time of year but I can't help but notice that the sun shines just a little brighter and longer in the rolling lowlands, well at times - and then the grass still needs to be cut.

Loch Ness

South looking North.

South looking East.

Hard to find a more dreary place than the south bank of Loch Ness, perpetually damp, dank and almost (apart from the lost) tourist free. Communities seem to cling to the wet rocks and the over powering trees, hanging on in the deepest shadows for grim death or life or whatever comes first out of the green, dripping woods. It's a single track road to ghosts, waterfalls, nowhere and nothing, so it's well worth a visit in other words and other worlds.

Always worth popping into Boleskin House for a cuppa tea, a digestive biscuit, a small bit of human sacrifice and the rites of passage ceremony to the upper seventh level of Thelema a strategic place in the universe of spheres that I've managed to maintain since 1971 or thereabouts.

Hoping for something brilliant and decorating the cave

Stones from the battlefield linked and unlinked in a dry, dead testimony - 1745.

It's not a particularly edifying experience clicking on the "next blog" tab on the top left of this site, I do so occasionally hoping to find some gems of wisdom or a unique piece of information or world view but mostly it's food and families and middle of the road values from Santa Monica to Sevastopol. Fair enough, we're all caught up in our little lives, trying to make sense, document stuff and create diaries, showing what's important to us and what we like. We are carving and painting on a cave wall, making a tiny mark as we pass across our own primitive life scape. Perhaps in the future someone will stumble on our material and reinterpret it and the impression of life we left in some insane and inappropriate way like they have done with stories of Jesus, Mohammad, Mickie Mouse, Marx, Katie Price or George Best. Good luck to you all, try not to believe what you read or all you hear, sometimes people get things quite wrong for very long periods of time and can't change. Meanwhile, I'm decorating the cave.

The sun goes down behind the trees, across the loch, no fish for us tonight (that was a few nights ago!) but we have smoked sausage, Pringles and assorted muffins.

Fishers of men etc.

It’s fabulous if a little peculiar to be doing nothing most of the time, when I say nothing I really mean very little or perhaps I mean something that is still very little but not the same as normal or at a normal level of activity but then I know fine well there is no such thing as normal nor should there be. I’m drifting.

Last night we stood on the bank of the loch and fished for about four hours. We caught nothing. Then along came this guy, kind of ragged looking, unsteady on his feet and with a strange glint in his eye, he looked us and our equipment over and gestured to say that he wanted to use the rod. We had had enough and were about to give up and stop fishing anyway so decided to hand it over, in life you never know what’s about to happen next do you? Anyway he picked up the rod, wound the line up and down a little and then looked at the bait and the hook. “Hmm.” he said. Then holding the rod as if it was a guitar he began to sing “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He was very drunk as it turned out.

The same guy was spotted outside the Costcutter Coop in Granton upon Spey a few hours earlier.

Small green world

Cabin fever

Ducks sail past my window living on a diet of bread and sticks according to my recent unreliable observations.

Today I am feeling a little better and less hostile towards the clump of perfect families and idyllic silver surfers that surround me. In making peace, accepting them and their green bags of collected dog shite and assorted shades of anorak I can sit back, serene from my conservatory’s (built in Macclesfield) woodland site and simply marvel at the world, the damp, chilly trees and the occasional wildlife that I occasionally spot. Perhaps it is simple, I do not have a hybrid Lexus 4x4, an anorak, a big black dog and children called Sophie or Jack but am pretty close to that, sitting as I am on the edge of this world and peering in - wishing for all my better judgement that I owned a horse called Moss (Kate for short) and a big “bog off “ horse box to tow along, angering my fellow road users and tax dodgers.

Karma Pork Pie

Brokeback Breakfast

Having arrived here as an unplanned event from somewhere else in the universe it’s always good to redress the balance and payback the unpayable debt we all owe the Great Pumpkin. I tend to do this in small ways i.e. I buy two pork pies and a half dozen free range eggs from an environmentally friendly butcher (no chain) with a face that looked liked it had spent many an unhappy hour in the Bar L. He undercharges me by £1.04, do I accept his obvious miscalculation? No, I correct him and for about 30 seconds I feel superior and in touch with some higher life force. Then as a swift return to the gutter beckons I’m about to leave a ridiculously over priced car park - 60p for a full day (!). Having stayed in it all of 15 minutes I hand my part used ticket over to a young lady who has just arrived, her battered faith in human nature is now restored and I can go for some Indian food with a clear conscience and a head full of clouds. I had curried “special” elephant with tiger balls, dishes of edible paint and the usual Technicolor rice.

In the afternoon we rode on horses most of whom had names beginning with M, mine was Moss or Mossy for short. I regarded the mission as a complete success, being the only adult rider as, a) I didn’t fall off b) I didn’t bump my head on any tree branches c) I kept a firm level of control on a spirited, superior mount, a horse that would have been too challenging for the many chubby and no doubt spoiled mini-minors galloping along in my wake.

Nothing to do with Saxondale

Wild, edible birds gather nearby.

Strange to be in these pleasant if manufactured time-sharing environs full of serenely driven SUVs stuffed with families of clean looking children and well fed Labradors. Yummy mums wear wellies and carry back packs with tough sounding names, dads tote boxes and Tesco bags filled with the essential outdoor shopping products. They are all so well prepared and organised. Occasionally the sun comes out and the damp green is bathed in the golden flakes coming at us from that distant star to remind us that it may be summer somewhere but not quite here. By then everybody is engaged in activities and experiences with ropes and paddles and taking hundreds of photographs to fill their hard drives from Milton Keynes to Motherwell.

We arrive to shatter (more like slightly wobble) that wilderness Sylvan illusion in the oldest and most battered car on site, like some version of a Tommy Saxondale family outing or Uncle Buck’s woodland holiday, under equipped for the wild and the wet, Pot Noodles bulging from bags and despite living in the country looking like prize townies on tour with a police car in pursuit. We lack that supreme badge of acceptance into this exclusive, shiny happy club, no bike racks on the back, no chunky cycles on display or garish high-vis helmets hanging on the coat rack. So we’ll just have to do a spot of pony trekking in our inappropriate shoes and jumpers and snap a few red squirrels.

Whizzing waters

The petrified jaws of prehistoric whales stand guard against the forces of commercialism and rampant capitalism to protect the integrity of our highland home. They are not much good at preventing the sinister spread of the waltzing waters brain washing phenomenon unfortunately. I'm still experiencing some trauma and occasional flashbacks.

At a railway station the platform should always be about the same length as the longest train likely to use it. This design innovation allows safe embarkation and disembarkation for all passengers, this one is a good example.

A single fish please

If it's all you fancy then sometimes a single fish can hit the spot. We may make an appointment with one (or can you make an appointment with two?) today or tomorrow. The waiting is always the best bit...

Garden of earthly delights

First generation apple breaks out from it's blossomy bed. There are more, they may become chutney one day or we may actually eat some raw.

We thought they were weeds and then they turned into flowers, always a nice surprise when that happens.

Duck type creatures swim away from a potential predator on the banks of the Forth.

Mylo, spending a few days with us on holiday whilst the grandchildren are away. Local dandelions form a tasty wee snack for the little fellow. Meanwhile the rain keeps on falling.

That Fifer smile

Born but a catapult shot away from the Old Course and Home of Gowf, nurtured by the sea breeze on the jagged East Neuk coast, fed from barrels of herring and tatties fae the fields. A product of years of selective inbreeding with a straight line family tree and a dialect no right minded person can get their tongue or head around. The twin Masonic pillars of serial drunkenness and Presbyterian guilt to straighten and break every back, confuse the young mind and reinforce the warped messages with each skelp of the forgiving tawse. Brought up with no concept of ambition or success and enjoying the comfort of clothing already broken in and worn out by successive generations. Scotland's answer to the Rednecks of Deliverance and the Beverly Hillbillies with some decent natured Spanish Gypsy pirate blood thrown in for good measure - mongrels with a peculiar and contradictory pedigree.

So despite the optical illusion it's the mouth that is squint and teeth or tooth that are/is (surprisingly) straight, most of the other damage however is on the inside but thankfully repair and restoration work is underway and ongoing. So God bless Fife and all the historical, hysterical but necessary chromosomal damage caused and despite my escape to the Badlands of Salmond Country I visit her open arms almost everyday. You could call it the Battered Fifer Syndrome.

Toads + Mice - Cats =

Nice concept drawing from Toy Story 3.

In what has been a fairly lazy and non productive day, yesterday that was, (due to an abrupt outbreak of tiredness and a peculiar and stubborn headache) where as well as observing the seven stages of Scottish rain I’ve at least learned a few things, most of them due to watching “the private life of chickens” on TV. I now know that chickens hunt small animals, mice and frogs, kill them and eat them. Of course most chickens on the food industry conveyor belt are never outside, never see and mouse and strangely never lay an egg. I particularly liked the segment about chickens rescued from factory farms and then released back into an open farmyard existence - they adjusted to space and daylight in no time. They're also rather nice in a sticky sweet and sour sauce but we Brits were late to catch onto that, up until the 50s rabbit was eaten much more than chicken, that's enough facts for the day.

3 mice, 3 toads in the house meanwhile the cats are fighting each other. I suppose another good thing is that I can now recognise toad excrement should I ever happen upon it again and that when you pick up a toad: a) they don't like it and b) they let you know they don't like it.

C.E.S.M

Favourite insults

"Bonjour ye cheese eating surrender monkeys”. As spoken by Groundskeeper Willie in Episode 125 (“Round Springfield”) of the Simpsons when, due to budget cuts he is drafted in as a temporary French teacher. So what works well about this insult and what is it saying?

Cheese eating: Of course we all (almost) enjoy cheese, nothing bad there, however some counties may produce and eat a disproportionate amount of it, does France? No idea. The word cheese does convey other slightly unattractive meanings and there are many negative associations that could be made over cheese smells, mould, fungus etc. or simple being attracted to cheese in some unbalance way. It also downgrades the recipient possibly to some peasant or servile level - all they ever eat is cheese, a basic food.

Surrender Monkey: This is the real punch of the insult, cheese eating merely provides a context and backdrop, “surrender “ immediately conveys aspects of the historical collapse of France following German invasion , sadly without thinking at all of the brave work of the resistance and the French public who made the German’s time in France as difficult as they could. Added to that Modern France, always something of a step behind or ahead of other Western foreign policy could be seen as at the very least “opting out” if not actually surrendering. It’s another stereotype that unfortunately works and does so on a repeat basis. The old joke “why do the French plant trees along the sides of their roads?”, “So that the German army can march in the shade.” is another example of the same thinking.

“Monkeys” is peculiar, whilst it could be seen as racist it’s also childish and much more lightweight and silly, not a particularly cruel insult. Many parents will call their own children “little monkeys” in an affectionate way. Monkeys are, for most people likable, fun and interesting animals, they are also and it helps with the punch of the insult sub-human.

So why does the insult work so well?

a) It is delivered in the mock Scottish GW accent “out of the blue” by an inappropriate character who is regularly ridiculed himself..

b) It has what seem separate but clearly linked messages within the four words.

c) It confirms a stereotype but in a slightly different way than you‘d expect.

d) It has a rhythm.

e) It has been given a longer life due to other topical events i.e. the war in Iraq.

f) It has a “playground” quality that masks the depth of it.

g) It is clean - no swearing is involved.

f) It confirms what many would consider to be a popular (if unspoken) view.

h) It marginalizes a nation so “we” can all laugh together and mock a (sizable) minority so it allows a bullying or superior stance to be taken.

I) It has had a life beyond it’s original airing and use.

What is interesting is that the episodes writer’s thought that it would win awards because of the overall quality of the script and the storyline - it won nothing other than recognition for happening to contain what has become a famous and a favourite insult.

P.S. I've nothing against the French or cheese, not so keen about monkeys however.