One of those things

A spokesperson said that it was just one of those things, just one of those fabulous things, a bit like a trip to the moon on gossamer (or some other similar substance) wings, just, as it were one of those things. Our regional correspondent then called to say that it had in fact been just one of those nights, just one of those magical nights, unfortunately like most nights it had been followed by a morning type of experience and in the process some of that magic had perhaps rubbed off. There were though a number of happy memories remaining and there were other perhaps less tangible benefits that had also been accrued, just one of those things once again. Then as it happened another correspondent mentioned that it was another of those things, in fact a crazy fling some had said, apparently not dissimilar to one of those bells that now and again for no particular reason rings like another one of those as yet unnamed things. A sweet simple pleasures. So don’t quote me on this but I heard that had we thought of it when we started it (the royal we?) then we may not in fact have undertaken to paint the town - unclear on the colour scheme here folks. After that it all becomes a bit garbled and thermal energy and it’s quick release is discussed (yawn), anyway the general consensus is that it was fun for the most part but didn‘t add up to the sum total of it‘s parts if that is possible.

Meanwhile the psycho path man says that there is still four weeks of work to do - and the trees are falling down and the roads are rising up and the rain is lashing down and the peanut butter has odd lumps in it.

Fife Diet

Some inhabitants of Fife.

Good to see the Fife Diet is still going strong, generating healthy publicity and presumably helping a few fragile souls in Fife live longer and feel better. It may well keep some nasty 18 wheelers away from the B roads and claw back some sales from the big 4 supermarkets. If only then: a) I was in Fife and b) on a diet. Unlikely.

Papal Visit

After the great invasion of geeky Scientologists comes the great September Papal invasion. The reluctant young Nazi himself will visit these shores and bless his many followers as he steps on UK soil and kisses the airport tarmac, lets hope he also blesses a few potholes on the way north. His blessing (whatever a blessing actually is, who really knows?) will cost our struggling economy £12m but sales of Papal tat and nonsense will be around £17m, so that's ok then. The bus companies, vendors of shite and motorway policemen on overtime will do best out of this ridiculous State Visit while sensible folks, as ever, look the other way. To add to the spectacle Tony Blair will no doubt get a private audience and an impression of the Pope's ring somewhere on the cover of his latest book . The Queen may also pocket a few quid in complimentary backhanders and the BBC will provide full and sycophantic coverage in HD of course.

This whole affair both intrigues and annoys me as it would any middle-aged, jaundiced sceptic. The Catholic Church, a simmering mound of pyramidal corruption, founded on a piece of misquoted scripture, battered murderously into shape by politics and planted in the gilded city of Rome from where it has been ruling and exploiting, ruthlessly sucking up to itself for nearly two thousand years without a proper challenge to it's ludicrous existence ever being made. So now, as before we bow to this glittering Roman drag queen and his minders as he visits, holds masses and generally gets in the way of buses; repugnant, almost as repugnant as Islam and err...Scientology, so back to where I started then. You are the masses? Open wide, here is your dose of opium.

Big Cat

I happened upon this fine fellow whilst out for a stroll yesterday afternoon.

Cocktails & Cats

These are the cocktails...yum (and me a confirmed, working class, socialist, beer swilling, real ale drinking, chip dunking yob (and a cocktail virgin at 54.95).

This is a cat...sorry no multiple cat type creatures were readily available at the point of taking the photo.

Man made natural disasters

Despite their naturally cheery disposition and various endearing Irish associations I'm finding that the mass farming of potatoes is a most disappointing activity. These cheeky chips rise in plant form like green marble giants suggesting a rich and bulky crop of pure, golden tubers that will feed us all through the long cold winter months so avoiding costly trips to some tin supermarket or other. Then the vigour dies, a mid life crisis occurs in the dark soil and they fizzle and fade like forgotten fireworks in a damp shed. So as I sweat, swear and arch my weary back digging up the expected harvest I find that there is a 51% failure rate in those that have spawned and in that 51% at least 17.5% have worm holes - not the good kind either. Why didn't I apply some dung? That leaves just the plums and apples to come.

As if the tattie crop catastrophe wasn't enough I find that the Psycho engineers and their great earth moving machines have created a veritable dust bowl out front. Four days of unseasonal dry weather and numerous 20 tonne vehicles have agitated mother earth causing great choking clouds of particles to rise high into the atmosphere and then fall on our local community. We are covered in disturbed material or if you will a thin and dirty film - a bit like Naked Lunch. Meanwhile the debris strewn causeway to Fife is still heading out over the sea and into the distance and does the pudding headed control freak Uncle Eck Salmond know about this alternative Forth crossing and if so who is underwriting the funding?

The Ghost of John Bonham

His ghost does not haunt this blog or anywhere else, as far as I know, so please remain calm.

Under Construction

Enjoying the evolutionary construction and release of CBQ's latest work..."Splinterheart" out now.

Townhouse

I ventured out into Scotland's capital city to see the sights and hear the sounds. Some of sights and sounds came along in the form of the tight, jokey, warm and highly skilled musicianship of the trio known as Townhouse . Should you get the opportunity to see or hear them then take it. They are: Lisa Rigby - vocals, guitar, mandolin, percussion; Stuart Clark - vocals, guitar, cajon, percussion; John Farrell - bass, guitar. So there.

Arcade Fire set list

Earth calling

"Earth calling Stroma, Earth calling Stroma"

Psycho II

The current favourite beverage holder - around these parts.

Psycho progress continues as it does revealing the following secret history; pictured above are the ancient ruins of Abercorn Castle 0845 to 1154 (times approximate). It was here that Princess Margaret, a mermaid from Denmark, set up home with King Malcolm Middleton the Rotund. Together they brought fierce religious beliefs, various useful pottery pots and deer skinning techniques to the primitive Picts who rewarded them both with a ritual beheading and a jolly good bonfire party. King Malcolm also invented the hotel and then the tin opener, unfortunately tinned food and tin were not at that point available to the general public so he was nicknamed "the Misunderstood". Odd that his crippling speech impediment is never mentioned. Things have moved on and their once splendid castle has now been looted and bulldozed so that townies can visit the countryside and kindly leave their Lucozade bottles and Kit-Kat wrappers as habitat for the embattled wildlife.

Locally produced food is the best beating both Poundland and Lidl's tawdry efforts into a cocked hat. This weekend we've feasted on garden potatoes (best suited for relentless mashing and pounding), garden rhubarb and tree based plums. These fine foods were duly heated up and consumed by a hungry family, part of which spent today marvelling at the unique weather system that sits permanently and directly over Pittenweem (almost home of the self righteous and frankly boring Fence Collective) and sailing great ships, something of a family business.

On 18th September it will be 40 years since Jimi Hendrix died, how strange is that? I'm already thinking back over those (for me) well known albums and songs, today it was Axis: Bold as Love. Seems like yesterday and then it seems like a lifetime, damn these persistent memory problems!

Some kind of Hell

1. Hell doesn't avenge evil or reveal God's power. It does the exact opposite! By holding on to the doctrine of eternal hell, we in essence hold to the belief that in the end God's will to save all people goes unfulfilled, which puts God's power and goodness in doubt.
2. Hell heralds eternal hopelessness. Suffering in hell for all eternity means that souls burning there forever will exist without any hope of redemption. This leads us to the belief that God withdraws unconditional love once a person's body dies. In other words, God's love for us is tied to the physical body and the temporal realm, and grace disappears for unbelievers after the physical life is gone.
3. Hell keeps evil in eternal existence. The Bible tells us that, in the end, God will abolish evil. Yet, somewhere in the universal expanse of God's perfect peaceful kingdom, evil still survives in those who inhabit hell -- evil "lives" on eternally.
4. Hell creates a clash between justice and love. We unintentionally conjure up a cruel father who demands that unrepentant sinners spend eternity in the flames of hell, finding endless torture an agreeable way to achieve justice -- which is a far cry from the God who loves with an everlasting love. We develop a picture of a God who promotes eternal punishment as positive, as part and parcel of divine love and justice. We try to relieve these tensions by appealing to God's love and mercy on the one hand, and to God's justice and wrath on the other. Such a view of God's love, mercy, justice, and wrath leads to the conclusion that to love is to punish eternally and, therefore, to punish eternally is just.
5. Hell assigns eternal violence to God: Traditional theories of hell not only keep evil in eternal existence; they also keep the cycle of violence in motion for all eternity as unfortunate souls suffer the ferocity of eternal torture because God requires it.
6. Hell executes eternal punishment for temporal sin: Does sin committed during one short, temporary life span deserve an eternity of punishment? Even in our own society, we strive to make the punishment fit the crime.

From Sharon L Baker's book "Razing Hell"

Sair Heid?

. The author chewing on a Marks & Spencer bacon breakfast bap. Very nice too. I cant be bothered to think about very much so below are some bits of lifetime advice from Billy Connolly.

Try to catch a trout and experience the glorious feeling of letting it go and seeing it swimming away.

Never eat food that comes in a bucket.

If you don't know how to meditate at least try to spend some time every day just sitting.

Boo joggers.

Don't work out, work in.

Play the banjo.

Sleep with somebody you like.

Eat plenty of Liquorice Allsorts.

Try to live in a place you like.

Marry somebody you like.

Try to do a job you like.

Never turn down an opportunity to shout, 'F**k them all!' at the top of your voice.

Avoid bigots of all descriptions.

Let your own bed become to you what the Pole Star was to sailors of old ... look forward to it.

Don't wear tight underwear on aeroplanes.

Above all, go to Glasgow at least once in your life and have a roll and square sliced sausage and a cup of tea. When you feel the tea coursing over your spice-singed tongue, you'll know what I mean when I say: 'It's good to be alive!'

It is obvious

Ultimately my plan is to do everything and to achieve everything. bearing in mind that my time and resources are limited this may be a tall order but I remain undeterred. There can be 36 hours in a day if you want it to be that way, just consider the actual hours to be a few % shorter. October will be my month of supreme challenge as I tackle the twin perils of birthday and jet lag. Ouch.

I'm also finding it healthier to temporarily park the crippling foot fetish I've suffered from for 75 years, losing this is like losing a soul fragment; noticeable but mostly painless and invisible. It did start me wondering if toe nails were jealous of their fingernail cousins. Those nails that receive all the attention, grab the daylight and see the world in all its fitful glory whilst the lonely toenails languish in the dark interior of sock country and smothered by all the associated fluff.

Tonight, after a feast of Pitreavie based mid-summer football it was tuna rice in a surprise microwave and onion combo, yum.

Another day...

...another UFO flies over the main western road junction near Newton village, West Lothian. When will our little grey brothers, sisters and others (?) just leave us alone to get on with the perfectly normal progress we are making in developing our mirrored lives and mind reading techniques? By the abnormal amount interest they are currently showing in us I'm beginning to think that we may be on to something. Could it be something to do with the recent French Toast formula discovery, the research into near vertical spiral paths or the prototype Flux Capacitor Mark III stored in the garage? Best not to speculate and simply carry on with the good work, at least they are just over flying us at present with their beams set to minimum scan (less of a burning sensation I find). The landing platform in the woods wont be ready for a few weeks either and there is a huge pile of ironing to be done.

Walking on the moon...

...or on the beach at Dunoon, with no shoes.

Special effects

The happy couple, now retired from worldly troubles take a stroll in the twilight to appreciate the view and various popular financial packages.

In the evening and covered by a badly designed radiation glow we walked along those same rugged cliff tops that mark the edge of ruined Britain supported by our faithful stick, old sunglasses and a bottle of auto-tune software. I was fortunate enough not to stumble and eventually returned from there to here. Once safe at home my thoughts again turned to the fundamentals of gardening, mass wasp executions, serial hoovering and economical recording processes.

Watership Down Syndrome

P.S. to Psychopath: It's like that bit in the first chapter, when the tremors start and the developers come. The ground cracks under your feet and all the tiny creatures, all the birds of the air, all the mice and rabbits run, run for their lives. The more spiritual and sensitive rabbits, those in touch with their environment and their feelings sense the impending doom and try to warn their fellows before the event, none of whom listen. Typical then.

Psychopath

West Lothian's newest psychopath is being installed, built, blasted out of living rock and timber and firmly planted in a recently deforested site that's not quite in our back yard. First of all heavy earth movers and badly written letters arrived and a short period of rain rained on all of us. Then strange noises, thumps and woodland whistling was heard even by people fast asleep or in drink induced comas. Next thing we knew we had, according to an iPhone app, 27% more daylight, 33% less wood pigeons and 18% less pot holes. It was a red letter day ( I got my Barclaycard statement) and we had a frozen trout.

,
A large, mean looking black hole appeared in the earth and we found a leg of deer (or the rear leg of a deer) up a tree. The rest of the deer had however hopped it. The track is forming up nicely and any day lots of clunking psychos and their partners will arrive, sweating with their packed lunches, heading for the now nearby and convenient sewage free coast. Meanwhile we're considering opening a nice tea shop in order to cash in on the thirsty, visiting psychos. The kind of up market shoppe that has tea and scones and tits and tats and no greasy spoons etc.

This publicly funded devastation is frankly OK with me and I'm glad that the indigenous and well fed but badly dressed peoples of West Lothian have finally been driven from their burning homes and that this appropriate new route has crushed their rain forest hovels. Project management at its best. I'm so in tune with this that I'm planning buy a second hand psycho all of my own from Gumtree. That will stop my bad habit of borrowing or, in extremis stealing the chrome beasts. See you all perhaps at the opening ceremony which has been scheduled to fit in with the next Papal visit, an event bound to relieve the pent up irritation that soils these troubled shores.