Are we Almond Valley?

Some conceptual art (left out in the rain for added effect) laid out on the Art College car park.

Voted eventually, held out until 2100 or thereabouts. Three kisses on lilac, peach and white papers, not easy if you happen to be colour blind or over 55. Earlier in the evening it was the Student Fashion Show at Edinburgh Art College, an entertaining and informative 90 minutes; women, men, scary monsters, super creeps and a good choice of music. I live and learn. The salmon caviar and the roast beef on toast was particularly enjoyable - these days it's always about food unfortunately.

Alternative Vote

Smoke rising over it

I wish I cared a bit more about AV and the arguments for it’s apparent (but unproven) superiority over normal voting systems. If we do get AV tomorrow when the scribbled blue crayon Xs are counted up and counted down then the way is paved for us to explore AV plus. AV plus is of course a fully proportional system which would of course be the next natural step. Whilst this may in various scientific and statistical ways appear fairer (an over used and not wholly attractive term if there ever was one), the real problem will all voting systems isn’t the system, it’s the candidates. When you look at the field, their pedigrees, careers and their actual capabilities it’s hardly any wonder that voters are fed up and apathetic. The truth is that he current political system does not attract people of a particularly high calibre nor people with the necessary backbone to represent their constituents honestly and wholeheartedly. That’s the problem and few extra Xs and some magical algorithms wont fix it.

Disaster today. Up, fed cats, cleaned cats, cleaned me, frittered about and rushed out of the house, no petrol so a quick pit stop for some of Arabia’s finest snake oil and onto work. Once there I realised I’d forgotten my fruit. My gorgeous green apple and nicely bruised banana were back home, idly lying back in the kitchen fruit bowl.

Imran Khan says “Pakistan has lost its dignity and self belief”. The reason is? “ Pakistan has the most corrupt and incompetent government in its history.” Well that’s good to hear, they’ve also got atomic weapons and have been given $28 Billion is US aid over the last few years.

In the good old days I mostly attended a chilly primary school and cared little for external things other than occasional assassinations and the way that Britain seemed to be in the centre of every crisis in the world (or to blame for them). I believed that Britain was hated by all foreigners because we’d stolen all their sugar, corn and butter and locked all of their zebras and lions up in our fashionable zoos. Then there was the Cold War which just seemed to drag on and on. Living in a council house with only coal fire and no central heating I understood that pretty well, cold was something you fought against with blankets, curtains and pots of soup and the air-attack siren that was tested once a week, just to add a little drama to the otherwise silent and grave soundtrack. My uncle and aunt were high up in the Civil Defence, they had hats and armbands and went on exercises every weekend in their Austin A60. I had absolutely no idea what was going on and looking back it’s clear that neither did anybody else, we just became indifferent to the cold, sterling in a non decimal form and the black and white lifestyle. Maybe that’s what was good about the good old days. Funny how I recall the fifties and sixties in monochrome and the seventies in wishy washy colour, the eighties are like a fireworks party, the nineties are white with a chrome trim. The last decade, whatever it was called has plumes of smoke rising over it.

Euthanasia Roller Coaster

Ok it looks pretty strange in this image and it's unlikely that it'll ever be constructed but as a design concept it has some interesting qualities and dare I say it has some potential. Some say it is on display in Dublin until June. You can of course take safer roller coaster rides anytime...

Scottish elections: I'm thinking Intertoto Cup here and as for AV vote, the possibility of everybody voting but still getting something they didn't vote for isn't attractive albeit maybe that's what we deserve. Roll on Thursday.

Fish finger sandwiches: In a stunning move Scotland's premier healthy snack has returned to the number 1 spot effectively ousting the two pretenders, coconut yogurt and sliced banana ensemble and the rhubarb crumble (avec nutty sprinkles) and creme fraiche.

A world without Osama

Up and showered, Ali gone to the office, yogurt and banana breakfast and coffee. On the sofa with the TV remote ready to catch up on the news and the weekend football. Then it becomes clear it's no longer a slow news day today. Bin Laden killed in a fire fight in Pakistan by US operatives. News channels and media machines go nuts as the story spreads across time zones and filters into slowly waking minds. David Cameron describes it as a "major step forward", I wonder what that means, I doubt Cameron has any real plan that might somehow move in any particular direction as a result of this. So that's one man, one super criminal and terrorist out of the way and for many there will be a strong and understandable sense of justice having been done. A brief moment of triumph can be enjoyed before the next wave of reprisal or revenge attacks happen and unfortunately they will sooner or later, so the fear stays - a fact that suits governments of all persuasions, everywhere.

Pimms o'clock

Lazy gardening day, the recipe being:

A bottle of Pimms

Ice

Barrs Lemonade

Raspberries

Peppermint cordial

Orange juice

Mix in a jug, drink in the sun, pull out nasty weeds and plant various plants.

Optional: Red wine, plaice with mushrooms and boiled spuds and peas (of course).

Neighbours: what are they all about? Are they important? Should we love them? Are they affected by the weather?

Meanwhile the Auf Wiederseshen Pet illustration on AV is making a significant impact on our thought processes. Nobody liked it, nobody voted for it but we got it....hmmm.

Cappielow pitch invasion

A beautiful afternoon in Greenock saw Morton and Dunfermline square up for a game the result of which could give the Pars the title a week early- and did. A goal in each half saw us emerge easy winners and League Champions after four years in Division 1. As the final whistle blew good humoured mayhem broke out in the form of a mass pitch invasion. Not often that all the results go well for us, the soap dodgers of Falkirk and Kirkcaldy both got beat and the swindling pretenders at Dundee won their game but got hee haw overall, a nice day's work.

Hot sun, no pies or bridies all afternoon, just two burger vans for 5000 fans, no wonder we were going nuts.

Wembley style goal post attack, almost.

Championship team photo with the Pars travelling fanbase as a backdrop.

Royal Wedding fever cools down

Buttons and the Overdressed Sisters await their cab now that the ceremonials are over and done.

Thankfully the wedding fever in West Lothian has died down and life is back to normal: chasing stray deer and cats, dishwasher sculpture and compost juggling have returned to their usual places and this temporary love affair with all things royal has passed. I didn't actually see the much of great event, I was detained in Asda Dunfermline and B&Q Hermiston Gate for most of the morning, such is the pattern of a typical public holiday for me. B&Q was fun, a brief argument with a fellow pension dodger over their inventory system saying one thing and she saying another resulted in a win for me but no apology from them. Never rely on hand written sheets for your system, rely on the machine, it's seldom wrong and "one set of numbers" should always prevail.

Back home and after a confetti like blizzard of witty and very funny wedding related tweets it was back to home recording efforts, revisiting the equipment's finer details and as is the custom entangling the entire area. Three hours work and I has three (very rough) demos done, ready for the perusal of the lead singer herself. It's hard work being a part-timer musician and a full time moaning consumer but at least I dodged the big wedding and all the sycophantic rhetoric that surrounds it, anyway I hope Wills and Kate have a nice life in and out of the spotlight.

Am I alone in thinking?

Grateful Dead: Funny how many of the famous people who have died recently are credited with “changing the direction of modern culture”. It struck that if artisans and luvvies of all sorts continue to die at such a furious rate (mostly due to bad lifestyle choices dating back to the 60s and 70s) and their unmanaged crediting continues, the direction of popular culture might end up going full circle. If these deaths increase, as is likely, then as the cloying and exaggerated obituaries are penned for the Telegraph, Times and Independent modern culture may indeed start to spin on it’s own axis. Eventually it may spin completely out of control and possibly (if all goes well) completely out of sight. It may eventually spin into some glorious cultural vacuum where, as they say, the sun don’t shine.

“There’s nothing as sad as the laughter of people who have lost their faith.” I wish that I understood that or do I mean I wish that I misunderstood that?

A pause for a Pot Noodle: I was bored I think, I wasn’t particularly hungry, I’d eaten mostly toast and various pieces of fruit that day and it was, or claimed to be sweet and sour. On opening the pot I was straightaway disappointed, like turning onto Radio 2 by mistake. The noodles were all far away, compressed into the bottom of the pot, hiding it seemed. I added the water, a lot less than the instructions demanded and left it to stand for what I imagined to be five minutes. I then returned to it and stirred it with a fork. I also added a little more water and stirred again and waited a few more minutes. Then it was time to add the sachet of sauce. I cut the pack open and squeezed, the contents dripped in like an alien blood sample. Sweet and sour, pot and noodle, wet and dry, fibre and plastic, hot and cold, two for £1.20, Asda Roll Back. I drank a pint of cold milk thereafter.

Windows Pain

Slowly saying a not so fond farewell to this flag of inconvenience, it's stupid updates and adversarial attitude, I need an easier life, somewhere across yonder shimmering horizon. Will I miss it?...not really as I'm stuck with it at work and in various other places. Anyway after the false (but long lasting, still running) dawn that was/is UBUNTU it's back to the Mac.

A Lego ship sails away

Well constructed Lego vessel plies trade in local bath.

Bathroom: Nice to get over the painting the bathroom ceiling, the mess, the mayhem and the mystique. The actual painting time is insignificant in the overall process, the majority of effort is removing all the bathroom street furniture, the bottles and paraphernalia to a place of relative safety and then, perched on ladders, toilet bowels and bath edges scrape the old and flaky paint from the walls and ceiling. The paint of course has long since ceased to be paint or to behave like paint. It has transformed itself into sticky flakes of a white unearthly substance that floats from above and then congeals neatly into itself and onto whatever surface it lands upon. Ideally this will be one of the many newspaper covered areas but more oftener than not the paint flakes wily aerodynamic design allows it to travel to all sorts of other places. Like a shoal of slippery floating fish the paint particles find new places to land and cement themselves., hiding from their catcher. For the enthusiastic painter the only option is to pursue each errant flake and harvest it into the black bag. This process takes and inordinately long time, causes major frustration and delays the painting but once done the fuller and more creative works begin.

White on white in bright sunlight is not a helpful effect to have to live with or work within. Like executing the portrait of a beloved but always twitching albino cat in a blizzard happening in an avalanche whilst sniffing cocaine. Paint snow blindness skews perception, spatial awareness and the sense of distance. White spots dance in front of other white spots set against an Artic background. Then you drop the brush, kick over the paint tin or rub your head against the wet ceiling. You alight from the moving ladder and walk around checking things only to realise that your new spirograph footprints are the result of steeping on that fresh white blob. Only Laurel and Hardy ever made more of a meal of this. In a year’s time where will we be with this? It only took a few short moments really.

Game of Thrones: Two episodes in and despite the familiar nonsense running through the whole genre that this represents , GoT is starting to accumulate a respectable score of “must watch points” and “jump moments” along with the usual “awful and lame dialogue” and “stupid name to give anybody” blooper counts. Also there is a strong and unexpected “attractive animal” content and attraction in there with the domesticated but spiritually aware wolf characters looking good. You can hardly go wrong with a healthy smattering of wolves in a fantasy plot in my view, unless it’s the Twilight series. The sex scenes are just plain silly however and look to become fairly tedious as the story unfolds, the Tudor‘s bedroom choreographer needs to be given a call for series 2.

As good as it gets: There are those perfect moments but none are ever as perfect as imagined perfection. They are something else, ideal, blindingly happy, maybe beyond any regular category but, like the rest of life floating in either a mediocre sea of lukewarm soup or framed perhaps by edgy disaster or acute discomfort. It doesn’t really matter too much, the simple trick s to recognise them when they come along and then maintain the memory and resource to recall them and feed on them when you need to.

Essential reading for the week

Zombie Sunday

Birmingham Airport: Still life with chairs.

Another busy weekend burns out quite satisfactorily. Little bits of things almost accomplished, completely finished and done and dusted:

Back and forth to Aberdeen for the happy birthday of a grandson.

Lego challenges.

Western themed restaurants can be fun, have you tried an Apache bun?

Rain stops work but I read the Times in relative peace.

Giant eggs appear on a piano.

Said piano's life story is researched via a leaky shed in Inverkeithing. Guitar prices there remain a puzzle.

Macbook, macbook, macbook and more macbook.

Plants planted, mice caught, pots drenched.

Bagels.

Football matches both Saturday and Sunday return good results.

Paint scrapers come in sets of three and in perfect packaging.

Bikes and Karts at Knockhill. Irn-Bru and Coke, spring water and coffee.

The sun shines eventually.

A single fish, a fish supper, rhubarb and custard and Magner's pear cider.

A couch is definitely a sofa and should always be referred to as such, particularly by those who know what they know.

Holidays from blogs and the like.

Aberdeen: Still life with hot dog.

Game of Thrones week

Too many elections and voting choices resulting in too many fliers, supposedly personal letters, irritating party political broadcasts and predictable editorials in all the papers along with annoying comparative pieces about the party leaders and activists that try hard to make them sound interesting. May and all the games it provides is lurking around the corner. There will be blood.

Gripping new drama, scenes of a sexual nature, mild violence and half decent but fully acceptable (in the context) production values, not quite a stellar cast but familiar character chewed faces, some seasoning from the Tudors and the threat of monsters and magic somewhere over the horizon, the script has more mean looks and grunts in it than dialogue. Sounds like Game of Thrones, based on “A Song of Ice and Fire” chronicles the nobles and hangers on struggling to control the Iron Throne of Westeros. The first episode is over.

The spring fogs that hang across the Forth Valley like badly parked clouds are a joy to behold. These irreverent plumes of lost vapour sit on the river like a frigid blanket, sent to dampen down the twin bridge’s spirits and test the light bulbs on the cars and signs. The patches are never quite strong enough though, never deep enough to smother all the daylight allowing the sun to meekly smile through it all, glowing with the smug knowledge of the coming summer as the fog rolls away, far out to sea set to rejoin the vapours and powers that we on land never see or appreciate. Home.

Back home

Nice to get home after a couple of days working in the balmy temperatures of the south; unbroken sunshine and 23 degrees of April warmth. The weather god smiles on our English cousins. Arriving back tired and hungry it was (almost) straight into the fridge to rediscover a few choice leftovers from Sunday's epic roast dinner. Creamed parsnip, garlic rolled roast beef, broccoli and deep green peas, all scooped onto a plate and microwaved back to life. A meal fit for Lazarus and a hungry traveler.

Next it was a review of Fraser's TV debut on the Beechgove Garden, miscellaneous other media, catch up on Facebook and Twitter news and a load of washing swirling around in the washing machine and of course that dreaming cat fast asleep on the stairs, completely uninterested in any of our pointless comings and goings. What are our travels and our trials? Mere feathers in the wind.

Garden open day

A beautiful day for opening your garden up to the public for charity. Fraser and Karen hosted this event and raised £660 in the process. See more on BBC1 Scotland Beachgrove Garden: 1930 18th April.

Plant expert Fraser Drummond explains the history of the plant known as "Mary's Tears".

The garden, or at least a small part of it. Magnificent.

Tadpoles, busy being tadpoles.

Vet school

Missy the cat keeps herself hidden as we bop along to the vets for some cat maintenance. A sunny pleasant morning today, Edinburgh looking almost good, traffic light and a huge stock of daily newspapers awash in the car. Thoughts turned to far away fish pies, gardens and pathways of great stubborn weeds and occasional sun spots probing the clouds. Saturday mornings don't really last long enough.

On a wall by the vet's surgery this strange graffiti exists, a cartoon warning or celebration or something completely unrelated. Who can every get into any artist's mind and (looking at most modern art) who would really want to? I'm lazy about understanding and appreciating most things but about art I'm more ambivalent than anything, let it just wash over. Nice to have something to say but it's better if you can articulate your basic message enough to allow it to be understood. Then again it may all be some kind of code, not meant for the like of you...and you just don't get it. As for the chattering classes...(three dots in a row will do).

Castle for sale

Somewhere in Belgium apparently, needs a little work, serious offers only please.

No good science fiction left

Daily sandwich photo: Part of the ongoing lite-bite regime and the ritual avoidance of elaborate preparations and washing up = a late in the day salad sandwich. This is because today's food intake strategy involved avoidance, firstly the free muffins and cookies in the Flybe Lounge, then a stodgy business lunch and finally a Wetherspoon's greasy tea at the airport - all well and truly dodged. So it was the alternative and golden (healthy) path that I took. Five bits of fruit, some nuts and cranberries, smoothies and then more nuts. Now I feel full of nuts and fruit; trouble is none of this slowly digesting food really feels particularly healthy at the moment.

Birmingham daily photo(s): Observed today at the Midland's premier airport. The use of supposed anti-terrorist bollards (why else are they there?) as advertising space. Odd to see these suicide bomber deterrents all set out in a massive line and festooned with adverts for Estee Lauder products. A strange juxtaposition of measures that compliments neither thing; the chronic need to sell anything and everything at airports and the manic need to defend airports against unknown madmen in bomb carrying trucks. If, like me none of this makes any sense to you then perhaps I can feel a little less alone tonight.

Estee Lauder's product placement devices march away to some vanishing point in the short stay car park.

Unrelated comment: Ali says "there's no good science fiction left", perhaps she's right.

Motorway

Good advice comes in many forms but is seldom seen on motorway signage. The makers and authors of the signs clearly don't see that their signs are in themselves a distraction, that their puerile and patronising messages are a source of frustration and that they contribute to road rage and (excuse the previous blog) unhappiness. Today on the rocky road to Livingstone the signs proclaim "Avoid distractions when driving", what the hell does that mean? Every drive involves distraction, all round observation, judgement and concentration, juggled in the mix and changing by the second. The trick is knowing when the distractions are turning into dangerous situations or actual opportunities. Save us from big, stupid, patronising brother and his desire to spread the word by any available means.