Marmalade Porridge

A slow news day today so I'm reverting to food related posts based on the premise that marmalade when added to anything, be it sweet or savoury, enhances the flavour of the original item. You get the idea, here's marmalade porridge.

Good banking experience

Detail from the newly refurbished Scottish National Portrait and Potted Meat Gallery in our fair but occasionally drizzly tram bashed capital city. Photo courtesy Mr A Leggatt.

Lloyds TSB, prepare for once not to be bashed. I was in a branch today in the Garden City and was pleasantly surprised by the swift and very helpful support I received from the bank staff. My query was resolved in a few moments, the end result was far better than I might have expected and nobody tried to sell me any unwanted banking products. I walked out of the premises with a spring in my step and a twinkle in my eye; no that final part didn't happen but but one day it might. Perhaps today it's been an as good as it gets type of day, little things falling into place rather than out of place or not happening at all. Perhaps I'm imagining this as I slowly slide into bewilderment. Doesn't matter really.

We'd be happier in space

Some folks think that space travel, eugenics and meteorology if pursued to extremes and if applied and installed in the lives of all people will lead to a happy and stable society. They say that true completeness will be the end result. It will of course not be fettered down by Earth's gravity, it'll be elsewhere, set up in grand style on the edges of the cosmos in shiny steel and tinfoil and food will be dispensed from toothpaste tubes. I doubt it.

Meanwhile, a view from the Guardian newspaper on yesterday's day of action:

"Pro-privatisation zealots will claim that allowing private corporations to provide services hitherto offered by the state will enhance "choice" and lead to a better deal for the consumer. But having seen what happened to our railways and to our gas, electricity and water companies when they were privatised - do we really want to see our health service, customs and immigration agencies and our state-schools go the same way? Of course not. Which is why private sector workers ought to be putting to one side their envy over public sector pensions, and supporting Wednesday's industrial action. It's not so much that the Government's changes are inherently bad, it's the motivation which lies behind them that makes them so objectionable." Well said young man.

Actually I don't really care

We're burning peat, brown and green chunks of ancient earth that burns and glows and quickly turns to ash and smells good. Warmth from the cold bogs and marshes and pastures, drilled out of the ground and packaged for popular consumption.

Today there were strikes and disputes, rallies and arguments against a broken, headstrong and corrupt government that's not interested in listening. They have their own way and they will have their way and by the time their life is over we'll all have been robbed of rights, pensions, savings, investments and health care. So that's it but the tall trees are marked up, ready for the chop, you'll see the signs, you can distinguish the marks, as you walk past, take a good look, stop and reflect. The tall trees will be cut down, just wait and see. The good thing is there's a lot of material in there for songwriting.

Can we get a dog to match this cat food?

Probably not, we could get dog to eat it if it had some spare time. Would it be a totally unrealistic vanity project to have a dog that matched a cat? A fur coat that matched a fur car? A tin of pale rice pudding that matched a cream enameled achette? A cheap whisky that matched a cut glass? An orange air hostess that matched an orange aircraft? A mathematical formula that matched a blackboard? A mathematical formula that matched neighbouring graffiti but meant less? That's far enough.

Where did the eternal blue sky and your long hair go?

Caveman Artwork

Walking in the woods I came across these primitive artworks mostly consisting of painted frames with little or no detail other than blurred images. It proves that frames predate pictures. I'd never thought of that. The textures in the bare and ancient walls are nicely featured. Who knows when or by whom these early works were undertaken? I guess that many long years must have passed, unpredictable Scottish weather systems have faded them but these strong artistic statements remain, undiscovered by those in the know, hidden in the wilds like an ancient treasure.

Who were the mysterious woodsmen who crafted these fine and sensitive works?

Giant Profiteroles

Amongst the items that are available at South Queensferry's Hawes Inn restaurant are, as you might or might not expect, "giant profiteroles". The term giant is of course quite enticing to a certain class of diner; the curious, the skeptical, the idealist, the dreamer and the greedy. I appear to me all of those things, as well as pretty gullible. Much as they were enjoyable, the term "giant" when applied to any food and to these profiteroles in particular brings with it a certain amount of word debasement and inevitable disappointment. I was full and satisfied by this point anyway. If 4 inches is giant then there is hope for us all.

This weekend we've been burning peat from Peterhead, bought at a geriatric friendly cafe on the A90 near Brechin. The mild highland aroma hasn't quite altered my consciousness but it masks the earthy smells of November leaving behind a rich trace of familiar but far away wild lands and their histories in the blue smoke and fierce heat. The Picts and Vikings knew a thing or two. I wonder if it's edible if prepared properly?

Our house is turning into a vacuum cleaner graveyard. Nothing that's mechanical lasts long here, they burn brightly, make a bit of a foul smell as they fail and then die quietly. They await Valhalla in the cupboard under the stairs beside assorted boxes. Pet hairs, fluff on steroids and general user abuse get equal amounts of blame for their untimely demise. Pushed to my limit and fed up with snapped Vax drive belts I tried some necromancy on them today using a mix of thrusting broom handles, twisted coat hanger gropers and high pressure water spays. Large plugs of both wet and dry colourful gunge emerged from pipes, tubes and nozzles, it was immensely satisfying as an exercise but has probably not made any real difference. This place is the Hoover Bermuda Triangle, they come here, suck up for a while and then disappear leaving no trace of their brief spiralling orbits.

3 things fixed, 2 things not

It's not free for download yet but it will be once we get bored with rolling in the money - pay for it while you still can.

I've already carried out running repairs to two hoovers, one telescope and some microwave porridge and it's only 16:00. The common broken belt and blocked filter problem. I'm strangely gifted as an appliance victim and also as an appliance doctor albeit unqualified. I have less good fortune when it comes to filling station air pumps, today saw two serious fails at both Tesco and Shell in the pouring rain. You put your money in the slot but no air comes out and what does the poorly paid customer representative say? "If you want to get your money back then you'll have to call customer services in Aldershot or somewhere". That's a fine attitude, they can't even give you a lousy 50p from the till when their machine breaks. I just smiled and took my usual Karma points instead and tried the low tech but working pump along at Murco.

Your fish is on fire

That's exactly what happens if you overdo the quick salmon grilling snack exercise. Best to stick to the more benign and neutral mac and cheese combo in my simple view. Soon of course we will celebrate Christmas, the seasonal habit and uncomfortable obsession that none of us can break. I like the nice passive aggressive take on decorations shown above, might try this later. If I was watching TV I'd watch Rev on Beeb 2 and not find it as funny as it should be, if I was eating a biscuit I'd eat an Naked Apple Pie and if I was having a drink it'd be an alcoholic surprise. If I was cleaning up I'd be searching for a dead mouse, by smell alone. Nothing is real apparently.

Watching the wall

Tired of watching those bizarre artifacts and still life pieces hanging on your parlour wall? So was I until I stumbled upon Sky 523 Discovery-Turbo. Now I can relax, iron shirts, poke the fire, make cheesy pasta, sip Nescafe 3 in 1 and lose myself in various regularly repeated petrolhead themed programmes (and it avoids the clamour, contact and confusion of Facebook and Twitter). Sorted for at least 3 hours or until my span of attention droops.

92.25.203.# (Opal Telecom)

Of course there are many nice people out there in the world, possibly more than you think (99%?), enjoying what life brings, having a good day, perhaps using their right to free speech, just noodling, dancing on the beach maybe, doing whatever, then along comes somebody...

Kayak to Kinnarodden

All the important locations in Europe in a single map. It's great to have a stupid, unrealistic, eccentric, irrational and expensive travel plan that can be slowly built up and then picked apart and undermined in every tiny detail. These are the kind of wild and woolly thinking processes that made this country everything that it is today. Roll on 2015ish.

Speaking of our great nation and it's possible role in a revamped Europe I was disappointed but hardly surprised to hear that a lottery winning Scottish couple have donated £1m of their vast unearned fortune to the SNP in order that it may be pissed up against random pub walls by some of our less visionary home grown politicians. We will probably have forgotten this mindless act of self indulgence come the revolution so they're safe enough. Anyone hoping to have their daft ideas financed need look no further, their mail box will be overwhelmed by an avalanche of ridiculous Caledonian proposals.

A Porsche 911 called Dignity

The local cat police were out last night and apprehended this little fellow in a nearby field, not quite sure what was going on, all we know is that this prime suspect said very little. His ginger accomplice, just visible in the distance (with max zoom) was a lot more vocal, we interviewed him later in a controlled environment, all he would say was, "honest, we were not up to no good officer but you need to talk to the badger". So we have two strange cats on a mission and on patrol around our manor and a crimeless victim, tension is building and feelings are running high. Clearly we need more moon juice.

Changing animals for a moment I saw a man out walking a small dog, "that's not much of a dog" I thought. Then I thought, "what is much of a dog?" I'm now on the look out; this type of thinking can apply to numerous other aspects of modern life i.e. that's not much of a TV show, that's not much of a portion of potted meat, that's not much of a political party, that's not much of a pop single, that's not much of a plan for the rest of your life. Try it yourself and see where it gets you.

I'd also like to quickly sing the praises of the green lentil, it may seem heretical you Scottish Soup fundamentalists but hear me out. Whatever made you think that ancient, spurious writings based on Middle Eastern mythologies were ever in any way applicable to Scotland or Northern Europe? I'll never know the answer but they got themselves bolted onto our lifestyle and have caused significant damage for about 1500 years - all relatively unchecked or challenged. In that time the great green lentil was tortured, suppressed and crushed but now it's ready to make a comeback. Gird your metabolisms for green lentils, pulse revolution, a brave new Christmas or whatever you call it, freedom awaits.

Radio Scotland: Playing music only fit to act as a soundtrack to the Highland Clearances and doing so since Marconi was a boy. Tune in today and hear the full accordion and fiddle based horror for yourself. 94.3 FM.

The garden and modern divorce

The crisis that is global warming and in Scotland's case rampant global driechness has driven a wedge between me and our large and beautiful garden. We had neglected one another and were no longer on good speaking terms. I needed to reconnect, to get down, get dirty and once again appreciate my creaky and malformed horticultural relationships. After some intense counseling I was ready to venture out and (under close medical supervision) once again lie down, face down in the glistening morning dew. For me it was a vivid and character changing experience which moved me to my very soul. These photos reveal the results but the true life affirming effects are travelling onwards far away beyond the soft machine and over the bright and speckled clouds.

Some other reasons that may explain why I'm pissed off by the garden and in such tortured turmoil:

It's cold and miserable out there.

The fence keeps getting blown down.

The unmentionable tree chopping thing and the departure of the Ents.

A mouse ate its way through the HT lead on the strimmer.

Put a neutrino in your tank

The finer points of modern physics are lost on me, I can just about understand the basic concepts of a tin opener or at a stretch Post Office elastic band catapult design principles. Despite my cerebral handicaps I could be a big fan of the tiny neutrino and it's impressive ability to quickly cross large parts of central Europe by avoiding all the major routes and simply going in a straight line at great speed. Of course my next natural reaction (good physics eh?) is to become a new neutrino denier, my mantra being "they aren't here nor are they anywhere so they must be nowhere" and simply believe that a single Neutrino, placed in any hot beverage will sweeten it nicely without giving you any additional or unwanted calories.

Impassive aggressive

Spanish style chicken, peppers and chorizo washed down with a cheeky red, a technicolor blue and a fashionably pasteurised green. I think the colours of foodstuffs are very important. For a while (as my body worked hard and absorbed the rainbow of pure alcohol) I watched TV and laughed quite a few times at Modern Family, "I don't talk in my sleep, or walk in my sleep, I sleep clown". I like all of the cast, the script and the concept. Then there were the segments of the worthy but frankly dull Children in Need celeb stunt bits (all of which I support but...). The cause and the stories are brilliant but the "stars" let it down badly. I was hoping that some celebrity chefs would suffer a sponsored bull whipping whilst singing barbershop, a few gobby children's TV presenters would run the gauntlet with WW2 flamethrowers or that a coven of coalition MPs would offer to have their scrotums waxed Brazilian style, not tonight however. The donations I'm sure would have gone off the scale. That's the problem with mainstream TV, it knows it's limits and fails to even reach them by mostly avoiding to tackle them altogether. Maybe next year, I'm content to bide my time.

Books & Demons

It was as if some occult hand had gone through every book, turned every page, checked every genre and then shaken the entire library violently. Some of the bright and randomly placed volumes were scattered in the process, some landed on the ground pages opened, others stayed upright like soldiers refusing to fall in battle. The sorting process continued in this way for some time. It was clear that a great mind was at work and that a higher, loftier purpose was being acted out. I was on the edge, a spectator, only hoping that by the end I'd be able to quickly put my finger on whatever publication I was looking for. “It's a big machine and it's working.”

During a lull in the maelstrom I was able to reflect on the act of reading itself, for me, an unfortunate cross between an illiterate, irreverent and a lazy being reading sometimes is unattractive. Bad eye sight and Poundland readers don't help either. I cannot imagine myself coming home thinking “I really must read some Robbie Burns” or “where is my copy of Ivanhoe?” or even “when can I find the time to browse a few more of Shakespeare’s sonnets?” Some people must think like that. I do like the odd biography, Sci-fi or even (the lighter) self help books, BBC news and the Sunday papers but that's not serious reading. When I was small I used to like reading the ingredients of tins or containers, I also liked knowing their volumes which for some reason I'd try to compare with car or motorcycle engine sizes, “so that's what 100cc looks like.”

So now we are organised and I feel a deep inner peace, the universe has moved and I have survived but this may not last, all feelings form up into some kind of circle. Once you know that life's not so bad: anticipation, expectancy, planning, delivery, pleasure, relaxation, guilt, remorse, self pity, inspiration, anticipation...etc. You're never much more than a few steps from a good bit and time and experience can make the negatives tolerable, at least for a short while.

All these smart books got to me, entering the grey matter and while I was sleeping I was visited by the demon Chorozon aka as “the demon of the abyss”. He seemed to know a thing or two about my internal psychological processes and offered a few bits of constructive advice as well as insights. Anyway he was telling me that as he is the last great obstacle between the adept and enlightenment, it would do me no harm to prepare to meet and challenge him so I can move beyond that great gulf and into the greater cosmos and so on to the fictitious universe of Douglas Adams or somewhere (I lost the thread as it was 3am, why don't demons come along when you're in a good mood and maybe just having lunch?), all useful stuff to know. His price seemed fair; £666 in twenties (rounded up) and a small amount of blood and reasonable but limited public humiliation, I'm considering my options.

One demon I'm not so keen on is Lilith, she's a Jewish or Hebrew demon. She looks like quite a nice woman with red hair but being a demon has no clothes on most of the time and has bird's feet for some reason. I thought she looked a bit creepy in an esoteric way but she did have a nice sounding voice. Not sure what her powers are but she got some bad press in the Bible it seems, that was about 5000BC. She also had a snake wrapped around her, writhing, flicking it's tongue and looking menacing. Not many blokes are going to go for that look. The birds feet were also a bit off putting, I can't imagine her in stilettos but at a pinch they might be ok in a nice stir fry; tasty as chicken?

Islam has a few demons as you might well imagine, they are called the jinn (they don't merit a capital letter of their own either, a bit mean). Apparently they roam about in the unseen or unknown bits of the world, they can see us but we can't see them, a bit like being on a bus I imagine. Anyway I don't think they are very happy, Islam isn't a religion known for tolerating outsiders so all the jinn are condemned as the “smokeless bits of fire” who presumably cant even get into a pub these days and soon wont be able to get in a car either. One thing to watch is that a jinn can enter into you (only the better ones do this) if Allah allows it. That fact does set up a number of questions about the nature of Allah but maybe it's best not to go there. Oh and they can also, when they are not being invisible smoke, take the form of black dogs and snakes (no particular snake colour noted there). Nobody really knows why they do this. Good to get your head round the finer points of the world's religions, where would we be without all this collected wisdom and useful advice?

Banana developments

Breed a banana with an edible skin why don't you?

Moon over flame

The early and unheralded arrival of the 2012 Olympic torch was recently celebrated round these parts. Sadly the usual high maintenance ViPs and hangers on missed this historic event as did the press and TV but we carried on and in our own slipshod Pagan way welcomed the eternal flame of outdoor sporting events and mass corruption to West Lothian. With no media frenzy to feed and as a result of my own rather absent minded behaviour I stupidly let it go out. In my defence it was quite a damp evening. If anyone is interested in taking this iconic piece of Greek history for a trot round the byways and more remote islands it's lying in the back garden. I've a box of Swan Vestas at the ready.

Pimp my Billy

Some of the better things about random web browsing are the daft, practical and outrageous storage ideas that you find; as well as the nice old Alfa Romeos and Jaguars for sale. Much as I like this configuration (pictured) it might result in overheating and cable management issues - the usual home studio problems. I have however succeeded in sorting all of our CDs into handy piles in preparation for them being swallowed up in the vast vacant Billy expanse that stands before me. The piles are somewhat vague, based around shifting ownership, meaningless genres, dubious popularity and imagined world locations. Retrieving music from this morass will be tough so I'll just stick to playing Let it Bleed on Spotify.