Back from Spring

South Bank, London, last weekend: A premonition.

Thankfully spring has been canceled for the time being, we've retired backwards to the more familiar conditions of Norwegian winter or something very similar to it. Time to break out the cheesecake, stir fry chicken and peppers and red wine. Comfort, coal fires, couches and the fine art of booking holidays elsewhere.

John Barrow-wheel

It's new, it's red, it's solid so it won't collapse under a half ton of slabs, chips or compost. The great garden tool that is the B&Q barrow has now been refurbished and revamped and is ready to go for summer. The old pneumatic tyre is flat and in the bin and this rigid sustainable model has been fully tested and installed.  Also ready for those back breaking, speedy and dangerous trips around the garden with the grand kids on board. That's really why I fixed it of course.

Return of the floating head

Nightcap - large White Russian.

New stadium at Stratford, a fun and strangely emotional experience as well as a family triumph, Emma passing Sally Gunnel and numerous other famous athletes as the race progressed.

The London Eye, scene of my most recent "floating head" encounter.

Just back from a full on weekend in the UK's alternative capital city. We camped out in the City with a capital C and a tough financial heart, drank fine wine and cocktails, marveled at the heavy weight stones and carvings, were squashed in packed tube stations, wandered in never ending malls and attended the opening and first ever event at the new Olympic Stadium. In contrast to what you often hear taxi drivers were friendly, waiting staff chatty, some prices were almost sensible and the weather was pretty chilly. London's OK. It is a real place after all.

People are stupid

The future of modern motoring.

I'm still bamboozled by the government's incompetence and by the general public's apparent stupidity and ability to form a spontaneous queue when not even necessary. It will only end one way and as usual prove the basic theory of supply and demand. Prices go up...etc. There is a deep underlying mystery? No, it's just being stupid.

Guardian news ‏ @guardiannews

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The Guardian's front page: As petrol pumps run dry the blame game begins http://yfrog.com/joxlyyj

Panic in the streets of Abercorn

This government's speciality is the release of the monumental lie coupled with the media smokescreen moment followed by a fiery attack of the socially dysfunctional dragon of "unfairness" (or worse, attempted cornball "fairness").  As we all amble down Gasoline's potentially empty alley one more time this blog post sums it all up quite nicely.

Meanwhile I'm out in the garden planting broccoli and lettuce so that when the great salad and vegetable shortage is announced in June we'll not only survive with a healthy diet but will make a handsome profit selling good wholesome greens to the poor souls without gardens, disposable incomes or who are too lazy to dig...that's just what the Francis Maude's and David Cameron's of the world would want us to do.

I've taken advantage of the warmish weather and  been out in the garden building a second trampoline and also dismantling the first one, it had been found wanting. The whole thing was a profound exercise in the art of swearing and cursing both internally and externally, I managed to shave some skin from my knuckles and thumbs for good measure and sweat just a bit more than usual. Thankfully my youngest son was around to assist and provide a stalwart support during operations as well as keeping me right by actually following the instructions. Of course now it's all over and we can relax; the old one's been recycled and turned into a Skoda and the new one sits, pristine, green and ready for the playful bouncing attack of generations to come while the summer BBQ smolders wistfully  in the distance, I won't be lighting it with any precious petrol either.

Bourbon Street

Just outside of somewhere else, across from the other place and adjacent to that other part of the neighbourhood; you know the one. Checking and verification is possible via Google, snuggle, peskyhusky.co. and various other unsolicited sources. Crunchy, best served with sweet China tea.

Enthusiastic but incapacitated

Canal bridge with added people.

One of those found items you find when out and about.

Barge headed under bridge.

Ali & our bikes on the towpath.

Today the sun shone for unfamiliar and frankly strangely long periods of time. This breach of conventional weather conventions allowed us to explore the lovely civic amenity tip at nearby Bo'ness. As non-residents in this grimly fiendish place we're not entitled to tip rubbish here but they kindly broke the rules once the car registration had been logged in Falkirk's Big Brother memory and signed up for possible crushing followed by the necessary extermination process. These green and unpleasant recycling boundaries are new to me, Alex Salmond of course will be getting a strongly worded text or possibly even a Saltire shaped cynical Tweet of some description - any day now.

Then it was to the garden centre for some back breaking gardening stuff, plants, compost and the like. We also visited a local farm shop where a Cairngorm beer and Strawberry cider sales pitch was underway, a fatal error was thereby made and various beers and ciders tested and duly purchased. Next it was Daffodil Tea Time at Abercorn Church, we behaved ourselves very well, bought the tea and the daffs and then moved on to...hit the nearby canal via bicycle, as you do.

The canal trip involved bikes, beer, wine and sunshine. I also discovered that the air-con in my car actually works (quite disconcerting), turns out it's been the hottest March day since February as well. An Easy Riding paradise along the canal banks unfolded and so we ended up here, where we relaxed in the sunny beer garden watching at least one canal boat and numerous colourfully dressed cyclists, yummy mums, social workers, Subarus, Game of Thrones extras and ner'do wells go by. The return journey passed a lot quicker than I expected and confirmed a travel theory of mine about going there and back again; it seldom is as far as you actually think. Then it was home sweet home and a little more of the dark dark bitter bitter Cairngorm beer and pork chops, mmm.

End of some kind of era

I've just sold my very old and very faithful Ford Cougar after four years and 80000 miles (total 138147), gone in 60 seconds via Gumtree on a very misty, moisty March evening. It just vanished into the mist as I clutched a warm mobile phone and a fat wad of Scottish notes. So I've got the cash and a Volvo S40  to run about with no proper complaints but I'll miss that big, clumsy, shockingly quick (and wet) pussycat.

In the afternoon I turned out to see how the mighty Pars would fair under the new Jim Jefferies management regime. Not an easy match against a stubborn and dirty St Mirren but we got the point, they got the needle. There's enough games left for a fix but it's going to be tight. Let's hope Jim really does hate Hibs enough.

Not rocket science

Out of use

In use

When I first saw this bike rack and before I ordered it on Amazon I read the customer reviews, I don't usually bother but with non-standard buys it's always worth a quick check. This one had a few four stars and one or two one stars, those are the fellas you read of course. They didn't hold back; "incomprehensible instructions, a box full of pieces, I couldn't work it out at all, poorly packaged and put together, not for the amateur, I put it straight in the bin." Well my experience was pretty much the opposite; easy to build up (two bolts), easy to follow instructions and fairly simple to use (cycle racks are never straightforward but they are not complex engineering problems beyond the capability of the common man). It's all good for boosting the self esteem, like answering more than one question correctly on University Challenge or getting close to a correct answer on QI or Pointless. Now I'm waiting for a sunny day and then going out and finding Scotland's flattest cycleway.

SQ: Great architectural blunders

A stones throw from some lovely 17th Century Scottish organic buildings and round the corner from the historic town centre we have this feckin' disaster. OK we need affordable housing but...

Adding a new depth of meaning to the word ugly, set between two world class  iconic bridge designs is this awful BT exchange, as putrid as a desiccated seagull, unloved even by the owners and badly situated and badly maintained. 

"You have been assessed for street repairs, £20 for every house and £50 for every hotel." In the USA this piece of pavement repair work would already be the subject of a few million dollar lawsuits. Nice  touch with the added Big Mac litter I thought.

Lest we forget, Tesco are here with their stupid talking recycling station and fly-away trolley docks.

Yesterday's thoughts about the missed opportunity on Rosyth's old Dollytown site made  look again at a few of the blunders hiding in plain site in merry olde South Queensferry. Now most of the village is nice, well maintained and fairly sympathetically put together but some howlers have been made (as above). I suppose I cant moan about Dollytown or any of these others really, they were done at a time when there was no proper funky, no real cool and no concept of any design other than modern concrete and cheap and nasty. They probably expected the Cold War to heat up and the Russians to destroy everything anyway so must have thought there was little point in making any effort, but today they live on...it could've been so much better. So what have we learned from the past? Lots but we can't afford to change it and just don't mention the short lived £6m+ Forth Bridge Toll Booth Project.

Dollytown (Twinned with Bedrock)

I was thinking about the former Rosyh housing estate known as Dollytown. It was an odd, spacious and very green place, I never lived there but had lots of childhood friends there. The long primary school summers were spent playing football, hide and seek and cycling around the grassy play areas and wide and safe streets. Then in the early seventies it was flattened and replaced with bog standard and uninspired Scottish council houses. Looking back a huge opportunity was missed, nearly forty years later there is now nothing remarkable about this part of Rosyth and the unique feel of the prefabs and open spaces of Dollytown are long gone. But just imagine...

Taking the new Mini as a type of design example it could've been that Dollytown, once demolished might have been replaced with a newer version of itself, Dollytown on steroids. Wider, bigger houses,  still all on one level, chunky windows and doors and trees and space and the design theme, however accidental of the original houses maintained. Awards would have been won, property would have been in demand and visitors and the media would have loved it. It could have been a model village and an inspiration, you can do things better, even on public sector budgets and best of all once completed it could have been twinned with the hometown of the Flintstones, Bedrock.

If Tuesday was Monday

A tiny corner of a tiny corner of West Lothian.

Meanwhile as the sun shines limply upon us all and promises with the faint hope of a decent summer yet to come the Tories start to slowly grind the NHS into their idea of a shape. A historic day for all the wrong reasons. Elsewhere David Cameron discusses how to fund road repairs and development via what can only be described as poor man's PFI by using pension plans to put up the money. So it's cash goes in to fill the pot holes but what, in the way of a return actually comes out? I cannot fathom the model or how, without tolls and charges it might work. How can you make money from that? Bamboozling but so is everything today and so is everything the Tories produce. I'm going to stop reading and watching the news, till Wednesday.

If only Monday was Tuesday

Is it me? Obviously!

Mostly a TV related evening with University Challenge reaching a climax, Channel 4's Chinese exploration running on quite convincingly and honestly and then Dirk Gently, full of gentle laughs and odd observation. I also made a cottage pie out of some spare parts of a spare cottage.

Springs and rings

Springs: Following a rigorous health and safety audit and technical inspection our faithful trampoline was found to be wanting in a number of departments. A prohibition notice was duly issued and all jumping, frolicking and laughter ceased, who are we to argue against the mighty power of the H&S Gods? Luckily a benefactor and sponsor has stepped in so saving and preserving our families valiant efforts to get fit for the soon to be everywhere on the telly Olympic and Commonwealth Games. Planning permission has been sought and approved and work should be started on a new trampoline once the final project plan is completed and mind-mapped. This morning the old and offending Trampy was taken down by a team of sub-contracted expert midgets who had just finished a really tough shift on the Forth Bridge. Most friction free parts will of course be recycled as part of the Edinburgh Trampoline and Panda Mating Survival Initiative (Pandamating should really be one word) and so will live on in perpetuity. The photo shows a bucket of recovered springs, all in great nick and ready to bounce again one fine day.

Rings: In an unrelated incident I managed to drop my wedding ring into a giant brown bin of last years leaves, Doh! A lengthy bin search followed which was dirty but pleasantly successful. A valuable lesson in life has now been learned.

Hot rice v hot rats

A hazy view of the magic rice potion.

Salad and novels v stimulants.

Rice & retirement & rats: As the great grey mist descends I make plans for the future, some are based around a massive lottery win, some based around magnificent and well deserved business success and some based around nothing in particular other than acting on some kind of stupid impulse, sadly this one is the most likely. What exactly springs to mind?

a) I did think that I should not retire until the very day the Queen of England and whatever else is left comes to a newly annexed and struggling Scotland to open the completed Forth Crossing. Then as a last act of working defiance I'll cross over and back and so end my illustrious career.

b) I could also work beyond that date until I can comfortably afford to buy and run a 10 year old Maserati Quattroporte for at least a year, in a romantic swan song gesture to life in the fast lane, the middle lane, occasionally the slow lane and some rough tracks with passing places.

c) I may decide that I should count down in haircuts, a dozen maybe. I'll stick it out for dozen haircuts, nine normal and three Turkish, all equally spaced apart, perhaps each one in a different barbers based around a simple spread sheet and rating system. Establishing what the timeline might be would perhaps be hard.

d) Another option would be to go just whenever and take up the full and fulfilling career of a barista, a word I've only just learned this week. I could be like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, throwing hot steamy Starbucks milk from cup to cup, turning the innocent cafe atmosphere into Hell itself with belching vapours and hissing sliver pipes of fiery liquid that torture the crushed beans into releasing their bitter flavour. Then calling customers by made up and abusive names and coining great wads in tips revenue by continually giving out the wrong change and overcharging for the inedible biscuits and muffins. Nice.

e) Pig and chicken farming; whatever the economic climate people will eat bacon and eggs and all the variations that follow, that even includes quiche. All you need are a decent pair of gloves and wellies and no sense of smell whatsoever.

f) There's also scope for a blindingly good career in squirrel extermination, particularly in Fife, where thanks to the efforts grumpy Queen Victoria and grumpy Andrew Carnegie the grey squirrel pox has not passed from grey to red; but it will one day. The only way to avoid a future catastrophe for the reds is to mobilise and lead the people of Fife in a massive exercise of ethnic cleansing against the dirty greys and so save the reds from the poxy pox. I understand that the River Tay Beavers may also wish to participate in the cull, of course there is a huge market for squirrel meat and fur in London's fast food and fashion industry.

g) Last but not least, walk away, buy a castle and pull up the drawbridge on creditors, bloggers, buskers and bureaucrats.

Drawing a line under all that...

Heat is remarkable, I'm particularly intrigued by the way it changes the state of things. Take for example rice pudding, that so often misunderstood and these days unpopular pudding. Cold it's the kind of thing you would only eat in a real emergency such as a shipwreck, a long running nuclear winter or an elongated Scottish power cut. So if it's nice and hot, if prepared properly it can be a real treat. Anyway I was anxious to try a new and revolutionary product that's been launched on the market, made up and created by the good people of Carnation (a subsidiary and trading name, proudly owned and operated by the giant food conglomerate Nestle who are still using the cuckoo based Bird's Custard motif ), Hot Rice Pudding Mix.

I did try to follow the simple instructions but was immediately put off by some key, consumer unfriendly words and phrases; whisk, oven gloves, 261 ml, caution may be hot and allow to stand for 5 minutes, to name but a few. All in all the rice manufacturing process takes about fifteen minutes and due to the mess created took a further twenty minutes to clean up; there is also the risk of an unplanned microwave explosives event that they don't mention in the small print. I persevered and eventuality got to the point where the unpleasant and gooey material was close to being edible. It turned out that it wasn't that close unfortunately, not hot, creamy or tasty or anything good. A lot of heat and effort wasted in a gunky, crunchy mess that leaves a weird aftertaste. Heat is remarkable and will remain so, Carnation Rice Mix is not.

Rats: Nothing to do with anything or pesky squirrels.

Porous with travel fever

Taken from the street

Taken from a tall building

Taken from a helicopter

Sweating away in the muddy laptop archives looking at old (three years maybe?) photos and wondering about the best method of filing and holding and referring to all the wonderful and overlooked jpegs sitting undisturbed in their rows. A short lifetime of images and mistakes crumpled together, travel and wonderfully sunny and rare days, grimaces, smiles and holding drinks up to the camera as if they were sporting cups or represented the height of personal achievement. It's good to have the means to look back, all I need to do now is maintain it. For some reason I was reminded of an old Joni Mitchell lyric that really has nothing to do with New York but a lot to do with travel and memory:


I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know - no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone 

Unanswered questions

There are many unanswered questions out there, floating, drifting, up there high in the sky dodging clouds and answers. They remain the great and universal secret.

"What does TPF stand for?"

"I understand what the graph shows but it strikes me that it would be better if it was set in a context that included an element that reflected the state of the infrastructure, is that possible?'

"Are we going this way because of the time of day?"

"Are they really buying a fleet of bendy-buses?"

"Where is the barbecue sauce then?"

"What makes Easy-Jet customers queue up like that when the plane's not even here?"

Almost Spring

Actual tiny daffs.

As the evenings lighten up then so do we, all that extra daylight, thin cloud and potential sunshine act like a mild intoxicant, like a Buckfast and caffeine sandwich and life, with all it's cares and carelessness seems suddenly good.  Traffic is strangely visible, people go out for walks, cyclists are not irritating or quite so wobbly, you can even imagine yourself being one. Bulbs appear on road verges, birds sart to learn summer songs and rabbits attempt to cross wild tarmac when they really shouldn't bother. Of course the real test of Spring comes with the ritual discarding of the under shirt winter T shirt, a garment first drawn into service late in the November gloom now due to be abandoned and plunged into the deep darkness of the laundry tub.

I still carry the scars of three futile attempts at cleaning a cat's bottom over the weekend.  It turned out to be a two person task, one holding the cat upside down trying hard not to stress the poor beast whilst the other attempts to remove whatever the foreign material is  that is bunging up it's rear and fouling it's fur. Of course fur actually flies and blood (of the human kind is spilt). The cat eventually wriggles away and escapes like the proverbial scalded/anally probed cat. Strangely enough the cat bears no grudges and returns home for attention and the heaps of food that usually follow. The human target remains on edge eyeing the cat, left with no other option than to simply nurse his wounds whist trying to calm the ongoing nervous spasms.

Boneyard Project

More photos here.

I'll keep on doing what I do for as long as I can

but when I can't do it anymore I'll make a new plan.

Bolt repaired but horses escape

As usual it's a DIY lash up of a mix up of a piece of thinking on the hoof and making it up as you go along brainstorm thing; repairs to the rotten/rotting gate that is. It remains our first line of defence against escaping horses and the turmoil of the outside world, sadly badly damaged by the January storms and years of neglect and indifference. Now all is well, at least for a few weeks or until the next storm or stampede. I painted it black because that's the way I see things in March, April promises to be completely different.

Cat hygiene: This weekend I've been reminded that the exercise of cleaning a cat's bottom can result in physical injury to the human participants and emotional trauma to the cat concerned.  The cat's now outside, sitting on a stone wall, eyeing us up somewhat warily, we may need to do more research.

Power to the steering: When it comes to power steering I'm feeling smug. It seems to be the only troublesome part of any car that can be fixed by pouring a magical liquid into the reservoir. I first did this some 50k miles ago and was cheered by the instant and fully satisfactory repair. It's held on up until this month so time to start again and administer the juicy cocktail of leak stoppers and fluid topper up. Dare I believe that I can be successful in this twice in a lifetime?

Football: A pretty bad tempered match this morning in the Fife resort and desperate sun spot known as Burntisland. The fur was flying, the wind was against us and the ref lost control as we got beat  3 - 2 in the shadow of the famous Great Bin. A draw would've been a fair result. Barclay Junior whacked in our two goals, one with the left foot and then one with the right, that was a first. He then headed a possible late equaliser just over the bar. Following an early morning radiator incident when a football boot insole became lost forever behind our kitchen radiator he opted for one of Ali's insoles as a replacement, I think it perhaps brought good luck though not quite enough. It's made me think seriously about taking up some of the good old fashioned top 100 superstitions and testing them out. It would be more fun that adopting some dreary religion and might yield unexpected results - so I started this afternoon by knocking on wood many times when fixing the gate (as above). The gate's fixed but I rendered myself nearly unconscious by hitting my head on a dangling lamp, that's one superstition down, 99 to go.