Sunday, June 02, 2013
If albums were books
More lazy blogging (due to unseasonal seasonal weather and being busy entertaining numerous guests). This site is rather good if you like to see rehashed classic (?) albums re-imagined as books.
Saturday, June 01, 2013
Friday, May 31, 2013
Imaginary Robin
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Blackie Strat
What it should look like. |
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Smartphone ownership
My actual screen pic minus the ever morphing shortcuts. |
Them there's the camera, the one bit of mobile tech I had bonded with. I don't see it happening with this fickle baby. It wants it's own way all the time, it blacks out in any sunlight, does the flicky thing to video when you least want it to and in a unforgivable way it refuses to mate with an Apple MacBook. That means that to get photos into the laptop (because I don't want to stuff everything on line unedited) I have to extricate the tiny memory card and then use an adaptor to regain control of the shots. Unless some unexpected Epiphany occurs it's headed for the bottom of a sock drawer or the bottom of the Forth.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Out of my system
The warden's house. A job for the summer, advertised once in a while and probably well worth it...I've signed up. |
Here's the ferry looking steady...but it's anything but. |
The green lump between the sea and the sky is in fact the island. |
The old, ruined Aberdour jetty, made to look older by adding black and white. Once the centre for river traffic, ferries and holidaymakers. |
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Been playing this all my life
MAY 16
|
The act of arranging bacon strips on a frying pan in the most efficient way possible given the dimensions of your pan. The goal is to maximize the number of bacon strips on the heating surface without leaving any part of any strip uncooked.
"I have 100 square inches of bacon and only 36 square inches of frying pan area. Time for some Bacon Tetris."
In praise of black bananas
Some days life is just a steady, relentless set of missed opportunities, black bananas and misspelled blogging errors. Today I did have the time and inclination to repaint the badly painted and slightly embarrassing garage doors and somehow justify myself. Two great blue chunks of wood fitted, hinged and bolted into sympathetic holes grinning at me in a potential DIY sunny evening way. Alas, just as I'd digested the last of the Anster cheese and was about to revise my ongoing ironing and kilt maintenance plans along came hail stones, rain and other general forms of warm Biblical pestilence. I imagined a leaf to be frog, blown grass to be locusts and midges to be scorpions, it was all over without the shouting. I resigned myself to a sober and unpainted fate and then watered the tomatoes and suicidal peppers in the conservatory whilst watching foolish people bidding endlessly on EBay for antique mandolins and banjos. Truly, the amusement never ends.
Garry Winogrand took this photo a while ago, probably part of a series and it's rather good and evocative I'd say. Nobody knows why she's holding her shoes, perhaps they don't belong to her at all.
Garry Winogrand took this photo a while ago, probably part of a series and it's rather good and evocative I'd say. Nobody knows why she's holding her shoes, perhaps they don't belong to her at all.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Still life with anchovies
Today I've received most of my essential protein from anchovies, I hope the doseage works. I'll need all my fading faculties to get to grips with the new mobile phone that the confused pony tailed driver dropped off, in the exact time slot (as texted), this afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised at the smoothness of the transaction following last week's web based elongated ordering misery. So now I have the slim, dark and exciting smart phone. It's gleaming, modern and charging (asleep as it were) but we've yet to bond. A key point in relationships with the inanimate technical objects that we use to connect us to the world; phones, Kindles, cars, laptops, web browsers and alcohol. If, even at this early stage we hit a snag then the marriage of man and machine can fail and stubbornly refuse to reignite the passion and promise that the first viewing on the web or on the forecourt suggested so strongly (the price must be a key factor here...). Clearly I need more anchovies, some red pepper dip and creamy chocolate cake.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
The A - Z of Grim
Dark & Macabre: I make no apologies for this, I am simply passing it on. I think Winnie and Xerxes met with the grimmest of endings.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Piper at the gates of doom
I didn't realise that some dumb trash can metal band had used this name. I could still shed a tear over the original chapter and the other night, when the sun hit the trees... I remembered a day.
LLL
Get ready for a new eating experience, choose from the Mach 1.5, the vertical drop or the Temporary Time Travel options. |
Friday, May 17, 2013
Phoney McRingring returns
File under "who gives a stuff anyway?": The good people at Three telephone systems peacefully capitulated to my stream of annoyed type emails and kindly called me back from a mysterious location hidden deep within the Indian sub-continent. A kindly chap, obviously aware of my recent history of mental health and my poorly expressed exasperation successfully negotiated with me and a deal was quickly struck. Good humour and rather weak signal came together to hurry the transaction along a bit also. Now I'm the potential proud owner of some fancy phone (delivery pending and illustrated above) and I've reduced my monthly bill by a whopping 33%. I'm getting some other free stuff also but as I dozed off somewhere around fifteen minutes into the slowly fading call and I didn't think it good manners to ask for a repeat of the details. Now I've no idea what it might all be. That's the way to do business I think. Stay on the edges of consciousness and don't worry too much.
If you are experiencing problems with call centre type issues, button pushing and excessive hanging on the line then this site offers short cuts allegedly.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Other people's funerals
Your own personal Jesus. |
Other things can rise up at will, a seasonal effect so I believe. |
I was at one today out in the East Neuk, wonderfully mad sunlit weather, rolling clouds and white seas in a craggy church clinging for dear life to the water's edge. Beside it a battered graveyard, windswept and white with salt, back on a low cliff top overlooking the great mother sea, licking at the graves as if to beg for a taste. I heard all about the life lived, it was uplifting and interesting, he sounded like a nice chap, a square peg in a square hole, loved and liked he'd explored and fathered and befriended. Then a cancer and the fatigue of living beyond allotted years caught up. I didn't know him at all it seemed, others clearly did. I wished I'd known him better and as the old hymns rattled unsung around the kirk interior I was sad for myself that I'd missed some slim chance somewhere along the way.
So that's life, death and families. In the end we all run out of time and patience and fail to make that tiny bit of effort. One thing we all have in common 100% of the time. Then it's time to put that polished wooden box into the damp ground, say a few words and turn and walk away. Awkward chat suddenly turns lighter, people shake hands, hug or kiss, speak quietly, someone smiles, our steps increase, up the hill, away from the place where the dead live as their disturbed ground now closes in again. We go to a busy hotel were chairs are hurriedly moved into positions. We arrange ourselves in groups and drink whisky and eat heavenly roast beef in a last supper (apart from the vegetarians who receive a hurried portion of hot mushroom risotto). Then bumper to bumper on the A92.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Upgrade your phone the easy way
It's that classic dilemma, that endless enigma, the constant problem, the itchy irritation, the still small voice whispering in your ear, the nagging doubt and the creeping dawning of a brave new wisdom; so what is really the better look, swept to one side or a fringe?
Bargain of the day: I ordered one roll of "all purpose galvanised fixing strip/band 10m x 12mm and they mistakenly doubled the order and sent two. Now I have an extra roll ready to ship to some needy part of our impoverished isle or to some other Third World Country (or maybe I just hold onto it for a rainy day). The best £2.99 ever, I take back everything bad I ever said about the tax dodging, shipment delaying, book burning and music killing good people of that strange on-line sales company named after a South American River, Orinoco?
P.S. If you want to buy a phone from Three or upgrade - you can't. The department is shut and you must go on-line but your old order's blocking your account and the phone you want is no longer in stock anyway so you're stuck and they're sending you texts to say your upgrade is done but you can't get a delivery so you sit at home and ... wait. I think they need a new system.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Stone cold holes
The world according to Beachcomber: Generally you search and discover a lot that is of little consequence, no pearls, no pigs, no buried golden treasure creeping through to the surface. Stoop to pick up driftwood, oddly shaped pebbles, sculpted glass and stagger over the detestable plastic and polythene remnants of some not quite passed by or passed out civilisation. Head down like a lonely maniac, a loose metaphor, scavenging on the edge, bitten by unseasonal winds and spray that erupts like a slow vertical blizzard. This must be where everything ends the journey, bogged down and botched up and washed ashore like refugees and so much forgotten trash. The scale of everything is off the scale. We are all guilty of various misdemeanors and if you're looking for something to hang on to yourself with then it's clear to me it's mostly going to be indifference.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
We will hear them then
Quite a nice piece of random mash up Tomfoolery. It makes me feel a little sad for some reason, perhaps it's poignant and full of deep meaning. No doubt this process could be carried out on a thousand variations of their works but this'll do.
In other news here's a friendly donkey we (me + grandkids) encountered over the weekend. I called him Don Quixote and his partner Kong. From the safety of a wooden enclosure we fed them long green grass, rain in buckets and 50 Pence worth of Cornflakes, now we're pals for life. Highly unoriginal. The rest of the weekend was spent beach combing, cooking up storms and vegetating; it's that tough time of year when exams, studies and questionable weather patterns abound.
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