How to spend your life

The wonderful things that people seem to spend their lives doing: Painting garden gnomes, chit-chatting, piddling, building guitars, sucking on flavourless boilings, learning to cook, collecting handbags, fiddling about, understanding politics, pulling up the blinds, holidaying in hot climates etc. You wonder quite why some folks spend all their lives doing what they do, by that I actually mean doing things that really amount to nothing as opposed to vital things. Don't they have any sense of the value of their own lives, their place in the world and the mark they might leave? Maybe they do but they don't care, maybe they make their mark in secret, maybe they've not given any of this any thought as they are too busy just getting off on the things I'm high-mindedly and incorrectly describing as idling, procrastination or a wasting time. Of course there is no such thing as time. 

Time was invented by belligerent and uncompromising European rulers to try to give workers something to feel guilty about and to measure the long gaps between ritual events and the less predictable seasons in nature. The first stages of time measurement used coloured sand in cola bottles, then they tried candles made from lard wrapped in proper English string. That worked for while but was tricky to use in open boats and on horseback when in hand to hand combat. Then the Swiss got a hold of it and mechanised it into tiny impractical clocks that would have been better covered in rich milk chocolate that, let no one forget, pretty much comes out of a cow's arse (or udder I suppose). They also formed guilds, designed knives and invented sexual perversion (a term no longer understood by anyone). Anyway that same technology inadvertently invented the cult of miniaturisation which then resulted in a number of dodgy sci-fi plots, the rise of China, the industrial revolution and counter revolution and places called Silicon Something (Valley, Glen, Bay, Iceberg, Cess-pit, Tits) and so on. 

Thus we find ourselves stuck with bright blinking little malignant clock faces and glowing numbers plastered across every device we greedily consume and occasionally use. A constant and noisy reminder of our wasteful and fragile humanity, the frantic avoidance of ageing, the countdown to imminent nuclear winters, doomsdays, lottery deadlines, airport delays, polar caps melting and the extinction of all the little grey/brown cuddly (but aggressive to humans) animals and whales.

Dinosaur plays piano

After witnessing  yesterday's local whale tragedy and being burdened down with more Nantucket Sleighride guilt than is acceptable for anybody we decided that today was to be devoted to being creative and edgy. You can't get more edgy than a squeaky dinosaur playing the final note to Happy Birthday on a piano.

Some kind of media event

Some days this stuff just writes itself which certainly helps when you're a bad and clumsy hack like me. Today a Minke whale was washed up on the beach nearby, struggling for life, not quite dead and desperate. Lots of good folks, firefighters, experts, vets and the coastguard tried to save it but to no avail. They let it go about one o'clock and it was unceremoniously removed by lorry a few hours later. Crowds had gathered and press and TV crews arrived to hopefully get a good story, once the whale was dead the story was gone and so were they. We caught the poor thing's final journey...

Anglebox

I saw this old timer Ford Anglia or Anglebox sitting bolt upright in the September sun in Dunfermline today. I never did want one (then) nor would I want one now but it looked good (as old, well maintained and interesting cars tend to) for a few moments. That's it then.

Guitar Shop 2

Partscaster 1, 80s Hohner neck and body, single Fender Atomic Humbucker, volume control,  Fender bridge,  tremolo and hardware, finished in a turquoise blue lacquer, also has a few tiny body dings. 

Partscaster 2, no known history, blank ash body finished in natural teak oil, Fender style neck with dolphin motif at the 12th fret, single G116 14k Alinco V Humbucker with coil tap, tone and volume/tone controls that  allow a wide range of clear sounds, Fender tremolo bridge and hardware. No marks or vices.

Partscaster 3, gloss black unknown copy body (jack socket on base, non-standard shape), hardtail, standard heavy pickups and Fender neck. Glossy black finish with a few minor dings but clean as a whistle otherwise Nice tone all round. 

Partscaster 4, 90s Korean Squier sunburst (very heavy, full size) body and pickups, hardtail,  overhauled with a new maple neck. Superbly playable guitar.

Ps OA.

Guitar Shop 1

OK, so it's a bit shaky and slightly out of time but how else do you showcase four guitars in six seconds?  Many thanks to the executive producer, director, editor, sound recordist and set designer.

Walking amongst the dead

We were out and about unusually early this morning, no family to cook for and the weather too poor for cycling so we hoofed it out to the old Crombie Church ruins. The promise of a bacon roll once we got home kept us going. Here the long forgotten dead of this corner of Fife are overgrown and at peace, apart from the noise of the nearby tree surgery taking place. The last burial looks to have been well over a hundred years ago and the oldest headstones go back to the mid eighteenth century, many are weathered and blurred beyond any recognition. For a dead place it's alive with brambles and wildlife and surprisingly little evidence of vandalism. File under some more evidence of our Abandoned Scotland.

The last days of August

August and summer are burning out as the strong west winds blow more strange cloud shapes all across the country far above our heads.  The sky is a watchable spectacle that beats the BBC or iPlayer. It's been a good, stretched out and tiring season but one where little if any peace has been found. Still today we're (in the UK) not yet at war with Syria, meanwhile Twitter lunatics are quoting verses from Isaiah 17 all about the wanton destruction of Damascus and the Second Coming while the USA finds itself on the same side as Al Qaeda. In many influential minds the war against terror becomes another battle scarred memory that just proves how little our leaders ever learn from recent history. Tony Blair certainly poisoned the well of public trust for this generation.

I'm full of Chinese food and toothpaste and I've built four guitars and fixed the kitchen drawer (over quite a few weeks). Never let it be said that I'm siting around wasting time. Tomorrow it's Dundee and ... cake.

The flying, fickle finger of fate

The flying, fickle finger of fate recently seen over Fort William.

Despite wandering the Earth for nearly sixty years in a haphazard fashion it's never occurred to me until today that my name was made up of four fairly common nouns. I know it's not important really but in the grim tedium of random grimly tedious coffee break thoughts it seems significant if meaningless.

John - Colloquial noun for toilet, the willing client of a prostitute or an unnamed or unidentified body (dead) in the USA.

Wood - Useful construction and combustible material found inside trees. In fact trees are made of wood mostly, as far as I know. Also the collective noun for a small clump of trees.

Bar - Tavern or drinking den/shop. Also a length of iron or a handy chunk of soap, chocolate or toffee.

Clay - Useful, malleable  construction material used in bricks, china and ceramics once cured or fired in a kiln. Also found in raw form somewhere not so deep in the soil or in river beds, holds water  well therefore non-porous.

There you have it, the fickle finger from the hand of God points; how many other troubled four nouners are there out there?

Social Attitude Test

I undertook a Social Attitude Test, here's my scores and overall result:

Political Values

Radicalism 85.75
Socialism     56.25
Tenderness  28.125

"These scores indicate that you are a tough-minded progressive; this is the political profile one might associate with a liberated atheist. It appears that you are cynical towards religion, and have a suspicious and unsympathetic attitude towards humanity in general.

Your attitudes towards economics appear neither committedly capitalist nor socialist, and combined with your social attitudes this creates the picture of someone who would generally be described as a political centrist.

To round out the picture you appear to be, political preference aside, an idealist with several strong opinions.

This concludes our analysis; we hope you found your results accurate, useful, and interesting.

Unlike many other political tests found on the Internet which base themselves on untested (and usually ideologically motivated) ideas, this inventory is adapted from Hans Eysenck's own political inventory which was developed after extensive empirical investigations in the 20th Century."

A little piece on Islam

These happy, shiny but mostly stern faced (and glittered, glossed, nipped, and tucked) people's particular interpretation of Islam discourages Darwinism (as many religions do), Atheism (as most religions do) and Communism (well of course you’re going to say that- we can’t have the working class cutting into your Botox money!) The only thing (?) that really seems off is when they claim they’re against something called materialism. Hmm....The clip is stolen from the Dangerous Minds site so don't blame me. Anyway what a warm and attractive little cult Islam seems to be, who could resist this sincere message?

The trouble with evolution

After another small scale big breakfast I reviewed the debris, mostly dishes, pans and cutlery ready for a ravenous dishwasher (as above). The food, apart from a few crumbs was long gone. The rest of the day has been spent in buying cakes and removing stubborn nails from pallets and carefully chopping up the remains for fire wood. No serious injuries were sustained in the process but as usual it was a close call. For the next part of the afternoon I drank small amounts of beer and wine and became mesmerised by the movements of various bees flying in loose formations  across the sun kissed garden.  I was trying to figure out what they were doing but I failed to grasp their complex and somewhat stupid flight patterns, they need a bit coaching in garden navigation it seems. You have to wonder quite what is they are up to and if they are indeed bees or some other kind of new bee impersonating insect. That's the trouble with evolution and it's various evolving theories. I'm thinking this is because the media and popular culture are forever telling us that bees are now extinct or dying away but are they really?  And if they are have they all now been replaced by near exact non-bee replicas that will eventually be more successful?

Tough Muggles

Family participation in the 2013 Tough Mudder found me in a damp Dalkeith field at 10am this morning, I had some misgivings. £10 to spectate (and opt out and declare all sorts of things in the process) and £10 to park, this wasn't going to work for me. How wrong I was. This was a perfect rock and roll event, it was like the jungles of Vietnam, it was funky and mad, it was tough...and I was only spectating. Going through the first gate, the music on the PA was "Crossroads" by Cream, live, my foot started to tap and blood would surely flow. These guys know what they are doing and the day's soundtrack was Pixies, Rage Against the Machine, Led Zep, Metallica, The Stooges and so on...beer and burgers and good weather and organisation. It all comes at a price but it was worth it. Home by 4 via Krispy Kreme. A grand day out.

Earlier in the week...

It was rather warm after a while in that monkey suit, then the zip stuck.

More rural pyromania

Log store now filled with an extensive selection of bespoke hardwood logs fresh from the Amazonian Rainforest.  No rare creatures or restless natives were injured in the whole process I am told. The logs will be useful for our many seasonal ceremonial celebrations and occasional traditional winter witch burnings. 

As ever the cats welcome us home warmly from last night's Norman Lamont/Invisible Helpers gig. Clearly they are pleased to see us return safely to the house and are eager to share a late Monday evening supper.

After the fire

This is what you are left with when three full wheelie bins spontaneously combust a mile or so down a quiet country lane in rural Fifeshire.

Images from a weekend

B&W ropes and Champagne.

Meg the blackest of black cats throws a mean shape. 

Best mug and coffee of the weekend. 

When there's no room service this helps pass the time. 

Ancient masterwork from an ancient master (rediscovered). 

Allegedly and bunk bed in which my hero Shackleton allegedly slept, presumably quite badly. The typewriter seems to be an unrelated artefact.

Weekends keep coming as regular as country buses and then are spent like hot pound coins in a hungry slot machine, gone up in smoke before you or anyone else notices. Life is a moving feast made up of moving feasts but I still have the peeling sunburn and the heat spot scars with which to remember it all.

Now that I've put six strings on it and tightened the various dirty headed screws, the guitar featured in the previous entry is turning out to be a proper monster. The Fender Atomic Humbucker pickup is performing even better than I'd expected, not sure where to go next with this one.

Coil tap wiring

For various reasons I seemed to find wiring a single pick up to a coil tap pot pretty difficult, mainly due to the numerous conflicting bits of advice, designs, styles and options that there are in this guitar shaped universe. The web with it's forums and videos and tales of the unexpected can be crazy, somebody should edit and grade the avalanche of stuff out there, it's badly needing done, people's heads are spinning free from their shoulders. Then again it may all happen one day when all the big smoking servers in the cloud crack open and die like elephants under alien ray gun attack, it's a distinct possibility. So having sifted through dross and debris and inspiration I've settled for a simple enough, multiple earth option that looks neat (now that I've remastered the lost art of soldering without burning any useful fingers or the carpet), so now I can relax. Lots of other bits have been screwed together also.

Necks please

Tonight will be a long day's journey into ironing shirts via a slightly toasted smoke alarm diversion and marathon towel folding exercises. As I speak I'm typing and my mouth is moving silently with the rhythm of the words. It's all a little disturbing but at least Scotland are one up and the milk thumper is one down.  The good news is that the two mighty shredder Partscaster Atomics are coming along nicely, all I need to do now (and it's quite a lot actually) involves wires, measuring, lining up and screwing lots of screws into places to fix things firmly and of course applying the nail varnish.

Move over darling

Ode to a plastic cow (Atom Heart Mother tribute):

With your plastic udders and plastic ass,

Above the septic tanks on sewage fed grass,

I doubted your existence but had to ask,

Were you sent  from Switzerland for this task?

Because for a real cow you'll never pass,

You're not even plastic, just cheap fibreglass.

This real plastic/fibreglass cow can be seen in an imaginary field at Loch Leven's Larder any day from 0930 - 1730, weather permitting. Advance booking is not always necessary.