58

Unspectacular but honest images from my 58th birthday weekend. The empty bottles are a natural result of a busy and entertaining family gathering and the taking of copious amounts of good food and wine; all birthday essentials. The guitar picks are made up from a handy plectrum making tool gift, I need never purchase or steal another plectrum again. All I do is form them up from any discarded plastic item or bank card and away I go. After a few glasses of Monday evening wine I'm now reflecting on my many fine presents, my friends and family  and my general undeserved state of happiness and fifty eight years of chronic and ongoing wellbeing.  This'll and that'll do me.

Pyromania begins

By the light of the magical moon, hence the poor quality. You need a steady hand and the force needs to be with you...I'm learning fast.

When you closed your eyes..

...tight when you were small you sometimes got this kind of thing popping up and onto the insides of your eyes. The dilemma  was always the same; do you keep your eyes closed and go with it, where ever it may take you, or do you open your eyes and concentrate again on that half read Enid Blyton book or go downstairs and watch Coronation Street on a 405 line, fuzzy black and white TV?  Those of us who stayed in the zone of the demon king, even for a short while were, as a result better placed for what our teenage years would lead us into. Satan rewards his own quite naturally. Those who went downstairs to watch the goggle box are...still watching it (in a fairly non-selective and disinterested way) and reading pulp fiction or glossy mags. So is it true or just another unfunded piece of blogging theory and pop culture muck spreading?  Of course it is neither thing. It's the product of an ambidextrous mind that's just had too much oily fish and milk bombs.

Accomplished Melancholia

"I'm so sorry but I've actually no clear idea what you might be talking about. Can you run that concept past me once again please?"

I vow to thee my chutney

Taking a food based perspective on today I suffered / enjoyed some odd things; Crunchie Nut Corn Flakes (ugh!), the mandatory "eat me I'm out of date" chocolates, a farm cafe haggis and cheese toastie with fresh coffee, pizza and two kinds of chutney (this really does work so don't try holding back), Halloween Eyeballs and a few glasses of red wine. Right now the red wine is easily the most powerful and significant influence on my day.

It could be New England in the Fall as the road goes ever on; after a morning spent idly observing animals on a Stirling farm we then retired to the home-base to warmly watch "The Hobbit" DVD and eat more random foods as the early winter rains descended. Now I'm tuckered out but terminally guilty over mistakenly locking a poor cat in the garage.

Safe as a Milk Bomb

A cute cat surveys his boudoir  domain and a blank canvas awaits the maniacal inspirational designs of a maniac; all portrayed in strangely sympathetic low tones.

The pain of repetition

Everything is a repeat of something else because as King Solomon famously said at least twice "there is nothing new under the sun", well not this current simple bi-polar solar system of ours anyway. So the tedious repetition of mistakes and recipes carries on beyond the vanishing point of lazy thoughts only to disappear over some familiar and grim horizon and onto the web. How many times must I mention the milk bomb before it gains the universal recognition it surely deserves? It's a moment of continual head banging agony against an unforgiving wall and without some tuneful heavy metal melody set in there to accompany the self deprecating pain. I'm left alone, vacant  and puzzled like some disappointed customer, indeed a quizzical customer of Build a Bear trying to offer up honest feedback about bear building onto their very teddy bearish website only to find that he can't quite  find the feedback page and so cannot every lay claim to the tantalising prospect of a $1000 reward and there's only five days left to make a claim before the valid claim period runs out. Time will crawl and then time will tell.

Random universal change

Hundreds of early morning geese suffering from navigation type issues. 

Today I spent most of the morning instigating a small programme of universal change. By that I mean rearranging stones on the beach; moving them from the beach to the water, or somewhere below the high water mark. Rearranging this universe, even in small ways, skimming stones, picking up driftwood or kicking sand should be encouraged and funded. Perhaps the Government or the Lottery or Arts Scotland will give us some money to support it, then we can start up a web-site, hold meetings and conferences, become a pressure group and have a full time adim officer  and shit like that. Anyway my grandchildren and I have already made a start and I'm sure there are a few others out there already hard at it. Change Scotland: not by politics, religion or cultural reform but by moving things randomly when nobody is looking. I also drove there and back again to Aberdeen sound tracked by the mighty Dweezil Zappa, it made me wonder if, following my untimely demise (?) any of my kids would form a band and tour mine and Ali's  music...hmm.

The way they were

From that now foreign, lost and alien Bizzaro Planet world known as the 1970s I give you Frank Zappa + cat + parents in a purple room and Grace Slick + baby China (upside down but unaffected) and her mum.  Be careful how you choose your heroes.

White Audi

After many thousands of miles of European motoring I've come to the conclusion that the most threatening and potentially dangerous car to come across grinning at you via the rear view mirror is the gleaming white Audi. The exact model seems to be of little significance, anything from an A1 to an A6 has to be considered as suspect and treated with caution. It does make me wonder if the buyers and drivers of white Audis are a "type", maybe crazy people you'd probably rather not know; psychopaths, lunatics, football players, members of the Illuminati, the Golden Dawn or UKIP, who knows. Just watch out on the road, there's a lot of them about.

Simpsons v Breaking Bad

Of course it had to happen, such is the grip of the maelstrom of the magnetism of the marvel of the drug induced evil power of the media, religion, art, drama, dharma, the web and sub-popular culture of whatever it is that the genre is. More here.

Another night@the Voodoo Rooms

A good if poignant time was had by all last night in Edinburgh's Voodoo Rooms raising cash for the Maggie's Charity and remembering the growling song-smith that was/is Fraser Drummond. Fraser's music and lifestyle of wisdom and banter lives on with his many friends and family and it was good just to celebrate this with music, songs and chatter - thing's Fraser loved. The music was mainly supplied by Lisa Rigby, Norman Lamont and the Invisible Helpers, Ms Fi and the Lost Head Band and Sam Barber and the Outcasts; all marvellous in their own way. The event was glued together by Jim Igoe and Scott Renton and cemented by the musical skills of John Farrell and the singing of Neil Drummond. Pics by Dave Reilly of course.

Anyone would think they'd never won a raffle prize before.

Cultural Reference Points

"And the winner of the best Someone Else's 60th Birthday Party Fancy Dress Party Costume is Ali Graham!"

So here we are, somewhere at sea, adrift in a blank ocean of grey, foamy and pounding waters, sailing and searching for some cultural reference points that we might discover, adopt and then use to make rough sense and give meaning of our lives. So what enthralling gifts are out there for us to use? Look no further than Game of Thrones, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, the Simpson's and the Borgias - there are all your answers. Their complex narratives, carved out characters, humour, shocking plot twists and the self imposed personification we gratuitously apply allows us to temporarily function and even thrive as we stumble blind and damp from one identity crisis to the next. Who needs a social life, designer drugs and their cruel psychedelic worlds and perceptual confusion when you have Sky+, a full Entertainment Package and hot batteries in your remote? A big comfy couch, a box of red wine, a log fire  and some tray bake also helps. Just make sure you're suitably comatosed when the first few power blackouts occur, the state of emergency is declared and the black start restart package stutters and fails altogether. You'll be fine until the logs and alcohol run out and the vigilantes start pounding on your front door.

Random Art

Welcome to the world of the absurd and the meaningless, the profound and the stripped down guitar body. Anyway I liked the word "GLASS" (in a John Lewis style font) applied to bleached driftwood set into the stones and the weeds. If anybody is remotely interested in what we've been doing over the weekend here's a link http://crispycat-recordings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/bad-claws-of-small-beast-who-will.html

Interesting Images from Today

After some pre-breakfast tinkering it was time to visit Dobbies for a quick breakfast (two fried eggs formed the breakfast base) watching other oldish people eat breakfast amid the pre-Christmas hysteria. Then we put up the tent and the hanging baskets. The kitchen emporium was just closing and for a short time we queried the sanitary arrangements of the white caravan travellers in their secret location. Then the postman delivered a brace of letters from the SNP as they tried to put their message about their denial of Grangemouth's closure out there somewhere. Then the tale of the cat, the fox and the dog was told. This was followed by a huge Tesco drop of huge beer and soon everything just seemed to fit nicely into the multiple refrigerators - so we sliced up the pizza. Just about then Dunfermline were soundly beaten at least 4 - 0 so I commiserated with myself by peeling a pile of stray potatoes as the asparagus looked on. In no time at all I was watching a film about the blues and jamming along to those rock gods aka Chicken Shack, it's been that kind of day. So goodnight to you all.

Strange Fruit

So is it a Quince that has mutated into a mutant, a sort of XQuince or is it the exotic sounding Asian Pear? The fruit picking jury is out (mostly raking up leaves) on this one and the web, gardening experts and various text books have failed us in the forensic identification process. A fervent pickler could probably pickle them and in the dead of night smuggle them into Big Macs as act of food based terrorism and dietary subversion, that might be useful to the party and the cause. Anyway as surely as eggs are eggs I will go to my grave not knowing the answer to this, the thought of that doesn't really terrify me as I'm pretty sure I'll go to my grave via the good services of the Coop not knowing a shed load of other things. Anyway it's all mildly irritating and a little puzzling; if only they tasted like chicken (as do chickens) - but few fruits do.

This may well have tasted a bit like chicken at one time...

Star Wars - the Weapons

And so it was I learned (and it was no real surprise) that I knew next to nothing about Star Wars weaponry. A poor five out of ten in the Guardian on-line quiz confirmed what I already had realised and accepted deep inside a long time ago; I'm not really much of a geek, more of a movie buffoon. I don't know my Vibro-Ax from my DC-15 Blaster. The quiz presented me with these puzzling names and terms and I just couldn't get it. I thought I was a kind of absent, interested but vague fan, but still a fan. It turns out I'm a true Star Wars dummy. What next then? I'm certainly a food and wine ignoramus, in the heat of such a battle the scores in any test or taste or tempting tongue torture would be...low. Then there's Scottish Football or The Marx Brothers or the greats of jazz, bald blues legends or the forgotten heroes of seventies progressive rock. No chance. I could ramp it up to Air-fix kit base plastic colours ('65 to '69) or long lost chocolate bars, maybe the life and times of Spiderman (up until Steve Ditko left Marvel) or vehicles owned by Keith Richards or the history of the Ford Cougar. I'm sure I'd start pretty well and then, as is the custom, crash and burn violently. Where does all that information go and why can't it settle and just allow itself to be retrieved? Does it all just turn into steam like an old stallion's warm piss on a frosty day? My world knowledge amounts to a bland mix of hard non-scientific facts, trivia, jaundiced and middle aged opinion and “concreted in” prejudices. However I'll console myself with one heart warming thought; I did get about 10 questions right during University Challenge last night.

Meanwhile it turns out that the best country to grow old in is Sweden, then quite predictably Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and of course Canada. The UK comes thirteenth...best not to ask about Afganistan and Tanzania.

Coconut Dance

Cake weekend

The whole weekend was incredibly warm and busy. There were long drives to and fro, grandchildren to feed, football to watch, the days of the "Cycling Kings of Dirt", the zombie graveyard, the cats and the trampolines, the Vines, more Vines, sunshine and tray bakes, swimming and blubbing, saunas and steams, French toast, traffic jams, Lego, universities to visit, chicken nuggets and swans on the fore shore, the Agents of Shield, the Forth Bridge, furniture inspired by Tim Burton, rhubarb crumble and custard, Asian Pears and cakes, many kinds of cake.

Express lane

A helpful little sticker. 

The giant spiders of Stratford Upon Avon. 

The Avon 

Ticket stub art.

Some unpleasant chaos was experienced by many travelling folks today at that lively house of fun aka Birmingham Airport. Apparently FlyBe has reduced  their check in staff here by four souls and a form of human chaos seemed to ensue shortly thereafter. This event was also coupled up with the failure of those naughty machines that you try to check in with (via passports and numbers) and end up swearing at as they stubbornly refuse to give you a boarding pass. Long lines were formed...After some standing in line and people shouting and me running across the airport and puffing and pushing my way through security I made it to my flight with not a lot of time to spare. My only comfort was the tiny plain sticker added to my handmade boarding pass, "Express Lane" it mischievously whispered. I never did find that lane.