For those abroad, some home thoughts

The bare trees of winter. 

The last two leaves about to hit the lawn,  in some way to start again.

Cat in her natural habitat. 

Confused cat considers some territorial spraying into the void (or at least the well). 

Here comes a rather feeble and ineffective November sun, peely-wally you might say.

Guitar Orphanage

Thinline solid (but 3 ply) Tele body now filled and sanded. Not sure why it was routed out this way with the HB slot at the neck and the SC slot at the bridge.  Anyway an early eBay adoption (by me) for £6 + P&P.

Another sectional Strat body, seems to be in three chunks but pretty much undamaged apart from some clumsy cutting out of the H-S-H slots. Not sure how to finish this one but there are plenty of options.

A busy weekend, too busy for nonsense and the usual irrelevant blogging. Ali's gone out to NYC to work so now on my own, I decided to sand down these guitar bodies out in the clear November air and thereby save energy. I'm considering the name "Guitar Orphanage"(only £2.99 and available on GoDaddy) - where all the lost and broken guitars of the world (maybe that's going too far) can be fixed up and adopted, for a small fee. Each one repaired with reasonable and reliable parts and completed with some unique design feature or other - features TBC.

Post Python

Monty Python: The hyped up pension funding return to live performance and a final cash in is proclaimed. Were they ever that good/funny? They were;  a hysterical early set of mangled programmes that as a teenager I loved - but I suspect that their best material and actual full legacy of comedy genius is safely under lock and key with the BBC. There it will remain because, like a lot 60s and 70s comedy it fails the modern PC acid tests and just cannot be displayed or broadcast in these serious and cautious times. There are too many bizarre references and frankly odd and scary bits that would require explanation and subtitles if they were to make any sense to a 2014 audience. The offence taken would be enormous and the resultant misunderstandings staggering. So they are remembered for some funny but patchy films and the Dead Parrot, Lumberjack and Silly Walks pieces (all borderline themselves), the rest is out there somewhere, (along with Jonny Speight, Milligan and Sellers and Pete and Dud), forever lost.

Happy Trails

Short road home today at 17:00.

Ben Lomond and Loch Lomond this afternoon. A bit chilly.

Happy trails into Glasgow airport.

How long will my use of Google Drop Box last? 374 photos and counting (but not counting the many deletions) in 6 months. There can be no other generation that has taken so many dumb and useless photographs that will forever remain unknown, hidden and generally not worth bothering about. So they remain, hogging their own special piece of disk space on some hot and whirring server in an anonymous building somewhere out there. Meanwhile large advertising budgets from hopeful companies and speculators fund this ongoing nonsense convinced that somehow, what with all the effort expended and the potential shown it will all amount to something substantial one sweet day. The illusion that it already does remains and is a gnawing and persistent irritation to us all. That's the way the hard to handle truth works on your dull subconscious mind.

Dark Glamour

For those who are feeling that really, what with one thing and another and the tedious repetition of human events in general, they just can't be bothered. Well good for you and it's unlikely that you're alone.

I think we may have left the lights on in Fife.

Mental Paths of Resistance

The point of reading good books or watching good movies is to create mental paths of resistance.

The persistence of mobile phone providers is...irritating. Somehow they seem to regard the product or service that you have bought from them as some mysterious divine device and relationship that you should cherish and hold close like a family member. They call you regularly like they were some cosy chatty friend and ask you if the phone is OK as if it was an orphan you'd adopted or a pedigree puppy that's moved in with you for the purpose of some planned breeding programme. "How's it all going?" they say in bright call-centre speech tones. The simple fact is that mobile phones have always been just another piece of pointless techo-tart consumerism. Here in all their new fangled splendour today and then, most likely in twelve months or less superseded by a lighter, smarter, faster more expensive model that is destined to steal your heart as the old model is headed out like Cain into the wilderness of eBay. So whoever you are don't phone; I don't appreciate cold calls from anybody asking how my car/ dishwasher/ microwave/ reading lamp/ socket-set/ pots of yogurt/ underpants/ kiln dried logs/ Mr Sheen/ razor blades or energy saving light bulb is doing. It's all just everyday stuff and I do not worship it or live to serve it nor do I wish to further your company's purposes by automatically purchasing a series of your ill conceived products as they appear in some mindless and never ending procession of development, nor do my family (as far as I know) or the people next door. There, I feel better now...

Daily Ghosts

The close proximity of the daily ghosts: I don't know what you believe, I don't really care. I know what I've seen, what I feel, what I've lost and what satisfaction the resolution of a puzzle can bring. Of course life and it's purpose are the great puzzles that haunt and taunt us. That's OK, we've become used to it but for me I felt the need to explore, to see further, to look deeper, to somehow understand. I wanted to see past my senses, past where they took me and then stood still, over an indescribable, vague but tangible horizon.

I'm seeing them more regularly now, out of the corner of my eye as patches of light or shadow. It can happen at anytime, usually when least expected, maybe in a moving car, there in the rear view mirror, at home over my shoulder, just at the edge of my vision, a hazy shape caught for a split second on the staircase or a subtle movement in the trees. At first I was puzzled wondering why I was seeing these things, these flimsy figures that called voicelessly, echoing from close by to far away in a peculiar silent language. I realised I was becoming aware, a new sense was developing, a grey awareness of some other kind of being. A being from elsewhere but here, studying my soul. Now.  So to you pseudo ghost people on those early morning TV couches with empty mugs and inappropriate clothing. Why when you mean yes do you say “absolutely”? And why do you say it so emphatically, do you think we will believe in you or even believe the silly things you say anymore?

Peebles Daily Photo

So what's been going on the quiet little town of Peebles today? Not much really other than it has a fine river running through it and everything seemed (suspiciously) to be in it's proper place. "Beware the superficial and observe the detail" you may say - but I just couldn't find anything amiss. Anyway it was all very pleasant and we have a super lunch - mine being the Danish open sandwich variety featuring rye and white bread, beetroot, blue cheese, herring, soft boiled eggs and Cheddar cheese.  No doubt there will be a bit more recordable controversy elsewhere tomorrow as I discuss the proximity of our daily ghost visits.

Sympathy for Rob Ford

Week in a day: Maybe not quite a week's worth of thought in a day; but of course there are just too many thoughts, most are tedious, most quickly forgotten, or so we think, some secret and only a few worthy of recording. I'd be fine if those were the ones that I did remember but no, that's on some other clever dick's web pages and it's providing a regular income stream.

Crisps for breakfast: What is the bizarre body requirement or function that cries out for two early morning bags of crisps to be consumed as an early morning breakfast and then leaves a legacy dry and salty mouth for the rest of the morning? I don't know and I don't get it but some Scottish people do suffer from this affliction.

Love and guilt: Everything anybody ever did anywhere is driven by one of these two things. I thought that briefly for a while this morning while I was reflecting. Then my reflecting grew dull and I wasn't so sure. Then I dropped the mirror. I did wonder why young female adults feel the need to drink entire bottles of wine, straight from the bottle before heading out for a night out. The girls in the flimsiest of clothes, tottering on impossible heels like swaying flamingos and giggling and chatting incessantly. Unaware of their curious vulnerability and potential to suffer from hypothermia despite the warm alcohol. Then the boys, tanked up on foreign beer and testosterone, swaggering in a uniform of sportswear, all stocky and muscular and herding in circles like confused buffalo. The two tribes meet at a certain point in the evening having been denying each other's existence and presence for a while, then illicit cigarettes and grunted bravado breaks out and shatters the evening's ice as the shrill and pounding music consumes conversation and...they’re off.

Folie a Deux: There is scientific proof for life after death. There I've said it. Of course it's that kind of abstract, awkward kind of quantum proof that the Daily Mail and the top floor of the BBC will never quite believe in. That does make me question my own conflicted position as I consider the “shared psychosis” theory that all of (uninformed) humanity unknowingly suffers from, all the time. Anyway it centres around the theory of biocentrism, the evidence lying in the idea that the concept of death is a mere figment of our consciousness. So when we die our life becomes like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the (quantum) multi-universe. Life being an ongoing adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix (?) but in the inescapable-life matrix. I'm taking that for conventional eternal life we should read “inescapable life”. That's really a different concept altogether which most western religions seem to have missed out on. Fate, you might say.

Sympathy for Rob Ford – by Charlie Sheen: An almost comical sense of senselessness and high scoring negative axis self awareness leads to... survival I'd say. When the going gets tough, no matter how absurd the protagonist's position is there comes a point where people just stick their heads down, batter on through and survive, coming out the other end as heroes (or more likely anti-heroes). Maybe this is they key feature of modern politics or modern anti-politics and anti-business and anti-religion and so on. It really doesn't matter if you're a complete horse's arse, a criminal or a proven liar. If you choose to be obstinate then the position you occupy is almost impossible to challenge and you can't really be deposed until your wife (or partner) tells you to stand down via pillow talk or some cold and withering public stare. So everybody else can go to hell as far as Rob Ford's concerned and about a quarter of the good folks in Toronto would agree with him. The opera is here.

Dark side of the light

Photo: Abandoned Scotland, thanks.

From the dark side of the light: A dim and stylistic rendition of how things almost are amongst the bare woods, here in the land of battered seas, still rodents and raging cats and trees as the mighty might of an east coast November night descends upon us in all it's rain and air trembling grandeur. Dull and Grim with tinges of burnt toast and fine roasted cheeses.

Fun Sponge

Useful extracts from some Urban Dictionary or other; for no obvious reason I wasn't looking for a term to describe such a person but then I stumbled upon it, suddenly everything made sense:

Fun Sponge (or funsponge if you want it to remain a single word).

"This word is used when a person sucks up all the fun out of a room and makes the atmosphere really boring."

Like the way a normal sponge sucks up liquid.

Maybe, just maybe, if I keep trying I could become one myself or better still avoid that fate altogether. RIP self awareness and hello old age!

Black Cat Moan & Fat Cat Strat

Fat Cat Strat.

Black Cat Moan.

Here in the primal, volcanically  formed basement workshops of Buckingham Palace my willing elf slaves have been busy forming, storming, borrowing and mocking up guitar based ideas that we've then tirelessly rendered into real versions of their long imagined selves. It takes bloody ages I can tell you. I should also say that the industrial relations between the guitar making elves and their human master(s) are a little strained at the moment. This is on account of a) the traditional Christmas rush for product b) the large amounts of cheap red wine that are consumed on the premises c) old and inefficient manufacturing practices that we are trying tirelessly to put right and finally d) material management and inventory issues within the craft process. I'd been hoping that since they'd put the Lottery up to £2 I might have a better chance of a grant so that I could at least pay for some ice-water and seasonal cigarettes for the elves (in lieu of wages) however that plan has caved in on itself in a flurry of sweaty indifference and resentment aimed at our Japanese cousins. All I am left with is the maniacal desire to string irrelevant streams of words together to form long winded sentences before heading out and kicking another lazy elf and then throwing pairs of their tiny but well cobblered shoes onto the fire. Having said all that here are early versions (unbolted or screwed up) from this century's guitar production line of fine musical instruments. As a well meaning clone of Andy Warhol  once said, "never forget what kind of business your business is in."

Heat Fan

This is in colour. 

This is a more tasteful black and white. You choose.

The news is that the Heat Fan actually works, it fans heat...well after a while and once the precious heat has built up in the stove below. We look forward now to surviving numerous ice-ages, reverse global warming and natural disasters whilst the fan provides free vital life support systems to us. Above are the actual photographs taken by me of this fine piece of eBay entrapment and entanglement engineering in action blowing hot air across a cold room powered only by the heat of...some spare and otherwise unusable heat. She spins as smoothly and silently as Isadora Duncan on a good day out in Paris. Easily the best £56 I've spent this week. I look forward to purchasing the nuclear powered version shortly.

The Ocean That Only Begins

Headstocks half finished with unfinished designs but showing what might be described as good and/or  peculiar amounts of industrial potential.

My slow adoption of the marvels of technology knows an alarming amount of bounds it seems. Despite reading quite  few books via the peculiar powers of the Kindle I'm still a bit baffled by it and the separate life it leads in it's own way (by hiding and revealing things about itself and it's numerous hidden treasures in some flickering and magical trickery). Today I found all the mp3 music that Amazon has converted from historical plastic purchases and with a little prodding added them to the bowels of the Kindle's inner workings. I have some new assets squirrelled in there it seems and they are almost pleasantly listenable; particularly so when plugged into a big boomer of a rattling speaker. Whilst on the subject of Kindle usage - please buy my friend Norman Lamont's highly useful book on the ISB. Just the thing for children of the 50s, 60s and so on. A bargain @ £2.49 or thereabouts.

Two acrobats riding on a motorbike

What you see is what you just might get: Today is the birthday of the fellow who came up with the much maligned and no doubt unreliable ink blot tests that were used to trial washing powders in the nineteen twenties in Vienna...or something like that. The fellow was Hermann Rorschach. He died tragically young but his work lives on.

Earlier I had milk and cookies so I feel a bit... meanwhile in a parallel universe I'm waiting on the cat to wake up in order that I may use the newly repaired tumble drier without disturbing her kitty slumber. Soon it will be time to unpack the money saving (14% at least) heat fan, stir the smouldering curry and uncrinkle a few shirts so that they can be worn safely. It must be the weekend anytime soon and I completely forgot to celebrate Joni Mitchell's birthday yesterday, as an indirect result I now carry a new burden of guilt. Here's a cute picture to finish with, the kind of thing you can find on the internet here and there most days.

Simple things

These are the malevolent or even magnificent seven, what your body craves and perhaps really needs when the protein counter is low and the heartbeat is slow and the eyes don't really glow so you know you need a big tasty fish based tea. Note the use of left-centric artificial milk-bomb used to create a sense of space and to provide deep and  inexplicable feelings of well being into the remote viewer's experience.

Octopus

The word for today is of course "octopus" - my grand daughter is learning in along with it's first letter, an O. All quite important. Outside the wind blew and the sea, well the estuary, boiled and spat at us while that fat old sun, predictably shone down and formed long, distorted winter shadows that I find amusing. All was well in the world for this bleak November  afternoon it seemed. My "media, politics and self driven unreasonable boomer type anger at eternal life, time and complacency" subsiding for a moment so I celebrated with fish and chips, peas and salad and wistful imaginary postings that I cannot repeat.

Before the deluge

Out and about bright, cold and early this morning scouting farm shops, dodging postmen, potholes and buying wine, oranges and three kinds of bread rolls. It's amazing how much you can fit into the basket of a bike. Then the rains came and we stayed out of them but travelled through them with the kids, all cosy in our big Jeep jacket. That's what cars are for; green supporters and people who favour all weather cycling don't forget that and don't judge us for it. As it happened - there was so much rainfall today I was able to take some photos of passing fish...

Death & Legend

The steady decline and collapse of the old people as the Reaper's purposes become clear and the pale horizon closes in: I read today in the Independent that some time next week (Thursday) Joni Mitchell turns 70. That's three score and ten, all the life you are biblically entitled to, after that time is borrowed like some exorbitant pay day loan that can be cruelly cashed in at any time; apparently. So all my once bright and incandescent heroes and heroines are reaching the end - though there are some who some hardy made it to a reasonable age at all. Now they are all bundled like antiques and celebrated and referenced by other fresh artists, poets and celebrities, most of whom I've never heard of, the dreaded younger generation that grows all too quickly. So we are left to walk alone in a shadowy world of crusty memory, grey zombie hippies and dried cadaver punks, junk-shop rockers and arthritic artists chasing down squinting directors and producers. Chewing the last few dollars from some decrepit career carcass or other and for the most part still looking cool if tired, the truth hidden by dark glasses. So it's got to be tough for the younger generation, tough to make a unique mark and show some originality to the angry new audiences with all that soft parade of old and raw material still teetering towards death and legend. That's what you get in the end, death and legend.

Two candles etc.

Two candles and a milk bomb flying in close formation.

The ceiling of the King's Theatre Edinburgh by John Byrne.