Bannockburn B&B

Not the actual mural.

In order to avoid any risky drunk driving or excessive taxi charges we stayed out on Saturday in an SQ B&B, about 30 miles from the Bannockburn triumph that the SNP are so keen for us to recall. There we found that our over familiar hosts  had decided to deck out the dining room as a shrine to 1314 and the famous battle. A huge mural of the event had been painted on the wall by an art student (Primary 6 level at least) some years before, the rest of the room was festooned with tartan, flags, swords and various Braveheart motifs. It was an embarrassing and uncomfortable venue for breakfast there amongst the badly drawn bloody and severed limbs, snorting horses and brave but anatomically challenged archers and foot soldiers. Any guest from South of Berwick upon Tweed would no doubt feel a little threatened by the clumsy and bloody scenes and might wonder exactly what had been boiled into the haggis and tattie scone ensemble being served up. Next time it's back to a safe but bland chain;  Best Western, Dakota etc. etc.

Daily Dream Kitchen Photo

The elegant if understated swoosh of the wood and granite doubled up experience is clear to see. Ignore if you will the potential porous natures of the materials and the possibility of unplanned staining and the colour scheme (oh yes), for this is high art and high technology married into some awesome design consequence. While we're at it we can't wait to tell you about the unique blown glass shatterproof splash back experience.

Hydrophobia

The cloaked and secret menace of the H20, ready salted, seaweed and sewage cocktail that at any given moment may engulf and indulge itself upon us and over us. We live in quiet, stoical fear borne from bitter experience but confident that come the day that the great and vengeful flood arises our super dog "Lassie" will waken us from our stubborn sleep with a gentle lick on the cheek (?) in good time before the Hellish torrent washes upon us all and destroys everything in it's merciless and dirty path. (At that point we head for the hills etc. led by that oh so smart yapping dog). The plan has a few flaws in it but we're working on them.

Low tide high tide

Calm and normal last Sunday.

Big storms come and go, that's just weather types for you. Today the weather and the tides combined and we saw a freaky high tide come and thankfully go. Forceful and unrepentant, like Biblical revenge. No one and no nearby property was engulfed, phew! Living by the shoreline you tend to notice these things and become increasingly wary. Staying dry is also useful. So said the Forth wise man.

Raw Materials

When I first saw these trees all lonely and entwined together earlier today, I had some really smart thoughts going on in my head. Mental pictures, concepts and all sorts of good cosmic stuff that made perfect sense to me at the time. Sadly I have now forgotten them completely, like they were just dumb birds stopping off on some random roof somewhere, but the trees are still in the same place so I  guess that's all OK. Typical.

Excuse for a film

Tate Modern: Summery summary detail.

Maybe I just want to watch the waves, or make a film that's just an excuse for something, or wear sunglasses like Jesus would or send everybody an acoustic Christmas card - in digital format.  Keep warm with winter soup and find ingenious ways to maintain the freshness of bread and the heat of salty whisky from romantic sounding islands decked in summer's best green. All pyscho-babble and turnups, grinning selfies and the Discovery Channel set on pause, that's entertainment.

Recording makes you sweat. You need an idea, you need ideas. Then they get built up and the timing has to work and the balance and the mix and the faith. The faith in your idea or at least the faith that says your idea may somehow come to something having followed due process, pain and endless accidental twiddling. During this time you pick up and put down musical instruments a lot and check the tuning and trip up on cables and forget quite how those various unfamiliar devices might do things. But it works, it all works eventually.

The rest is history

The books that I started to read in the Summer I shall finish in the Winter.

The guitars that I started building in 2013 I'll complete in 2014.

The music that I started to record in December I'll sort out...soon.

The soup that I made today is made today.

The phone that I switched off five minutes ago is back on now.

The laundry that I started is underway.

The TV show that I recorded is still somewhere on the Sky Box.

The journey that I began in 1955 is still going on.

The doodle that I scribbled is lost, someplace.

The idea I had in August is kind of forming up.

The photo that I took a few minutes ago is at the top.

The cat that I fed has run off outside to play.

The dessert I didn't eat is in the fridge...waiting.

The other cat that I annoyed is asleep.

The new T Shirt I received is on my back.

The uploads I attempted to upload are stuck.

The Christmas shopping is progressing, in a virtual sense.

The rest is history.

A huge and incredible bag of PB M&Ms.

The Puzzles of Caravaggio

Caravaggio's woman illustrates the strange arcs, cycles, angles and influences that govern our everyday moods, actions, outputs and creativity to a young disciple. We are all travellers on some vast cosmic highway but none of us can see the route or the destination, we don't even know quite where we came from. As a result there are quite a few collisions and there is much confusion, general uncertainty, friction, discomfort and unhappiness; and that's how it is but when it's good it's fantastic, deal with it. Look deep within the glass - the answer sits in there.

Cereal and Fruit

It could be mistaken for a vat of porridge, pale muesli, the surface of Mars or the Gobi Desert in detail - none of that thought, it's the detailed surface of  a skip loaded with rock solid concrete. A problem for somebody - the guy who owns the skip mainly.

Apricots, plums, tomatos, lemons, limes and an orange reflected in a friendly toaster. I probably wont eat any of these. I am stuck fast in an apple and banana routine from which I cannot escape. These pleasures will surely pass me by.

Well Read

I trudged through "Scotland's Future" or maybe waded or possibly crawled, I'm not sure. It'll never be up there with Scotland's favourite literary works however, that according to the 8000 who voted for it is Trainspotting and it is the best thing written in fifty years - no mention of the Oor Wullie Annuals or the Scottish League Review 84/85.  Most people just see the chase sequence and hear Iggy and the Stooges I reckon - we Scots are easily led. So Scotland's Future is a summary of the 650 page turner that most voters will fail miserably to read, I'm not sure many will ever read the 45 pages in the summery. I really wanted it to be good, to be a clarion call for the cause (even if it seems daft) but all we get is a wish list, a set of voters bribes and nothing that couldn't form the average Euro party's manifesto anywhere. So we're promised (and these are repeated many times) changes over bedroom tax, childcare, an efficient tax system (?), reduced energy bills and no nukes in our wind farmed waters. This mantra is repeated on every third page just in case you miss it. There's no economic detail, proper numbers or an actual strategic plan. How it'll all be paid for and quite why the SNP assumes that the EEC, NATO and Westminster will happily agree to our demands is unclear, perhaps we'll kidnap the Queen or something, I may have missed that bit. It's a route map but without a route or map. If you need another view check out this, good old Robert McNeil seldom misses.

Quite Scary

This is quite scary.

So is this.

Yes I did print out a copy, I'm a serious person underneath it all. I am going to read this and try my best to understand it. For that to work however I will have to lose the vivid and persistent mental image of a fat and smug little Hobbit called Alex Salmond trying to launch a big document that tells how Hobbiton and the Shire should pull up the drawbridge on the old Brandywine River and remain quite independent from all those strange men, elves, dwarfs, orcs and wizards across the borders who so spoil the peaceful place that the Shire should really be. Those low and ugly foreigners with their fancy ideas, banks, golf courses, wars and messing about; it's more than any well mannered and peace loving Hobbit can take. 

The rest of Middle Earth had better listen and take themselves off on a great flying feck because Alex and all the other  Hobbits (he says) just want to live well from the income of their legacy fossil fuels buried deep in the seabed whilst trying hard (but without the use of any wizards, just oil company's money) to generate other forms of alternative  and odd energy from the mystical powers of wind and waves and the great denizens of the deep. We'll use this to make heaps of black puddings to sell to the Chinese, there will be curried chicken for the locals  and surplus whisky and wooly jumpers we can flog to the Indians and Canada. That's about it apart from the genetically engineered tartan bagpipes and the Dundee video games - and there will be no fecking shipbuilding.

Alex is now smoking his clay pipe on this wooden rocking chair, smiling and pondering quite what socialism might mean and if any of his fellow Hobbits are infected with this terrible disease, if so they'll pay. They will be punished one day, their bus passes, student fees and community charge assistance will get sorted out and abolished. Quietly he puffs and puffs and allows his saltire blue Tory smoke to blow serenely out of his arse to the accompaniment of his own cackling voice. Somewhere in the distance a piano accordion is playing an old lament via BBC Radio Scotland. "You've never had it, whatever it was," says the announcer.

Lifestyle Choices

How does this work out then? Nigella has allegedly been off her face on daily cocaine workouts for ten years and squandered a shed load of cash bribing her assistants to keep it all quiet. During this period she's married and left a hard nosed multi-millionaire, become a world famous household name as a guru for fine if somewhat self indulgent cookery and rich foods, chain smoked fags and drunk a whole lot of full bodied red wine...and she's 54 or so and still looks...Hmm.

If ever it happens I'll consider eating my virtual hat: When science fiction writers and futurologists try tell you tales of doom and gloom all about that awful day when evil robots will completely take over the world and subjugate mankind to some terrible technological revenge just point out this nice little image to them.

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.