Universaily Challenged

When Cambridge met Oxford there was a predictable outcome, one of them would win and then go on to run the country via the offices of some dark and secret sect like the Roman Catholic Church. Anyway as an innocent spectator and with a few lucky breaks I reckon I'd score about 50 points but lose 20 by interrupting with wild and incorrect guesses. That of course assumes I'd get to my buzzer before the young  chap with the plumber's mate glasses and slogan T shirt, the pretty posh girl with the short hair and the grey and mature student who looks a bit like Vic Reeves. 

Habitual watching of this show makes it so easy to kid yourself that somehow your ageing brain  coupled with a lifetime of media trivia hoovering and despite a lack of true academic prowess might just get  a seat on the bench or even a shot in the team. Perhaps it could come about if one member had a really bad hangover, lost their sense of decorum or suffered a highly inflamed bout of acne, maybe then my name would be drawn out of the sweaty woolly student hat. It's a pipe dream (is that an expression you can use these days and "by the way," says the bold and clever cos' I've all the answers Jeremy, "who first coined the phrase?" "Was it C S Lewis, Rudyard Kipling or Charles Dickens?". BUZZ. "Might it have been Sherlock Holmes?". "You stupid man, he's a fictional character..."), yes it surely is. 

Editors note: Way too much TV talk this week. Next series will see us back to music, ranting about politicians, religious intolerance, Airfix models, home improvements and real life. I promise.

Unbalanced week?

I can't help but wonder how Monday night TV is suddenly so good, so spectacular ... well not quite but amusing and engaging anyway, compared to the rest of the week's dull output. Perhaps it's just that my uncultured tastes and primitive needs that have somehow slipped into the random scheduling algorithm in some accidental piece of televisual planning. Maybe I just like crap TV and everything else for the other six weeknights in brilliant and beyond my grasp and comprehension. I suppose it'll never happen again. Me and and my perfect rapport with a flat screen and SKY box. It's over but it burned brightly for a short time. The moment has come and gone and now orbits the outer reaches of the universe, brought to you oh undiscerning one by the services provided by red wine, Southern Comfort, a cheeky and tepid Stella and small bits of ex-Xmas chocolate. So what was it all about? Game of Thrones, University Challenge, back to back Modern Family and Rev. As good as it ever gets in these dark days.

Next

Overhead spies from China.

A fine, organised mess of broken tiles.

Watching the latest episode of BBC's "The Trip" set in Tuscany provided me with an unhealthy craving for pasta, garlic, red wine and reasonably priced organic steak mince saturated in oil and peppers. Any cheap and nasty, slimy and creamy pasta would do, so that's just what I had, topped with cheese. I should've been thinking high level thoughts about Scotland's economic future, the significance of the film "Gravity" and how best to smash the Tories or at least offer a credible level of resistance. The pasta won however and, strangely it went well accompanied by warm Stella Artois, a comfy seat and the early evening springtime sun sneaking in through the downstairs windows. Next...GoT.

Candles in the bin

Following from last month's dead mouse in the boiler situation I've slowly become addicted to scented candles, tea lights and that sort of thing. I've not eating them or licking them yet, just mildly inhaling and absorbing the healing properties of those exotic slow burning fragrances. I'm not sure if there is a further stage to this situation, some worse and blindly destructive path on to certain ruin. Perhaps the urges for candle highs will all die back or perhaps I'll end up chopping them up to add to coffee or stir fried food or I'll just get on and chomp into their highly coloured and attractive smooth waxy centres. Then I'll mourn with appropriate reverence as their burnt out bodies are cast into the oblivion of the waste bin. 

Today at Dalgety Bay's almost human friendly ASDA store  I bought some lovely Wild Blueberry & Tame Crayfish Essence, Amazon Hummingbird & West Lothian Cannabis and Absinthe &  Italian Dark Chocolate varieties. Yummy.

Anyway, moving beyond mucky candles etc. and in anticipation of the return of Game of Thrones for whatever new season it is  and despite the fact that I abhor violence here's some pics of that mean little King Joffery getting his comeuppance. It won't do any good anyway, they are all doomed and corporal punishment doesn't ever work.

Les Rois Maudits

Now that the hype for the new series of Game of Thrones is at it's height out comes the (not quite) shocking revelation that it owes a lot of it's plotting and content to the French historical novels "The Accursed Kings" by Druon. I've never read the books but I recall the 70s TV adaptation, all gore, marvellous French overacting and lengthy and quick subtitles. Main characters died in each episode and back stabbing treachery and treason were the normal ways of getting things done. It was compulsive viewing and based on credible, proven historical fact. As a subtitle obsessive it was a welcome break from Dusty Bin or whatever crap there was on regular Saturday night TV back then. It was shown on the still arty channel, BBC2 probably around 1978, quite why it was delayed until then I'm not sure having been made in 1972. I think I saw it in black and white but most of my 70s memories are black and white anyway and up until now I had completely forgotten about it. Some pretty sketchy Wiki info here. It get 8/10 at IMDb so my mind can't be playing too many tricks so it remains a potential guilty pleasure for the future via the services of YouTube.

This is from the 2005 version I think.

Everything makes sense

Pop Philosophy - so everything makes sense in retrospect, even if there is no apparent reason for the event or it’s consequences. The context, seen from a distance via the passage of time renders everything as “inevitable”. That doesn’t mean we don’t have choice or control it just means that “things will happen and will continue to happen”. One after another but more often like a piano falling down a flight of stairs followed by the loose sheets of music and finally the unlucky pianist. What we think we might do to influence events and to try to exert control is never as powerful or effective as we thought. Our lives run on, fuelled with an often  pleasant, occasionally nasty and disarming form of universal chaos that maps our path. People say “live in the moment” but I’ve always found that impossible, in fact incomprehensible. You really need to live just on the edge of the future but looking back for the learning that comes for distance and experience but looking forward into the treasure trove of jumble that awaits just across the threshold. That particular stance may require a level of mindful contortionism to work well and there can be trip hazards. If I knew anymore I’d tell you but then again who ever listens?

Actual Fairy people filmed in Dalgety Bay, not quite caught in their moment.

Meanwhile in the background a million books are downloaded onto Kindles and left unread, a billion songs are downloaded onto tablets and MP3 players and lost in a great heaving mass of shuffle options and box sets of DVDs and well meant films and documentary packages clutter shelves and hard drives. As our libraries shrink we face the future with giant digitised junk piles  that fit easily into our pockets and backpacks and using the needle in a haystack searching skills we’ve developed we fish for more meaningful and intelligent content. It’ll be along in a moment, just toggle on it one more time and all will be revealed by the random mechanics. Then sit back and let the power of imaginarily strong caffeine, black as various moonless nights documented at random global locations unleashes the hidden power of all this media and everything will at once make sense. But don’t take my word for it, test it and see. Everything makes sense in retrospect.

Apologies: This is a fine example of somebody just stringing words together to see (?) how they might sound and to hear how they might feel in order to understand what they might mean in the hope that they appear to be sensible when they clearly are not. Unforgivable really.

Let there be light

I sing the body electric: The new wires are going in all around the house, lights and power points, switches and sockets, junction boxes and light fittings. Great coils of grey and occasional green and yellow stripes, taped and tagged and fastened in and around the wooden walls and supports. They'll go in all the right places, all the required by building regulations places, all the DDA compliance places and wherever we might want some extra ones for SKY or alarms or contingency needs. So there will be some of these and the list might be quite long. But do we really need them or to be precise do I really need anything non-standard and bespoke? What's it to be, special, moody or high lux lighting or otherwise to illuminate that  great pile of beige objects and items  that will lurk, unloved, folded and undiscovered but worn on a regular basis lurking deep in my wardrobe?

Home of the time capsules: Ever wondered what the cross section of a 250 year old house wall might look like? Me neither but this is as close you'll get to seeing one that's been buzz-sawed open and exposed to reveal two smaller walls filled with rubble in the middle. This special Scottish-Organic design and construction method keeps plague germs, creepie-crawlies, arrows, the angel of death and time-bandits out apparently.

Global warming

Politicians considering the impact of GW.

There's nothing like a home brewed batch of Cantonese styled stir fry chicken to brighten up a fairly bright day so today's self basted vegetable tea was nothing like that, it was more approximate than on target but still enjoyable as was the final blueberry muffin. Meanwhile global warning and the clear but muddied signs of it still leave us baffled and in some quarters unbelieving. There's a lot of it about. I watch the tide slip in and slip out. I watch the grass covered by the dribbling waters and the dead tree trunks and broken branches that lap up on the shore when the sea turns a golden coffee colour. I wonder about the future, the politics and the lies and ineptitude of those impotent politicians, paid to solve problems but only able to create more. Today is the 2nd of April, so it will be until the 3rd comes around. I'm seeing a bit of a recurring pattern here.

Floating above the high tide, the May Island, as seen last week.

High expectations and low tides

It came as some surprise to me to discover that eating a chilled pancake topped with caramel sauce was a rewarding experience. The cold pancake had a rubbery consistency but that wasn't a problem and the sauce despite suffering from a certain lack of viscosity from languishing in the back end of a cupboard in a squashy bottle was sweet, sticky and rich. I may well have another  accompanied by a milk bomb now  that University Challenge and two back to back episodes of Modern Family are done and dusted. Now to endure a long week filled with over-hype and anti-climax induced anxiety as we await the new series of Game of Thrones.

High tides and low expectations

The faulty ring pull on the can of cat food meant I had to open the tin with a regular tin opener. A process that the can clearly was not designed for. It was near the end of the laborious opening revolution that the can began to distort. There then followed a slow explosion that left me and my shirt front covered in tasty and meaty morsels, served in a highly pungent gravy that, as far as my blocked up nose could tell owed a lot of it’s existence to fish based products of an unknown type, whale and dolphin maybe. Hungry cats were circling. Perhaps today was not to be my lucky day after all. Having said that it's Mother's day and I'm an interested  spectator as lots of supermarket flowers and chocs are entering circulation spreading Hallmark Happiness everywhere despite the gloomy weather and the changed clocks. That was Tesco at 1130.  Oh and the lost and baffled pigeon's back pecking and flapping at the window. No, our bedroom is not actually the Torryburn railway bridge. Probably a commonly made avian navigational error.

Nothing remarkable

Cat v pigeon.

This afternoon we've pigged out on pizza, salad and Vichyssoise. The couch, which had been beckoning from a distance finally captured us in it's leathery arms and we were won. Somewhere on wastelands of the BBC2 Saturday the Liberals were gaining more unwatchable coverage of their evolving car crash life cycle. Hard to watch, impossible to believe in. Time to fall back onto saved television experiences, "Shetland", a bit like the Bridge or Borgen but set on a strange wee island north of the Scottish mainland where grim faced characters are determined to murder one another in order to settle family scores and the many bitter disputes that rage over lands and development. The cliffs and the churning seas figure strongly, many long and winding roads and artificial looking pubs also appear and threats and opportunities from the oil and gas industry continually arise. Old Volvos chug around quietly in the background untouched by rust or repair work. Then there's the local knowledge and the unlikely coincidences. I think I'm saying that it looks good but there are problems with the script and the plotting. The actors are all fine Scottish examples of actors and the landscapes are suitably moody; fiddle music occurs now and then and whisky drinking always looks slow and civilised. The verdict: some dysfunctional and surly local did it, overall mark for the show 7/10. Then, TV off, in an unexpected moment of veterinary discovery I was able to learn how to remove ticks from cats. Remarkable.

Where all the money goes

My granny's house, I owned this briefly in the 90's only to lose it over an ill considered hand in a Chinese card game. Typical. 

The pub and cafe where family funerals usually seem to end in a steady stream of sausage rolls, cheap white wine and dark brown beer. In the foreground the harbour seat where my grandma would sit and soak up the rays. To the left and out of shot is the new and discreet sewage works.

The Barclay family seat, owned by my dad and my true inheritance. Unfortunately it was sold for £1000 in 1970 as part of a shrewd business deal that didn't so much go wrong as didn't actually exist at all. Another feckin' financial disaster. How different things might have been we'll never know.

The stars and stripes fly over the Cellardyke war memorial (well close by). No idea why.

Random pics and more unsolved mysteries and memories from the East Neuk: The recurring "what is the meaning of life?" still haunts and irritates since as a troubled teen I first asked myself  the question down on the rocks at Cellardyke whilst puffing on an Embassy Regal. There is no answer of course, only the meaning that we give it ourselves and that can be quite significant and powerful. Once we are gone however life returns to it's regular meaningless state I suppose.

Kirkcaldy and back to the wild

Grey concrete abounds.

The new pool and health complex, looks nice; stark and Cubist.

Today my random journeys around Fife found me in Kirkcaldy. The truth is I was also there yesterday but failed to get any further than some well established NHS premises but today I explored a bit beyond the broad new roadways and housing estates of the north side. My impressions were not good, Kirkcaldy is definitely down at heel despite some courageous attempts to improve it. It's as if there is no reason for it to be there, like it is a parasite on itself, consuming it's own smoke and discarded chewing gum. History and geography have conspired against it, the inner political will looks feeble and the economy is clearly depressed. The High Street would make most Eastern European places look good, all newly paved and sorted but flanked by old and desolate buildings supporting dull shops, bleak pubs and fatty cafes that have run out of ideas and customers. Fife and the good people of Kirkcaldy deserve better.

In other news, heres a cat that catches mice and then drops them in the bath as some sort of playful torture. You'll be glad to hear that the mouse was rescued and set free; back into the wild.

East Neuk again

Anstruther harbour entrance and Berwick Law.

The remains of the seawater pool at Cellardyke. 

Cellardyke harbour.

A journey through the past and a morning spent in Anstruther. Here in the East Neuk the bones and ashes of my family lie like a procession of frozen shadows. Every corner turned is a reminder of forgotten childhood episodes, family strife and misunderstandings, odd happy days of discovery and the painted over changes that mask true memory and experience. If this is where I come from why don't I feel at home? Where in the world is my connection to all this? I pass the houses, the homes of long gone relatives, where we all ate and slept, where coal fires burned and large fried breakfasts were consumed, sugary drinks were secretly taken and tumbledown garden ruins were explored. The once welcoming windows are now dark and blank. Strangers, incomers and ordinary people with their own better recorded stories live and breathe there as I wander past, aimless and observant. It's a perfect day. I sit in a cafe, dark smoked glass windows, young mums with noisy, excited children, I order a big breakfast (without beans or tomatoes, I don't want to appear to easily accept the stock menu, I am an individual) with flat coffee. In the window a sign reads “chef wanted”, I laugh to myself but enjoy the well presented food nonetheless. This fashionable cafe was at one time the Co-op and a centre for grocery supplies and commerce. Next door was a ship’s chandlers, now also a cafe. The pub is now a wine bar and “famous” and “prize winning” fish and chip shops are lined up around them, charity shops support some other economy model on the fringe of things. Across by the harbour small white double axle coaches from Edinburgh arrive and drop Asian tourists who stare in at the customers. On the walls are black and white photos in frames; herring drifters and waterfront scenes, a link with a glorious past that ended abruptly when the fish moved on and the war ended. Now everything is centred around ethereal pleasure, natural history, post industrial consumer development and different types of milky coffee. 

Looking out at the random patterns of ship's mast heads bobbing in the water, the sun glinting on metal, this could be France or Portugal, Skye or a quiet port in South America; but it's really some version of somebody's version of a modern and confused Scotland. Occasional hippy types with scarfs and boots pass by, refugees from the Fence Collective, there are rainbows on doors, freak flags and stained glass, stone painted fishes and advertisements for “Blues” evenings. Houses sell coloured eggs and artifacts and a strange Bohemian strain runs through this once tough and working class Fife backwater. Escapees from the city, St Andrews student types, hiking travellers and builders repairing all the tumbledown and  listed buildings. They are all polished up so as to be like another Tobermory or a film set or some coloured in reflection and recreation of the black and white past. That imagined place where no one actually lives but strangers and outsiders routinely  inhabit. 

It's as if the sun is too bright today, beyond what we deserve, we have no right to bathe in it's forbidden glow, we are the children of salt and storms and repression. God gave us all up a long time ago. All the heat and empty atmosphere bearing witness to the redundant town halls and old churches, each built with a frowning doorway and upturned smile to remind their users of the grim and Presbyterian past. The great and serious thinkers remembered with blue plaques seem to have outnumber the poor, the churchmen, sea captains, founders of schools and political nonentities, and so their imprint is the persistent and strong memory that unfairly lives on. 

The smiling waitress clears away my empty dishes, the breakfast was good and was good for me and I enjoyed this free and easy amble through my own slightly time-warped reflections. I like to stare out of windows. I look across at where the old men, the former harbour office, now a public toilet. There the old fishermen once sat and smoked pipes and spat on the ground. They wore flat caps and growled at thin dogs, played pitch and toss and looked out across the harbour wall to the sea and thought of the men that had gone out there and never returned. All for a basket of silver fish. Now a bus full of Eastern European tourists arrive, guttural Polish voices, anoraks and sunglasses. I've no idea what they make of this place but they are determined to have mid morning fish and chips and bask in the near 13 degrees freely supplied by the fickle weather. I get to my feet and square up the bill, the waitress moves on to another customer and I head out for the car and then the cemetery. 

Once up there, inland from the sea in the noise of wind and the council strimmers angrily cutting back the spring growth I walk in ever decreasing circles before encountering the various family gravestones. My name is repeated here and there, weathered and faded as the stone letters collapse and lose meaning and clarity. I take some photographs, it may be years before I return, if ever, this is no annual pilgrimage, more a rechecking and box ticking exercise. When did they all die? How old were they? My dutiful errand of respectful remembering  and sentimental meandering necessary  for the successful navigation of this part of the century. There they all are under the ground, right below my feet. I never can quite get that, standing six feet above the dear remains and forty years away from their breathing. Time to get back to another, more familiar and less distorted but painfully real world.

The illusion of control

I'm thinking that I'm in command of this laptop but truly it's soul was bought over and chained up long ago, it's still a slave to it's builder and what does that make me?  Some kind of twisted and sad Apple or Samsung employee? I'm the one who politely asks it to do things, those things that smiley families, confident mums and dopey dads do so easily in advertisements, glowing within their life enhancing stupor of technical ecstasy. All I want Mr Apple/Samsung/HP/whoever it is to upload files or print or just use this stuff you built. I hope in vain for a drift in the right direction. Yes that stuff with the multiple sets of functions and options I'll never use. All I want is to upload and print a few fecking files, maybe even connect wirelessly to another plastic box without error messages and gremlin induced complaints arising. I want to turn the key and the engine to start. That's what machines do but not you. You, you send me message I don't understand. You cannot communicate but you, Mr Machine are clearly smarter and more stubborn and more haughty than me and I cant help but notice you've developed a distinct dislike for me as you spew out ink cartridges as if they were an unfit meal, reject files and settings or mysteriously hang for long periods waiting on updates...like some teenager in trouble but unable to articulate their fuzzed up feelings. But while you control me and my sad life, you decide how I feel, when I win or lose, at least you offer me the pleasure and fragile inconsistency of on-line spell checking that may or may not guess correctly where I am in the world and what my reading age might be. Thank you for that small mercy.

Little Features

Daydreaming is a peculiar habit to get into. On one hand it might seem creative and stimulating, an opportunity to get random thoughts in order, explore ideas and of course indulge yourself in a pleasurable way with imaginative stimulation. Flights of fancy lead into all manner of interesting thinking processes and the opening up of options and ultimately, as common sense and age induced boundaries will tend to prevail, the shelving or total  deletion of anything too far fetched. Anyway yesterday I found myself planning to start a “Little Feet” tribute band; they would be the “Little Features” of course. I was primarily tickled by the name, a shallow enough but persuasive start to anything. Most of the act centred around replaying the “Sailing Shoes” album, an album I’ve not listened to for thirty years (intense preparation required then) and I was there in the Lowell George slot. A charismatic and  talented figure. Short and dark, equally full of Latino fun and growling menace and master of the slide guitar. I think I was playing a cherry red SG as opposed to a Les Paul, I considered the Tokai options also for a while. There would be a big seventies amp for me – stage achieved presence in one fell swoop. I’d also allowed myself to grow extra facial hair here and there, mostly on my upper lip and around my ears. It was a curious look for me but I was confident that I could pull it off. I had some difficulty picturing my fellow band members however, a raggle taggle bunch of Edinburgh street musicians who would blindly follow my every move. The horn section would always be troublesome. I didn’t really understand any of that. Perhaps this band would have to be more stripped back and simple, no over complex arrangements. Drums, conga, bass, keys, rhythm guitar and two backing singers. 

Then I thought about customer demand and engagement for the Little Features here in Central Scotland. Where was the appeal, where was the audience? Weddings and wakes, political fundraisers, club nights; none of it looked promising, we’d truly be a niche outfit, but we’d also do the odd Zappa or even Beefheart numbers, just to keep us all interested and focused. Rehearsals might be tough and my game would have to be raised by numerous unknown notches, a steady left hand on the bottleneck and noisy practice sessions that would bring on headaches and stress. I was doubting myself already. There would be fights between members, it would like the Commitments but high on tequila and Sol beer, scrapping and walking out but all based in Edinburgh. At that point, as a film script started to materialise deep within my right brain’s blue and sparking innards I got back to watching the football. Dunfermline 1, East Fife 2.

Bad news

Unexpected bad news puts everything else into perspective, all your moans, all your imagined  fears, all your petty dislikes and bundles of anxiety. They don't mean much in comparison to real and tragic events. Very sadly Jamie Frain aka James Jamieson, a popular and talented Edinburgh musician passed away very suddenly on Friday. Dave Reilly writes very movingly about him here.

Nature's Secret

When I was small I'd hold my bare arm up above my head, clench in my fist and hide my fist and fingers and pretend that my arm was the branch of a tree. A winter tree. I (and I deliberately and definitely saw myself as the real and unique me) was deep in the ground, down below, far within myself and amongst the imagined tree roots. Some strange buried spirit looking up through the ground to observe this tree from a vantage point in the soil. Sometimes I'd slip down into the darkness but still the tree stood straight, hardly moving, creaking if a strong wind passed otherwise steady all of the time. But me, now I was hanging by my shoulder from the trunk of this tree, hanging in the earth. Dark brown and crumbling earth that hardly seemed strong enough to support me or all the other trees that I imagined were there, rooted and firm on this unreliable ground. I'd peer down through the dark to see where my feet might be, where in or on earth were they? Was there support? 

Of course there was none, I was hanging from my own tree arm and the particles of earth and soil were orbiting around me, swirling in a mass like starlings or blackbirds and somehow holding firm. A motion of perpetual stillness frozen into an illusion. These pieces oozing together to hold the woodland and grass and habitat and walkers and wild flowers altogether above. They lived there on my surface in complete peace while it wrestled and squirmed in this black and moving quicksand. No one knew that I was struggling. My hand and arm were still a tree. There was no waving or waggling fingers, no sign language. Just a tree standing there while, all the while, I drowned below. The voices of the passers by were heard, the polite or rough conversations but I stayed silent. I couldn't give the game away. What would they do if they should ever discover the true nature of the trees in the forest and how unreliable the earth below their thoughtless feet might be? Nature's secret was always safe with me. One day I shall be rewarded.

Thanks George

Does anything ever really change? Thanks to the Tories for recognising that all that the hardworking families of the UK really need is Beer and Bingo and maybe the hope of a little value being added to pensions and if you can gather them,  savings. We are all equally patronised and ignored by this system, by politicians that can see not good in the actions of their rivals and nothing bad in their own. This strange, monochrome world does not exist in any real sense but in politics and power it does. Sad but true. So pointless debates will rage, young people will be drawn in, old people will be chewed up and spat out and poor people will be blamed for everything. 

In other non-budget news our rock collection has grown. We always had it really but it formed part of the house, now it's slowly being removed and moved elsewhere; now the collection is visible.

Shocking and compulsive

"This book is about leaving your wife and everything you know. It's about fresh starts, about love, about friendship. It is also about the earth-shattering experience of becoming a father, the mundane struggles of family life, the ridiculously unsuccessful holidays, humiliating antenatal music classes, fights with quarrelsome neighbours, the emotional strains of children's birthday parties and pushing a pram around Stockholm when all you really want to do is write. This book is about one man's life but everyone else's too."

How hard can it be to copy a straight piece of text from the back of a book? Eight mistypes and five spelling mistakes. To stay fit and alert in the mind and body I need to walk two miles a day every day. In a week I'll be fourteen miles away (what good is that?).