Home before the postcards

Hard to feel sorry for the England team (or anybody who gets beat at a football match). Anyway good to see the Messiah chose to be with those mortal fans in the main stand and then decided, as part of the divine visitation, very briefly to walk amongst them. Oh how they sang and partied.

I'm not sure what hipsters look like, what they do or where they go. So when I found myself in a bleached wood and chick pea cafe in Aberdeen I felt out of my depth. There were devices and teapots everywhere. Ugly people beautifully dressed, hip staff in black and conundrums played out all across the menus like entrance exams into some strange organisation. I didn't choose wisely. After the order of soups, breads, sausage rolls and salads c/w expensive juice in rat-proof cans it was cake time. "Four pieces of carrot cake." I said, squinting at the selection and nibbling on random samples and crumbs. "You are being boring" retorted the waitress like some female Jeremy Paxman interrogator. "You need some flour-free brownies." I was unaware of that and have been so for most of my life. I gave in and took a selection of their wares back to the table. It was all fine, in fact pretty filling and substantial. Lunch, queer cakes and modern jazz. Maybe I am an old hipster after all.

Black and white cat

Reflections in a marble worktop, born from primal volcanic fires and the magma from the centre of the earth a million years ago. Almost perfect and generally regarded as indestructible, just take care not to place a warm teaspoon upon the surface. Terms and conditions apply.

Tigger the cat, the local pussy bully and general bad, streetwise boy. He's wild, crazy and a little mysterious. He cares little for the World Cup, what we're having for tea, trivial affairs  of state and today's Daily Mail headlines. He's above and beyond all that, he's on the roof, on the windowsill and prowling around the garden. He's watching. He may not like cheese, he may love it, we can't be sure. He's probably watching you right now. Look out. He's watching me.

Queen's Baton

OK, I'm done. I cannot take anymore. I nearly cracked in 2012 over the ballyhoo for the Olympic Torch but the Queen's Baton has now pushed me over the edge. Have we all lost our fucking marbles here? Are we now under Cameron's benign nothingness transported backwards and  living in the 13th Century or the Dark Ages or something? How is it that a plain, inanimate object, a stylised golden baton in fact, can inspire crowds, lead baffled celebrations, hysterical responses, bring out brass bands and hot dog vendors and cause inappropriate expense and media attention across the so-called Commonwealth. Are people so desperate for some spiritual experience that they'll gather together and blindly follow this tin wedge of an item on it's busman's holiday across the globe and bits of Wild West Lothian? 

Well yes of course they will. You almost expect the sick and feeble, the poor and the infirm to be wheeled out by grinning social workers and activists so they can bathe in it's quasi-religious presence and so be inspired to compete in running, jumping and swimming competitions or more usefully be divinely healed and freed up from their compulsive personalities and attention seeking demons. It's just a gold stick FFS and this is the twenty first century. Stop acting like Saxon morons with pitchforks and straw sucking village idiots and take a good look at yourself. This is a meaningless charade that only exists to promote a puerile sporting competition, eh? OK, now I'm really done...back to the World Cup and a tin of golden, chilled to perfection lager in front of the TV.

Pictorial fillers

Cut a hole in a 2ft thick wall and...put in a window. 

Sad dog in the floor.

It's Father's Day today so I'm not doing much apart from laundry and sandwiches, so here are some pictures with which I will fill the space.

Tough Mudder 14

Just being a simple spectator at Tough Mudder is hard work. This year they seem to have imported a particularly fierce and sticky mud and spread it everywhere; from Dalkeith to the TM finish and back again, so spattering the countryside. Last year there were complaints that there too little mud (?). Anyway after a strong family challenge involving just running like mad at every obstacle our team completed the course, wet, muddy and happy. I came home knackered, sore feet, tired legs and collapsed (almost) on the couch. They of course ran 12 miles and took part in some risky things along the way, maybe I walked about 5 but in heavy clay and muggy weather, I'm not getting any younger it seems. I never new that. Now I'm home at last, two cold beers and a limp chicken curry later all is once again well in my tiny unmuddy world.

Deja Vu

Conclusive proof that humans (well this one) are stupid and learn nothing from either mistakes or experience or the searing pain of a fresh knife wound. I cut my finger in the same place cutting a tomato today, just as I did yesterday. To be clear whilst the same place was also the kitchen the precise same place was my left index fingertip. Darwin; you are kidding with that theory of natural selection and adaption! it was however a different knife but still from the same set. Maybe the lesson is to eat fewer tomatoes.

Tomatoes and blood

It's great that as part of a balanced diet tomatoes can help beat cancer, they are red and taste pretty good. Some people even say that they are a proper fruit, like a banana. What's not so good is when you slice one up using the brand new knife set for the first time and you think, as you cut, "wow, these new knives are great, so sharp, so easy, they make this job a pleasure, how did we ever get by without this set of knives?" It's just at that moment, you're hungry and ready to eat the salad you are preparing when the knife slips and Oops! it's now a finely chopped index finger tip you've got there. I'm also observing that the older you get the longer it takes for the bleeding to stop and that finding, unwrapping  and applying a sticky plaster is nearly impossible. 

Wee Heavy

Get it over with: 100 days to go before the referendum and we have a fine excuse for more media inspired terminal fuckwittery. Some badly constructed arguments, wishful thinking punctuated with the occasional bout of honesty was on display with ill matched and expert talking heads...just talking (SKY News I think and then BBC News from a rain soaked and desolate Dundee). I listened to other bits of it on Radio Scotland this morning, it was a tough call; people were asked to phone in their questions. The trouble with that was that the Scottish public didn't seem to realise that when forming a question you have to construct a phrase or sentence that actually asks somebody something and that they, by way of a return provide an appropriate answer to you. God bless them but they just phoned in and babbled on, ranting about the economy, saying they were voting no (because there's not enough information (?)) and whining about pot-holed roads, nukes or the Royal Bank of Toytown. FFS, let's raise the level of this please.

Beer Heavy: No it's not an invitation to urinate 5kg of golden liquid into a poly bag nor is it a short but portly gangster type. It's a beer called a "Wee Heavy". My dad was fond of it, not sure it was brewed by Belhaven in his day mind you. I was just thinking as I sipped on a cheeky wee glass of red plonk how my drinking exploits and tastes might have compared with my dear departed old man. I'll never know, I've already lived a lot longer than he did, not sure I've drunk more alcohol though. He'd have voted an emphatic SNP yes by the way. He'd also have burned Catholics at the stake, given the Black and White Minstrels a Grammy and branded any man found drinking lager as a "woman". At least I turned out OK.

Blissful existance

 

A good, fruitful, peaceful weekend comes close to ending with steak and salad. I'm not sure what was really achieved however, a mix of household, family and domestic events ran seamlessly into one another. You look around and Songs of Praise and the Canadian Grand Prix are on the TV and the sun is creating that spectral glow that tells you it's slowly setting just beyond the Kincardine Bridge. It's all good but inside I feel just a little conflicted and contradicted. I'm sure it will pass once I set myself up in a more universally Karma-centric position and start listening to ancient music on vinyl and less to the shrill cacophony droning and  looping inside my head.

Special fish

I've got those Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, Marilyn Monroe in a potato sack, John Mayall, can't fail, blues. 

(A curse upon Sky Arts, the past, BBC4, the future and everything else related (almost).)

 I've got the special fish, slightly pished, Holy Grail, Scottish Rail, give it all back, Fleetwood Mac (again), Scalextric track, blues.

Fallen out of love with the trams, don't give a damn, flooded bogs, dirty socks and bungee jumping daughter's blues.

Or maybe not.

Ariel - my favourite font

Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's driving up to the wrong side of the petrol pumps, maybe it's getting to the middle of the supermarket and thinking "what is it I really came in here for?" It could be the endless voxpop messages about other people's wonderful lives, here, there and everywhere. Perhaps it was entering some dumb on-line competition (Yeo Valley Yogurts) hoping to win a VW camper and finding that's it's an instant win...which means that it's an instant lose for 99.99999% of the entrants. Then you drop a carton of their yogurt product in the floor and it promptly explodes. Maybe it's thinking you should really be doing something better with your time than searching for tiny pots of paint in toy shops. You drive around in the sun, windows down, fumes coming in. You forgot you had A/C. Then for no reason you strongly suspect that all the items on Ebay are really price fixed and corrupted by some huge on-line cartel of sellers based in China. After that you watch a funny video about cute and stupid dogs a friend loaded onto Facebook. Well they're a friend but you haven't spoken to them for six years, paths not quite crossing etc. Then you start to fantasise about cauliflower cheese but you eat cheesecake leftovers instead. Then it's time to sit down and try to figure out something on the phone but no real progress is made. After all that I enjoyed another simple snack...

The fragrant game of nil

Unseen until today.

Mathematics and absurdity – my two beliefs.

When I gave up on low level doses of chocolate, drugs and religion I had two choices, well three if you count going back to religion and sweet stimulants. My choices were a)greed and anxiety or b)guilt and absurdity. Naturally I chose the latter and despite some pretty poor days I have not regretted a single day nor any randomly absurd incident. Then to add to the general tableaux and chaos a cloud of mathematical theories fell randomly into my head and inside jacket pocket. Despite my lack of understanding I immediately knew that these mathematical solutions lined up perfectly with my own view of the universe (viewed from the inside as opposed to the outside). Supernaturally I grabbed them with both hands and have neither looked forward or backwards since. The arrival of a proper solution always brings serenity (says I), you can quote that if you like. In a nutshell then Applied Maths tells the believer lots of useful things but the unbeliever a great deal less. If you don't believe then I can't be bothered to explain any more, so my message to you is just go and lick the insides of a can of tuna. 

Soup

Listening to Arcade Fire (via a Kindle) is almost an interesting experience, but not quite. Never an early adopter of anything (except Knausgaard and junk foodstuff) it's taken me years to get round to listening properly to these multi-skilled indie kings and queens, all critically acclaimed and award winning musicians etc. What do I find then? It's really a musical soup, ongoing like an eternally simmering, occasionally stirred vegetable heavy pot of gloop, played honestly, sincerely (I assume the words must mean something) and with enthusiasm. After about three or four portions of soup, I'm looking for a change, that doesn't come, just more soup which eventually becomes an great murky ocean. There's no bread or a bit of titivating cheesecake either, nothing to vary the dynamics of a menu based on being as soupy like as you can be. Clearly this convinces and pleases some, (it's not unpleasant) but not me. It's just relentlessly homogenized breed of modern music, phrases and fills and english words, not high on melody and construction. Probably (and I'm not really familiar with their stuff either) it moves across and into the grim Mumford & Sons universe. You can see this self indulgent gene out there in singer/songwriter land, a common problem. They get a hold of a minor chord and just wont let go. Their goal seems to be to paint the world in the drab colours of their self tortured post-student souls, the assumption being that their audience needs to hear that primal howl and moan; now in Arcade Fire a whole band of ethnically uncleansed instruments goes with it and that makes it all credible in a phoney way. So all the songs are seriously worked on and worked up and performed (eyes closed) as intensely because it all means something, something which I think you could sum up as being; soup.

Out and about in Edinburgh

Toxic building syndrome – or whatever you do don't take on a pub as a business venture. The prospect of running a live music venue is dangerously appealing...maybe one fine day when the pension kicks in.

The sound of the trams, it's a friendly clang, a bit like when Vic hits Bob with a frying pan, twice in quick succession. Day three and no known fatalities so far. I did see one old bloke get close to becoming that particular awkward statistic. "There were no bloody trams in my young day...or were there?"

Here's a van I liked, nothing to do with toxic building syndrome either, but TBS  seems to happen a lot in London (the BBC; hygiene breakdowns allegedly resulting in shrill or overly loud examples of TV presentation) and the Home Counties, occasionally it spreads north to urban areas such as Manchester or Berwick upon Tweed. Today I'm carrying undercover investigations to see how that pearl on the Forth of Firth aka Edinburgh Town is fairing. All the signs so far are good but what awaits us when we wander away from the whirr and clang of the suspicious and elitist tram system and the skirl of dangerously over exposed busking bagpipers? Rumour has it that the firing of nuclear tipped shells from the one o'clock gun was considered in the sixties and during the Miner's Strike. I doubt if it was technically possible but it's a juicy news story and a believable lie. Some say that the gun may well be trained upon Bute House in dawn's early light on the 19th of September. Lots are already being drawn for gunner's duties that day.

Warning

Tigger c/w breeze blocks.

It seems that we are the parents your parents warned you about.

Here's a video to not quite provide any actual proof of the validity of the above statement or so I allegedly might think in some safe, risk free and non committal way.

Hidden Gems

Hidden gems from the Fife coastline, brought out and exposed on a lovely sunny afternoon.

     "Zhuangzi's wife died. When Huizi went to convey his condolences, he found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. 'You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old,' said Huizi. 'It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing – this is going too far, isn't it?'
     Zhuangzi said, 'You're wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn't grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.
     Now she's going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't understand anything about fate. So I stopped.'"

Peace in our time

Practical tips on how to be middle aged, happy and avoid an untimely death.

Living long  and feeling good is pretty easy really. Firstly it's about avoiding an early, untimely and unexpected death. You do this by taking care, becoming wary (but not paranoid), just developing the right instincts and a good working level of confidence about when to stay and when to go. You can allow yourself some calculated recklessness, so as to allow adrenalin to flow and endorphins to rise, then reproduce and migrate etc. but don't over indulge the reckless behaviour (it can become addictive in it's own right and turn destructive). 

Avoid diets and regimented exercise, avoid working out just be sensible in how you use your body. Burn up any excess, store up a little fat for winter and keep the nasal hair trimmed so that nose breathing is clear and well maintained. Adopt a sincere, honest “I don't give a fuck” attitude. That's not to say that you become selfish, pompous or detached. No, you care but you don't get over involved. That breeds worry, stress and a truck load of negatives that will bring you down. Do what you like and, even before you do what you like actually understand what you like so that you are sure you are doing the right thing. Don't therefore do what other people like or expect (unless in some perverse way you get pleasure out of that). Recognise what drives you and swop places, you drive that thing. If you don't it will exhaust you and you'll dry up like prune.

Eat sensibly; try to eat different foods everyday. Try things you don't like but avoid things you know that your body doesn't process well. Learn to recognise these things by checking your performance. Anything that bungs you up, makes you unwell or gives you bad breath or acid reflux is best avoided. Mediterranean food has the best reputation for health, follow that model if you can, green, oily, fishy and well seasoned. Don't be a sourpuss scoffing at meats, spices or preparation. Enjoy food and eat it the way you'd want to make love. Make decisions quickly but thoughtfully and avoid procrastination, that is a life force drainer.

Avoid organised religion, trade unions, political parties and noble causes. These are human constructs with mainly negative outcomes for the participants and victims. You could  be both. These things really fuck you up because they want to to compress and control you so they can spread their ideology. If you do well in them (and that won't make you happy) you'll just end up as a controller of others on the same sad path. You'll only spawn misery and carbon copies of your sorry self that will go on to rebel and cause further chaos that could really get out of hand. 

Don't be swayed by health scares, hyped stories, miracle products and shortcuts. These things create a confused and unfocused mind. Keep a diary or run a blog, note how you feel using simple terms or scores, look for commonality and success, look for positives and then try to repeat the circumstances or the environment. Live in a happy place and don't compare yourself to others. If you judge on superficial things then you are judging incorrectly and anyway, who are you to judge? Better to not get involved  and stay a safe distance  in the “don't give a fuck” place. Don't hang out with people who don't see or respect your space.

Be playful, don't stay serious too long, don't reflect on what might have been, don't try to change the world, enjoy the moment you are in. Sure things can deteriorate but learn to appreciate the cycles, natural and universal that you move in, in whatever direction. Your mind and body are always rotating in some unscripted ways that you often fail to recognise, try to go with that rather than resist (unless it's some stupid or dangerous impulse). Yes you can be impulsive but don't dance naked on somebody else's lawn. That will only end badly. Get drunk now and then, get stimulated but learn to lay off when you can. Get to know your own mind and attitudes. Best of all give yourself to someone else, live with them, love them, sleep with them. If you can get that right (and they can too) you'll be happy but you will have to tolerate or accept their own ways of happiness. Strangely, with the right person, these things expressed by another can often make you happy too.

P.S. The things you think will make you happy, things you look forward to, easy, peaceful things. Where are they and where do they belong? It should be an easy list to list but it's not. Too much material on the flip-side. Every A side comes with a dodgy B side (except for the double A side which isn't really because there always is/was a better side, the label's free expression can't change the quality). I gave myself a good shake at this point and started again.  So I sat for hours, staring into space making a long mental list of the things that made me happy. It was a long and varied list but with repeated themes, people and feelings. The long list was a short list once I stood back and looked at it but as deep as the Grand Canyon.

Engine room of the engine room

I should've saved up all those crucial conversation notes and noted them, learned things, moved away from streams of blethering consciousness and restless twittering and consolidated. I should've got a decent job, ate a decent meal and walked a crooked mile in a stranger's shoes, given generously to charity, talked less and listened more. I should've looked out to sea and up into the sky pondering the distance, scale and shape of things and arrived at proper conclusions. But I ate, drank, made merry and pursued that strangest of goals; the sharpening of muscle memory and the memorization of abstract patterns. It was all working well until my memory failed. Now I stand in the engine room and dream of sitting down in another engine room, resting in a less complex and more reliable model.

I travel

Detail from the anti-Fascist mural in Shadwell London, found as a result of the Overground being shutdown and the requirement to use alternative bus services through various hazardous and unfamiliar areas of the city. 

I overheard an interesting conversation in Panopolis in London City Airport between two rather camp pilots, they were both talking about the aircraft they flew as if they owned it rather than just driving it for a bigger firm i.e. the owner being British Airways. Maybe that's just how pilots are; camp and a bit delusional. Maybe they adopt their aeroplanes and form strong and meaningful relationships. How can we, the great unwashed, bound to the ground and unable to fly so free ever know? 

Totally different kind of pub band set-up.

Hackney skyline #1.

Hackney skyline #2.

I quite like London, I really like my Oyster Card but despite it's slick operation  the weather was atrocious. There are some things it cannot quite do. So bad (was the weather) that it was double macchiatos all the way, warm beer, fat sausage rolls and whitebait. I may not know much but given the chance I think I know how to live. This actually makes sense to me.

Engine room of the mind

Danny Alexander has pledged hard cash from the cash strapped Treasury (the Treasury being the pantomime  bad boy of today's coalition government) to rebuild the Glasgow School of Art. "Whatever it takes", like the demolition of homes in the East End to make way for all the ludicrous spectacle that comes with the Commonwealth Games? Only a cynic of the highest order would suspect that the good Danny's quick and heartfelt, open chequebook intervention wasn't really done with the best of intentions and for the common good of art lovers, students and the  attention deficit challenged citizens of the world. It's a fine time in Scottish history to make political capital out of an unrelated and random situation such as a building burning down. "Don't worry Glasgow, we do care about your...shit". I wonder how much the SNP will pledge? "Art Schools under the hammer" might be the next big thing.

As I ponder these cocked-up times and how it is that neither me or anyone else ever learn life's hard taught lessons, all a bit like the day that lightning struck York Minster or the pilgrims were killed on the road to Mecca...things just happen, some people try to put them right whilst others feed on the opportunity provided. Most folk will pass by looking the other way, their minds engrossed in survival techniques and the possible time of their next good meal. For Danny I see little in the way of redemption, of course he'll pick up a good job and well paid back room career after the next election but the reality is he's been ground up by the machine, an almost painless and invisible process and he doesn't even know it's happened.