Squirrels

Summer has finally arrived in Scotland bringing with it those woodland vandals known as the squirrel contingent. When nobody is looking it seems that these uncultured squirrels get up to all sorts of squirrel type mischief and when they are doing that you may just capture some of the strange action on an apple device of some sort. Actually I think that somebody was looking,  it just wasn't me for a change. What you can't see in this image is the third squirrel who owns an impressive cloak of invisibility that he is putting to good use possibly just out of shot.

Banana disaster

Today has been the kind of day when you unpeel or unzip your breakfast banana and then promptly drop it onto the floor (in the kitchen at work). Even applying the two second rule and assuming you've no sore back so you can  pick it up quickly it has to go straight into the bin. It's a dirty, tainted banana and there is no nearby, easily accessible replacement. Oh how I cried (well inwardly) and how forlorn and half empty did my porridge pot feel. Is that a question of some kind? It seems to sound like one. Tomorrow I shall do better.

Sexual Healing of sorts

I woke up this morning to the strains of a marching band doing a perfectly loud and credible version of Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing. Maybe not the most obvious or sensitive rendition but they carried the tune well in a hummable way. After that it was downhill all the other way into a party clear up, dishwasher emptying and breakfast foraging kind of morning. Along came the lazy  the sun to provide a warm and pleasant surprise as we rewound ourselves back to normal on a hungover Sunday morning. There are no workable rituals here other than getting on with it and sensing an inner peace in knowing that you "made it". When I say "made it" I'm referring to more huge, bottomless pots of Stovies - the meal that keeps on giving, relentlessly.  I am now reflecting. I have eaten too much this weekend; cakes, chocolate, burgers and buns, cheeses, light and heavy beers, red wines from far away lands and occasional dollops of salad, greens and pulses. Now I'm ready to fall over and onto the couch and never write another word, compile another playlist or drain a tinny of IPA, till next time that is. 

Look somewhere else for your stories

Don't expect any clever or controversial opinions here, nothing is ever original, all I do is lift and plagiarise whilst carefully avoiding eating any of the bones from sardines; I've developed a slick technique you know. You should see how I manage to dispose of the oil and the evidence. I also try to work up a cryptic lyric now and then but that's just a dull hobby like hoovering or selling unwanted stuff. I also believe that playing music helps you to understand quantum physics a bit more easily, all the stuff about matter/atoms/tiny balls changing shape and nature; think about how you move between scales, change intervals and bend notes, it also guards against early onset brain damage.

Muddy Waters Monday

Shirley Bassey Tuesday

Wednesday Velvet Underground

Thursday Lynyrd Skynyrd

Friday Flock of Seagulls

Sat to Sun a Crowded House.

(Lynyrd Skynyrd is such a joy  to type, it gives you a headache. It should be compulsorily to use it at school for English class, in adult teaching seminars and in T shirt fronted Apple Stores).

Death walks behind you

I just ate an enormous slice of chocolate heart, a chicken curry and two glasses of red wine and apart from feeling a little tired I'm fine. I also did the Ubble mortality test and I'm good to go...somewhere. Thirteen strange lifestyle related questions if you are male, eleven if you're female and then your Ubble age (50 for me giving me an extra 10 years of something) and your % chance of living another five years or dying within them; 2% for me to die and obviously 98% to live till sunny 2015. I'm sure there's some bad science and dodgy algorithms in their calculations that have already been discredited in the media but if it makes you feel good then fine. Shame that there will be a few people who'll just feel bad afterwards. If you do then try to walk a bit more briskly and invest in a second car.

Everything is annoying

I need to let this go. Particularly annoying are the items of mismatched garden furniture lazily bought on-line that turn out to be a) the wrong size and b) damaged in transit and c) just plain awkward. Preparing for the oncoming advent of summer and the passing of El Nino  has never seemed so complicated. I am of course exaggerating this just a little, life's little inconveniences are nothing compared to life's slightly larger ones, few of which I suffer from. The problem is recognising them and dealing with them in a balanced and proportional way that avoids conflict of the inner, outer and elsewhere kind. Gumtree (plugging again) may be the solution, now what was it that I was preaching the other day about planning your happiness?

Thoughts from Saturday

Set up for the Nepal benefit gig in Joppa.

Five simple things that will make you happy or even happier:

Listen to a favourite piece of music.

Spending five minutes more with somebody you like.

Going outdoors - explore.

Helping someone else.

Having a new experience (presumably a good one).

Context for life. Design and live in an environment that makes happiness possible. Willpower doesn't work, make it easier for yourself by design i.e. make your bank password or begenerous1 or stopspendingcash1 Do things and have things that make you smile.

Lazy blogging

It's been too busy (almost typed too busty there till the spell check kicked in) a weekend to post anything coherent but it's Sunday night by now which will soon give birth to another sterile Monday. So this image sums up something, somehow.

At peace with the world

After an afternoon of filing away at stubborn Chinese metal I've given up; 48mm into 48mm doesn't go and never will (unless you do a whole lot more filing). So I have stopped trying, stopped fretting and more importantly stopped sweating. I bought another pole, one of a more suitable size and...relax. The 48mm pole is about to feature on Gumtree in some badly worded form. How old do you really have to be to stop listening to that stubborn, irritating voice inside your head that repeats various kinds of noisy nonsense on a loop? 59 and a half apparently. 

Coop Sandwich

These are seriously good sandwiches, I'd recommend the salmon, egg, egg mayo (that's two kinds of egg on one sandwich) and salad big boy.  Available from some emporium near to where you are or my case the Coop in Balloch. Simple things please simple digestive systems that are mainly powered by a combination of gravity and perseverance and regular exercise. Look after your innards and plumbing and they will surely look after you. Send it down and see it from the premises. Tomorrow for rich and self indulgent mixture of sport and lifetime experience I plan to visit a bank and a petrol station in no particular order. Whatever next?

48mm dia hole

Here's the nifty, large and earth/beige/brown coloured sun parasol I ordered from Amazon for the garden. Perfect in every way apart from the fact that the pole diameter is 48mm meaning it requires a 48mm hole to stand up in the standing up device. Where on earth can I get such a thing?

Strange to think of finding a means to block out the sun's precious little rays when in May it's a little south of 9C and pouring with seven different kinds of rain.

A little screwy

Despite the advances we see in technology some folks still enjoy drawing cartoons, I presume mostly using normal, low-tech methods. Then they upload them on instagram or something. God bless them all.

At some point every generation stops, takes stock, looks out of the window and thinks, "things are getting a little screwy around here." That's what I tell myself and then, shortly after that I tell myself that in fact I'm the one that's getting a little more screwy. Then I stop all of that and stop thinking for a while. Meanwhile as I do I notice that based on the images that glide into my peripheral vision it seems that the screwiness simply increases. Learning lessons from life, recent history and ancient history doesn't really happen. It's a problem for all of us and none of  but maybe I can be a little more relaxed about it. I am after all a big part of the problem.

Forgotten pieces

The forgotten pieces of yesterday's Lego, as collected from the rug and rescued into a new life on the book shelf. Where will they find themselves next?

Today I seemed to drink a lot of tea and probably ate too much. I dreamt that the house dated from the time of the French Revolution and indeed it did. The morning was a fuzzy time, it took an hour to wake up and an hour to shower and an hour to fiddle with yet more versions of vehicle number plates. I also ate a fried egg. That's three hours of anybody's time and before long I was in a cafe eating lunch. Now I can't make my mind up as to whether I'm a bowl of lukewarm soup or a butterfly covered in butter. The afternoon burned away like an Embassy Regal so I pottered in the garden before eventually running out of pots and failing to find any ill placed trees that needed removing. As usual I moved the barrel into a better location, soon the torture will stop. I also sprayed things with teak oil from the bargain land of Aldi, that was a quite satisfying activity. The garden has a grammar all of it's own and I can't quite understand it. In the end all I knew was that there was a remarkable amount of dust up inside my nostrils after a lengthy spell of sweeping. I'll not be trying that again. 

Longer may you run

Gone to a good home , I hope.

OK blog in the doldrums, what could pull you out? Extensive tales of ironing to a CSNY soundtrack? The removal of old and stubborn number plates without causing injury to myself (can't say the same about the plates)? Selling a Dutch car to Dutch couple from Glen Clova who've had enough of French cars for the mean time? In that same sale getting half of what I paid for the car three years ago and 40k later? (That's not half bad for a half value thing). The possibly mistaken purchase of Moroccan lamb meat balls and couscous for tea? A sardine snack and clambering through the woods with a hose pipe? Deciding just for one bloody Friday not to got and  worship at the temple of the false god Tesco? Drilling holes in plastic? Wondering about guys like Alistair Carmichael and how they tick, what's the best position to take; pity, revenge, hate, hounding, ignore or just watch from a safe distance as he's devoured (for being a liar) by other politicians? All of whom may well have told a lie or two themselves...but they're safe for the meantime s they can stir up a frenzy. Time to fry some more potatoes, foil up some corn & butter, drink some beer and think deep thoughts in the dubious company of the Discovery Channel.

Has anyone seen that confounded bridge?

No postings for days and days, it seems that I may well have a life after all. The weekend and the early part of the week are just a blue/grey blur. Is that alcohol, tiredness or is my eyes doctor? Today I got out into the vast and open  countryside that is Central Scotland and saw the new bridge across the River Forth. An impressive and comprehensive piece of fine Chinese engineering set into an iconic scene, one day I hope to safely cross it. Busy people are everywhere, screwing it together and doing a damn fine job of it all. Meanwhile I'm getting back to chopping up a few mushrooms and emptying the dishwasher.

Anniversary

Today is our anniversary so we're off to Nandos later, that's how we roll.

A good time of year

This is good time of year (if you can somehow ignore all the terrible things going on in the world) and the garden is going a bit daft. Many plants and trees that I can neither name or pronounce are pushing out blossom, leaves and the new green shoots of a healthy economy. Birds are twittering and flying in that gravity defying way they do whilst building unapproved and dangerous nests in the roof. Elsewhere squirrels are learning road sense the hard way and under numerous stones and twigs a lot of insects lead quite and unobtrusive lives but presumably have a lot of insect sex that we never see. Moss lands in the garden as if it had fallen from the clouds or a neighbour had chucked it over the fence. In the Co-op wine and pizza are sold, quite freely but at a reasonable price. Really, you'd think I'd never been outside of the house before.

Living with a Mini

And now the dress is hung, the ticket pawned

The factor max that proved the fact is melted down

Woven on the edging of my pillow

And my brother lays upon the rocks

He could be dead, he could be not

He could be you

He's chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature

Shooting up pie in the sky

Bewlay brothers

In the feeble, in the bad

Bewlay brothers

In the blessed and cold

In the crutch hungry dark

Was where we flayed our mark

Oh and we were gone

Kings of Oblivion

We were so turned on

In the mind warp pavilion

The Bewlay Brothers, verse four or thereabouts. I probably don't need to hear anymore. Every so often I feel a little unsure, about the state of the world and the health of the poor and I return to some summer place where questions were never asked and truths were never faced. So what is this larking about all about? Where is the gravity and the fat, where is the dog and who hid the cat?

Oats

Politics suck as does traffic. So back to the world of dull, mundane things and my recent discovery that, once a finely sliced banana is added, instant porridge is actually ok. Not only does it fill that peculiar gnawing gap deep behind the belly button but it fuels you till at least twelve thirty and it makes you feel just a little more Scottish in some bizarre way. If I had a plate of tatties and herring for tea, hurled some coal at passing cats  and washed up in a tin bath the effect would be complete. Even an idiot can make this, just add boiling water freshly drawn from the loch, stir with a genuine Celtic spirtle, wait for a New York minute and away you go. It works; and I hereby declare the microwave oven obsolete (except for scrambled egg fixing and restoring the healing properties of a two day old Chinese carry out)... and oats build fortitude with every fibre and can prevent strokes and influenza.

Sheep shape

Taken from my car on my daily commute.

Sheep are a kind of non-human animal created by god during a trip to New Zealand when he was looking for some extra ingredients for a curry. Beef was considered but for some reason lamb sounded grander, would please food experts more and would roll from an Asian tongue quite easily. The sheep eventually escaped from New Zealand on the raft Kon-Tiki (meaning Kon-Tiki in Maori) and eventually made it to the West Coast of Scotland attracted by a seasonally based diet of midges. They've evolved to have no road sense, regularly sleeping in potholes and/or just standing there, in the way. They are unafraid of noise and rain. During the Clearances of 1746 there was little or no shagging so the population dwindled, recently things have looked up now that the Campbells have returned to the hillsides in their rusty camper vans. In spring they can be recycled into either small amounts of money, clothing (via knitting pins) or stew. Curious artists have also turned them into abstract pieces of art by simply attaching LEDs to their wool and turning a lighted wild dog on them. In time we hope they will spell out a secret word that will unlock a way for them to get back to their homeland. Just watch out for them anyway.