Jean Liotard

I was fortunate enough to get a close look at this man's handiwork, much of which is currently on display in the Royal Academy. A remarkable talent, a curiously successful businessman and one of the most enigmatic and unrecognised figures in art history. And he worked mostly using pastels...

Climate change

Now that the great and the good and delusional have gathered in Paris to discuss global warming and how best to engineer global cooling our nearby neighbours have responded in their own sweet way.  By neighbours I'm referring to Ineos far away across the river (that's about a mile). They've turned up the petrochemical flare to around eleven on the dial. We can hear the roar, we can almost feel the heat and perceive the message to be "A Merry Christmas to one and all, don't worry, whatever you decide we're still going to do whatever the market's demand". If only all that excess of sound and fury and fire and brimstone could be channeled into something other than industrial fireworks.

Life is a piece of cake

Well it can be. Monday according to the calendar and various other expected events now and at last last week is over. Still alive afterwards after numerous escapades, travels UK wide and snow that looked bad but finally came to nothing. In the midst of this a song was actually written, a slightly disappointing Dobbies dinner consumed and more recurring theme TV watched and despite all the tension and action almost immediately forgotten. Unlike the lovely cake. I've also realised I don't really need various bits of social media to survive but I lack the heart, soul and resolve to cut them off. That's probably because I'm too lazy to embark on more of more meaningful things in life...this week. Maybe next.

That's entertainment

Or that's intertainment, a new and potentially meaningful word that may have something to do with:

internet-attainment, international-attainment, interweb-attainment, internet-entertainment...and so on. Some possible current examples:

Homeland
The Last Kingdom
The Vikings
Fargo
Fast n' Loud
The Bridge
Inspector Montablano

...I have no better ideas at the moment.

Hair like Adele

Cat dreaming and in the dream experiencing a deja vu; this may be a good example of parallel universes scientists say. Tea cup (that is a banana in a parallel universe) for scale. Meanwhile everybody it seems either wants to bomb ISIS or just have hair like Adele Atkins. Me, I'm somewhere else on all this but I'm feeling the benefits of two pints of Guinness, some fricasseed squirrel and seven wholesome hours of trouble/dream free sleeping.

The unbearable lightness of bicycles

Nothing to do with Christmas, this is bicycle art.

The grey cold continues, following in our tired footsteps across the path of months and on beyond the black hole of consumer heaven Friday to the wet weekend and beyond. At this time of year there's a powerful urge to just run and hide. Christmas is coming upon us like some dreadful, greedy disease that we must pay homage to or suffer. There's no such thing as doing Christmas on your own terms, it already chokes the life out of you well before December 25th. The sales pitch, tunes and tinsel get in your head space generating a blizzard of bi-polar conflicts. That's really just another day destroyed by our own need for self destruction and the frenzy of not missing out. Who needs bombs when you can spray this festive confusion on your enemies. We in the west are so sorted that our imported and distorted festivals deserve exporting to those who don't know any better and can't fight back. Future civilisations will look back on this and scratch their heads or possibly their bottoms.

Hot rails to Hell

Well no hot rails this time just a nice JB Humbucker, not quite what was planned but nonetheless another project and planning and design opportunity. Thankfully after some masterful work, pole climbing and standing in puddles by BT the phone line has returned to full serviceability so the Internet connection can be fired up. Life without it all? Strangely tolerable, like the nineteen seventies or thereabouts. The lesson learned is that if need be life can be lived successfully off-grid. Maybe I have a new ambition.

Random Access

Photos from around London, posted in Glasgow. Just me keeping my hand in and touching the virtual world over a coffee and a donut. One day all of life will be like this or at least feel like this. The cold of November and the warm remembering of a clunky internet connection shrouded in white noise. So if I haven't got time for this them what have I time for? The only answer is a foolish one, close down all systems, bide time and stare into the horizon. Soon it'll be April 1st (well not soon but soonish) and another braver, newer world will open up. Of course it may be that I'm simply dreaming all of this...

Awkward Silence

It's highly likely that an awkward but maybe useful and therapeutic silence will now prevail from my little corner of the blogging world. No phone, no broadband at home. It's like having an unplanned and unexpected holiday from on line action and serial time wasting. I may find that beyond the screen and keys I have more of a life than I thought...and if I need wifi there's always free stuff here and there. All I need to do is go out.

Early morning walk

Trees blown almost bare by a week of strong winds and driving rain.

The path is clear here but further along the water running from the fields has flooded it. Everywhere is the gurgling sound of  dirty, smoky water trying to escape.

A fresh torrent bursts across the path and down onto the beach where it splits into numerous streams all searching for the quickest route to the river.

Low cloud, mist and drizzle obscure the view, shielding the power station and the lagoons and hiding the geese and sea birds out on the mud.

Wild unpicked apples rot on the wrong side of a tree guarded by thickets and thorns. Only birds manage to feast on the fruit.

For some reason the gate is too big for the gap.

The ditch on the left is busy clearing the water from the hill but it also keeps the path clear. The old ruined church at the top of the hill stands quiet, the defiant grave stones slowly turn onto  their faces and lie at odd angles and the moss sucks up the water. The souls buried below long ago can hardly care what goes on.

Slippery pavement

No it's not any kind of suggested prog rock band name, the "Slippery Pavements" it's a fact and phenomenon that exists in Glasgow but is denied by the city fathers and most of the western world. I have experienced this in both pain and humiliation. So there's no mean city thing here, no city of culture, miles better or city of smiles and hawkers; none of that. I would simply christen Glasgow as the supreme, one and only "City of Slippery Pavements". Other over 60 Hush Puppy shufflers, am I wrong on this? Glasgow City Council please get this sorted ASAP by the application of neutralising chemicals or a revised slab purchasing policy of some sort.

In other news, these cruel Islamic State bastards need to seen in proper perspective:

Simple time travel

This evening has mostly been spent driving back from Dundee through the rain and singing along to the Grateful Dead's version of Me and Bobby McGee. Obviously not the definitive version of that arguable ruined and overkilled song but worthy enough in it's own right. In the end listening to this kind of music regularly represents a primitive form of time travel where you travel without any of the physical problems of travelling. Apart from the rain.

Culture will eat itself

Memo to self: must get an upgrade to a new smarter smart phone that will fill my life with connections and meaning. Once fully charged I can simply concentrate hard and stare into the black abyss known as the soul of technology. Then I can talk about it and message from it using a series of exaggerations  and wondrously wonderful made up adjectives. After than I'm getting an Audi.

Autism Test

There are quite a few tests out there nowadays if you're inclined to self diagnose. Some say that the ability to predict the collapse of a once healthy tree is a good indicator (either of autism or witchy powers) but I doubt it. Telekinesis is another possible side effect, you either have that or you don't. No, the most reliable test is listening to Adele's Hello and checking on your own private reaction to the lyric when it rises just at "hello from the other side ". If you can avoid a tear in the corner of your eye or the hair rising on the back of your neck at this point, good news (bad news?), you're well high on the spectrum.

From the relative comfort of the couch

Occasionally challenged, seldom beaten. Oh there's a book as well written by some Scottish bloke.

Somewhere between the soul and the soft machine, between the braised salmon and the apple crumble, the clear water and the red wine and Wheeler Dealers and Fast n' Loud we find Dr Jekyll and Mr (overacting) Hyde. This is in it's self somewhere before the baffling but addictive Homeland. It's so bad I almost reached for Dr Who on iPlayer but that also felt like a step too far. These quiet, pleasant, high value low action Sundays require discipline and control and the TV can ruin the moment. They may even require some reassessment of taste and discernment. Any way this Dr Jekyll is so bad that apart from the insurance company sponsoring the ad breaks there's nothing else in between. It's unloved and it shows. Proof that good actors, decent production values and homages to literature, steampunk and the Great British Empire are no guarantee of a decent programme. Currently my assessment would be about 1 out of 10. 

Doing nothing

Everything is windy, wet, blustery today. Makes me lazy, careless and reluctant to step out into the seasonal damp. Time to mentally hibernate, batten down the hatches and stare into the near space. I know there are other spaces out there, wider, greater and ripe for exploration but today is not that kind of day. So I'm taking low level control, slipping into doing close to nothing and just listening to the wind moving around in those trees.

Last of the autumn apples

50 years

So you see I have come to doubt,

All that I once held as true,

I stand alone without belief,

The only truth I know is you.

Strange how this Paul Simon lyric from 1965 has sat in the back of my mind like some progressive time/cluster bomb that issues tiny explosions of emotions and questions. It marks a long slice of a life time. It went off again when the song popped up on early Saturday morning radio, there in a mediocre procession of other tunes and warbling, stuck in the middle of nowhere, then along comes this emotional blast from a different, unexplained past. There's no reason for the combinations that arise in strange radio programming mixes. No explanation, random and scattered and all full of effect for so few just once in a while. Or so I imagine.

Late for the sky

American Sniper: As ever behind the popular curve, playing catch up, understanding the world by degrees and at that only a few degrees at a time. I like to watch films but in no particular order and generally not when they are white hot with the plastic and tat of Oscars and parades and hype. So I was conflicted about this film, mainly due to it's reputation and of course the strong subject matter. I tried to watch with an open mind. Turn's out it's a powerful anti-war statement after all but not everyone might see it that way. There's glorification of sorts, flags wave all across a vista crowded out with raw and pointless violence, the pain of conflict and the questionable reasons for western intervention in...everything. War makes nobody happy and seldom make things better in a justifiable way (though there have been just wars) and that's all down to the lowest level mechanics of war. Some things are just cruel and miserable and we made it that way. No gods, no devils or demons to blame, only stupid us. Down in the dirt and up in the sky and on the place in between where we, with all our septic, putrid differences and where those petty beliefs exist and prevail.

Birdman revisited

Fashionably late for the movie premier, late catching up, late catching on. Everything is quite disturbing and unfortunately surreal, a handful of gongs and a fistful of Oscars later. The story of imagined failure, not appreciating what you're appreciated for because how can that ever be good enough? Well that was disturbing. Just enough.