Wrath of the call centre

Never a good experience to hear via voicemail that your credit card has been hacked. It's followed of course by a long phone call where you are passed between handlers, all punctuated with irritating music whilst you forget and fumble through various versions of passwords and personal facts. I always remember nothing and the cat invariably sits across all the vital documents during most of the critical conversations. Thankfully the would be fraudster got none of my cash or credit (not much cash, much more credit of course) and I walk away feeling like an innocent man, even though I've done nothing wrong. So another brightly coloured credit card goes into the plectrum making machine, on-line shopping stops for a while and I re-register new versions of myself here and there. Groan.

Two days of cheesy pasta

If it's too good to be true...

For two days we've been surviving on cheesy chicken pasta with a chorizo twist.  There's a slight aftertaste building up but other then that no obvious side affects or effects either. I'm unsure as to the difference. That's the food review for the month done then. So having abstained from eBay for a spell I happened upon another alternative click-bait site where everything is a fiver; jeans, shirts etc. What could possibly be wrong with such an enterprising on-line shopping experience? Well I opted for a beige/buff/ indistinct kind of light weight summer shirt as a trial. Systems must be tested. I can already taste the sour disappointment in the roof of my mouth when I open the damp jiffy bag that's been crammed into the letter box and find some torn, shrunken, sizeless, useless offering in there...we shall see. The outcome may well be unreported and I might just get on with wearing it as if nothing had happened at all.

Virtual rule

I've come to terms with my political position, it's not been an easy journey. Painful even. Turns out I'm really a socialist zombie supporter with some tiny royalist sympathy (for comedic purposes) who would like to see the end of Westminster's tyrannous rule but with an alternative seat of power not necessarily operating  from Scotland, Iceland perhaps or (controversially) from the Moon. Earth's moon that is thought I'd consider one of Mars' as an alternative. Another solution is that Scotland could be run from some virtual world, at a safe but unspecified distance. My theory is that any Scottish Parliament will always be full of argumentative, ugly or thick Scots who all mean well but can't quite operate in a non-tribal and professionally productive fashion. They also have bad taste in a number of keys areas of art, music and decorum. So in short we should be run by aliens or perhaps zombies, or just zombie aliens in a virtual debating chamber in some digital dimension linked to Scotland by an App. Now I can't wait for their first party political broadcasts in that awkward spot when you're digesting your tea and about to snooze just after the Scottish News.

Bad Karma

Last night, in heavy rain and poor visibility at a hotel in Edinburgh I inadvertently parked my car in a disabled slot. It was there all night and I only realised by mistake this morning. Fortunately I'm not superstitious or paranoid, in fact I don't believe in much and I don't expect to suffer some divine retribution but I have an awkward feeling of guilt now that I've broken a (golden) rule of some sort. There will be consequences, bad dreams and sleepless nights until I can find out how best  to claw my way back into the bland and abstract favour of the universe. Or maybe not, perhaps it's best to shake it all off and not give a shit. To the best of my knowledge no one was hurt or harmed by my (thoughtless?) actions. Let battle commence and rage  inside and outside my head but I will choose to ignore the voices.

Dyson Airband

Last night I encountered a Dyson Airblade that (I known it has a kind of sad robotic face here but I'm not going into the whole  "faces in things" stuff) seemed to have a strange musical capability.  As soon as a drunk, post urinating punter but his dripping hands into the robot's mighty jaws it responded by playing the intro to "See Emily Play". A top twenty tune by those timeless psychedelic darlings known as the Pink Floyd.  Well it certainly sounded like it to me, but I had had a lot to drink by that point in the evening. I also suffer a little from false memory syndrome. Occasional bouts of blogging, periods of reflection, alcohol and the keeping of notebooks helps greatly. Please send money or listen to some of our stuff at least 2 million times on Spotify.

Venus

The Birth of Venus of Suburbia. A photo by Rosaleen Ryan.

What cats really want

That strange, moist, pre-lubricated chicken pieces pack that you never buy; we buy. But we don't eat it ourselves, never. It goes directly to the cats, well one cat, particulary if it makes the hungry noise. Seems to taste best straight from the floor as well, maybe that makes it like some kind of household road-kill so there's cat satisfaction. Tesco value, asda value, Aldi whatever and randomly packaged bits from petrol stations and Spar shops (whenever lack of planning and lack of shopping comes about). All from the same big chicken run in Norfolk, economies of scale etc. It's probably OK but I can't say I find it appetising, it's got too many cat associations now. They won the chicken pieces war over a long period of time and I'm slowly either turning vegetarian or into a vegetable.

Project for somebody

I am of the belief that all things are (possibly) possible. So, setting James Joyce to music. Has it ever been done successfully? Then again is successfully the correct measure to use or outcome to expect? Doubt it.

Collateral damage

Cat relaxes as the storms roll by.

The measure of a modern storm are the new kinds of harm done other than chimneys and trees getting blown over and other forms of collateral damage. We had a bit of that, the felt has parted company with the garden shed and a piece of the kid's slide went AWOL (now returned) but generally it's our wonderful lo-fi Internet life line that goes all flaky. Funny how this unseen and abstract little link with civilisation affects us when it glows with an angry red light instead of the cool blue of stable communication. Then it's the pointless OCD act of switching things off and on just to try to jolt a restart and also to delay the painful process of calling the rather frigid and underwhelming BT hotline, joy of joys. Anyway the link has (no doubt thanks to some BT engineers climbing up a ladder in a gale; thanks) returned and I'm bathed in a serene blue light again. If only I could find something meaningful and worth linking into on the great wide web. I should look for some IT contingency planning techniques I guess or better yet, get a life.

Not civilised enough

There must be better and less petty things to moan about than the weather. In theory yes but once trapped in the black hole of stormy muck that is currently steamrolling over us it's hard to think creatively. Of course it's hardly tough indoors in a warm and dry if slightly shaky building. Get a grip man.

I presume that it's the government, Donald Trump and ISIS that are to blame with their negativity, well constructed lies and poor sense of style. They've killed our moment. They disturbed the Karma balance with their antics and now we're all headed to hell, limbo and the 5th Dimension. Once there we'll befriend pigeons and wild birds; feed and talk to them in the streets awaiting the moment of our arrest and eventual incarceration. It's just not civilised.

Goodbye January

So January is over, now it's February next with it's inexplicable extra day, all because it's not had one for four long years.

Making things fit

The day began with a three egg F&B breakfast that somehow confused the waitress. She recovered well and earned a handsome tip. She also gave us free or bottomless coffee, not usual in the UK. Then it was time for the great outdoors, a pleasure always available but seldom sampled. So I walked three miles today in very cold weather wearing a very tight hat and very tight sunglasses; Mrs Impossible looked on approvingly and did her best to capture the uncomfortable moment. My head has swollen somehow. I did not choose to do this it just happened. Along with the puddle jumping, dog and owner encounters and the prospect of the heavens dumping tons of chilly water down your neck at any moment it passed the time in an edgy but almost pleasant way. Once home I was resuscitated with chicken noodle soup and corn bread. Then it was a YouTube marathon, editing and making things fit. More later.

Stormy Friday

All in my head

A cartoon cat called Tog.

Everyday, if I can, I like to read something from a quality newspaper or at the very least it's facsimile in the form of a web site. So it turns out that I saw today that there's a cat in Scandinavia trapped in the body of a woman. She has to employ false ears and a tail to be the cat she wants to be. No mice have been caught yet but she may well eat them from a pet shop. I can think of a number of humans who are trapped in the bodies of cats, there are likely more than even I think. Any corrective surgery would be both risky and expensive. Sometimes life in all it's confusing forms is just plain confusing. The cat problem is one thing but I've yet to hear of folks who thought they were a red setter, a spaniel, an elephant, a buzzard or a trout. perhaps I'm going to all the wrong parties. Maybe in these "fluid" times it will become more common and we'll gradually adopt more creative personas and looks that will be accepted by employers, governments and welfare agencies. It'll be fine so long as I'm not expected to share a cage, hutch or aviary. What about being a tree? There's got to be room too for becoming inanimate objects like a bungalow, a lawnmower or a motorway information sign. So many opportunities really.

Dash Position

As I've travelled the world, tripping over flagstones and spilling tea I realise more and more that a good many people are completely glaikit and behave that way most of the time. Glaikit is a great and underused word and one I'm sure both W C Fields and Groucho Marx would have used regularly had it been available to them. It sounds like it's meaning, pretty much perfectly. So these  glaikit people then; they are everywhere and often in quite senior and influential positions, others do things like hairdressing, driving or travel agent work. I often wonder how they survive and, more confusingly how the rest of us get by whilst alongside them. I'd also like to see glaikit appear on gravestones more often in what is known as the dash position; Born - Died. So it would be:

Born 20th October 1955

"Glaikit"

Died 21st October 2030.

Nothing personal

Available somewhere on Etsy.

If you were to criticize this blog (and that would hardly be difficult) an easy and accurate accusation to make would be that it's not personal enough. It's vague, woolly, full of fabrications, dull, lifeless, a vanity project, an obsession, unfunny and a complete waste of time. Fair enough. So to rectify this (the personal part) here are some truths:

Favourite food - rhubarb.

Favourite island - Galapagos

Favourite body posture - slouching.

Favourite font - New Times Roman Size 8.

Favourite item of clothing - cravat.

Favourite fabric - jute.

Favourite colour - duck egg green.

Favourite drink - coconut milk.

Favourite word - wobbly.

Favourite TV show - The One Show.

Favourite swimming pool - Burntisland Beacon.

Favourite shop - Lidl in Broxburn.

Favourite sound - sandpaper on wood.

Favourite day - Wednesday 

Favourite weather - foggy, dull and 11C with a 6 mph wind for N/W.

Favourite egg - brown size large.

Favourite toe - wee toe, right foot (on me but not everyone else).

Favourite stamp - First class large packet.

Favourite sand - builders'.

Favourite holiday - two weeks.

Favourite money - 20p piece.

Favourite band - The Pixies.

Favourite thought - stopping.

Sunday - usual soundtrack

Drove to Aberdeen and back. There were occasional blips of tyre warnings, rain and scrambled egg on toast. As the dust settled and darkness fell I listened to what has come to be known as the "usual music". Soon it was home for haggis, neeps and tatties. Nice as it turned out. The tatties and neeps were purchased from Waitrose, a shop I seldom visit, mainly because it's far away. The vegetables were fine but overall the shop, whilst pleasant was unremarkable and strangely cheap. Is this the experience that posh people rave about and cannot live without? If so my thinking on a number of exclusive and elitist pastimes must now be reconsidered. I may indeed be posh after all.

Bridges

Having not been in the village of South Queensferry for a while we ended up there two days in a row, eating, drinking and parking badly in the Hawes Inn, one time hang out of Robert Louis Stephenson. Here's some touched up and untouched photos of the noisy new bridge construction project, taken from a safe distance with a full stomach and an empty head. The old bridge remains a cause for concern, it seems to have become extra bumpy since it's December mishap - even with the crossing speed reduced to 40 thanks to a network of intrusive cameras. If I didn't know better I'd suspect it was reacting somewhat petulantly against the steady arising of it's younger, fitter sister. Retirement and redundancy are  not easy paths sometimes.

Blurry cat exits

Here's Tigger the local bad ass cat and general street fighter making a hasty exit from our cat sanctuary just as I was about to snap him snoozing. He objected to his privacy being invaded by a camera and duly bolted. Now the cat house is chilly and vacant until he or some wondering stray decides they need some shelter.

Asleep at the wheel

You know that feeling you get when driving when you zone out and carry on driving but you're not really aware of where you're going. You're on some aware but disconnected driving autopilot of the brain. After a few minutes you snap out of this, can't quite recall how you got where you are and resume driving in a much more conscious state, you think. So to counteract this I've taken to making up songs based on the number plate of the car in front. There's a strong, random element of nonsense here. It's important that there is a car there and that you are not too close to it. Here's tonight's effort, played in D but likely to be better in F#.

Slo Jamu

I want to be with you

I know you want me too

Slo Jamu

Slo Jamu

This place you're going too

I think I'll pass straight through

Slo Jamu

Etc.