Golden Slumbers

OK I know that the sun sets everywhere, that's a common thing. We see it most days assuming there's no fog or low cloud or grey and murky weather. Here when that everyday thing happens the trees facing west into the fading light are bathed for a short time in a warm, ethereal glow that lasts only a few moments. Is there a name for it? I've no idea. These photos don't really do justice to the effect either.

Snowdrops

No snow but some real hail and a biting cold wind. Not a great afternoon for venturing out too far. I did however decide to refill the bird feeders and thought I'd better catch a shot of the scattered and fragile clumps of snowdrops before they disappear. 

Lookin' in the wrong place

Lyrics:

You say you want a love that's pure

You'll find her, heart right, you're sure

But not so much when you're face to face

Maybe you're just lookin' in the wrong place.

You're searching for a cause to believe in

Feel strong about, kick their teeth in,

See the solidarity trapped in a wider space

Maybe you're just lookin' in the wrong place

"Here comes the sun" done as modern jazz

John Coltrane's shadow on a piece of glass

You fall in love then you fall from grace

Maybe you're just lookin' in the wrong place.

Lookin' in the wrong place, twenty twenty vision sees the easy mistakes

When everybody moves in their happy ways but you're still lookin' in the wrong place.

Lookin' in the wrong place.

Still hibernating

As I walked out one March morning: well I forgot my phone and the weather was a bit iffy and there were dogs and birds and other walkers and things and then the weather turned so I turned and returned and eventually ate a late and very welcome lunch. Turns out that despite the date, media speculation, bulbs sprouting and the great portents in the night sky, Spring is still busy hibernating (as above) and who can blame her.

The breaking of the day

Today's extra and quite pretty dawn, captured from the bus to work by the wonderful Ms AG.

You have to wonder why the mystics, timekeepers and clever people from the past chose to add an extra day in February of all months. Why not July or August when we could all enjoy an extra day out hopefully in fine(r) weather. but it was not to be  for sound reasons of propaganda, stupidity and control. Any political party worth it's salt should shove that one in their manifesto, do away with the occasional 29th and add in the 32nd of July. Vote winner surely. Also an extra day to blog when my head's full of soup and cold chicken and there's a cat lying across the laptop.

Bad design

Note: no grizzly away fans, just a blaze of winter sun on row upon row of empty seats.

When they (?) orientated East End Park man years ago they failed to take into account the position of the sun in the sky relative to the assembled multitudes watching the game. As a result the home support spends eleven months of the year sat on the dark side of the moon, devoid of heat and light, freezing, chittering and buying hot, poisoned Bovril that's murky and grim enough to stun a beaver. Meanwhile the away fans, no matter how badly behaved, bask in the radiant warmth of the best of the Fife climate should any of them bother to turn up. Groan. Anyway and observations aside, we won the game in fine style, 6 goals to 1. If only every match was like that (apart from the searing cold).

Cameras roll

This film (LIFE) is about the photographer Dennis Stock's early work featuring James Dean. Slow and unsteady, introspective and disturbing. Dean is enigmatic, volatile and vulnerable, Stock is driven and self centred. Neither man knows his life and what to make of it. They stumble in the dark while the cameras roll and casualties pile up around them. 1950s USA looks grim and cold and the film industry is a great, careless, chewing, spitting juggernaut. Having said that it's a watchable film in a bleak, car crash kind of way and the photographs that came from the sessions live on in the strange, black and white afterlife of remembered popular culture.

A short period of artificial serenity

The Superwoman of Rock? This is complete nonsense and what's more everybody knows that Dr Strange and Captain America were always Fender guys. Not sure about the drummer either.

For some reason preparing and cooking up a pot of vegetable soup gives me a peaceful, easy feeling. I can't explain it. and it's nothing to do with the Eagles. I don't actually get much of a peaceful feeling serving it up or when eating it either. It just happens. Then there's the eternal quest to get down to the bottom of the dirty laundry basket and get everything clean again. No real peace here I'm afraid just a sense of perpetual churn. What about mixing up the smooth, decaf and regular coffees into different jars and not letting on? Hmm, just breeds and uncomfortable guilt and mischievous self doubt. Extracting a trapped mustard seed from the dark void of a worn molar without drawing blood? First remorse over eating that kind of mustard and then some low level of satisfaction once the errant seed is removed and spat out into the sink. Ugh. Winning an item on eBay. That's OK but there's usually a catch, a delay or a quality issue of some sort. Feeding the birds? A short spell of serenity then rampant anxiety as the cats eye them up. Frying three eggs and not breaking any of the yolks; nice.

Instant protien

Keeping up my strength, fortifying my resistance to ebola and stimulating my vigour with a regular can of cheap, slimy, oily fish. It's almost working and I'm feeling younger every day. The main bodily joints work more easily, times passes more quickly and I suffer fewer corner of the eye flashbacks than before. My ideas are less politically bankrupt and my beliefs are less stressful and more believable (but less achievable). My sense of humour is darker and deeper and my feet less itchy. My trousers fit and my shirts need less ironing. Comfortable shoes remain a problem however. You are what you eat it seems. In other news I'm turning my back on bananas, you can't get a decent one anywhere these days.

Detrimental

Large artistic beanbag has detrimental impact on pony.

#Fiscal Framework. What appears to be a good result for La Bella Scotia somewhat marred by the lovely Nicola's overuse of the words detriment and detrimental. Clearly help  is required in the speech writing office in the SNP. HQ The offending words appeared in various awkward forms 87 times during her regaling of the "Toon Cooncil" this afternoon. So we've a few bawbees for the next five years and "nothing detrimental" to report apart from the Tories being in charge of the Treasury and the collapse of the oil industry.

"Move along, move along, nothing detrimental to see here."

Scully's Song

They said you'd come home

But things have moved on

They said you'd come home

Nothing's moved on

It wasn't the stress of the job

Causing offence

It was bound to come true 

Glorious chaos

Ripping my sense

It was bound to come true

So it rained for five days

Hunting and fishing

I was rusting from the inside

Justice asleep but somewhere

She was not sleeping

The programmes don't help

The links

The YCL girls

The sauna

The doctors

The drugs

Missionaries

The punters 

The habits

Community men

They said you'd come home

But things have moved on

They said you'd come home

Nothing's moved on

Songwriting with Robert Mitchum

Any source of justifiable inspiration is a good source of usable inspiration. Black,white, film noir, moody, grim, rain, Blade Runner, X-Files. This has been a busy 24 hours, eating, occasionally sleeping and a fairly intense period of collaborative songwriting where we realise that we have nothing to say but that nothing is in itself meaningful and worth saying. So thanks to long gone movie star heavy weight Robert Mitchum for some blurry but useful inspiration in the wee small hours. Everything is currently running through the mincing machine as if it were mince but it isn't. Meanwhile in the kitchen real mince is cooking, Italian style. Robert M would've approved.

Stock footage of cats

Unsurprisingly some stock photos of cats in the "so you're back home from work, well we've been doing absolutely nothing but lazing on this bed all day" mode.  Also featured is a post haircut, half hearted, hatted selfie cleverly taken in a mirror and presented quite poorly even after some (all of 5 seconds worth of) editorial trickery on iPhoto. Alas things around are not always so serene, earlier this morning the cats staged an impromptu fight i.e. squawking and ranting at another slightly more hostile cat that happened to be outside on the roof staring into a window in a bid to gain territory. Just as well we humans don't try that sort of thing. 

Day off

A few hero types here.

Unusually I spent today not at work. I still made a few phone calls and sort of thought about things. That's all part of being off but not quite being switched off. I also walked during a brief spell of early spring (optimistic) sunshine. That took place just before the daily deluge. Then it was administration, a primitive sort of sorting, laundry and guitar and drum machine twiddling. I also fed a random selection of British wild birds, none of which showed any obvious gratitude. They just seem to scatter it all across the lawn as if it were some free food avian carnival day. Don't these birds realise the high cost of scientifically engineered, non-organic, long life bird food?  There was also a spot of cat shepherding and the essential routine of laundry pursuits was also followed. After that I chewed on some sardines as the rain came down. Back to work tomorrow. Hurrah!

One of those days

This picture is worthy of serious study and possibly a short story or even a novel. No motor accidents today, oh no. Then in some songwriting way just thinking about Egypt and Hawaii for some reason. Seeking inspiration and not finding it. Also listening to the radio for the randomness of it all. Then there's eBay.

Indestructable

I don't know why it is that so many drivers, at speed, in the dark and in the rain, consider themselves to be indestructible. Is it some horrible, ageing, creepy thing I'm now feeling? That desire not to drive as fast as possible, despite the conditions and not to stay in the outside lane all the time. To be a bit later because it really makes no difference. To be wary of standing water and blinding spray and just to be sensible enough to know that it has to be best to take it easy when the weather and visibility are poor.  With increasing years comes maturity that gradually gives way to avoiding anything reckless and I guess it all slowly solidifies into a new kind fear. Not sure I'm liking this new experience.

Cake of the Year

A pretty strong contender for Cake of the Year and it's only 15th February. Having said that I was not aware that there was a Cake of the Year until a few moments ago.

Dragon face

Still messing about trying to get the right name and mark or motif as a user / business name for the various guitars I'm building. Dragon parts, eyes, tails and scales all figure and I usually google for ideas and simple designs to transfer, anyway this somewhat natural dragon head came up on my Twitter feed today. It may well come in useful when I get down to doing some actual concentration and focus in on the subject properly.

Elsewhere in the universe

This would explain almost everything if I could understand it.

Nice sharply cold but sunny Valentine's Sunday morning, early breakfast in F&Bs and a toddle around the shops and then home for bird feeding and catching up on odd domestic tasks. Meanwhile as we sit here doing this kind of stuff whilst pointing various kinds of highly dangerous nuclear weapons at ourselves bigger things are taking place elsewhere in the universe.  The problem with that is that we can't quite understand them. Heads slowly fill with treacle when the boffins talk and we of little imagination and patience stare blankly for a while, slack jawed and then return to our lattes and phones to study cats jumping into boxes or digital sprites flickering away on some pointless and noisy task. Of course I'm still puzzled by the modern conundrums offered up in car park designs and how to find your way out; no hidden galaxy quest for me it seems. Creatives still struggle on as a minority as a lost audience of confused enthusiasts listens to highly compressed music or watches action movies that contain no real action, elsewhere people are starving, drowning or being bombed.  I'd like to think that out there amongst the hidden galaxies some universal sense of common sense is prevailing and that they are either totally ignoring us (for good reasons) or about to invade the fuck out of us in order to set us straight. 

Mike up a piano

Firstly get yourself a suitable piano and somebody who can play it. Then get somebody else along who knows how to mike it up (thanks JF and FT) and set up the necessary equipment. Then do some recording. Then sit back with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee whilst all that happens. It's really as simple as that.