Cauliflower Cheese

Trump won because, despite his hypocrisy, lies, bullying, lack of experience and generally terrible behaviour he represented to the American voters an alternative to the political elite who, despite numerous opportunities and a wealth of resources have failed time after time to deliver the changes and demonstrable levels of fairness and justice  that people naturally desire. He will be a disastrous and dangerous president no doubt but his election (like the UK Brexit outcome) can only be useful if it serves as a clear warning to the "liberal political elite" that they must revolutionise their own approach to their stale, self serving and corrupt career driven politics if they want to return to power. 

Party politics, constant bickering and the inability to ever credit opponents even with the germ of a good idea is no foundation for government and for directing the fate of millions of people and the running of healthy and prosperous economies. Trump has achieved the unthinkable and the cost to us all will be enormous but we need to learn from this disaster and across all of the political spectrum actively work to change the very nature of our failed systems. In the mean time I propose to fortify myself with a portion of hot cauliflower cheese whilst I ponder my next set of actions for 2016.

Original image and credit: http://www.b3ta.com/board/11212886

Photo of Phobos

This isn't one of the many dull photos I take with my phone as I'm pottering about Fife, as you may have thought. It was taken by the Mars Express apparently. Not sure if that is a newspaper, a train or some form of interplanetary craft that happened to get close to the Martian moon Phobos, you can never really tell these days. Anyway Mars still remains a pretty sexy planet as far as most folks on earth are concerned. From H G Wells, Matt Damon, the ancients and the new series about to start up on the History Channel, Mars is the place. Yes we all love Mars and it seems and quite right that we should, it will be our refuge and home (well for those with enough influence and cash) one day when the earth has been finally strangled and asphyxiated by this septic generation's plastic and junk.

Tuesday stuff

Abandoned cottage up near Bridge of Orchy. 

Ugly: Taking an old and beat up  strat body and filling in the bridge and trem cavity to hardtail it. Basically stuffing it with wood and filler to make it dense and strong once again. It doesn't look pretty but once finished it should work and hopefully will be completed and finished with an interesting  road worn look.  

This is for the front of course. An unusual two pickup scratch plate I put together fitted with single coil lipstick pickups. No idea what it'll sound like.

Drinking aspargus

Reflections on a kind of bullying and not growing up: Secondary School in the sixties was a bully's haven, there were so many fine opportunities designed into the school system that allowed it to flourish as some second line of pupil discipline working behind the tawse and daily classroom humiliations to maintain a solid state of fear amongst the kids. One example was the jungle like atmosphere in the dinner hall. This was before the days of actual choice or cafeteria type systems. This was dog eat dog and possibly included dog on the menu, you couldn't be sure. 

We were seated at tables of eight, three on each side and a "monitor" at each end. The job of the monitor was to collect the food on warm trays, bring to the table and then dish it up to the hungry young would be recipients. Simple arithmetic said that each serving should be one eighth of the contents of the tray but that seldom happened. Generally the monitors were the most aggressive, worst off, toughest kids on the block (or in the housing scheme). They all had big brothers and a tale to tell and they ruled the table as well as the playground and distributed the food according to their own warped whims. 

We (the bullied, as it now turns out now thanks to my enlightenment) knew them as "starvers". A really bad starver would feed himself and any of his tribe or followers present and leave the rest with a few chips or a sausage or sometimes next to nothing. Funnily this system was accepted and understood, few complained. They knew fine well that if they did then after lunch there would be an ambush and they'd get a good kicking so we silently went along with this and learned more of life's bitter lessons on a daily basis. Often the water jug doubled as a makeshift spittoon to add to the glamour of the occasion of this fine dining. The fact that we'd paid for this princely meal at sixpence a day seemed unconnected to our treatment. It was just a part of the general misery of the grey Presbyterian Scottish education back then. Of course teachers would hover around but they remained indifferent and aloof and seldom intervened to bring justice. A misheard complaint could be seen as cheek and that would result in a good but undeserved belting.
  
I guess a couple of years of this haphazard diet explains in someway why I'm on the short side. A long day a school with whatever I could scrape up as a main meal and then potatoes and butter (?) for tea when I got home after my double bus journey.  Growing up was tough. Still they were reckoned to be the happiest days of my life although and now I can relax, look at fine art and sip asparagus and lime juice whilst munching on fresh French bread and Marmite. Never had it so good I suppose.

Weekend with added invalid bit depth

The sun sets all across what looks like Scotland's answer to Ayer Rock but clearly isn't. It is a big hill however set a long way from Australia.

Nice weekend of road trippy travel gave us a day out in the highlands. Peace, good company and some sharply cold but agreeable weather. 

Invalid bit depth: I almost love the strange messages returned to dumb users from websites when uploading files. A meaningless stream of Google inducing technical madness and jargon. No rational human ever spoke or communicated this way. It's like watching some slow fit taking place. Words and terms pulled together and all pleasingly incomprehensible and seldom with a hint of a direction for help so not only has your first "simple task" failed you now enter a new world of pain and wild goose chases to try to resolve the fault. 

Going Forth

Sitting in the car at Limekilns waterfront, sipping a (surprisingly good) coffee from Stephens and watching the light play on the water and flash and hide through and between clouds. The air temperature is 6C, the sun is working hard but not hard enough. Too chilly for a walk, I've not enough layers in place today either. I had some thoughts at the time, clearly they were not important because they are gone, just passing things negotiating an idle and parked up mind before setting themselves free. 

When I got home a bird was trapped inside the kitchen flue. I could hear it scratching and fluttering against the metal, the cats were agog. I had to remove the back cover to let it escape. I did hesitate for a few moments before I did this. I wondered if I should intervene or let nature take it's course but then I thought on how cruel nature is, so I went outside, got up the ladder, fiddled with screws and bits and opened it all up. There was just silence from the black tube so I left it open for a while. I guess the bird eventually escaped, the noises have gone. It kind of made up for the bird the cats killed the other day, or maybe not.

Stopping the rot

Like the saturated timbers of the Mary Rose or the Great Pyramid keys structural parts of old buildings need cleaning and preservation regimes in place to keep them from turning really tatty. I've been doing a bit of that, just to beat the tat. Clear and unambiguous instructions are important and it's even more important that you follow them and don't drop the tin or drink the liquid. Butterfingers. Open the Ronseal carefully, apply with care, step back with care, avoid damp or excessive moisture with care, let it dry with care, watch it with care, clean the brush with care, store any remaining product with care, once dry apply a second coat with care (6 hours drying time). Live carefully. Don't touch wet paint with or brush against it without care. Don't thoughtlessly step into any older building that may be suffering from rot. It's risky. You may go through the floor or the ceiling might collapse on you and that would never do. 

Solar Art

As well as providing life and light to those of us currently spinning happily if a little confused on this marbled bowling ball the sun also likes to indulge in little pieces of impromptu art now and again, just for the fun of it. Here's a couple of pieces the sun shared with me recently. Just a matter of waiting for those pesky clouds to clear and the business of self expression can begin. All in all it's just another reason to love the sun. You may indeed worship it if you feel so inclined, I'm not taking things that far. The sun is of course not to be confused with the detestable rag top red top newspaper that criminally chose to steal it's name.

Shameless self promotion

Innocently trying out tools and stuff:

End of Autumn

How autumn took it's glowing and wonderful toll on the trees and leaves. Sun and stillness break up the shapes as the failing leaves wave goodbye, departing for the year while the spring seeds sleep deeply and untroubled before the coming winter.

I had a garden centre type lunch with Tommy Mackay who, little did I realise, was about to record this despite an awkward wrist injury:

1. Tommy Mackay ‏@TommyReckless  2h2 hours ago

   @Johnbarclay1 quickly did this just after you left.

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2. Alsatian Strangulation
3. 
   
4. John Barclay ‏@Johnbarclay1  9m9 minutes ago

   @TommyReckless wonderful, must've been something in the soup, great guitar work by the way #brokenwrist

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5. Tommy Mackay ‏@TommyReckless  6m6 minutes ago

   @Johnbarclay1 stookie slide guitar #wristgate

   0 replies0 retweets1 like

Does Tusk suck?

Standing or at least remaining seated and not falling asleep or picking your nose in the presence of giants: I am now in the slow process of travelling back in time 37 years to the release of Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. At the time some said it was pish, no Rumours etc. Some said it was cool and experimental, others said too long, too thin on content. I didn't say anything, I was renovating a cottage and experiencing fatherhood for the first time, life was not straightforward and I was happy enough listening to a battered copy cassette of Rumours anyway. Music like that was on the back burner, I had other stuff to do. Time has passed so I'm now catching up on 1979's outstanding business via digital remastering, truly I don't know why but I sense a gap needs filling somehow (I'm also working through a cavernous Steely Dan gap via blurry YouTube renditions). It seems that there are many ways to make peace with the world but fewer ways to make peace with yourself without baffling revisitation and foggy exploration. 

Blue Moon

Once upon  time there was a blue moon. People everywhere looked up and stared, they could not believe that their piece of sky had been visited by a moon so blue, but there it was, clear for everyone to see. A strange, beautiful omen in the night sky which  they watched, wondered at, stared at and talked about it for hours and hours. 

So time passed and the moon shone down steadily through the night time and twilight hours on them and they just carried on with their own business peacefully. Some would be asleep whilst others worked and some, unsure as to how they should be just dreamed moonlit dreams neither fully awake nor deeply asleep. I'm not completely certain but I believe that many of them went on, simply and carefully, to live happily ever after. 

I'm no expert either but I think that it could all be down to the effect of living under the blue moon. Perhaps it's all just another fairy tale but you'll have to check that out for yourself.

Extra Hour

No I don't understand what this means either but I put it together and I like it.

View from the non-office this morning; seems time has moved backwards for me and everyone else as I slept. Very useful and quite convenient. For no clear reason, other than it was in my mind to do so I decided to have a quick listen to Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons, such was my befuddled state of consciousness. So that's pretty much how I spent my extra self indulgent hour, well doing that, drinking tea and freshening up in the shower.

The cruel devil robbing our imaginations

Some clever artist somewhere has been able to turn the cartoon Cruella Deville into  a real (?) person without using an actress. Strange thought really, turning cartoons into real people, presumably it's been well explored elsewhere but it strikes me as a kind of Halloween horror scenario. Loose cartoons running around the world like in Roger Rabbit. When I was a kid I was fascinated by the cartoon Cruella; her rich bitch, slutty look and her evil intentions. I also liked her demonic car. Of course it makes no sense now but who cares, she was only every visible to me via one rare trip to the cinema and the odd appearance on Disney Time. All this material was carefully rationed by the corporations back then, before the days of piracy and constant feeds and streaming. Funny how the lack of content and the image starvation I felt only added to the intensity of the experience. The images were sharper and more imagined, now in the deconstructed present day all the mystery and proper magic  is gone and only cynical exploitation and exhausted, digitised messages remain. Our imaginations fail to get the exercise they need if it's all put on a plate in front of you.

P.S. I must stop spelling prostate as prostrate or prostitute or whatever it is I'm doing wrong.

At least a year

Me: It's confirmed that I'm at least a year behind the times, this lady from Aberdeen, Kathryn Joseph won Scottish Album of the year 2015 and I've only just heard of her thanks to a few minutes trawling around the BBC iPlayer. I sometimes wonder how much of anything I take in or absorb. She's a strangely talented and striking lady, 40+ and enjoying some commercial success and all that goes with it, now a little later in life. Her music is a bit dark and heavily piano driven and in my view a bit intense and disturbing (doesn't make it bad). So not for her the normal route to stardom. She has a strong back story, is a mum, waiting 17 years, being a barmaid in Aberdeen's Lemon Tree and something of a reluctant performer but it's all changed now for her. Website etc. here.

Favourite Tweet

Whilst I quite enjoy using Twitter, though mostly reading the tweets of others, seldom sending my own, I rather liked the one I sent the other day.

John Barclay ‏@Johnbarclay1  35m35 minutes ago

@Support #Twitter! Stop telling me I've been away when I've been here all the time! #FFS

You see Twitter keeps repeating tweets and tells me that all this stuff happened "while I was away". Well I wasn't away, I just wasn't giving 100% of my attention to Twitter like I'm supposed to, so that's not how I see my relationship with it. Neither do I care if I may have missed something from yesterday but still I find my feed full of regurgitated tweets that in all probability I've already seen because (shock, horror) Twitter doesn't really know what's going on anyway. It just assumes things because of bloody algorithms, settings or IP addresses or the like. Of course there will be no reply or acknowledgement, robots don't care.

In other news I actually finished this guitar after a long struggle and lot of bad soldering, unnecessary fiddling and the switching of switches. So that'll be the end of this series of tedious photographs.

It was all going so well

Pyro'd, polished and the shielding paint applied. 

Pickups, bridge and scratch plate, just a few odd wires to tie together, so I thought.

I actually thought that I'd finish this guitar today, it was going well. Then I hit a wall soldering together the electrical components, probably the simplest part of the job. It seems that there is some gremlin in the pots or switch or inside my head that is well and truly catching me out at every turn. Soldering, then unsoldering, replacing components and fiddling with a variety of wires (there are about eight altogether, how many combinations can I get wrong?) has got me exactly nowhere in particular. So I quit. Another day, a decent sleep and  the world and this project may seem more logical and cooperative. Basically it's a matter of trolling around the internet for help and trying to decode the various non standard wiring colours that I seem to be confronted with.

Headstock shot

Curiously sunny weather allowed me to get out, generate some sawdust  and hack at a few pieces of wood on the B&D workbench, that's guitar building. Best done outside to minimise mess and keep me clean and breathing. First time out also for the Dremel routing bits I purchased in the USA during the summer. They really worked well, I also sculpted a pick guard and a pickup holder and corrected one or two pyrography mistakes made along the way. The photo above shows another take on the Viking raven design (the bird that took messages between the gods) that I've added onto the headstock. Still a lot to do but getting closer to some kind of finish.

Cats, guitars and mystery fruit

AM: So just embarking on a project that sees a Creamery hand wound single coil pickup mated with a Bare-knuckle humbucker in a Telecaster body. This guitar may well be the ultimate of noisy, raw power ultimates (or a complete fizzled out flop). At this point it goes under the working title of "Raven". That is because I'm currently drawing a Viking style raven on it. Somehow the dragons don't get a name check.

Cat guards windfall mystery fruit.

We suspect that they are quinces but we're not quite sure. A bit of a naming crisis really. No idea quite what to do with them either.

PM - OK: about 33% through the first stage of pyrography so lots to do, a bit of carving and wood butchery, then routing (for that non-standard pickup), then sanding, then oils and on and on. Oh and maybe a bit of border burning with the heat gun.

Zen and the tube

When you have temporary drainage tube burrowed inside your tummy it's a) hard to ignore and b) hard not to be intrigued by it and it's mechanics. The human body is strange, disgusting and wonderful and I'm currently appreciating those facts. My tube has now been in place for two weeks, like some now familiar alien parasite poking through my stomach and somehow now, neatly fitting into my slightly stilted lifestyle. The inconvenience and occasional discomfort has normalised as has the creeping, restricted movement and the slow and steady pace at which I try to do things. Stumbling or bumping into things or animals and small children jumping on the tummy are glaring moments of immediate danger that spark mild panic and clumsy body language reactions. But I am learning to cope and remain relaxed (?) and adopting some Zen-like processes of patience  in my concerns over my place in the great NHS queue that I find myself invisibly in. One day the buff or possibly white envelope will arrive and the great creaking gears of hope and recovery will grind slowly into motion. In the mean time I just drink more cranberry juice and sleep all night unless the cats start a fight, nothing to complain about really.