Einstein

Whilst large sections of this confused country were watching some worthy crime drama on the BBC other folks were tuned into the National Geographic Channel watching "Genius" a biopic about the chaotic life of Albert Einstein (other people were out in the pubs or interacting in some other way). I say chaotic because that's how his early life comes across. He is at odds with everything and everyone he confronts. Nobody really understands, it's the loneliness of the long distance genius really. He writes a good letter though, but his timing is poor, too absorbed in his work, a freak. If I'd been around then we'd not have been pals, he'd have no time for the likes of me, slow and superficial as I am. Now sixty years after his death and the ongoing rise of his legend he's part of the Nat Geo family in HD, his life carved out into twelve handy episodes to see us through the summer Sunday evenings. 

Shave the djembe

Still looking a little rough at this point but headed in the right direction we have here the newly re-skinned djembe. eBay we thank you for your rich source of materials. The goat skin drum skin turned out to be a little too hairy so it was duly trimmed and the excess skin around the edge was also cut. Remarkably only one of my fingers were cut in the process but sad to say the actual goat made quite a sacrifice in order to give this drum it's characteristic African tone (but with a Scottish accent).

Scorched brown world

The pre-frack but still gloomy view from St David's Harbour on the shores of the Forth in the Kingdom of Fife. Iconic bridge structures struggle to be seen in the distance as the clouds gather over May's insane and fractured vision of a unified land.  If they ever frack under the Firth of Forth it'll all end up a brown, burnt, scorched mess, as if some civil war had raged. You'll all have some cheap gas for a while but once that burns away there will be no water to drink. Bit of a simple choice to make. Set fire to the ground under our feet here in Central Scotland, let it smoulder away and enjoy a barren wasteland for the rest of your life (that could be seen as a view on a possible outcome of independence). An expert of fracking and schisms of all sorts passed this knowledge onto me, now I'm clued up.

I often criticize the BBC for obvious bias and poor choice of news story and (in Scotland) irritating parochial coverage that quickly skips to the lowest common denominator. Well today they did produce an honest and decent piece of  work on men's help on Radio Scotland's morning show. Lot's of good fact, useful opinion and shared experiences. More please. 

Pigs at the Horn

I'm something of an aficionado of the greasy spoon cafe, there's so much bizarre food enjoy and life to observe. It's like a guilty pleasure tableaux of behaviours, food and strange versions of modern hygiene. Today's example is from the infamous or more simply famous "Horn" on the A90 outside Dundee. For a fairly pricey (i.e. more than you'd expect to pay for normal sized food) £3.95 you get this massive bacon roll, way too much meat obviously, so that's reflected in the price. Along with a mug of lorry driver coffee this kept me conscious for about six hours before any further grub was necessary. 

Many old folks congregate here, sipping strong tea and guzzling sugary cakes, most of which (the cakes that is) don't look quite right. They have sunglasses and leisure wear and take a long time to decide where to stand and what to eat and where to sit. Next door there's a massive caravan warehouse full of massive caravans. Maybe people come in for tea and cake as they ponder their next big holiday and lifestyle choice and then go across and hand their bank card over for a gleaming white box on wheels. Eventually pulling it around or just "managing the steps" will kill them, but we all have to die of something. I stuck with the bacon roll, it seemed the safest option.

Purple Jungles of the mind

In the false, enticing and strangely purple jungles of our inner selves we explore and get nowhere until we stop exploring and simply allow ourselves to fall quietly and peacefully over some handy cliff edge. The good news is that the drop is shallow and the landing is ultimately soft. The purple leaves work well and good natured locals normally appear quickly to administer things that look like drugs but aren't but they have the same effect - or is it affect. 

Once you recover from the upset things just don't seem the same as before and you begin to understand that you've been waiting on this moment for all of your life. That's when it hits you, square in the ego. All of the smorgasbord, the lack of risks taken and the number of times you did risk everything only to find yourself back here. This is no bad thing either, it's the luck of the draw and the top of the morning...eventually and it was all going so well and then I noticed that a few pixels were out of line. It only means one thing, a glitch.

Cubase virgin

You don't really realise how little you know about recording software until you come up against an enormous iceberg of technical complexity like Cubase. Today I downloaded what is fairly basic version in a bid to move away from the old digital (but nearly analogue) desk system I've been using for years. Turns out that Cubase, which I've used but never actually operated represents a bit of a quantum leap forward. Aside from using this software the actual download, registration and installation process is hardly straightforward. First there's registration with all the usual checks and balances, then registration involving firstly a 16 digit code which then morphs into a 20 digit code which then refuses to go quite where you think it should... much head scratching and multiple window opening follows but of course this is Windows 10, a set up that never quite works with you in my opinion, but I'm learning. Then there's a 5GB download which, in this neck of the wild woods is a three hour slog but it worked first time. Then it's five prelim, get you started and bloodied, videos that I will have to watch a number of times then...relax. Thankfully I've got a fairly basic version with not too many bells and whistles. The learning process is however underway and will run probably for the rest of my life. It proves that it's one thing to observe someone using a tool and quite another for you to pick it up and try to use it yourself.

Tuesday

When it's Tuesday morning and you get  an email from Amazon saying that your item should be delivered some time today but there is no actual time given.

Best ever

So who are Britain's greatest ever female vocal group, a tough call but is it Bananarama or Fran and Anna?

Or is it FranandAnnaandaBanana?

Waterfall

Here's a cover version of the song "Waterfall" originally recorded and performed by Fraser Drummond and John Farrell. This version was recorded in January last year by Pol Arida at his studio in Edinburgh and then remixed by ourselves late in 2016. The waterfall photo was taken last year on our trip to Iceland. 

Sunday morning

It's Sunday morning at most of the places in our time zone , anyway here's a cat (Tigger) sitting on our roof.

Random images from Twitter

If nothing else social media is gloomily entertaining. It's the almost artistic the way random images come together, juxtaposed in close and unintended proximity as unrelated as bingo numbers or lottery balls. Whatever next? Quickly the images become a large and odd glass tower of photo stops as we ponder the harsh reality of climate change, a person drinking the milk from a cat's bowl, Marilyn Monroe, Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson and Jurassic Park. These arrived one by one in my Twitter feed, an activity that happens everyday in some strange pattern, hundreds of times, each pattern is unique, often unnoticed or acknowledged. No connecting narrative, no theme, just streams from unseen sources flickering away in their own darkness. A sad, repetition that moves across our screens and seldom makes any kind of sense or impact, gone in a blink, never to be seen again. Life flashes by in a minute.

#SixWordStory

For Sale: Gnome Boots, never worn. 

It's all an urban myth but then what's so wrong about a bit of mythology. What did Hemingway really do, say, write or drink? We think we know what he wrote but then ...who wrote the Bible or the Koran or Jane Austin's, Bod Dylan or E M Foster's work. Probably, maybe, possibly and perhaps it's theirs but maybe they stole it or shared it or it was from an alien life form nearby, transmitting. Clearly I don't know where I'm going with this other than trying to express some of the sense of the dislocation I feel with most media sources these days. 

When the news is fake, the people are fakers and the audience (mostly) don't care, then anything can be said, with or without impunity and certainly without integrity. I for one welcome this absurd situation but absurdly I cannot support it. That's because most of what passes for news and the commentary attached is backed by spite, hatred, prejudice and unashamed self interest. It's not even any kind of amalgamation of conspiracy theories or parallel news, it's turkeys voting for Christmas, repeatedly. Who writes this stuff anyway?

The small world of large birds

In a move clearly designed to snare me in some opportunistic way google keeps pinching images from my phone and rendering them in the style of a Soviet 35mm camera of the 1960s. I refuse to take the bait. It's one thing to have a blog hosted for free but quite another to go all the way and partake and  imbibe of the Queen's Shilling. That'll never end well. So there's one of mine and one of google's set above in the "pheasant of the day" category. It may be the only one for a while, the females have all but disappeared, I suspect they're hiding in the woods, breeding and laying eggs and all that sort of Spring type avian behaviour. The end of the seasonal photo op.

As I walked

As I walked out one summers (spring) morn on account of a requirement  to get a driveshaft fixed and a new wheel bearing I came across these trees. They look nothing like this in real life. I normally whizz past them but today was not a day for whizz, more a day for cheesy toast and sauntering against and into a brisk wind that blows over from some far away place filled with litter. My adventures continued as I visited hospitals, a vet's surgery and a garage. I spoke to builders and blacksmiths and finally found an Allan key of the correct size in an unexpected place. I armed myself with it.

Once safely back home I fixed the sliding door, the cupboard door and some other random doors, I spent (wasted) two hours of my life trying to come up with a guitar riff that would go with John Bonham's half shuffle groove segment (approx 1 min. 25 secs). No luck there but I will return to the task, it's a challenge all young men and iffy musicians should tackle with courage and no small amount of sweat. Then I was mugged by a series of pheasants all determine to beat the squirrels and blue tits to the peanuts I casually toss their way. All in a days work.

Making a way to the hospital

It's all routine, I'm in for a pre-op check. Form an orderly queue. See what I'm made of. A few hours and it'll be over. A few hours of waiting that is, but it's still free at the point of delivery. Who knows where it will be once the Tories cement their unholy selves in for another five years? Five years according to the will of God and Theresa. I'm not going to think of that, I'll remain positive, perhaps some event or other, some unplanned crisis will choke them all and we'll get a more balanced and caring government. Still none of this answers the question and I know I'm in a bit of a social media and chosen media echo chamber but who, in the electorate, really believes in them and would happily vote for them in June thinking that their lives will somehow be better under their rule? That there are a majority of people in this country that feel that way is what I find difficult to swallow. Anyway, here's a small piece of well deserved serenity.

An Extraordinary Cup of Tea

Above: A key lodged in a table top in some magic, sticky, solid mist. If you're locked out and you need this...forget it.

Today I (we) visited the Log House or the  Round House or the Log Tower or something like that. It's way out west in the middle of the country where great rivers find their source. There you can share a classy tea along with a nice lunch served on wooden boards once trodden by famous ballerinas at early points in their careers. In my country wood is very important you know. Today's tea was described (in less words than I'm about to use) as Bollywood Nitrate Lapsang Souchong from the lower slopes of the Himalayas, always a great location for tea of good flavour. Some say that's where the green shoots are. 

As you can see it was served in neat little strainer of a pot along with tepid milk and bear-proof honey on the side. It was a sweet treat. It lasted ages in a mind bending TARDIS tea pot fashion, it stimulated many areas in need of stimulation and I now feel slightly detoxed as well as light headed. Any day soon, once I get myself back together, I'm headed  for those sacred slopes to chill, meditate and recover. I may also take a little more of that tea.

Wooden headed

As my middle name is wood it's only natural that from time to time I consider myself to be a little wooden headed.I have a sense of oneness with natural materials, wood being my favourite.  Mostly this happens when I bump my head. That kind of elderly fellow feeling of a lack of coordination kicking in, not being quite aware of where your head or limbs or torso are in space whilst all around them other items, some still and some travelling, are bound somehow to make contact with you. Your level of control is inadequate somehow for the complexities of the world; coffee tables, counters, bed legs and any object above shoulder height. This can be painful or it can be embarrassing, I'm not sure which is worse, actual physical injury or that feeling of being a clumsy horse loose and out of control in an elegant world. I suppose it stems from a mismatch in reference points, Where I think things are and where they really are. If  I could draw a diagram of this I would but I feel I might, through wooden headed-ness or a similar weakness, miss some key piece of detail rendering it useless. In a way that would prove my point but then again I lack the concentration to appreciate graphics and instructions. That's another kind of sore head. I suppose a formulae type of explanation could work with matchstick men figures hitting and missing bits of suspended wood, doorways and the hatchbacks of hatchback cars or the boot lids of others. It doesn't really matter, it's bad and pointless science that no one really worries about or thinks about until you get a right crack on the head from that thing that is now in the wrong place and was in the wrong place in the first place. 

The universe is a cruel place, dark and airless for the most part and then, when you find a warm and well lit corner, things just turn up and clatter you on the head. Maybe Stanley Kubrick got the whole ape thing wrong in 2001, maybe they should've just been bumping their heads on cave entrances and low branches so as to illustrate how far we haven't come in thousands of years despite the Sentinal's best efforts . Maybe using Windows 10 for a few weeks will help.

Add selected

A long day's journey into Spring. Tired out by doing nothing in particular other than being, breakfasting and gather milk and tomatoes. There was a little trampoline observation, the battle of the electric butterflies and too much wine. Now order has been restored, bees are freed and the sun is sinking slowly, over yonder west of here. Next: the installation of MS Office on a Windows 10 platform. These doodles are not mine, I've a talented family.

Newly weds and nearly deads

Apparently a large number of  the people who live on the south coast (?) can be described as mostly newly weds and nearly deads. At the start and close to the finish of something. I like the phrase, it seemed to resonate around with me  and I'm looking for some container to put it into. This isn't it. The phrase remains an orphan in my circle but in the world of the local estate agents, plumbers and fixers it'll mean a whole lot more. That's not where I run or where I position myself. Perhaps it's a song title, some kitchen sink drama lived out in three verses, a chorus and a middle eight, shot in black and white as a couple move through the struggles and pleasures of ordinary life. That thing that most songwriters seem to know so little of, they're too busy with their introspection and their egos to bother. Of course I don't mean any of it, I'm just trying to plant a phrase and, unlike the tomato seedlings I buried today, not finding it so easy to  get it to take root anywhere.

Spring in the walled garden

A heavy lunch today in the cash friendly/card hostile cafe in the Walled Garden, Fife's best kept hidden garden and temporary white topped caravan site.  Somewhere off in the woods, along a bumpy road and then strangely at the top of a hill, there it is. A mug of herb and mushroom soup, a ham salad sandwich was enough to floor me, that and two flat white coffees. I've just no staying power anymore, weak willed and lacking in stamina and the ability to resist reasonable temptation. The afternoon turned out better than expected. Once soup ran out I was in the mood to wander. I made it all the way to the root of the old pier where, as usual, nothing much was happening, but it looked good. 

Well that was yesterday, today I'm revelling in the reflected glory of a bright new Windows 10 laptop screen (Apple fanboy no more) and understanding it's many quirks. I've also had a new, snake like and supple caffita fitted, my health is in good hands, thankfully not mine. At the moment neither Windows 10, Apple whatever it was and my plumbing are fully connected. Tests, intrusive probes and intensive treatments will no doubt sort it all out in due course.