A collection of collections

Muircot Farm Shop & Cafe, deep in rural Scotland somewhere but still closer than you think. One unexpected outcome of my retiral from any kind of serious working life has been my creeping awareness of visiting more and more farm and coffee shops across the Central Belt and enjoying the experience. Indeed they form the buckle of Scotland's recreational belt for those of a certain vintage. I'm now on speaking and visiting terms with about a dozen of these authentic stone and metal clad establishments. It's happened by chance I suppose but truly one visit leads to another in the never ending chronicle of easy ways to waste time but still exploring safely and maintaining a feeling that's warm and woozy. Turns out "warm and woozy" is a perquisite for being happily retired nowadays, that and drinking fancy coffee and exotic tea. 

Despite all this self indulgence and unlike most of my contemporaries it's really a savoury experience, sugar and cakes and all that fluff are avoided but a good crunchy farmhouse lunch with authentic soup-works still renders you sleepy and smug.  Then, once the grub's gone you wander around the farm shop and look at stacks of eggs and portions of local jam and perfect looking vegetables arranged like soldiers in white wood boxes. Sometimes we buy, most times we don't but despite our indifference these places are booming, filled with shuffling Zimmer frames and young mums on the lookout for bolt hole before the next school run, they're the equivalent of Betjeman's air conditioned, bright canteens but without the danger of brain damage.

The day before the day before.

High tide.

Eurovision

We watched Eurovision last night, it'd be fun anyway whatever the outcome if only for the riotous tweets and messages generated in the background. Every act's performance and look being subjected to a blizzard of humour and criticism. You need to be tough in this industry with all the immediate feedback. I've not bothered with it for a few years so it was nice to come back in from the cold and note that nobody gives a toss about Brexit and the UK's schizophrenic politics, we really don't matter much, we're like some drunk, eccentric uncle determined to piss the bed and then keep everybody awake with his snoring. Politicians should watch this, if only to gauge the puerile level that most life is lived at and to see the absurdity in their pompous stances and ill informed statements when faced with this daft version of reality. Know your audience (and then ignore them).

(8 hours later) A spaniel in the works: two to be precise, running madly, funnily all across the garden and various outside spaces. I'll never finish the paragraph above, the spaniels have worn me out, none of it really matters anyway, much more fun to watch dogs having a good time.

Losing my incontinence

I always wondered what it must be like to lose your memory or have a stroke or be injured and suffer a loss of mobility and then have to relearn habits, skills and whole chunks of life once again. My recent illness has of course been mild in comparison to anything as life changing but I've had to relearn a few basics. Mostly toilet related. Now I'm post-op things are thankfully working again and fear, pain and the embarrassment of imperfect and malfunctioning plumbing is diminishing. It's nothing I can take credit for, just the right surgery and the body, set straight again now realigns itself with functions that were previously running smoothly. Though for some reason it's easier now to pee when standing on tiptoes. Has this always been the case and I just didn't know about it?

The things is I've never really understood or accepted that things might break down. Ok there's wear and tear and possible abuse but why should perfectly good well designed components just fail? In cars or appliances it's all about heat and friction and the build up of contaminants. In humans, designed I assume by god/aliens/evolution/imagination that shouldn't happen. We should just remain unbreakable until we're seventy or thereabouts. Then some latent chronic laziness, fatigue and unfair wear and tear time bomb comes into play and we'll just die. Following this and after the necessary purgatory period our spirits soar to the moon for refurbishment or perhaps we are reborn as noisy wild birds hovering above graveyards or pecking at telegraph poles. Then again it may just be the black worm hole of eternal loss and spiritual incontinence.

Concept albums and screwdrivers

Every so often or during periods of intellectual starvation I take a dive into my inner obsessive and edit my Amazon wish list. There will be blood and casualties, things removed as they are no longer available, obvious whimsy either tolerated or surgically dealt with. The end of hope and the start of dreams, the notions of reading and listening and relaxing in some golden state of being whilst surrounded by the totems and explorations the list might promise access to. The chance to revisit past choices, to remake them, to ponder and then start some collection that might, upon my untimely demise explain some tasteful things about me. Not so much that this was what I liked, more this was what I perversely added and you can never be sure whether I liked them or not (as if that was even important).  There is the other overarching storyline...of all the things I might need right now the very last of them is more stuff to confuse and clutter this stuttering life and so add to it's teetering contents.

I'm also tickled by writing a will and funeral directions that contains instructions and elements that I'd not really want but that might be fun. The wrong kind of funeral music, the wrong or inappropriate readings, the wrong setting with unwanted details added. Then people can be finally confused or reassured by this 45 minute bemusing, miserable and contradictory experience. "I never really knew him". "It was exactly what I thought he'd want". "A load of bollocks, a bit like everything he ever did". "What was that all about?" Why leave certainty and answers when you can leave an interesting pattern of random litter, like a wish list that points in a forever dumb direction headed elsewhere? 

It's the opposite of those times when you're receiving strange but well intended gifts. Those things things that tell you that you've not really made yourself clear or failed to communicate  some kind of taste or preference. You're an unknown. You'd only given out a vacuum and now all this random material has arrived in order to fill the oozing black space of some unexplained life. Serves you right. Make a wish list but make it anything but straight. 

What does a wish list really mean if you have on it things that you already have?

Production Boost

Things you see when you happen to live close to a large industrial and chemical complex: Usually INEOS save their flare burning stunts until after dark. Must be surplus of materials this week as they were in full and fiery flow this afternoon. As ever I'm ambivalent about this great glowing beast. The NIMBY in me says no, the practical man says it's our only refinery and petrochemical plant so we can hardly move it elsewhere. There's no right answer, well there is a right answer. Keep it, make it safe, move technology onwards into cleaner methods so that we can reduce this smokey footprint and eventually, god knows when in the future, be rid of it. Here ended the lesson.

View on Google

I'm in my rest period, my recovery. Time to make mental lists and play with electricity, top ten concept albums, places to apply cement and mortar, clothes that need folded/renewed/discarded, where to apply paint, exercises that I might consider, bike cleaning, ways to spray tomato plants, how clean/dirty should crockery be anyway, where might the sun go next, head count of passers by, the best ambient music available on YouTube, predict the arrival of the postman, move a guitar around the house, listen to the birds, renovate a microwave, experiment with chocolate in the freezer, edit lists on Amazon...and so on.  Enjoy life. 

So I've been through an awkward time for a few months and thanks to a lot of loving TLC, the NHS and some seasonal variation I'm now on the other side, reflecting. Having not been ill before this experience has been new and not altogether pleasant, at times it was frightening and maybe I over egged it now and again. Maybe I was too precious and careful. Now I'm in recovery mode, it's sunny and suddenly almost anything seems possible...taken at the correct pace and with the right attitude. 

Another morning

Another bright, sunny morning where the same things keep happening over and over. Cats on the roof, sparrows on the tiles, pigeons feeling frisky and the sunlight sprinkling across the trees and garden vegetation bringing it all back into life. Then of out into the car and back to hospital for a quick check up and check out and the hopeful resumption of normal business. Then home for a comatosed snooze in that same peaceful garden.

Mad shadows

The sharp sunlight and unexpected May time warmth have aided my recuperation. That and regular hot meals, root beer, green tea and chilled water. If I didn't know better I'd say I was on the mend but I won't speak too soon. I prefer living in the moment where the weather is kind and I'm being looked after. Long may it continue.

The Operation

So for a short while I was back in the safe bosom of the NHS, all warm and reasonably well timed. It was Star Wars day so quite appropriate that I should be seared with green laser so that  all my nasty little health problems could be quickly vapourized. Unfortunately the laser was not pointed at my head, it was aimed a little lower. Well it's done now and I feel a little better in some places and a little worse in others but that's how life goes. The road to recovery is a bit like the A90, it just keeps going, eventually you get somewhere but not always to where you expected. I also ate quite a lot of toast, toast is big in hospital, everybody likes it. Toast is up there with anesthetics, those two things get you through all the other stuff. I actually quite enjoyed being knocked out but like most good things it was over too quickly. The dull awakening and the sluggish sensations of pain and crawling back to reality were less enjoyable but I've always had a troubled relationship with reality in all it's fake forms. Anyway I'll be fine once the bleeding and the music playing in my head stops. Thanks again NHS, please don't let the Tories destroy you.

Back to being human

I'm not sure if this is staged or real but whatever way I'm parking my normal cynicism and saying that this is probably the best election image I've seen so far  in 2017. It just works on numerous levels and I just can't count them all but I know they are there. Sometimes an image is a million times more powerful that any amount of rhetoric or planned and spun out messages. We the people need desperately to connect with our politicians and they need to connect with us (and each other). It's painfully obvious that it's missing from most of what takes place which is a poor excuse for communication. The media seldom help either with their smoke screens, agendas and bias. The fun and the life are effectively sucked out of everything, sure politics is is serious but it need not be so disconnected from normal human activity that it falls into a black hole of despair at each juncture. 

Theresa May has her level of disconnect and artificiality down to to fine and awful art. She hardly comes across as a functioning human being, it's sad to see this played out and, by those in the spin and image business Tory machine, somehow seen as a good thing and a safe way to proceed. We need a dose of normal from our politicians and at least in the image above Nicola Sturgeon comes close to getting there. Strangely and just to prove I'm either simple or easily distracted, the older Osborne version (below) also made me smile. He's still a twat though.

Aliens

Good to see that our alien overlords are still smiling down upon us despite our numerous misdemeanours and consistent examples of bad behaviour. Our inability to learn from past mistakes and to shake off the dangerous appetites that as humans we have cultivated and encouraged still persist. We can however take some comfort from the fact that they are out there, watching and waiting and not quite ready to intervene. They might do after June 8th however.

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?