No jazz

A sign of the times or just a sign of a lack of challenging time signatures? No jazz, just blues apparently. All other genres, major and minor may well be blocked also, a management thing. More questions than answers but you'll know them by their limited appeal soundtrack. Photo by Andy Leggatt, taken in an Edinburgh pub.

Burn down the Mission

About forty five years ago I worked in this factory in Dalgety Bay when this part was known as Hillend Industrial Estate. It belonged to an American  company called Bournes (Trimpot), who manufactured potentiometers amongst other things. We were at the cutting edge of science but at the blunt edge of wages, conditions, health and safety, industrial relations and planning. The management were mostly drunken, sweary, self serving sexists but it was the hard living 70s and nobody knew any better or cared. My time there was brief and hardly covered in glory, I was a lazy eighteen year old with little interest in the job or even finding a career of any sort. I was someplace between drifting and free falling but not in any poetic sense. I did hit the ground a few years later. I'm not actually sure when Bournes closed down and production ceased, I left in 1974 and I understand the building has been empty for some time, one or two careful owners maybe. A few weeks ago some kid torched it thereby rendering it even harder to let or sell. It's now another sorry scar on a blot on the landscape. Scorched earth in Fife's industrial history.

Twelve Million Bees

There currently are twelve million bees employed on the Hopetoun Estate. I presume that most of them are busy working on honey production whilst a few deal with actual estate work, administration and grounds keeping. Good for the bees I say and I'm glad they've all found meaningful employment of this kind, far better than having unemployed and feckless bees hanging around on street corners annoying passers by and drinking cheap cider. There's a lesson to be learned here for all who wish to make a meaningful contribution to modern society, eat honey or simply build a career for themselves in the large network of farm shops and farmer's markets that's taking over the country. 

I also traveled back in time to when there was only one lamp post in South Queensferry to capture this Edwardian era shot of past times, low down  on the High Street. Before there were automated bookies, coffee shops and estate agents...so that's the days of gin palaces, rampant sinfulness, wooden lawyer's offices, stables for horse whipping and boys selling porter from crates on the cobbles.

Geese Warning

There are lots of noisy, agitated and possibly unruly geese loose in the area. Their anti social honking and blustering starts about 6.30am and then peters out when they head off to Canada for lunch. They also refuse to fly in a nice V formation for some reason, just  to confound watcher expectations and they  insist on squatting out on the foreshore for long periods thereby upsetting other local and more well established bird colonies. Once dead they also taste like chicken and their fat can be rubbed over roast potatoes to make them shine, a good food presentational tip. They have been known to bite the hand that feeds...

Glasgow daily photo

The sign for lap dancing club "Diamond Dolls", down a back street where an odd mixture of today's Scotland fans, Eastern European girls and swarthy characters of unknown origins congregate and presumably do some kind of business deals while they all take a smoke break from show-biz life and the not so bright lights.

Every window in the clothing store is filled with the dead carcasses of used and broken vintage hand sewing machines. Rather than glamour, honest industry and good tailoring, it suggests sweat shops, misery and cheapness. That's just my take on it. Perhaps the designer was being ironic.

Almost every tourist stops to take a shot of the iconic Duke statue and his traffic cone hat. At the moment he's dual hatted suggesting he actually has two jobs on the go, neither of which he enjoys.

The floor in this card and art materials shop is lit up by these colourful tiles as if they were part of a giant paint box but set in no particular coloured order.

Pin ups and downs

This old pin up photo of Raquel Welch popped into my feed the other day from some click bait site or possibly in the Guardian. I've not seen it for about 47 years. I'd like to say memories flooded back but I'm still a bit numb over my teenage passages of my years, not sure why. Desperate times, smokey, troubled and too distorted to be real maybe. 

At one time a large poster sized copy of Raquel hung on the back of my bedroom door along with other images designed to irritate parents; Easy Rider bikes, Jimmy Page, the Grateful Dead, Freak Bros cartoons and Bridget Bardot in black leather with the Velvet Underground droning in the background through 17 minutes of Sister Ray.  A blue bulb glowed up above giving out little actual light.

In those days having posters from Poster by Post was cool and the word cool wasn't even in my vocabulary. You paid by postal order and a grey tube arrived a fortnight later. I'm not sure I even had a vocabulary, just animal grunts and some internal conflicts raging here and there inspired by the latest LP I'd heard or paperback I'd read. Black and white telly and the John Peel show on a pitiful transistor radio accompanied by twenty Number 6 and some Nescafe from a tin. Glory days.

Cursed by Frida

Meanwhile in the human zoo and football match that is politics Theresa May is cursed by the ghost of Frida Kahlo, presumably for wearing the bracelet upside down, not being much of an artist type  and enduring as one of our worst ever Prime Ministers. Oh and obviously a vision free Tory. So don't mess with the commie creatives, not even the dead ones. All the other things that went wrong on the day were just down to security incompetence and the fact that all of our fine leaders can't organize much of anything these days. Just watch their frozen, fearful, stiff upper lip reactions to the P45 prank. Groan.

Vanity Plates

Somehow modern online business still has the capacity to confuse me. The relatively simple task of moving one registration number from one car to another involves an on line process that is simple but lacking in logic and if you get it the wrong way round...it fails (as you might expect). The confusing part is the numerous codes required and the fact that despite "owning" the number you still have to retain it and pay £80 for that retention, not for the actual transfer. Of course I had to call the DVLA at one point when I was told that my transaction couldn't be completed on line, though quite why wasn't explained. The DVLA lady, with a nice warm Welsh accent didn't really process the transaction, she simply pointed me towards a web area I had previously missed and there I was able to somehow make the transfer. In the end it's still all clear as mud glorious mud but hopefully, in a few days or so, the postman will bring me my updated documents and then all will be street legal and personal again.

Embedded

Embedded via F***Book. I wasn't sure this embedding option would work. It seems that Facebook have changed or disabled the option to download photos...maybe. You can never really tell what's going on, nothing is clear, published or explained. But that's what you get with free social media that asks very little other than you put up with stupid and inappropriate adverts, links, click bait and suggestions as you trudge through what is basically ongoing spam content apart from the real posts from friends and family.

Small and interesting

Here's a small and interesting shop, gallery and studio down by the harbour in South Queensferry. Click here for more information and material than I can ever describe properly, that's the reason we have a www.

Zooming in

Here's a view of the Tay Bridge and the not so far away city of Dundee from the unusually sunny side of Fife and below we have the zoomed in  version showing three crows up a tree in detail (almost). Nothing remarkable here, I just happen to like crows,  provided that they remain at a safe and respectful distance and don't attempt to peck my dead eyes from their still warm and moist sockets and so corrupt my soul's passage on to the world of the Great Pumpkin.

Mustn't Crumble

The golden glory that is apple crumble. That's apples, crumble and a few mysterious ingredients that I cannot list here for commercial, security and hygiene reasons. Here we see some examples, in foil tins, cooling ready for final packing and onward shipment to customers and end users.

Problem: Side one is side two and side two is side one. Not sure what to make of this. There is no side three.

Like a bird on a ladder

I now know how to draw a 3D ladder and I also know how to climb an ordinary ladder. At least two useful life skills there. I was up a ladder earlier today but not for the beauty of the view or the exhilaration of the fantastic climb and clean air or to see how things below looked like Matchbox cars or other toys. It was to remove a young upstart of a tree that had chosen to grow between two roof tiles on the house, the stubborn tree was duly removed from it's cheeky squat. I also lifted thick mud from the gutters and various unkempt weeds and grasses that had taken root or perhaps taken roost.

Heights never used to bother but now I'm not so sure. Quaysides and cliff edges make me feel peculiar, I'm drawn to their brittle edges, that gap between a hard surface and the empty air and the knowledge of a certain drop. It makes me dizzy and nauseous, sometimes ... sometimes excited but not to the point of giggling*. Tall buildings are OK, there's a strong illusion of safety and generally ladders are fine too, you have something to hang onto unless you're holding a paint brush and a pot of comedy paint. So as a leisure sport I guess ladders and tall monuments are fine clambering activities to pursue - but standing still by perpendicular drops set from edges are not.

*At what age is it that you lose the ability to just giggle at things? I used to find it easy but I've not giggled freely for a while. I miss the loss of this most human and attractive of (seemingly) childish gifts. Is there a drug on the market? Perhaps the giggle inducing material is no longer available, something to do with austerity?

Universally Challenged

It was an old school TV watching evening yesterday, almost. First up University Challenge, well the last ten minutes but Strathclyde won out so that was a strangely rewarding view. Then "Impossible Planet" from the C4 Phillip Dick series via Sky Planner, not quite a classic electric dream, more a mish-mashy short story but with some eerie effects and an almost satisfying story line. Sci-Fi adaptions usually disappoint for some reason but I've grown used to that and don't expect much. Like some YouTube Dark 5 piece of non-revelation with twisted fiction and lies.  Then back in real time some BBC doc about brains and stem cells and scary beating hearts in laboratory jars. The research work seemed to to be leading to some of the Impossible Planet scenario where people live too long, get too tired and yearn for a simple ending to their days. Finally as fatigue started to set in it was W1A, the Beeb laughing at itself by retelling the same joke in numerous ways, mostly via the medium of bungled meetings and a desperate need for all things PC and inclusive. A kind of comedy wallpaper that's so clever it seems stupid until you remember that it's actually realistic way beyond the BBC's own excesses. Non ironic workplace comedy is the new normal.

Just spotted the problem

Oppenheimer: The geeks shall inherit the earth, or at least what's left of it.

First rule of writing

Stunning BLT roll combo, only hours old but already eaten up.

These are of course toy mice, cat toy mice to be exact. They kind of freak out the cats, which is fun in a cruel way. They've now been given early retirement, the toy mice that is.

Note: Never confuse the first rule of writing with the first rule of spelling, or grammar or punctuation or sentence structure etc. The first rule of writing, in my book (?) is of course know your subject or topic. How well then do I know BLTs? Pretty well, I've eaten a few albeit they remain in second place behind rocket and crayfish in the league table which are hard to come by unless you visit a Pret (none round here) and the crayfish portion isn't quite enough but it still is a great combo. Anyway  Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato is a fine filling for rolls or actual bread sandwiches. It also helps if the bacon is warm or even hot, this provides a better taste and texture and overall eating experience. Mayo, a decent slurp is also required for lubrication, the tomato may be juicy but it's doubtful that it'll do the same job as mayo. There you have it. The first rule of writing applied to the BLT.

Rusty tunelessness

Thinking of going off road anytime soon? You need the tools. Ready for the snows, the next ice age and the petrol revolution? Not me either but everyday it draws closer, probably, as we happen to live off road, or at least about a mile away from any recognizable roadway, functional street lamps or up to date services and signs. The trappings of civilization are few and far between apart from the whirring of dishwashers and the instagram alert beeps, a bit like things in the Oval Office right now or in Theresa May's Beetlejuice style Cabinet, signs of intelligent life exist but they are at a low level and only functioning in part. It's the end of the road and a terminus for Western civilization, the sun sets in the west but only because it has to and that's only because of our earthbound homo sapien perspective, one we are unlikely to move on from. Restringing guitars will always seem tiresome but somebody has to do it or we'd descend into rusty tunelessness.

Pull up your socks

Nearing the time for that awkward mid-year staff performance review? Never an easy interview for those on either side of the desk. Quickly gather up a few water tight excuses, remember how your sick/holiday record looks and how well you did in training/forums/presentations and other sucky uppy things. Glad it's all a distant memory for me. I never really did pull my socks up (the most meaningless instruction ever given ) and I may have been economical with the truth at times. However I was never properly mad.

Strange effects

I could say that I was experimenting but as it happened I just took a few random pics as I was taking out the trash or some other meaningful/less task the other day. Accidental, industrial photography. It was a sunny day, unusual around here and the light nicely caked everything it touched with...more light. Even the lights were light and some of the darks were light and then here were reflections, here, there and in my mind. Such a 60s thing to say.

This what you get

...when you mess with a wooden pallet and chop it up into the necessary kindling to crank up the log burner during the long days of winter. You also get a bit sweaty and a sore back but thankfully there were no major injuries during an hour or so of meticulous axe handling and wood splitting. I was revived later with soup, corn bread, tap water and plain dark chocolate covered with pictures of the Queen or Audrey Hepburn dressed as a cat, (hard to tell) a common meal for lumberjacks and axe murderers in these troubled times.