Off-grid problems

Staring into yet another black hole/money pit/void/place of safety/improvised nuclear shelter.

Impromptu archaeological digging was done, some good finds but none of them were the well hidden and blocked up outflow pipe.

The drain cover was not happy about being woken up at 0855 this morning, been a long winter.

The septic tank saga continues. Week two I think. We can find the way in but not the way out albeit there is a way out but it's blocked by who knows what (we have ideas). One brave soul ventured in, down into the abyss, the bowels of the the err...bowels. He stopped and passed time with a few troglodytes but that was about it, it's abandon hope all yea who enter here. So a soggy morning all around as we rise and fall on the learning curve that is living off-grid and the serene management of sewage and effluent in a non-interfering way. As a young man I'd considered getting back to nature but was unsure what it meant. I now understand that it means living as they did in the Middle-Ages apparently, attending moonlit mass, being toothless, dying at 35 and eating chicken's feet apparently. 

Signs o' the times

Truly, no orders for steak pies taken after December 27th.

When your septic tank's soak away is blocked and disaster may be imminent. 

CBQ's New Year image.

Some things are written in the stars.

Cruise around the sun

Well, that's another one nearly over. All still looks pretty familiar and repetitive now that I've been round a few times. 

The new year

Note: End of year grumpy post coming up. The phrase "new year", with or without capitals, makes the introvert and the mean little Puritan man in me cringe. People seem to think it's worth £££s of rare tourist gold so let's all roll over and be welcoming and servile. Who actually sees all that cash? What locals do well out of it? Hmmm. Maybe best to just get out of the way?

So crowds of bemused revellers descend upon the City of Edinburgh and set foot on the damp and frozen Scottish soil for (to me) no obvious good reason. Of course Edinburgh is a great place to visit but would you seriously want to be there in winter and at new year? You're going to get fleeced for one thing, also be dirty drunk, patronized and disappointed and be part of a huge and largely stupid crowd that don't quite know why but feel like they need to celebrate the turning of a calendar page by staying up all night in a strange city. It's neither religious or heathen, it's simply commercial exploitation and lots of dumb fucks will participate lemming like in the annual  carnage. There will be greasy chips and wooden prefabricated German Markets, baseless optimism (for a brief period), pickpockets, "warm hearted" media coverage and tolerant policemen and bouncers. 

In the distance you'll hear the bassy drone of music and interminable fucking bagpipes and the flash of far away fire works (for a world record nine minutes or so). Wow, this is the place to be, herded between fences, carrying no bags rules, frisked regularly and drinking watery beer from a plastic cup while you try to find your friends or just a friendly face. No, stay at home or go to a pals or a warm family house and avoid Edinburgh at all costs (then come along later in the year when it's all a bit more sensible and the weather is better).

Smashburger

Industrial light and magic.

A Smashburger burger (not sure of the exact model), the latest eating sensation to hit Fife, all the way from Denver Colorado. Actually a pretty good burger, all present at the tasting ceremony marked close to 10/10, a good score round these bemused and cynical parts. I may well return for further samples.

A rare view, taken looking north from Scotland's ancient capital Dunfermline. Snow shows on the Ochils in the distance and generally, as you might imagine, things are as grim as they've ever been there.

Photos of ghosts

Number 2 in an occasional series: I inadvertently summoned up a ghost the other day, mid winter soup creation and a rushed kitchen seance.  Not things I usually combine but accidents happen. There was some sewage vapour diluted in the air and a bloody coldness that could only have come from frozen hell itself. Clearly a troubled spirit, perhaps they lived here once, all curly hair, flowing robes and of course a deep sadness, the like of which I can't quite fathom. Strikes me as the basis of some new cookery show...spirits in the kitchen, ghouls on the chopping board, the great British Cake Seance. Another TV idea I'm working on is Dog Food Masterchef. I think this has great potential. The ghost agrees.

Faces

A bear with a split personality...from feisty pets.

A free sample from the hotel for dead fish.

Boxing Day

  #2017Acquisitions A cheeky wee 4 track EP inside our Xmas card from chums Impossible Songs @Johnbarclay1 and @alisongraham Top notch results of a German recording in October...

After a long and "blinded by the light of the low December sun" drive from Aberdeen it's nice to see that our Christmas release CD is being well received here, there and on Twitter. Thanks Mr CBQ.

Listen here, for free, if you will. Ta. https://www.jamendo.com/album/173271/in-another-world

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all the people and to all the modern people. It never was the way it was or the way it was portrayed.

Christmas Eve Eve

Not even close to the nightmare before Christmas, no panic, mad crowds, traffic jams or chaos...the Christmas weekend arrives with a whisper, in my own head anyway. And (never start a sentence with an and) there never were blue passports...more utter nonsense to hopefully forget. They had black covers and blue text inside, that's all.

Grandma was a fishwife

But this isn't her. It's somebody else who looks similar. Grandma died in 1968 anyway so it's ancient history. Best to keep on the right side of these guys (?) at this time of year, particularly the window cleaner. Don't want a rogue window cleaner going rogue on us, that's worse than anything apart from a rogue fishwife maybe.

Migrants

The hotel for dead fish employs a lot of people that the above newspapers would describe as "migrants". I dislike the term just about as much as I dislike these papers. Folks from the EU who have the guts, courage and drive to uproot themselves and move and work elsewhere deserve nothing but praise. These people are bailing out out our industries and services daily, we rely upon them and they are generally good contributors and great workers. Of course there will be a percentage that are wasters, just like within the so called Anglo Saxon/Celtic/Norman UK population. You find those kind everywhere. As I've said before, many EU workers that I've encountered put their UK colleagues to shame with their energy and positive attitude. So stop buying these right wing tale telling rags.

Dill

Dill. What is dill anyway? If ever the North Koreans want to destroy us I'd suggest that rather than using nukes they use dill bombs. The mess a single dill bomb would create would be far worse than any other WMD. Dill is insidious, gets everywhere, has a funny smell and frankly I'm not sure why it even exists. Has anybody ever said that they'd love a nice piece of dill flavoured anything? Anyway at the hotel for dead fish today was dill day and it was pretty traumatic and messy.

Hotel for dead fish

(Nothing to do with fishwives either). Back at work today, mostly on some kind of auto pilot. One that allows random whistling and the inner humming of tunes in no kind of order. There is also a certain amount of day dreaming or flights of fancy. This includes imagined conversations, replayed conversations, prize winning scenarios, inspiring talks to both myself and a variety of others and of course well worded rants of justification from all sorts of sources i.e. the merits of adding cream to fruit juice, ways to remove Mr D Trump from office, other miscellaneous acts of political revenge or downright revolution based around the current UK set up, why I did what I did (or why I do what I do), remembering gilt edged rants from previous daydreams and attempting to reconstruct them and also, by way of a break, thinking a few positive thoughts about the future. Of course by the end of the day these various long winded acts of twaddle are completely forgotten but will not down reappear on my return to the hotel.

New album

This link may actually play the album / EP for you, the buttons above are just part of a dumb screen shot.

Recorded in Germany in October by the usual suspects, contains four tracks that we're actually quite pleased with. 

Sing along with Theresa

"Everybody!...

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day. 

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. 

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown. Waiting for someone or something to show you the way!"

Golden Time

That time of day and year when you excel at John Bull printing skills and the land outside is bathed in a strange, ethereal winter's glow. This level of success in life has not been easily achieved, there have been sacrifices and a certain amount of pain along the way. 

Birds of the air

Even the birds of the air and the beasts of the field will get a bit peckish from time to time and head around to your garden for just a bit of good natured freeloading. Be not concerned, it will not harm you it's only me pursuing something I really don't have a clue about. It appears that someone left the cake or possibly the suet out in the rain and that resulted in some catastrophic failure within the feeding system. Blocked. Well it's all been purged and everything is fine now apart from the bitter cold and crunchy, churchy ground found underfoot. Look carefully and you'll see the wee birds come and go and then disappear into some parallel universe somewhere close at hand.

Detectorists

The final episode of Detectorists has now been aired. Spoiler alert. The treasure was found but not in the ground. A tiny, well paced glimmer of a bright and slow show that excelled at portraying normality and eccentricity at the same time. They are parallel and diverse, like some perfect summer than never occurred. Normal people are crazy and flawed and things happen to them but it all goes unrecorded, marked only by the lost coins and buttons trapped underfoot. Maybe the pace of this was too slow, too much of a plod for most but not me. Sad and funny, desperate and contemporary and well written. It has passed it's peak but it was a damn good peak. A season three might be a good idea but then again it might not. In comedy and light drama leave them wanting more, not begging for less. That's entertainment. RIP, stay in the ground, undiscovered. That's the best way out.

Today

A slow still day by the river. Nothing happens. Everything is frozen in the cold and in the vice like grip of a Friday early afternoon. The sun tries hard but stirs nobody. The wind is absent and the amber weather warnings are far away, meant for someone else. The birds are busy, just surviving the winter. Dogs play here and there, far and away from owners with long leads and devices set  to cast a ball as far as possible. The radio is filled with the truth about Scottish hip hop, pies on rolls and food banks. Who will eat where at Christmas and people aghast over tax and social responsibility. Some want nothing to do with anything because they've worked "so hard" to get to where they've got to and of course so should everybody else...but that's not how this world is, it's unfair and all the rules are unfair and the rule makers are unfair as are those who interpret them. Only the weather is fair, for today anyway.