Tips for entertaining

"Donald, if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times there's nothing worse than serving up lukewarm food on cold platters. Your guests will be disappointed, though they're unlikely to tell you to your face, and I don't care if you paid for it yourself or how many new Happy Meal toys you've got for your collection, it just won't do. Oh, and by the way Wendys is much better than McDonalds, that's just for the record."

Helleborus

Hellebores are one of the first spring flowers to open.Their colour & showiness is so welcome in these weeks before spring.

Helleborus niger (far right) is called the Christmas rose. In legend it sprouted in the snow from the tears of a girl who had no gift for the Christ child. (That's possible).

These are not my words, they belong to a lady by the name of Emma Mitchell, she's on Twitter you know. I have no real idea what this is all about (other than flowers obviously) but I liked the picture and the peculiar little legend mentioned. Perhaps it could form the basis a question in the famous TV quiz Universycle Challenge.

Shopper's Paradise

OK. So you want some coconut water (as any sensible, respectable person would), but you don't want to pay £2 for a single small carton. The answer to this shopper's conundrum is to simply purchase the coconut water as part of a "meal deal". Yes there are such things. Then for £3 you get the coconut water, a bean, curd, salad and chilli wrap and a tub of fresh pineapple chunks. All of which will prove useful if you are either hungry or thirsty or your body is crying out for fibre. Thrust me on this.

Today...

via GIPHY

Hmm, mysterious leak in the downstairs bathroom plumbing, weird little wet patches between the tiles on the floor. No foul odour. Procrastinating a little. Had a shower anyway.

Seven pieces of French toast, three slices of Lorne sausage and two brown bread rolls (not all eaten by me but I prepared this). Orange juice with bits. Coffee.

Browning and thickening minced beef in a pot.

Removing the trickle charger, starting the car, running the car and then reconnecting the trickle charger.

Carrying out recycling but two of the bins are full. Started a new pile.

Discovering that the mice have stolen and eaten the mouse poison. Not really sure what to do about this. Almost feeling sorry for the mice. What drove them to this?

Fed the birds (did not feed any mice knowingly).

Admin for work, sorted papers, letters, pamphlets, made up letter packs, checked everything twice because that's just how I am. Still having doubts about the envelope contents. 

Split three very stubborn logs with a log splitter and heavy hammer. Harder than I'd expected. Recovering.

Ate three leftover After Eights nobody seems to want. It's 3pm.

...next?

Edinburgh nightly photo

Somewhere up near the castle, the tourists have mostly gone, the castle and "attractions" are closed, no invaders present. No unrest. Soldiers smoke a cigarette and dream of sleep. Drunks and those on their way home trip on the uneven slabs. Headed home except for the homeless, those who lead mysterious outside lives in shop doorways an hostels as they seek out warmth and food wherever they might find it. Nothing to see here, officer. 

The city is cruel stone, red lights, dirty pavements, unobserved speed limits and rules. That feeling that nobody cares but everyone is watching, circling, spinning, trying to find a way past the old and the brutal, a way to make the city a better place. All that happens is the popping up of new fast food frontages, revised landlords, a restrained police presence and traffic mis-management. We are all captive here, no matter how free we believe ourselves to be. But you can escape, along the western approach road, via the A90, on a shooglie bus, jump a tram, take a late train to Dunbar. It's possible.

Night garden

At night it's dark (obviously), unless artificially interrupted, which can be OK, or a little strange or a little magical. You can't be sure. There are too many variables. Moonlight, cloud cover, security lights, house lights, star light and too much brooding darkness in the mix to screw up everything. Oh and fog, and freezing fog and finally a decent blizzard coming at you like horizontal flying nails. That's all due to arrive next month, via drone.

The revolution wont be a revolution

Today's mood and general demeanour was largely influenced by the sighting of this dead bicycle forlornly laid against a railing in Princess Street (in Edinburgh) awaiting a sky funeral once all is quiet and the vultures descend. It might not go like that. The pickings will be slim. There will be no recycling. There will be no news coverage. The flesh will be largely unconsumed. The final revolution of these once proud wheels will not be televised nor witnessed unless a few folks peer out of the windows of MacDonalds, squint over the plastic tops of their plastic lattes and soberly observe the moment when a "cooncil" pickup tears this bike away from it's moorings and then moves it onwards to the tip. I don't what happens after that. I don't ask awkward questions. I just tweet slightly absurd things on Twitter and then wonder at how things became generally but not exclusively mediocre, a black and white finish is the key. I do like a good argument now and then though.

And now...

...for your delectation I give you some street map details from Fife, portrayed in money saving black and white to suit the Fifeshire type and nature. Just the thing to use should your GPS fail or your battery goes flat any time you're in the area for the purpose of some kind of rendezvous.

One for the refugees

I don't know much about this other than it's an artwork (sculpture or whatever you want to call it) that has appeared somewhere in Denmark as a reminder of and a tribute to the many refugees lost in (shall we say) Northern waters. These people are people, with names, education, talents and families, they are refugees, fleeing from war and oppression, not migrants, or immigrants or some sub-human species that we can conveniently ignore. I'm sad that the UK is slowly  becoming the place that the current government seems to wish to define it as, a cruel and heartless land where the ruling establishment neither show mercy or compassion to their own poor people or to those of other nations. There is a special place in hell...

Post its from the edge

No words really needed, one of the best post its of all time.

This isn't here

In the Far East, further east than you can think of, a large hungry bear took a bite at the moon and the results are now available thanks to modern technology and the like  (see above). These are common occurrences in the eastern part of heaven or even space, usually it's a dragon that gets the blame. It's a cultural thing based on storytelling traditions. I sincerely hope that the Chinese rocket that landed there last week was not swallowed in the process. The effect on tides and possibly time has yet to be measured and it may well be a little darker at night once the moon returns to Scotland where, as far as I can see it tends to hover like a lost Police drone over Edinburgh airport. The good news is that mankind is working feverishly to come up with workable solutions to sort out the damaged moon and any naturally occurring wild drone bad behaviour.

In a green world

Seasonal seaweed colour changes. The cold green of January paints the rocks with a bright and slippery coating revealed as the the tide hides and packs away the water somewhere else down the river. It comes and goes, sweeps clean then deposits more material and allows the green unseen world to come to life for a few hours. We walk across the bottom of this nether world, mud, sand, rocks and weed, any sensible creatures in hiding until the chilly waters return. By then we'll be supping hot coffee and eating the remains of any reasonably well preserved Christmas fare.

Window and door

There's no doubt about it, at this time of year, in the frosty, spectral winter light and the brooding darkness our front door and the odd 18th century windows actually look rather mysterious, as well as strange and warm.

Never the right time

Shallots were discovered by this family late in 2018. In 2019 they were used up. Not sure when we'll see their like again.

Soda bread: No yeast or obvious trouble to make. Solid and dependable and quite rugged and good looking. A new year winner.

When it's not the right time to write but you write anyway but it's just not right, quite. As it turns out I seldom write or type up anything at the correct time. Ideas come inconveniently and I'm astute enough to recognize them as they arrive, often like buses, one after another. What I regularly fail to do is capture these ideas, they evaporate and remain lost and unused. It's my own fault, I refuse to learn or I'm stubborn, lazy or dumb. The ideas fly off like migrant birds headed south and so, once I've gathered myself together to the point of writing something down, I begin with an empty head. Sparse as a wardrobe robbed by a dozen funeral attendees requiring outfits, like an empty fridge two days before pay day and so on. Ideas = down the drain. Well some of the time. 

There's always a lost Christmas card, stuck in limbo, undelivered, eventually binned. Sad. In black and white.

2018 was ...

... whatever it was. Now it's nearly time to move onto 2019 and face up to the future, something that's always just around the corner but still manages to arrive quite unexpectedly. I wish I could say more but the future is notoriously tough to predict, people have died and/or lost vast sums of money trying to do just that. Best to let it happen, relax and allow the soothing magic of time's oozing and passing to wash over you like some woolly, warm, soft and flexible blanket. Welcome to 2019, a year devoted to the void, to reflection, clumsy social interaction, moved goalposts and a degree of bearable frustration. There will be change and changes, pages flicked over and storybooks thumbed through. We'll tell ourselves different things, often they're script will refuse to line up with the obvious world of reality but when all else fails just stare into the soft glow of the imagined light that's straight ahead of you and point yourself towards it.

Farewell Big A

That's my final day as a sweaty minion in the Big A over for the foreseeable future. I've returned to civvy street and feel like a combat soldier who's just done a stint in Afghanistan. Maybe that's a bit of exaggeration. The thing is that this year's sojourn into the purchasing mind of the British public hasn't been so bad. The Big A seemed almost human at times and the staff and managers were genuinely working hard to give the customer what they want, mainly a load of Chinese crap as it happens i.e. phone cases and covers, awful toy games, electronic oddities, cook books and a smattering (?) of lurid sex toys. It seems that's what Santa brings us all and then, for good measure we buy even more of it when the sale comes. As a barometer of taste and appetites it's worrying but then so are the TV schedules, the pop charts and the wayward political opinions trotted out all over the place. As a country and a society we're mostly fucked and fucked up but at least the good people of "A" retain a sense of humour and dignity in the face of Brexit and economic adversity and plow on. "It's all right for them" you may say, "what about our high streets and the retail sector?" Yup, totally fucked, blame that one on your town councils and chamber of commerce jokers. Those without any vision or flexibility will, I'm afraid, perish. 

More Cold War

I've been following Coldwar Steve on Twitter before it was cool or fashionable. Well that's my claim. The output has been patchy on occasions but this top deck shot shows him at the peak of his form. Just a pity nobody is sneaking a fag in memory of the old days and the smokey, early morning mist of the upstairs passenger compartment. The 0655 to Donibristle Industrial Estate was my ride, humming "a day in the life" and probably (but I'm not sure about this) not having a care in the world. It was 1973 and the world was truly a different place, unrecognizable and strange, austere and tough. I'm glad that it's over. None of the punters depicted have shared my experience, they've done other things but still ended up in the same place.

Some time in Fifeshire

Earthbound now for nearly 64 years, finally found a reasonable hat, still something of a tooth problem going on in that squint smile but at least I'm smiling, Christmas and the remains of all things must have been good to me this year. Sunglasses are of course vital in December, all that glow and haze going on above the fog. Having a lovely loving wife and a wonderful (if bat-shit crazy) family also helps me stay sane. Reasonable amounts of exposure to animals (dogs, cats, alpacas etc.) does no obvious harm either. I'm back at work today and I've eaten three Christmas dinners this week. Roll on 2019ish.

Picturesque Fife corners

Looking west in Limekilns. Fife.

Further west.

East, in the blurry distance.

Emergency Kitten

Boxing day: If the holidays, vacuous TV broadcasting and hollow religious festivals are getting to you then here's an emergency kitten to study and thereby calm you down. His name is Kylo, he's about eight weeks and he's currently residing in Dundee and in this pic he's having a wee nap. You're welcome.