Break Free

"We'll break free of (?) the EU like the Incredible Hulk", says Boris apparently. This is just complete and utter rubbish and I'm sad that people would actually consider buying anything looking like a newspaper that's running such a stupid headline. Of course if it was an actual comic it might be OK, up to a point  ...

Monster Munch

An escapee from a garish multi-pack, the scourge of proper sizing and consumer understanding. We get what we deserve.

Once upon a time crisps were unsalted and you added your own salt from a silly blue bag. Then flavours came, colours and shapes. It was the ending of an age. By the time that Monster Munch was launched I was an adult. I had responsibilities, a mortgage, kids, intermittent career prospects. I was respectable. I was never a child in the heady, colourful, salty and sticky world of early Monster Munch. I couldn't eat a bag in public without looking like some pathetic man-child in crisis and of course in those days Monster Munch actually came in monster sized bags. There was no hiding place. This was the age of snacks and sweets before the great "shrink to fit the budget" strategy was launched on unsuspecting punters. Whilst this has wreaked havoc in dry snack land, for some reason (wet) drinks have only got bigger and more expensive and more dangerous, apart from the actual cocaine once found in Coca-Cola.

There is some odd logic at work here but we're all too stupid and desperate to comply as we allow it to grow by our voiceless, munching participation and lack of protest. So "in praise of Monster Munch" should really be some confessional singer songwriter ditty; funny and wry and witty and with a clever ending, if only somebody would write it. I wont. BBC TV variety shows of the 60s spewed this kind of jaunty material out every Saturday night, I'm not sure what replaced them. Oh yes, dancing celebs and talent shows. Enough.

Rainbow Cake

Yesterday: A day unlike others inasmuch as I ate some rainbow cake. Today I might eat some more rainbow cake. You can never tell how appetites might dictate the pace and content of the day. N.B. no actual rainbows were injured, damaged or disturbed in the making of this cake.

Daleks v Skeksis

Daleks: Ugly fascist totalitarian rulers. No mercy shown to enemies, no sense of humour, robotic bodies, squiggly innards, various alien type weapons and grand ideas of universal conquest. No respect for all versions of the human race etc.

Skeksis: Ugly fascist totalitarian rulers. No mercy shown to enemies, no (properly formed) sense of humour, bird like bodies and heads, squiggly innards, various primitive but magical weapons and grandiose ideas over their status. No respect for all versions of the human race or gelflings.

The thing is with both of these fictional, clumsy, villainous types they always avoid any kind of decisive comeuppance. In some pantomime inspired way it seems that it would be easy simply to run around them with a long piece of rope and tie them together in a clump and, once that was done, cover their eyes (electronic or otherwise) and ... destroy them, as you would with any other extreme form of cruel tyranny. But then the stories wouldn't quite work or continue  ...

Next Please

Business opportunity: In most communities this sign could be placed almost anywhere and remain accurate and useful. I'm surprised that DIY stores and various high street and web retailers are not selling out on these (think of the market value in China alone). Arguably every second house should be adorned with this simple and helpful message, eventually every home would have one. 

Also think now of those older, often confused, grey and worn out people over the age of 60 with their lifeless hair and unhelpful attitudes. Troubled of mind and stooping and squinting as they try to go about their feeble, petty and meaningless business; here's a quick and easy piece of signage to steady them in any moment of self-doubt or mindful confusion and confirm to them that all in the universe is at a steady state. 

There's also talk of a phone App development  that simply reminds you with a pleasant beep and humorous and cute display when you cease to be at your own door and move over into the space best defined as next door.

Sweden

Today I'd just like to say a big thank you the people and the randomly inspired bots of Sweden. I see you've had a busy afternoon and I do hope that you found it all worthwhile. I have no idea how any of this happens. Again, many thanks.

P.S. Nice to see you hanging in there Russia.

Barter Books

Roofing detail: The retired Alnwick Station, books, shelves and wise words.

IT cabinets, books, comics, pamphlets and the relics of a railway station all hang out together.

Table 10: Breakfast at "one of the largest secondhand bookshops in Britain". We also used Table 11 the day before. Quite a filling breakfast some said. There are also a lot of books as you might imagine hence the claim. Thanks to all those who ever recommended that a visit might be a worthwhile experience. Strangely no books were bought (or bartered) but many books were enjoyed. That's the point I suppose.

Lindisfarne Daily Photo

Dead whales waiting to be turned into boats to be used to allow local schoolchildren to commute to Berwick upon Tweed regardless of the tidal state.

Over there on the mainland are the remains of an ambitious Game of Thrones set that was never actually used due to script continuity problems.

Excavations have revealed either a Viking helicopter landing area or a possible Neolithic coffee shop.

Where shadows fall

An occasional series: Exclusively filmed in the picturesque but functional harbour of Eyemouth, a place to be found at the mouth of the eye for illustrative purposes only. Here sea, sand and seals meet along with shadows and that sort of thing. In other words we spent a day away.

A more creative tone

The promotion of the more creatively well set up things in the world and original, tonally attuned material should really be what this blog is about. Recent posts have been a bit grim (understandably?). It's just tough to maintain a steady course when the fuckwits have taken over the sanatorium and their kind looks to be prospering thanks to various conspiracies and accidents coming together in opportune ways. Ugh. I therefore will try harder to shut out this corrupted world and delve more deeply into the less cruel and less real world of fantasy and creativity so ... for some reason I was quite happy to discover that this new album containing various types of sophisticated sounds was being promoted around the Twittersphere. Will it be any good? Are there any sample to be heard? Not sure. The link here gives some info as well as some unfortunately highly set prices and a far away release date. It can't all be good news...

Good news! The Dark Crystal prequel that's prequelling on Netflix is pretty reasonable. Apart from us referring to it using the somewhat derisory term "the puppets" it's actually rather good and err ... enthralling, if you like that sort of thing and of course it's another reasonable reason to avoid large chunks of the BBC's schedule.

True love

Human beings find themselves everywhere: The course of true love never does run smoothly, there will be bumps, crumples, squashed coffee cups, chipped nail varnish and cigarette ends along the way. It's a journey disguised as a trek looking a lot like a sweaty hike in ill fitting boots. The old wooden seats and park benches that are sat upon will be stained and marked, as weather beaten as fishermen's faces and invariably and inconveniently with concrete like bird shit marking the arms and danglely bits. So in these difficult times it's also good to know that we can reply upon a free thinking and unbiased media system to air and to challenge the big issues of the day, should there ever be any. No stone will be left unturned and no turn will be left unstoned (as used to be the custom) in creating the illusion of truth and we will get to wherever we're getting to eventually but probably not by the best route.

Old stories, old movies

There is no apocalypse now, there was one earlier however and there's a good chance there will be another along shortly. These are of course small apocalypses, tiny tremors and events of an apocalyptic kind, like gusty hurricanes or shallow floods, single figure epidemics, silent whispers and rainbows that avoid natural hues and concentrate on neutrals rather than actual colours. This page is set in black and white tones today as a reminder and a memorial to these things. Things that are not everyday things but small things that  happen somewhere almost everyday and then stubbornly fail to register with us.

From Iceland

Slightly confusing photograph shared by some of our friends from Iceland earlier today. No explanation.

Making plans

Life is filled with uncertainty. What to have for tea, what day to do the laundry, where are my favorite socks? Now those wise and insightful people at Gov.UK want to know if I plan to travel after 31st October 2019. Well I suppose I might but then again I might not. Until I know for sure my new formed preparing for Brexit Plan is in disarray, as is everyone else's. This finely layered piece of software takes the reader on a journey through various options on business and personal matters before revealing itself to be of no use at all (as if you ever thought it might be). A fine and indeed almost comical state of affairs but it's our elders and betters who have led us to this crazy point in history where "helpful" websites give poor and vague advice about things that are not fully understood by anybody anywhere. Your future is what you make it unless Gov.UK get in there first and mess with it.

Toyota Spoons

Toyota Spoons: Spoons by Toyota, the engineering and production giants of Japan, the inventors of terms and practices such as continuous improvement, just in time, make one sell on, one set of numbers, Kambans and so on. In many ways they are my industrial heroes but in my life I've only ever owned one Toyota car and the cylinder head gasket blew on it shortly before it was written off in a rear ending kind of smash. In many ways it was a great car, in many other ways it wasn't. Anyway I like their spoons.

Plumbers fixing leaks more likely to cause floods

There should be some text here, possibly a picture or two. At the moment there isn't. This blog is currently under maintenance due to (yet another) reasonably priced existential crisis taking place in my noggin as a result of performing a simple action, that action being indulging in the rather careless act of actually bothering to listen to/read some news bulletins today only to discover that a) there is a serious level of news distortion going on b) stories are clearly not fully understood by the reporters* and c) politicians are spouting incredibly high levels of complete rubbish. In other news the rain is now getting into my tinfoil hat and that is causing a certain level of discomfort.

*Actually they are understood, they are simply spun in perverse and damaging ways.

Duck and cover

Random ducks of Scotland: For you delectation a selection of random ducks parading around a local farmyard the other day making some kind of ultimately unsuccessful group effort to pursue me for reasons I can't quite fathom. Much easier on the eye than this week's news bulletins or headlines I think you'll agree.

If 6 was 9

Confused by recent events? Bamboozled by political chicanery and deceit? For many of us the threat of both real and existential crises looms large. The world (our small and unreasonably stable world) is turning itself upside down and what if 6 really is 9 after all? Does that really matter or is it just yet another dumb, open ended meaningless question? This very exercise is pretty pointless really, being confused and indulging in the perverse joy and mystery of confusion doesn't help, it's not real. But then what is real? Civil unrest, civil war, economic collapse, new orders rising, old orders falling, uncertainty rules and in any weak moment 6 may well turn out to be 9 or the other way round. It feels as if stuff is on fire, somewhere out of reach and beyond treatment. That's what new and unfamiliar words do when they salt up your life with a spicy piece of rhetoric ...prorogue. Suddenly a new term has been released on an unsuspecting public and the "old order" is challenged by the reptilian elite. A tactic, a smoke screen, a coup? Fuck this shit.

X Ray Specs

As I'm waiting for the chimney sweep's arrival and some cement work to dry I decided to X Ray my head during a lull in activities. It's all looking OK this afternoon, no obvious signs of damage or disease. The teeth look fine too, the £21 a month dental plan is worth every penny.

My old school

Fire from a safe distance: A great photo from JB junior with EB as a spectator.

God moves in mysterious ways: My old school (Woodmill High) burned down last night. I left there in 1969 but it was never a happy place for me (not that I ever wished for it to be burned down). The 60's were educationally speaking (?) a bad place; rampant corporal punishment, feeble teachers, a curriculum that was dull, unchecked bullying etc. etc. But I made it out alive as did numerous others all with healthy chips on our shoulders and a degree of bedded in trauma and anxiety. We were ill prepared for the outside world and it showed, the 70's were a proper mess of a thing as we explored that Brave New World. For kids there was quite simply a lack of preparation and mentoring, no warning or guidance as to what was to come our way via the injustices and vagaries of life, now we know better. Maybe we don't do much better though. The passes and failures are hardly hot currency, just dim relics on faded documents that are rendered meaningless by the passing of time and the growing up of spirit. It was grim but all we knew, such was a working class Scottish education and the then brutal and unfocused world of primitive academic ideals and targets.