A candle

The time of the season for candles...

When Christmas isn't white

No white Christmas here, just foggy sunshine beaming down to create the crisp and bright weather that was the order of the day. I also found myself in an unfamiliar part of the Lothians and managed to capture the Queensferry Crossing from a spot I've not used before (nor have many others I suspect). As a result I got some fairly satisfying shots as the mist rolled out across the river and the bridge structure emerged into sunlight.

Boxing Day

Christmas Day

Christmas Eve

I present a lovely and colourful Christmas tree I digitally knitted myself. Happy Christmas Eve and here's to fewer wordy word based things in 2020 (which is only a few days away and I'd like to think a reason to be cheerful).

Mealie Mince

Numerous possible spelling mistakes abound in the title but who cares? It's just a variation on an ongoing pie theme from the North where they know a thing or two.

Big headed cat

Another in  series of posts that contains a reasonable amount of the minimum of information: that's the minimum information in this minimalist statement.

Fruit based economy

Brexit etc.

Peat and Diesel

A Hebridean version of one of the most over exposed Christmas songs ever, a fact that's nobody's fault I suppose. Some babies grow up in peculiar ways. Anyway I cant dislike a band called Peat & Diesel despite their reliance on the awful tones of an accordion for the main part of their sound.

Daily flower photo

Peace at last

13th December 2020.

A day

A day for quiet mindfulness, if that's at all possible. Avoid the news, the media, reports of large election queues or a "good" turnout. Cute dogs at polling stations. Postal votes and the possible impact of any bad weather. Avoid hoping for the best. All recent elections and referendums have produced results that only brought disappointment and led to a worsening sense of doom and gloom. That's no way to live, under the pressure of being ruled and governed by ignorant and corrupt idiots and having a grinding, bitter sense and experience of how badly their current policies and practices are turning out. So I'm closing my eyes, thinking of better things and better days and hoping that we all wake up to a significant change of government and leadership tomorrow.

Easily distracted

The reality TV world of bright, shiny, noisy things beckons; Fastest Car is a predictable but amusing diversion. Opium from the tube, Nirvana from Netflix, rest and be thankful and be amused. I suppose I should know better, be seeking higher things, have aspirational goals. But ...

I should add that I've only watched a bit of one episode as a result of a radio interview/review I heard, not sure there's a long term viewing pattern forming here. Bright, shiny things etc.

Diamond Head

Self commissioned x-ray self portrait: There are now many versions of this out on the wires but I'd like to ignore that fact and simply pay tribute to Damien Hirst, a man who is worth an estimated £215m these days making him quite a successful artist and human being, unlike me and I'm not even a proper artist but despite all that I'm up for copying and plagiarism because those things, along with love and inordinately long sentences are the things that not only make the world go round but lubricate it's cosmic wheels (in a manner of speaking) as we quietly turns in space. 

To do list

Leonardo Da Vinci's to do list from 1490.

[Calculate] the measurement of Milan and Suburbs

[Find] a book that treats of Milan and its churches, which is to be had at the stationer’s on the way to Cordusio

[Discover] the measurement of Corte Vecchio (the courtyard in the duke’s palace).

[Discover] the measurement of the castello (the duke’s palace itself)

Get the master of arithmetic to show you how to square a triangle.

Get Messer Fazio (a professor of medicine and law in Pavia) to show you about proportion.

Get the Brera Friar (at the Benedictine Monastery to Milan) to show you De Ponderibus (a medieval text on mechanics)

[Talk to] Giannino, the Bombardier, re. the means by which the tower of Ferrara is walled without loopholes (no one really knows what Da Vinci meant by this)

Ask Benedetto Potinari (A Florentine Merchant) by what means they go on ice in Flanders

Draw Milan

Ask Maestro Antonio how mortars are positioned on bastions by day or night.

[Examine] the Crossbow of Mastro Giannetto

Find a master of hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lombard manner

[Ask about] the measurement of the sun promised me by Maestro Giovanni Francese

Try to get Vitolone (the medieval author of a text on optics), which is in the Library at Pavia, which deals with the mathematic.

My personal favourite is "Examine the crossbow of Mastro Giannetto", either a forensic mechanical and scientific process or some kind of weird euphemism. Just imagine what he'd have made of a smartphone.

Cat Interrupted

Cat Interrupted: Possibly dithering in that moment, caught between two distinct worlds, trapped in indecision, frozen in the presence of a clear choice, bamboozled quietly, in other words torn between the options of sniffing an empty IKEA bag or sniffing an Arnold Clark bag that is not empty but does not contain anything remotely interesting to cats.

Tough as

I'm not really sure what I'm referring to here. Not some kind of cooked meat, boiled cabbage or any serious aspect of life and toughness (yeah, life can be tough but...). I guess I saw my old boots loafing where I'd abandoned them and thought; just for a split second, maybe more, there were two actual thoughts I think. Though No.1. Those boots have seen some action along the way and then Thought No.2. They are sitting there like they don't really care, don't give a flying etc. etc. There was also a third more roguish thought that thought " I'll take a photo of my boots as that's something I never actually do". So that's my boots and my thoughts and today is Saturday the 7th of December.

Cold enough for soup

Cold enough for soup in an Alton Towers souvenir mug (and other expressions of complete nonsense):

See also: Mild enough for pickled herring.

Re-imagine the world

Probably not important but still nice to see old album covers re-imagined in a Blue-Note style. More things need this treatment.