Sunday Morning Cats

Cats enjoying the Sunday morning sunshine, safely indoors.

Sunday afternoon washing machine (detail).

Panoramic Pictures

Dundee Panorama. The question that nobody ever asks is: "If you put a panoramic picture on your blog what is the best way to make it a reasonable size without allowing it to bleed over the edges and into other areas and still be fully visible to all viewers?" I'm not sure that what we have here is the actual solution or just something else. Unfortunately there is no practical application for this knowledge.

Dundee Daily Photo

I know why the caged bird sings.

Our mast, our communications, our conversations, our data, our weakness. Somebody else's profit.

Let Dundee flourish, a few weeds here and there don't matter.

A city profile dominated by waterfront oil engineering.

The Tay Railway bridge takes quite a bend as it leaves the city, some say that it's headed for Fife.

Capa-Choo-Cho

Home built Capa-Choo-Choo complete with stirring spoon (CCC built from a kit that is).

I'm not riding on a train, not rushing to get to a meeting, hoping for a taxi, not got lots of thoughts and business plans swirling around in my head, not travelling or waiting, not anxious about that call or email that I hoped would arrive, not chatting on the phone or WhatsApp, not really stressed or searching for a new idea ... anywhere, haven't skipped lunch or left my laptop somewhere, not lost the papers or spilled coffee on them, no nasty stain on my tie or scuffs on my shoes, no change jangling in my pockets, not arguing about cuts or staff or changes, not worried about expenses, no deadlines, no pressure then. It's July 2020. In some ways it always was.

Two cats fighting

Feline's fighting in School Lane, Auchtermuchty, Fife, Scotland. Oil painting (Completed 1909) by Verne Delorean from Dundee School of Art. Sold at auction in 2011 for £8K. If you'd like to purchase it by all means comment below. I'll see what I can do.

It was a day of drama today. By that I mean I was sitting in the car watching two street cats fight. One black and mean, one grey brown and slightly dumb looking. Like kids in a playground they snarled and posed, pounced on each other and strutted back and forwards across the road. Fur began to fly on the July breeze in the bloodless battle. They seemed to communicate via tail flicks; interesting but pointless, I thought. Then in a nearby garden a bonfire suddenly was out of control, flickering flames and dense smoke floated across the hedges and two fire appliances arrived on the scene, all in a few seconds. There's a back story here but it's either stupid or trivial I imagine.

The cats however ignored the blue light stramash and continued their fight (which was by now hotting up). At one point two fire fighters stopped to watch the cats, I suppose they were revising their priorities for a moment, saving life and property v breaking up a cat battle. As the road was blocked by fire engines I just sat tight and looked on, clearly no person or cat was in any real danger. The fire was quickly put out, it wasn't serious and the cats, now somewhat bored with each other like pole dancers at the end of the night (I imagine) walked off together, exit stage left and into a hedge. Performance over.

John's Nihilistic Breakfast

For a very short period of time I dabbled in a breakfast based nihilism but in the end it seemed as pointless as anything else. I spent some dreary times listening to "Obscured by Clouds" and "Desertshore". I also looked at busy clumps of black ink letters forming unfamiliar words placed together along invisible lines in papery books hoping they might tell me something; I found that to be a tedious and laborious line of programming to try decode. It was clearly not a serious intellectual exercise but then I was searching for something, mostly an easy, lazy life doing next to nothing. 

The harsh reality being that I never did eat anything for breakfast, just cigarettes and coffee. Eventually I realized I'd have to earn money doing something in order to sustain myself in this made up, comedic world of misunderstood and ineffective nihilism. So I resigned myself to my fate. In the blinking of an eye many years passed. Thankfully I'm much better now. I'm back in with the Shreddies and the Cheerios and those curious eggs that simply cannot be unscrambled no matter how hard you might try.

It was all a dream

I bought a copy of After Bathing at Baxters in the unlikely environs of a high street Electrical shop in Fife (a shop selling light bulbs and appliances) back in 1971, it was 7/6d. That's seven shillings and six pence or about 35p. They only had a few records for sale and this one was clearly "left on the shelf" amongst faded James Last and Val Doonican records. It was an odd ball bargain, I felt sorry for it. I decided it had potential because of the cover art, so I hoped that it would be interesting. I took it home and listened to it a lot, I only had about three other LPs so any new record was a big deal. Jefferson Airplane were a good band, I decided. It was a kind of early concept album, there was a story, somewhat badly formed as it turned out but that didn't matter. Nobody else had a copy either.

As my collection grew it was slowly relegated to the dark void that was the lonely place in the cupboard where older, worn out records stayed. It was buried by new material from Pink Floyd, CSNY, Bob Dylan, Soft Machine and the like. Eventually, along with pretty much all my remaining records it was sold, thrown out or borrowed and never returned as my life grew more grown up and even more crazy. Possessions mattered less, or so I thought. I now have close to zero original vinyl and only fleeting memories of my old long lost noisy collection of ill gotten gains and guilty pleasures. It was all a dream, a fuzzy, noisy dream.

Cloudy Observations

Nice, odd shaped, right angled cloud formation hanging out over the A90 somewhere north of Brechin, 10/07/20.

South Queensferry, 11/07/20, vague and wispy clouds messing around above our garden. No clear purpose or obvious intent shown. Weather sunny with some blustery blustering features.

Later that day: I stood a little further back or did I just change the distance setting on my phone/camera? Note large, overly photographed, intrusive piece of heavy Victorian engineering spoiling the otherwise pleasant view.

Posh Pie: An Apology

Dear Bots, an Apology and an Anthology: It only seems right and proper that I re-render what was actually quite a posh pie picture (the pie not the picture) with a more artistic and some might say appropriate finish so as to attract a better class of viewer. A throbbing pie in garish oils and badly applied palette knife debris if you will. It just might do the trick.

I'm always hoping to attract the kind of individual reader or viewer that knows a thing or two about cheese or coffee, game pies or smoked salmon and isn't up for any bullshit excuses. Not just those pesky Russian bots intent on bringing down Bulgaria or the fast food networks in the USA. Tedious. If only we could be at peace with ourselves.

After all some folks just might be "informed", well read and only slightly bigoted. Possibly a little up their own arses at times (but aren't we all?) and liable to follow the wrong strand in a story. Someone who browses regularly in flavoured farmer's markets and shooting estate shops, expensive delis and inner city cheese-mongers, but is also happy to queue in an orderly fashion for the reopening of a friendly punky pub chain or a Primark store. You know the sort.

That's exactly the type of person I think would enjoy the bright and classless diatribe that I indulge in here on this hallowed, slightly bleached cyber-space of overlooked and under cooked erratic brilliance and nonsense. There, I'm glad that's off my chest. Over to you then you kind and benevolent old school bots of sorts.

Some struggle with these things

I laughed when I first saw this on Twatter-patter, I know it's a wee bit cruel (and American) but I rather like the precision implied in the 40 feet west part and the suggestion of reflected selfishness. Actually I'm still laughing, well sniggering to myself rereading it. If it wasn't a sign but a spoken statement there would be some nice added expletives here and there in the text. I'm already adding them in my own head. Today is the day that you must wear a mask to shop anywhere in Scotland, I wonder how that will go. Our people don't like being told what to do.

Hot Jenga

In the rarefied presence* of a more lukewarm, refined, abstract but traditional Jenga. Family Edition.

We built a temporary and experimental fire pit using paving blocks. Also invented a new outdoor game in the process. Try to remove a key brick or two once the fire is alight. Hot Jenga with real flames. Try it if you like, I'm not going to recommend it though. Alcohol doesn't help with actual game play either.

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Google releases the contemporary, troubled poet hidden within the algorithm of the beast:

*Slightly better album than you might think, need to be in the right mood though.

Shameless Product Placement

Irn-Bru: I never really drink this sweet and traditional Scottish softy but I know it to be OK, that's about all I can say. Classic fare for the Scottish taste buds. I could be more enthusiastic but I'm biding my time. I'd like to be able to add that I've been offered a significant sum of money to post this picture here and wax lyrically about the drink. Well I haven't yet but I live in hope. Is that not how these things work?

Nice Place

Nice house, shame about the bins.

South Queensferry High Street: A lovely place for the most part but we're let down by the intrusion of real life when ugly bins are the unfortunate ambassadors of otherwise respectable households. In simple terms because of historical design limitations we are stuck with this situation until a practical household version of "Mr Fusion" comes along. Any day now, I hear it's 2020 in most places.

Double Slit Theory Triptych

As soon as you start to observe examples of the double slit wave theory it's wave patterns immediately change even if you view it through three distinct prisms. I might need a new prism or a new theory. When you travel at the speed of light other rules apply.

If these formless physics based witterings appear pretty clueless to you then you'd be completely correct. My current level of knowledge is around about "Beano" standard at the moment but I'm not standing still. I'm actually moving forward in a glorious field of waves. Takes me all the way back to 1972 and some unfortunate but memorable experiences. 

And another thing, for those who liken the universe to some kind of giant cosmic piano, the universe is actually guitar shaped and we are all slowly pulsating along on a finely tuned A string awaiting the arrival of the next full chord. You might want to tighten your grip just in case there's some unexpected turbulence. I have all this on good authority. On other authority it seems that  the universe may well be an enormous version of a Corona Virus cell that is busy ... err ... replicating as you might expect. If nothing else this might explain entropy and aid in the measurement of the rather elusive term "infinite".

South Queensferry Daily Photo

High tide on the pier.

A Sincere Thank You

Yesterday, whilst being both sound in mind and body I received a nice card from the Edinburgh Kremlin thanking me for my long service, good conduct, stoical attitude and generally sunny disposition. I'm a model citizen now it seems. Not sure if I'm with Airfix, Lego or Play-Dough however. All that therapy, torture, extensive surgery and long periods of housing scheme incarceration have paid off. I'm no longer the uncomfortable, racist, sexist, materialistic and deranged person I used to be. My eyes have been opened, possibly my third eye also. I may well add up to more than the sum of my parts.

I ways I don't yet understand that weird feeling of approval from my peers and tormentors has delivered strange healing and cathartic properties to my soul, I'm positively light headed. Money cannot buy this feeling. Money can't actually buy very much these days either, it's pretty much useless on account of the faltering economy, tactical foreign interference and the white noise of Covid despair polluting the media. It's a long list. If it was an itch you'd scratch it's eyes out. However the future is just around the corner as is the past but it's a different kind of corner pointing in another direction. My bronze medal and citation will no doubt arrive in the next post.

More Mystical Experiences

Your toilet may be golden but your shit still smells as bad as everybody else.

"I wonder who they are
The men who really run this land
And I wonder why they run it
With such a thoughtless hand

What are their names
And on what streets do they live
I'd like to ride right over
This afternoon and give
Them a piece of my mind
About peace for mankind
Peace is not an awful lot to ask".

The lyric from the song "What are their names?" from David Crosby's album "If only I could remember my name", I guess about 1971 or so, 49 years ago. I was but a lad then. It's not really a great song, the performances are pretty shaky, long noodling start with just a single verse and chorus near the end, not  a well structured piece in the conventional sense, the playing and singing is all a bit dopey, as were most things back then. I still like the sentiment however and of course these things mentioned in the lyrics remain unchanged, as they were then and as they still are today, most probably it always will be so. Here's the actual audio version.

Gloomy Friday

Crowds slowly gather at the Church of the Sacred Thumb to celebrate the correctness of the forecast and the destruction of this year's crop of whatever it was.

The forecast was correct, 97% chance of rain. July in Scotland, we've had our warm spell, our windy spell now we're back to our wet and gloomy spell. Across the border the public houses open tomorrow as a sign of even more of a lack of grasp of any anti-plague strategy. People will sup pints in plastic booths, be sanitised and socially managed. Pubs will be as much fun as a cocktail bar on the space shuttle. Jollity and atmosphere surgically removed and the punters, so eager to participate apparently, don't seem to have any idea how shit or awkward it'll be, then the fights will start. Alcohol and common sense meet only ever briefly, then it all breaks down into either violence or comatized storytelling. 

The English media seems confused that Wales, Scotland and NI have their own separate health responsibilities, quite inconvenient for our colonial masters in Westminster. When they cry "advance" we're all supposed to head up over the top singing happy songs and dodging bullets as best we can. For a rare moment in history Scotland, using it's own historic ability to not quite toe the line revels in some kind of Presbyterian conservatism and prudence that as of today (in the rain) seems strangely safe and attractive. It's all a pot mess. Stay home and scran your BrewDog on the couch till the vax comes out.

I really have no idea how any of this drip feeding of restriction management is going to work out and neither does anybody else but if you're seriously thinking about blissful pub chats in sunny beer gardens, dining out with "friends" or two weeks in Lanzarote to calm your nerves and chill you out then you are kidding yourself and in my view heading towards wasting sizable chunks of your own money. But hey, we need to boost the economy they say.

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Chris McQueer: I've seen a little of him on TV and twitter, an interesting, likable and funny guy it seems. BBC Scotland's new bright star. I watched the 16 minute segments of "Hings" last night and was pretty disappointed. Three shallow, mucky and dark (not in any kind of good way) tales that your average 5th year English student author might have thought were OK, just about. Didn't work for me, the hype has left me confused.

Litter Bin Daily Photo

In these troubled times even litter bins count too, remember to respect safe distances.

Lost Suppers

And Lo, Jesus said unto the gathering: "Look we just need somebody to sort this whole thing out in an orderly fashion. Anybody up for that? All I had were the spicy buffalo wings and a green salad along with a glass of tap water. I was hoping to get an early night".

Lost Suppers: Rhubarb crumble and cream. A bowl of mixed up crisps. Cheeses, crackers and wine. A chip sandwich. Kellogs Frosties and milk. Actimel. A bottle of Guinness. A Mars Bar. Toasted cheese with Branston Pickle. Beetroot sandwich. An apple. Cold pizza. Custard dregs from a carton. Rice pudding. Ovaltine. Horlicks. Hula Hoops. Berocca. Strawberries. Coffee. Whisky and ice. Shreddies and milk. Buttered toast. Chinese meal leftovers. A banana. Cold potatoes. Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Monster Munch. Toasted scones. Nothing at all (sometimes).