A place to park those random thoughts, stolen images, hidden conversations and incoherent babble from beyond the wall of sleep. Odd bits of music and so-called worldly wisdom may creep in from time to time. Don't expect too much and you won't feel let down.
I recently collected a substantial Chinese carry out from our local place and it came in this rather nice box, one which I quite like. Tsingtao is a type of Chinese beer that I've never heard of, not being much of a world traveler or beer geek etc. The carton, meal time contents duly consumed is now destined for the recycling skip across the street and will presumably return to us one day in the form of toilet rolls or a brown paper bag. It's the circle of life, as every Chinese lion knows only too well. Here's a sort of Steam Punk / Industrial rendering of it, purely for reference.
It's found in the second aisle in Aldi, around the corner from the cheese, ready meals and cold meats. It's on your left, down a bit on the lower half of the display rack, lower than the unpleasant chocolate and the strange biscuits. It's not like the much hyped Dreamies for cats, they're hard biscuity things smelling of fish and unpleasant to human taste (I suspect). This Dreemy is really a knock off Milky Way but, quite strangely a lot better. As if the Aldi brothers had secretly nicked some old, not quite right for 2020, cost effective or PC Milky Way recipe from Mars and actually improved it. I'm impressed and I will return and buy more in my new found role as a happy customer.
I'm old enough to recall "the world according to beachcomber" (without capitalization). It was a silly, funny, odd column that existed in the Daily Express on certain days. It was about everything and nothing in particular. In the the pre-Python days (but still with Tony Hancock and Spike Milligan being very busy being brilliant) it did represent a slice of humour that was not mainstream BBC fodder. Having said that I cant remember a single Beachcomber anecdote whereas I've some seriously good memories of the other comedy trailblazers who didn't play the complete establishment game. None of this is relevant, comedy remains a weird profession and what is funny sometimes isn't.
Anyway I like the idea of the observational beach comb as a piece of relaxed therapy and possibly inspiration. Living close to a beach helps and thankfully I do but my beachcombing brain and attitude are as yet not fully developed and of course I should really be combing some metaphoric and imaginary "world" beach and not just the real sludge, sand and rotting seaweed. The real Beachcomber had few answers, mainly just findings, observations and views. Finding answers are of course the hard part of real life and the combing of it. I've a way to go it seems.
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| A real pub in an imaginary place. |
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| An idea from above. |
Tomorrow further rain is forecast. Quite incredible. The spiders however remain busy, unbothered by the damp weather.
Little known facts from the darkness of the past: A recent discovery has been made at the low water point near the harbour of a Scottish fishing village famed for it's confusing one way traffic system, tacky AirbnB homes and having the oldest "old school" fish and chip shop anywhere. The discovery was made by a band of Enid Blyton characters all up in Scotland for their "hols" and staying with their maiden aunt Agnes, madam at the popular "Fisherman's Brothel" Hotel. And so it was that Sonja, Charles, Boudica and Jeffrey along with their feckless dog Sparky the Spaniel made the discovery whilst heading home for supper one July evening during Edwardian times.
Experts have described the find as looking a lot like ancient communications from an unknown alien race. The runes can be seen at low tide in Pittenweem but only through special goggles. I took it upon myself to check out the find and have already translated their meaning but have decided not to share their message with the rest of mankind, until the time is right. Please note these pictures only show a part of the message, there are other photos that I am withholding for robust reasons of national security.
The Blyton kids have now returned to a small village near Harrow and pose no threat to the secrecy of the project due to having been written with short attention spans and being easily distracted by a tray of hot fairy cakes or a large bowl of iced sultana buns and a jug of fresh lemonade.
Some smart arse (well that's pretty unfair and judgmental right away and untrue no doubt) drew an arty picture of something called "line on turquoise" but the sad fact is it looks like a very basic diagram of the human digestive system and based on my limited knowledge and taste that works just fine for me. I'm sorry about this but actually I'm not sorry at all. I do kind of like it but it also makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. I'm thinking that it's in the South Park School of Art if there is such a thing. I also think that's what art is supposed to do so everything here is reasonable for the time being.
I can't quite figure out what a 24 year old Neil Young would have to say that would connect with my 17 year old self but a connection of sorts happened way back then. Naive and inexperienced and all that, a million miles away from the leafy Laurel Canyon wonderland and the Canadian prairie (in every sense), but it meant something at the time. So I caught myself singing "a man needs a maid" in the shower (?) after a pretty sweaty, full on working day. I was two glasses of wine in on an empty stomach. I managed at least two verses before forgetfulness set in.
The daily harsh reality being I made two trips to Broxburn tip today (aka the recycling centre), it's as unglamorous as it gets. Wood louse and creepy crawly infested fence posts, rotting timbers and broken wooden slats were duly disposed of. It felt, in the post thunderous August heat like climbing Ben Nevis in a diving suit. I've turned soft and unfit, I've sweated pints and been bitten by the local berry bugs as if I was the UN supply team in a famine situation, I'm now a blobby jelly man. Then I cut the grass and then I did some concrete shoring and mixing. Now all I want is a shower and lo and behold I begin to sing "a man needs a maid" and feeling conflicted as I douse myself in fake coconut body whatever gel.
In my head it is not PC, I'm not sure why, I suffer some kind of self inflicted abstract ageist guilt. The things I liked, the phrases I go to, the thoughts I think might just be ... incorrect. Of course nobody is actually listening to my inner narrative and judging it or any of my questionable opinions as I try to keep up with the best possible contemporary guidance and pretend that I care about them and their incomprehensible logic. Like trying to walk the unenviable tightrope of SNP or Labour Party acceptance and correctness, a fucking intellectual trial and a joke in itself. Anyway at some kind of weird, possibly incorrect level, out of step with the current enlightened view ... a man probably needs a maid, I think.
Designed to keep out the good people, keep the cats in (but there is a sizable kitty escape gap under the actual gate that's causing some chin stroking), be a timber bulwark against the cruel storms of the world and reduce the south gable end of our house to some kind of apocalyptic grey zone where the sun won't shine and nothing will ever grow again (but there will be hope as we set our faces towards grim reality and rebuild with the tortured muscles of the crude and unsophisticated life forms that we have become, a brave newish kind of alternative world). That was/is the plan and now it has come to be. It has shape, texture and a latch and hinges. I give you a poetic and unrealistic rendering of the new gate.
I'm almost sorry for poor old Lord Banff. He must've just said, "Yeah, whatever."
What is her name, that cafe girl? All speckled colours and avoidance, woolly scarf, student face, reading a grey green book in a grey grey cafe by a grimy station in a washed out city. She's still reading, still not looking up from the book, still sucking the glowing life from a cigarette. A cheap little coffin nail of a cigarette from a cheap little carton. The kind too mean to include coupons or vouchers. There is no upside to this smoking, it's just some vaguely nihilistic activity that feeds nothing as you breathe it in and mix it with those rippling, cranky words you're pulling from the page.
He wonders how long he can sit here. He looks at the other customers. They all form some jagged edged composition framed by his view of the slippery world. His Irish perspective distorts the scene with a cruel familiarity. A Liverpool made of both simple and complex atoms spinning and blundering that will slowly cough up a Lennon or a McCartney or a Cilla type or some football player hero a time or two in every generation. The crowd cheers and chants. Those relentless Mersey Beat jingles, now tired and overtaken, more like rain in a bucket than Ringo grooving on a snare and tom tom. The golden days are gone, evapourated when the genius left the bottle and the bottle fell from the wall.
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We're over on left wing now, proper and it's a manky ill-fitting day and the Beatles are some shattered thing that lives on in teenage memories, pop art, charts and frenzied tabloid excitement. A situation only destined to get worse as you get older as it's relentless tailspin mirrors that of your own life. And now, waiting on the train he can't pull his stupid eyes away from the sad girl pretending to be deep reading bloody Kafka. Everything is so obviously temporary, feelings and ideas float in and out, like tide water in a frustrating cycle. He gets up and heads over to the station as the cafe girl slowly disappears in a silent puff of her own frail white cigarette smoke. A half crown coin, she'd balanced on it's edge on the Formica table top flips onto it's face with a clatter that goes unheard.