Northside of the Masonic Lodge

This is nothing to do with Freemasons. It's on the cemetery side of the grand dilapidated lodge, the once proud meeting place of the great, the good, the mediocre and the troublemakers. Let's face it, in more recent times,  getting into the Masons was always about your face fitting more than your actual character, that and sopping up as much cheap beer as your face could take. So perhaps this is something to do with the Masons, maybe I've something to get off my chest. Maybe not, nothing worth saying other than that my own prejudice and dislike of them is based on my own family history and that skews my view. This is after all Central Scotland, an area well known for wonky and spiteful opinions, mindless cults and stupid followers and of course bigotry with a capital B (except that's not how I formatted it). 

I'm not sorry for you and your big grinning gravestone. Perhaps you were a good family, perhaps you were complete bastards. The stone tells us nothing other than you're gone and that for the safety of the family souls you carved a piece of Bible text on your front panel. Nobody's buying this stuff anymore and guess what, your pious text makes no difference. As useful as a Trump bumper sticker. (Obviously I regret saying these dumb things about something I know nothing about but I'll just leave them away).

A frame without a name, sad really but then we all come and go alone. Some marks and chips in the stone don't make much difference, time wipes everything clean. For the best perhaps.

This grave looks like it was designed for some Triffid or an early attempt to visually describe the central nervous system of an alien visitor caught, beaten and killed up by Masonic vigilantes who blamed it for the poor crops, turning the water to wormwood and befouling the local tabernacle with green slime and strange unmusical sounds.

Not in the same boat

Short and unreliable quiz for your tea break. 

So what's playing on the fishing boat's radio today? You can make tiny guesses or rather large guesses. I'm not sure what the difference is apart from size and I'm unsure as to how you measure actual guess size. 

So I'll go first and suggest that it's a Radio 4 program just randomly playing, possibly "Woman's Hour" or as a second guess (of indeterminate size) I'll say Radio Forth (as the boast is fishing in the Forth) and to be more precise I'll plump for Forth 2 with the catchy strapline "the greatest hits". Third guess (unsporting I know) is that it's VHF Channel 16 in case there's any trouble out there.

Next question: Is "and" a better and more useful word than "but"? Asking for a friend.

Next question. What is the fishing boat fishing for and (no but) just saying "fish" is not an acceptable answer. Is it a) Mackerel using baited lines? b) Lobster using kreels or c) Crab using kreels.

Next, next question: Is the boat facing east or west or is it steadily rotating clockwise?

Final question: Estimate the crew size i.e. not heights and weights but actual numbers.

Thank you.

Whatever you think, remember ... there is no answer.

Detectorist

In the distance a lone detectorist scours a newly cropped field hoping for treasure. I'm in a nearby lay-by taking five. Perhaps he knows something no one else does or likes to think that. So I was briefly reminded of the TV show, dry humour, back stories and escape, oh and the nice theme song. Out in the Fife countryside the other day on an appealingly warm and calm morning it almost seemed to be the perfect low key pastime. Like buying sets of slow moving lottery tickets and quietly waiting for some lazy, lost buried jackpot to be uncovered from the soft brown soil. You keep half of the treasure's value, the rest goes to charity and the historical item, once cleaned and catalogued, sits in some glass case in a dull museum. A small slip of card mentions you as the finder and the one who made the donation - all in a tiny font.

Of you go back out into fields, keep searching but never find anything else of significant value, then you die weather beaten and happy with a few quid in the bank. Your detection equipment hangs dusty and unused in the garden shed, all is forgotten. A few years later one of your grandchildren finds it, switches it on and is puzzled by the flickering LED display and the lack of functionality. As it has no screen or visible apps installed they throw it into the house clearance skip sitting on the driveway. The museum is currently closed because of a COVID-29 outbreak.

To all the lonely lone wolves

Sometimes I just get a little misty.

"It's not easy being me any more than it's easy being you." 

So you are hearing pearls of wisdom directly from the gentle heart of the leader of the pack. The old wolf's wisdom, the great white elder, transferred by thought transfer and wobbly eye contact. Transfigured and in the slow glow of the power from the eternal life in all animal spirits that stalk the earth and battle to keep it safe and wholesome.

 

The wild is something to savor and difficult for the dulled and detuned human mind to grasp. Like a fine wine on the top shelf or even a not so fine £6.50 plonk with an appealing label, both can be effective but why pay a greater price? What the wolf says or even suggests, goes (and sometimes what the wolf says stays and sometimes the wolf doesn't really say anything; that would be the unreliable, flakey but interesting thought transfer concept thing mentioned earlier). Oh, and please don't mention the moon. The pale orb of nightly pain.

So you'd all do well not to ignore wolfy wisdom however it may be communicated. They are like the ancient forest spirits that live within the trees and branches, except they are animals and not made of wood or squiggly, smoky, spirit kind of ectoplasm stuff, just wolf meat, bones and fur. The one in the photo above is living it up, having the best life in South Queensferry right now with his best friend a tennis ball, albeit always behind bars. 

Given the chance though he'd go straight for that soft, fleshy, narrow throat of yours. I'd wear a thick scarf if I was you.

Plums etc.

 

*Plums: Plums are in season, we are living in the season of the plum. All of us here, brothers and sisters, unite. Nobody talks about this. The fresh fruit is tasty and the rapid acceleration possible in your metabolism if you eat enough of them can be very useful. Mentioning plums early in any conversation is always seen as a good starter topic and will win over rivals. In these troubled times, they may be very good for you. Unite or face the consequences of your body works slowing down way too soon.

Pears: Pears grown in Scotland are not generally fit for human consumption. In the middle of the Middle Ages locally grown pears were used as a form of currency or as house building materials due to their inherent density and resistance to various plagues and also because of feeble Scottish engineering knowledge. Much of the housing on Edinburgh's famous Royal Mile is constructed using horizontally sliced pears as foundation materials, laid out across an oatmeal base and cured with pickled herring tails and heads (minus the eyes). Some buildings constructed over 600 years ago still stand but nobody actually wants to live in them. For some reason English based banks and building societies tend to be unwilling to lend against any building or property using pears as part of the original construction materials. Buyer beware.

Rhubarb: Safer but less photogenic.

*Other fruits, vegetables and edibles of all sorts are readily available here and there.

The Open Road

I may go out tomorrow if I can borrow a set of wheels.

When we did nothing

It should have been something more than it turned out to be. That's the problem with reflection if there's not enough to reflect upon. Regretting not so much what happened but what didn't happen. Those things that were talked about but never progressed, those places never visited, those conversations we failed to have. The wrong directions now clearly visible looking back on life's cruelly real and undeniable mapping systems. 

Everything back then was strained and strange. How did cars and appliances ever work even in the 1970s, how could we speak to each other, why did we think that our food was nice, was working really miserable, where did money come from, what was the real news, were our clothes ever clean, where did you get information, why did you fall in love? 

The past is horrible even though horrible things only rarely happened. Yet people write books and stories and make fortunes trawling up their early lives and experiences, their version of the universe, ensuring their history comes out on top. They have their victims lined up. How they got a job with the BBC, signed on the dotted line, went to art college, traveled to Nepal, fought in a war, met somebody famous, wrote a song, had casual sex, discovered themselves, woke up alone. Their halcyon years of well remembered trivia and fibs. Nostalgia matters to the nostalgic, but it was never quite like that, never as it's portrayed, never the same as it was seen through your eyes and with your own feelings, there before you like some collapsed wooden Jenga puzzle. The past is mostly uncomfortable for ordinary people because they didn't really do much with their lives, just towed the line. Got by. 

People might say I cheated, that I was a cheat, a traitor, I kept myself to myself, I didn't speak or speak out, if they actually noticed. Everything is true and everything is a lie, in this belief I'm  relaxed as I approach the later stages of life, not looking back but looking forward to interesting things still to come ... like an new anorak. Most likely blue.

In the next few days, 1st September, my dad's 100th birthday happens. I'll visit his grave but I don't know what I'll do when I get there. Probably just stand and feel awkward, look blank, try to think the correct thoughts but know that my memories of him are pale and not properly constructed. I've not worked hard enough at remembering, I was too busy passing time in the here and now and in the fuzzy travelogue narrative of daily life, the information and detail I need to call up just isn't there. I didn't collect or curate it. I didn't think it mattered. I didn't think. Perhaps I'll just do what writer's do, make things up and embellish. Perhaps that'll compensate for actually doing next to nothing all this time.

La Suite Apocalyptique

 

The Umbrella Academy is strange, surreal, almost compulsive watch. A TV show that engages (me) with each new episode but then you somehow struggle to remember details of what went before (normal at my age). The previous episodes lie there like dried out muddy puddles as the action moves forward in a repetitive cycle that is the basis of the comic book story arc and shows some inventive genius. It's odd because for once I actually like all the characters complete with their obvious flaws, contradictions and the occasional editorial jump that renders the story line nonsense or at least a little less believable with each episode ... but it's a comic. Sense, sensibility and logic are not required. I'm not worried about them, I've not invested anything in this pulp TV, I'm being entertained by Netflix. I understand that they can never die, never be saved, simply because they never existed...and Season 2 is over and done with. Not sure I've the stamina for a Season 3 should it ever materialize.

New Radiators

Actual picture but not the actual picture.

Seventeen years of gunk, corrosion, chemicals, road film, Scottish weather, high operating temperatures and environmental trashing* means the two radiators on my car need replaced. They're on their last little sad radiator legs. They're leaking. Something I noticed when a) I noticed a warm fluid leak dripping down by the front wheel that certainly wasn't coming from me or my trousers and b) the temp gauge, always steady at 80 degrees whatever the weather, decided to move by all of a millimetre to a little more than 80 degrees. OCD me quickly sweated and panicked at the sight. Fortunately these events clashed with an MOT and service booking so there was an opportunity to get everything sorted in one sweet if sightly expensive move.

*May also just have been yet another random mutant algorithm. Or a perhaps a big mutant algorithm did it and ran away.

Actual.

Squirrelproof Bins

 

Out for a healthy walk: Sometimes that irrational fear just creeps up on you. Out there, beyond the boundary of senses, no easy navigation possible, like dark waters, too deep for your feet to touch the bottom. Then, that cold breath on your shoulder slowly turning warm. What ravenous beast is this? What's out there, unnamed, rattling on the bars of it's damp dungeon, whispering spells and words to ingratiate itself with golden lies and promises as you lean into the dark spaces? Out there in the blind woods, where eyesight is unreliable, where sounds are tortured and unclear, where signs remain distorted and warped. Mostly just brisk cyclists and clumsy joggers passing by.

You shift your weight, foot to foot, uneasy, troubled. The sweat begins to stick to you. You're aware of your own smell, your nerve's show their clean edges. Sparking with invisible electricity and ferrule dirt. You're looking but not seeing anything, there are no connections to be made. There is no sense to this. A funny looking old dog that's off the lead is almost approaching but meandering across the path with no clear purpose, the owner cannot be seen.

Spittle and fury, limbs writhing and items flying in all directions, whimpering or howling tries to match the sounds of crows and seagulls attacking stray pigeons over on the foreshore. Or peace, tranquility, only the smooth hum of Chinese plastic wheels rings out across the bumpy unrepaired tramac and puddles as they breeze along, fruit shoots and bottles successfully deployed. Mums in leggings and hoodies shoving buggies, headed for the nursery.

You're in Scotland and it's still August. Will this month ever end? Please adjust your face mask and remain 2m clear of fellow humans, avoid eye contact, look serious and take care because our current litter bin designs don't seem to be very squirrel proof. Thank you. 

Here's a drone view of some early Earl Gray tea plants we're cultivating as a hedge against future shortages.

Not one of those people

If I ever were asked to sum up the UK's current state I'd probably use an illustration something like this one. That only makes me a realist, not bitter and twisted in any way and certainly not a traitor, though you can stuff your jingoistic Rule Britannia type anthems wherever they might be the least comfortable for you.

So, having established that I am not one of those people who moans and drones on and on about how things are getting worse and how the UK is an international laughing stocks, a denier of it's own putrid history and currently run by a bunch of crooks and jumped up village idiots. I actually think things, whilst far from perfect are tolerable, up to a point. Many things are wrong and are going wrong but there are quite a few good things happening in science, industry, culture, language and human relations ... I'm sure. They tend to be overlooked by a squalid media scrum over nonsense news, celebrity trivia and editorial guidelines that "promote" the jumped up village idiot's idiotic behaviour and utterances. Otherwise things are just fine if you're keen on measuring that sort of thing. 

I say that but then again I may have just coughed up a rather nasty mutant algorithm. I did walk past a school, used public transport and shopped in a shop today. That might explain everything. 42.

Here's a highly sophisticated animation showing the ritualistic dance moves of either a Russian Spy or a Young Conservative. Make your own mind up about it:

Putin, Putin, Putin.

Dance, Dance, Dance.

Like a Young Conservative.

The Glow of a German Cat

 

Meanwhile over in Germany, cats are going for a decidedly stylish but also sinister look these days. That view is of course from a human perspective, the cats may well have other opinions. I'm guessing for them it's a matter of increasing your own profile, building status, standing out in the crowd while looking cool if a little humanized, and for city cats, as basic step towards road safety and self preservation. 

TSINGTAO

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.

Vicarious Coffee and Cake

Custard tart and milky coffee as served up in Koln street cafe yesterday at lunchtime. Meanwhile back here we had lentil soup and oatcakes as the rain poured down on the corrugated iron roof of the croft, a wee surprise after a promising early morning brightness. Cats and dogs weather. I am of course not being factual here but referring here to the ongoing going ons going on inside and outside my head. Turns out too that a little rain does not discourage the jet skiers currently mowing through the waves and the lawns up and down the streets.

Distorted Woodland Gods

So as not to be confused with dragons or other fierce creatures the characters balance a welcoming cherry berry cupcake by creating a pyramid with their bodies much to the confusion of the woodland sprites standing by awaiting the unknown visitors who may of may not turn up today or even tomorrow subject to the availability of the right amount of golden starlight in order to fully warm up and power the proceedings and also supply the refreshments. Very thoughtful.

(Examples: One very long sentence and one very short sentence.)

In Dreams

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.

Le Grand Bleu

Sailing on out into the great and somewhat misty blue yonder of the North Sea, the £150m (or thereabouts) super yacht Grand Bleu leaves her temporary mooring just beyond our back garden and heads away to London town. No doubt there's a decent socially distanced cocktail party happening there tomorrow night and nobody on board would want to miss it. There will be wheeling, there may even be dealing. Of course they will be missing the Saturday evening delights of the 'Ferry but I guess they're OK with that. Bon Voyage.

           Blurred image as she sits outside Rosyth docks ready to depart.

Confessions of a Beachcomber

 

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.

The pubs are open

A real pub in an imaginary place.

 

The pubs are safe spaces say the safe space experts but if you get ill it's your own fault. The shops are safe as is your place of work ... (I ranted quite unhealthily for a bit after this and I decided to delete it all, ranting isn't helpful to anyone).

"The students are calling for the reform of the monarchy" said the newscaster regarding protests in Thailand. I quite like that phrase. I wish they were British students.

It's August but ... weather warnings have been issued. So say the motorway signs.

The Yo Sushi counter in Tesco remains closed, there are fears that it may never open. I however am unafraid.

I put a full bin of compost into my brown bin (the same sized bin), it only half filled it. Explain that if you can Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (or you'll fail the job interview that I'm imagining), and show your working. An interesting fantasy test.

The Umbrella Academy Series 1 Episode 9 "A Serendipitous Discovery". Lovely title.

Onto plums...

Shoes on a wire

 

A daily photo type of post and a sad state of affairs, not expressed in bold text either for some reason despite sitting to the left of a colon: Unloved and unwanted and possibly infected by some terrible foot fungus that even a good quality cream might fail to cure. Nike shoes, suspended from a telephone wire above the Cowgate in Edinburgh City, August 2020. Size unknown, suspected to be at least 10s.