Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Cocio since 1951
Chocolate milk in a tin, nicely chilled, very few ingredients; milk, chocolate etc. All very simple. What's not to like there? Learn a little more here. I am not being sponsored or paid in anyway to provide this particular information. I regard it as a public service, being a good citizen. You all need to know about this stuff so I'm sharing it.
Monday, August 16, 2021
Alpaca Daily Photo
The truth is that alpaca ownership is not the easy road we thought it might be. As newbies to the world(s) of these lovely beasts and complete strangers in the alpaca community we've struggled. The paths of alpaca husbandry are many and varied as it turns out and there are some key directions and options we hadn't thought through such as:
Sunday, August 15, 2021
The Doors
Interesting Doors. What's on the other side? No one knows for sure. That's true of all doors*. You just can't tell what you might experience on the other side, so in order to do so you must pass through. Turn the handle, push and move forwards. Pain, fear, surprise, terror, disappointment, injury, revelation, discovery or perhaps nothing really, just another space to inhabit.
Saturday, August 14, 2021
Into the Light
Meditations on spiritual matters for beginners: Follow the path into the light and then, without really thinking too hard about anything, you're back out into the dull but reliable world on the other side. There, that wasn't so bad. All the time it was just a rotation. If done correctly you should experience a rather satisfying sort of circular motion. Vague but tangible. Great for the flow of blood and the complexion.
Friday, August 13, 2021
Piano
Dark studies in the eternal key of piano: An old friend and companion, maker of wooden music, mechanical and complex, solid as a rock, resonating and still in sympathy, black and off white, in tune with yourself, weathered and coloured, unknown hands and unknown long hours history, unknowable, to lean on, listen to and play.
Thursday, August 12, 2021
Misheard Yoga
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Skies East & West
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
The A Words
Monday, August 09, 2021
Pen Island
Always more trippy in someone else's garden.
Having uploaded this I quickly realized that images contained within the detail, all naturally floral and vegetable, had morphed into something a little more phallic as a result of some unexplained "process". In the name of art I've decided to run with it, or at least post it here for want of anything better to do with it.
Sunday, August 08, 2021
Bruntsfield
I first read this sign as Muriel Spark Way (like Yuri Gagarin Way) then realized it was Muriel Spark Walk though I read that as Muriel Spark's Walk. I then wondered if she walked in some peculiar or distinctive manner. Perhaps with a slight limp or with flamboyant or perhaps very graceful movements, like a fashion model would. Maybe with the purposeful gait of a doughty head mistress or an angry policewoman, or like a party lady tottering in high heels or like a cowgirl, moving to her inner music's beats on some line dance night.
Probably none of these apply but I presume she did walk amongst the mere mortals of Bruntsfield, quite normally, once upon a time, somewhat detached, observing and noting, laughing to herself and grinning at her fellow humans with their strange habits, loves and behaviours; there across the uneven grounds of Bruntsfield Links.
Not much had changed since except everything, her beautiful world with all it's fine aspirations is a fading shell, hollowed out, as if a stray and nasty tongue had sucked a Malteser to a soggy husk; people, lovers, dogs, coffee, inner city relaxation, chatter and rough picnics. Still there but mostly unobserved because daily life doesn't matter so much, there's too much of it about, constantly recorded and replayed on social media. What remains to be said that is actually new and fresh?
Saturday, August 07, 2021
Blue Waterside
Oils and pastels imagined, sunny farewells, short holidays less than a day long, apparently lost dogs and slow burning sand, framed but without dimensions, intricately mistaken, hot under the collar with sweat running down your back, a bottle of tap water and abandoned buildings, litter, no litter, some sense of the unrecorded past, travelers on narrow roads, clifftop pathways, avoiding eye contact and telling the time thanks to a peaceful wind from Norway, taking the day in to take in a different view.
I do these things, note them, experience them, remember them; sometimes. More frequently and I don't know why, I just forget.
Friday, August 06, 2021
Another Lost Football
Thursday, August 05, 2021
What to Panic Buy
Wednesday, August 04, 2021
Whisky Toad
There maybe two bees in this photo or one bee and a smudge, not sure. I've discovered that trying to count the amount of bees in a garden at any one time is difficult. They simply refuse to stay still long enough to allow you to focus in on them. There's probably a scientific method that allows an accurate figure to be arrived at using a complex statistical formula, a grid, two finely sliced lemons, a pot of jam and a special camera borrowed from NASA.
Speaking of insects: Why, when said in a certain way, does the word "mosquito" also sound a lot like "whisky toad"?
Tuesday, August 03, 2021
IKEA Robots
Monday, August 02, 2021
South Queensferry Daily Photo No.13
We come and go, we are all alone except we are not. As above: a rocky promontory where tourists and day trippers sit and noisily scoff fish and chips while enjoying the view. The smells hang in the air in the still of the slow summer evening but I've had my tea. Locals generally avoid this area for their own personal reasons, all of which remain a set of closely guarded secrets that outsiders can never know or understand. That also includes me.
Meanwhile an old Saab (there are only old Saabs now, a fact that annoys me) is still stuck at the top of a short set of steps that it can never hope to negotiate. It sits and stares forlornly down the close, towards the High Street and all it's bright, shining, imagined pleasures and distractions. There is also fresh festival bunting as now it is THAT time of year.
If you are sensing any sense of despair in these words then your sense of your sense of despair could be described as reasonably accurate but still sadly misplaced.
Sunday, August 01, 2021
Liked but not fully understood
Bob does tend to look a little menacing these days, even at 80 years. It lends a certain weight to his words. Actually I do understand everything referred to, everything said, every word, light and shade, tone and aspects of nuance ... and I understand it all better than you because of my own lived experiences and big dramatic ears, there.
Saturday, July 31, 2021
At the Barbers
Overheard/addressed at the barber shop:
As a young man Donald Trump was an early supporter of action against global warming but later changed his tune.
Only pepper a steak after it is cooked. Pepper burns and should be the last thing you add during frying steak. Steak and chicken need to "rest" after cooking.
The army always include curry powder in their ration packs to pep up leftovers and other bland foods.
Joe Biden is being played by an actor as the real Joe Biden has Dementia.
Hair clipper manufacturers only provide cheap electric cables with their items so they can resell overpriced spares when the originals get tangled and broken. Also covering a clipper with Elastoplast provides a better grip in the warm weather. Why are rubber sleeves for trimmers and clippers not available?
It's easy to confuse TV show Dragon's Den with the Apprentice. (?)
Why are Fridays no longer busy but Thursdays (and the mid week in general) now are?
There is no such thing as a firm price for a haircut.
You cant estimate anyone's age these days.
I wouldn't watch Celtic.
Older bikers are always offended by offers to trim their eyebrows.
Viagra is available on prescription - making it free in Scotland.
Lidl stock the best value wines, bleach and male grooming products. All their stores are "massive". ("I've got their Quick Noodles for my lunch. I know it looks like pizza but it's noodles").
One of Scotland's top surgeons, an Asian chap, was in here the other day and he told me ...
You should not attempt to cut hair and solder electrical items at the same time.
Friday, July 30, 2021
Ready Made Ambivalence
When, in a peculiar serendipitous way you come across a photo that you somehow assign some kind of a more profound meaning to but then you struggle to come up with whatever that might be in a meaningful form of words. In other words (they just keep coming) I'm stuck at the moment with nothing more to say about the image. I suppose it's like writing a song or melody and never quite getting a lyric that fits.