Escaping the Fray

Oh, give me land, lots of land* under starry skies above

Don't fence me in

Let me ride through the wide open country that I love

Don't fence me in

Let me be by myself** in the evenin' breeze

And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees

Send me off forever but I ask you please

Don't fence me in***.

*Preferably with planning permission and development potential of some sort.

**Never knowingly using the same photograph twice.

***Whether it's Rwanda or Risley, putting people behind fences doesn't work.

Antonio Pinto de Carvalho

Some eBay lurking recently got me this odd little guitar that's manufactured in sunny Portugal. A possible bargain at £35 in an auction. They retail for around £300 here and there so I thought it was a steal. It's fairly solidly built, nice binding and well finished, a but a bit tight and not particularly easy or smooth to play. Maybe better suited to slide and open tunings. The company make a wide range of stringed instruments, some high end Spanish and Classical guitars as well as a few steel strung guitars so they know what they're doing and it's nice to have something at this price point that's not Chinese or Korean. 

Doctor Doughnut

I'm not the theatrical type, I don't particularly enjoy over egged or over rated performances but I like the doughnuts. Of course this theatre whilst remaining slightly absurd is fairly realistic. A production cycle made transparent and (spoiler alert) a lot of dough and doughnuts don't make it to the end and remain embedded in the floor.  There also are some housekeeping issues but I'll just leave that here. The high price of fame, hot fat and excess sugar is obvious. In the end it's pretty much another sweet little story of no actual consequence.

Mint & Clissy

 

Cats have no respect for the individual's personal space or for the space shared on some kind of limited, partly negotiated and informal basis. They don't care. They do as they please. We just look on at the unbalanced relationship, tottering and creaking in all it's curious glory.

Late Friday

Friday comes but once a week and if the weather is fine then the grass can be cut, the cat litter tray can be cleaned out and various patches of interior painting touched up. Then trim away at some rogue plants and iron a few shirts. I also reminded myself that I'm still not at all a competent slide guitar player despite occasional bursts of trying followed by sustained periods of giving up on it all together. Thankfully that little spurt of enthusiasm didn't last too long. Perhaps my hand is too unsteady or my eyesight too weak to connect correctly with the slide, strings and fret board and actually create a pleasant musical sound. Then there's the wonky brain problems ... and I can't actually find my proper slide.

Plant a Tree

 

To everyone who is cool enough to be planting a tree because it's the done thing: For every cola bottle you buy we'll plant a tree, for every ton of wood pulp your corporation uses we'll plant another, for every Multi Launch Rocket System we manufacture we'll plant a dozen trees. For every £1.82 litre of petrol you pump we'll reanimate a dinosaur and promise to nuke all future comets of a certain size that might threaten the earth. Get two meal deals from Tim Horton's and we'll plant a tree and create a unicorn from spare genetic materials we found in the lab on an old petri dish.

Le Mans

The strange art world of the bold comic stripper. Where reality meets nothing in particular but still constructs colourful vistas and situations you might like to explore or even live in, unless that is it's already occupied by super hero types who clearly would be the worst of noisy and aggressive neighbours. This depiction is clearly focused on the rain, sweat and desperation of a full 24 hour road race many years ago. Everyone is busy. I like the drafting but this one panel is enough. I lack the concentration to read and study any more of it. I'm also worried that I may stumble upon some dark matter, hidden there in plain sight.

Nobody's Life is that Perfect

Let's celebrate those glossy, happy lives, carefree and fulfilled. Existence without blemish, argument or passion. All across the internet and in the media. You can find them there. Happy multicultural, financially independent, healthy families pose for the camera, smug that their good looks, smart choices and purchasing power have got them ... somewhere sunny. It's a good thing I'm not bitter and twisted. I just wish for perfect white teeth, straight and true with meadow sweet breath 24/7 - and sunglasses that I can avoid sitting on accidentally.

Nostalgia Circus

I woke this morning thinking I could see Whitney Houston in the curtain design. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. People don't normally appear to me from within a curtain. Perhaps it's just a hangover from the Jubilee events, most of which I tactically avoided. Too painful, too cringe worthy, too royal for my liking. The general public lapping it all up, waving to holograms, shuffling along to Elton John, eating red, white and blue sponge cake. Growing old in this country appears to involve joining up in some garish nostalgia circus. 

It's not a road I want to explore. I can't celebrate greed, inherited and meaningless power, dumb people promoted to "royal highness" and the celebrity flotsam and jetsam that follows in their wake. Gongs, medals and titles are everything to them it seems and you pay it back with all of your wrinkled dignity. Cliff, Rod and Brian May. I hope I die before I get that kind of recognition.

Scotch Eggs

 

Some sound advice I'd like to have received about 40 years ago. It also applies to sausage rolls. Maybe even to all types of cooked meat products but depending on the supplier and your own taste and texture likes and dislikes, to some extent. Then again sometimes a cheap amplifier produces the best tones. In life all rules are likely to be a bit elastic, nothing is ever 100% true or untrue. Except for this series of blog posts. Absolutely. 

Platinum Jubilee AI

Ach, just wheesht. Sometimes I wish I could care but not very often: I have no time for the detached, greedy, self serving monster that is the British Royal cabal. There's nothing about the institution and the dysfunctional royal Windsor family, with it's snobbery and corruption that's worth celebrating. I'm not even an old punk either (too old to be an old punk).

Wherever We Are

"Wherever we may be and despite being lost for a time, I'm pretty sure that by now we must be very close to the treasure. That is according to my calculations and the sweet scent of success carried upon the four winds. Modern maps don't lie as a rule but they can be misunderstood."

Johnny Loco

I saw my first Johnny Loco bike the other day. Parked up by a coffee shop that was selling Portuguese cakes and the like. Nothing odd there I suppose. Of course the name Johnny Loco meant very little to me but then I did what we all do and googled them. They do fancy bikes, bike parts, eye wear (glasses) and watches. Lifestyle items I guess. Do people still like/buy/use watches? I know in my soul that I'm too old and too uncool to carry off using such products and I'm happy that it hardly bothers me.

Koln Daily Photo

 

Koln, a wonderful city with a crazy mixture of buildings, lanes and streets, vehicles and graffiti. Above is some anti-Nazi street art inspired by the events that took place here on Kristallnacht in 1938.

Lost bike.

Music from the big pink.

Some buildings just defy description.

Heavy Ice Cream

I'm in an ice cream shop*. The ice cream is normal but their process isn't. Once you've chosen a tub or a cone or whatever then they put your ice cream on a special scale and weigh it. Unfortunately the special ice cream scales were playing up and required regular rebooting. During the rebooting the ice cream was temporarily returned to the freezer to preserve it's very nature. 

Once the scales were up and running the ice cream was weighed and a price decided (by the machine). If ever there was an unnecessary process in retail this is it. What could be simpler than selling ice cream? 

Now it's technically dependent on a dodgy system and with only a few grams either way it makes little sense. The ice cream was nice but the desire to over complicate the sale had me baffled. Also amid this technological breakthrough in frozen dessert retailing, I was surprised to find that their till was cash only.

*I know that the photo isn't actually of ice cream, it isn't even an ice lolly but it was on the wall of the shop.

SQ Compass Daily Photo

 

The north is never too far away. Most of the time it's over there somewhere. This also applies to the other compass points. I'm not sure how accurate this painted, hand crafted and static compass is but it's well enough executed anyway, sitting as it does in a car park adjacent to the various bridges we have here. I'm sure tourists and vandals alike will find it quite attractive. I hope it survives the ravages of the summer.

Google

We're all reminded by Google*, it never forgets.

Timely reminders, prompts, "take a look back", "those were the days".

Things we uploaded return to haunt us.

"Recognize this face?" 

But one day, perhaps it will forget and who know's what might happen then?

Something beautiful? Something disastrous?

Memory fills up and fades.

The ages of innocence.

And the end.

*Google wants to know your pronouns. Nobody else does though.

Life in a harmonious dictatorship where we think we make all the correct choices.

Jack Black & Desmond Decker

 

One of those posts where somebody talks about a kettle or a fridge they've been using for about 60 years and how it's never failed them. I'm tempting fate. Well this Black and Decker 2 speed electric drill has been with me since mid 1978. I borrowed it from a friend to use on some house renovation work and promptly broke it. The 2 speed feature jammed solid. I tried to fix it but it was truly stuck in one speed (the faster one I think). I bought my friend a replacement drill and soldiered on with the old one expecting it to break down at any time. 

Strangely I've used it regularly since and it's never missed a beat. Of course the chuck mechanism is worn out and the extra handles are long gone but it continues to operate. Last week I used it to drill into stone and masonry (3"deep holes) in order to put up a new house number outside. Obviously it will give up one day but at 44 plus years I can't complain. Thank you Chucky from B&D.

Short Paragraph

A picture is not necessary in order to understand this.

"I despise him for the contempt he has for everyone else. The narcissism. The laziness. The incompetence. The mendacity. And I despise those who are keeping him there. Supine weasels. They know who he is. They know what he is. And they let him carry on. Fuck them." 

@ernest_malley

Porsche 914

 

An unusual sight at the Porsche in the Glen day, held near East Kilbride. A restored 914, ex-California and Belgium. Not sure what the age and mileage is/was, with this type of rare car none of that is particularly important.  Among all the "super" cars this simplistic VW powered, 1.7 air cooled model was my favourite. Over 200 shiny vehicles turned up, fairly choking the roads and display area, it made a decent wee day out.