Pleasure and Happiness

The new old urbanism: A wet Wednesday evening. Shoppers are queuing to buy tat in glossy shops where the label and bag logo mean more than the contents. Few things are "nice", they're just the shiny bright totems and charms that beckon the beholder into some pretend place of pleasure and temporary satisfaction. Like candlesticks and crosses in a gilded chapel, they suggest the great beyond, the supernatural and a wider horizon but the payoff never arrives. In the end they lead nowhere as the lights dim and the candle's wax cools into chilled drips that cling to their holders. The inner light has failed.  Nobody is going anywhere and the fun of existence is sucked into some black hole of continuous credit and hypnotic greed. So suck up some more snake oil and don't bother to review your life or purpose. The open road that led back to simplicity has closed it's black and yellow barriers. 

Anyway, it's hard not to wander around a mall and not feel you'll be picked up on CCTV as a bad egg, a misfit, walking in circles, going up and down escalators and not taking part in the shopping spree. Staring into windows isn't enough, you deserve to be ejected back out into the rain where you belong. Security sees you and the fingers point. If you want to stay then get in the line for a bubble tea, jewelry for a loved one's gift, some impossibly designed trainers or a perfume that will transport you to some exotic location where Jonny Depp might be waiting. Shopping breaks even more promises than religion or politics and nobody holds it to account as it just rolls on 24 hours a day, in the flesh, on line, over the phone, through TV. We seem to have the wisps of pleasure but never get to the heart of happiness.

Halloween Pumpkin Ideas

Withering testimony and reality check from a pumpkin impersonator: 

"I had considered spending the day disguised as a pumpkin and completing several low key local journeys by train in order to ascertain the quality and integrity of my hastily put together costume. The purpose of the test being to measure how convinced my fellow travelers might be that I was indeed a person who might have morphed into a pumpkin and also how the October weather might impact on my apparel. After a few sharply taken selfies I saw that I was looking more like the elephant man than anything else so I decided to stay at home with my original head wedged in a book. The pumpkin part of my head came away easily leaving only a few red marks on my neck. I then discarded the pumpkin. An unpleasant smell also remains in the air so don't try this at home. It was then that I discovered the wolf hidden in the large flower vase..."

Clearly none of this is a good idea.

Seasonal Greetings

The day before the 31st. This pumpkin has already expired, one of the many that just didn't make the big day. Pulled too soon from the warm earth, sold into a type of modern slavery and exploitation, hacked and chiseled into an unpumpkinlike form with little significance to the history of the fruit. Then only briefly and sporadically illuminated by a cheap tea light candle and finally ignored and discarded as a collapsing, mouldy husk. October may be the cruelest of months ... if you're ever reincarnated as a pumpkin.

Medieval Times

The clocks go back tonight. Nobody really knows why. We just do what we're told. It's something to do with farmers, school children and cyclists I think. They need less gloomy conditions and a grey safety curtain to perform their duties. Maybe the butchers, the bakers and those very busy candlestick makers or the remains of the Holy Roman Empire need it too. Perhaps it saves us money. 

The universe is trapped in time's own endless mystery, while we tinker in the margins. In the end our struggle is ongoing and quite pointless, always against the oncoming darkness and some unnamed threat.

Strange Fruit

The leaves are rotting and tumbling from the tree but those stubborn pears remain. A long summer in the pale sun, drying out and fattening up hasn't improved the quality of the crop. Tough, sour and tasteless they remain, a strange and peculiar fruit, hanging like unfortunately and unjustly sentenced criminals in the October gloom. They have two states now, on the tree or on the ground. There is no redemption or resurrection here, they are in some temporary limbo before they settle down into their winter home, the dreaded brown garden bin.

Thank You for not Smoking

Itchy ankles. A closed and closeted world that doesn't exist. Burning things and puffing smoke. Clubs and societies with devotees who have very small eyes. Those mysterious groups that seem to operate in shadows and half light but really do nothing. Setting up and off intruder alarms. A cruel smile. Loud triumphant music played on brass instruments on a damp day. Card games under a spotlight. The kind of subjects that a bad artist might paint. People who are more like dogs than people but don't realise it. Locked doors that nobody bothers to try to open. Flickering neon signs with letters missing, mostly the vowels. Imitations of life. Bricked up windows. Using the word spectacles when you could just say glasses. Weird drinking habits. Dining from cold plates. Ugh. These are the things that haunt us.

"So what is it you're so angry about?"

"I honestly don't know, I've just always been angry."

Tuesday Ruby

"Goodbye Tuesday Ruby, who is gonna hang a name on you? And when you change with every new day, still I'm gonna miss you." Jagger/Richards.

"Tuesday's dram is still only an imagined thing that, on a Tuesday morning doesn't exist, it's only an idea or a desire that will come to be at the right time later on in the day. All good things are worth waiting for and should be realised at the best time possible, say in the early part of the evening when the mind is still sharp."  Robert Burns. The Crest of the Broken Wave.

Dram

A nice wee golden glass of Scottish whisky. A dram. Very relaxing and the prelude to a good night's sleep but don't take my word for it. 

The Lies Phones Tell Us

Yes it's here sure enough, 14 minutes early.

Figure in Red

The footy competition in the Scottish Seaside League goes on. This week we're in the municipal mega city known as Montrose. A lovely place mainly remembered for being mostly Montrose. Under blood grey skies the game was played out in a fairly dull and grey fashion. We (the DAFC visitors) were beaten by two quick goals and that was the end of our afternoon out pretty much. The understandably much abused Tory MP Mr Douglas Ross was running the line (the figure in red in the photo). Despite my obvious dislike for that party and it's representatives I couldn't actually fault his performance as a linesman. Perhaps that task should be the main one he focuses on for the future. Are you stuck in the wrong career and fed up with things? Why not get out then? (It's not so simple is it?).

Pie, coffee and Snickers score: a healthy 7 out of 10. 

Ages of Consent

Another year another birthday. What an unexpected surprise it was to my absent minded absent mind. I am however pleased to have reached an age where, quite legally, I can purchase and enjoy a liquorice pipe. I find that it alleviates the many stresses we are subjected to when, as residents within the UK, we are being governed by utter fuckwits.  This ancient and serene cure for the jitters is only one of the many benefits than can come your way as you get older. Looking at sunny, bright pictures a clever grand child coloured in also helps.

Economic Solutions

Sixty seven years of philandering and curiosity. No one knows how hard I worked to earn those 203 blue stars on eBay. "You lived what anybody gets, you got a lifetime".

Gasoline for Water

In keeping with the great folk/blues lyrical singing traditions i.e. "I asked her for water and she gave me gasoline", I'm thinking of writing an eBay version. It may or may not go like this: "I ordered a 28w fluorescent 4 pin light bulb but they sent me a PRIMA hot & cold thermos flask." Doesn't quite scan that well really but you just never know when you might need to introduce an unsung line with an unexpected element into a tune. Not sure how may stars to add for their review, five for imagination would be fair enough.

Older Fellow

When you've got the builders in and one of them says that an "older guy" will be round tomorrow to do the rough-casting but when he shows up he's a lot younger than me.

I suppose I'm approaching what I'd loosely describe as the "Keef " years, like a schooner negotiating some rocky tropical coastline just after a passing typhoon has ravaged the area. We'll get into a safe haven eventually but there will be bumps along the way. We're also taking in sea water in small amounts but are looking forward to the feast of the coconuts and wild pigs. The morning after not so much.

Blogger Stats

Be of reasonable or even good cheer, your artificial searching is over and the numbers do not lie, most of the time anyway.

Things of Power

 

Well that's Season 1 done and dusted. A lot of money spent and what's to show? Staggering but ultimately exhausting CGI vistas, grand schemes and designs populated by characters who are somehow much more petty and stupider than Tolkien might have imagined. Then again people (elves, dwarves, halflings and humans) are pretty weak and fallible and that makes for ongoing and regular drama. Nobody in Middle Earth is actually bright enough for the job or role they're in, a bit like a Tory Cabinet I suppose. Not all that likable either as they struggle for power and domination, I imagine that there's some original sin spooned into the gene pool mix but that's never really explained.

Considering that the source material is an "unfilmable" book at least they ended up with a film series that's just about OK. Money obviously talks. Arguably this adaptation was always going to be a bit unnecessary, like Peter Jackson's three part Hobbit saga. The stop button is hard to press. Amazon is on a roll, like some unhinged Balrog. Just a thought, is RoP going to looked back on as the Star Trek of this generation? Probably not.

So we're a third of the way through this and it's a season (No.1) I won't be revisiting or rewatching again. I'm hoping it picks up in season 2 whenever that's dropped on us. Perhaps a little less wooden acting and direction, some reasonable dialogue and less casting that looks like it belongs in an end of term school play ... but it's fantasy and really there are no rules, just put it all out there. Some will like it, some will get angry and some will just ignore it.

Mad Not To

This slid it's slimy, gravy coated way into my Insta feed the other day. I thought that these places might well have expired but no, Mad O'Roukes Pie Factory lives on. Back in the 90s I spent some time working in Dudley near Birmingham on some goofy IT project. Mad O'Roukes was a fairly regular haunt in the evening (it might not have been in Dudley but it was nearby, it's all a blur now). Proper beer, pies and mash; Black Country food, as I imagine it. I'd like to say I'll just pop round the next time (?) I'm in the area but the sad truth is I'm highly unlikely to darken their roughly brush-painted, colourful doors ever again.

It's already looking like a food themed week on these pages.

My Collection

 

My taste buds and sensibilities are enjoying something of a renaissance these days. This has resulted in my collection of esoteric sausage rolls (all kept neatly frozen but ready for the air-fryer) slowly coming together. Here's a listing of flavours and fillings, from left to right:

1. Wild pigeon, garden parsley and crushed avocado stone jelly.

2. Garlic fried kale, fricassee porcupine and cartoon Japanese radish.

3. Mexican dynamite peppers, and Coca-Cola glazed caramel sardines.

4. Icelandic tomato spears, balsamic chutney and ox-haggis.

5. Pulled Hopetoun pheasant, leeks in coffee beans, buckshot and brandy infused artichokes.

Crepes al Fresco

Good habits that are for one time only: My breakfast crepe, forged in the fire and hot steel of the Crepe Shack's woodland kitchen from natural ingredients and other stuff. Filled with peanut butter, banana, porridge oats and mysterious extras. Served on a kind of recycled plate thing with yogurt and blueberries and eaten with a wooden spoon/fork/fingers with a milky super latte on the side. Everybody wants one now.

Tentsmuir Daily Photo

 

I've heard a lot about Fife's Tentsmuir forest and dunes but never visited it at all until yesterday. I was born a (longish medal winning) stone's throw away but never ventured into the dark woods. It's a serene dog walker's paradise albeit I was without a dog. Bikes and Spandex pants are quite popular here too. What a time to be alive. The October weather didn't disappoint and the trails and the landscape looked great and (thankfully) pretty empty of other people, the scourge of a good walk. 

The smell of pine hung in the still air and it was nice to breathe in what seemed like very clean lungfuls of it, filtered by the sea breeze and the wafting branches above the path. Quite why there are two iron girders sprouting up next to a tree (above) I've no idea. There's clearly been other activities going on in the past.

A redundant WW2 observation station is still a useful spot from which to observe. Never forget that.

Looking north across the dunes to the distant silvery Tay and the Angus hills, maybe.