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.
It was said that the cold hands and digits of the great royal houses of Prussia and beyond beat a golden path to the threshold of her business's tradesman's entrance. Inspired by the early works of Wagner she seldom looked back. Before long she was a destitute gin soaked alcoholic living in the streets of post revolution Paris and the rest, as they say, is of course history but not the reliable kind you were taught at school.
Here's a version of the original Boaty McBoatface leaving Rosyth and sailing out to sea past the Forth Bridges. The ship itself is named RRS Sir David Attenborough. The name B McB now belongs to one of the robot submersibles that are attached to the mother-ship. I've no idea where the ship is currently headed, I presume it will be doing some kind of valuable research into global warming or something similar, the results of which will be completely ignored by the government of the day - no doubt.
I took my new phone out for a photo walk in the garden. Having had an unreliable phone camera for a couple of months I needed to give the new one some exercise. Of course it works exactly the same as the old except that it works, it's new after all. You just point and shoot and hope for the best. I'm sure that's the essence of most photography. Nowadays you don't have to wait weeks to view the blurry and distorted results. Good progress that meant the collapse of camera factories and photo processing all across the world. The old laptop remains the weak link in this fairly basic artistic chain.
Understanding and appreciating the mental health of your potato crop is not easy. There may signs showing here and there but I'm unsure how to read them. The plants are growing, hopefully with potatoes beneath them. They seem happy but I've not tried talking to them, that would be ridiculous. I'm not at that stage in the relationship either. They're just root vegetables but I hope they can survive the reasonably warm spell we're in and grow.
Brewdog IPA in a Stormtrooper glass. Mixed media.
A lovely summer's evening.
Meanwhile...
All of the people talk a lot of shit some of the time.
Some of the people talk a lot of shit all of the time.
All of the people believe some of those people some of the time.
Some of the people believe all of those people all of the time.
Because of the compelling nature of numbers...
We're screwed.
The all white liner on the right chose to play the theme from the manga series Inuyasha, "To Love's End" on it's horn as it departed, according to Google. The music is by Kaora Wada. I'm not sure if it was a mark of respect, hope or despair. This does not normally happen and it certainly was unexpected. To be honest it sounded more like the theme from "Lord of the Rings" to my cloth ears. Either way it makes little sense unless it's a matrix glitch or just an attempt by the universe at leaving me more confused than ever. Maybe the captain was just having a laugh. Anyway the sense of the impending collapse of reality is getting stronger every day.
One night we looked out across the Forth, the whole of Fife seemed to be ablaze. The tinder dry scrub, the parks, fields and buildings, everything was alight. The heat radiated across and we felt it on our faces and in our lungs. On the water some escaped by small boat or pleasure craft, a few just drifted by downstream, watching the fiery destruction. Now that the road bridges were gone there was no quick way either north or south. Many had headed west but I imagined that would only add to the chaos we'd regularly heard of, over in Glasgow and beyond.
I tried to get some sleep, do some thinking, decide what to do even. There were few good choices and no likely interventions of outside help. So the time will shortly come for us to set sail, setting out on our boats to who knows where. Before we just stared out of windows, into screens and refrigerators or at each other. We're explorers now. The Great Sea of Joy beckons.
It's always nice when the smaller birds get some free time to visit the bird feeder without the big bully crows, magpies and doves blocking off their entrance. Here's a wee sparrow just taking a few seconds to dip into the seeds on the feeder. The small birds never hang around for long; too quick, too wary, too much unknown danger to take the time to choose what to pick up. We do have other, less open feeders that these birds gravitate to where feeding is much easier for them, as the bigger birds simply cannot land on it's narrow perch. Obviously it's not set up with the remote camera as this one is. It's a good shot of a cheeky young bird.
Still life with speaker, spectacles and lamp shade: Coloured and scented banana oil melange and mixed media (in bacterial microscopic form) on ex-fire service canvas, some slight burn marks across the rear. 6' x 3' so will likely look good hanging in the average sized lounge of the contemporary home of average sized people. First £50000 secures, second £100000 properly secures. Stupid, rich Tory buyers also very welcome. No time wasters please.
Sometimes things are so still and warm and quiet it becomes easy to imagine that we're on the brink of the end of the world. No big bang, meteor strike or thunder storms. No World War III wreaking havoc, chaos and pain. Just a slipping away of everything. It begins with a warm cocoon of weather that slowly increases in heat and density. Bit by bit everything eases down and stops. Other people are invisible. Cares and concerns lose meaning and context.
Breathing is calm though the air is hot and strangely oppressive while the whole world just falls asleep. No mass panic or destruction just a winding down and a running out. No sirens or broadcasts, the power has all gone from agencies and governments. There is no commentary. Those that led us never really meant anything. It was all a grand illusion without substance.
Now a perpetual summer has arrived, at first pleasant and comfortable and our sense of time and space is lost. Everyone is seduced into some easy, soporific stupor that can't be explained and we all just go along with it as if we're under a gently administered drug. Eyelids become heavy, we relax into a quiet place where all dreams are accessible. We are in some cosmic flow, caught up and moving. There is a light. Where will it end? Where does anything ever end?
"Only a fool would say that" is a song by Steely Dan that effectively takes down John Lennon's whole "Imagine" bullshit. "Imagine" a song so vacuous and idiotic that's unquestioning trotted out time after time as if it represented some brilliant insights into the deeper truths of the human condition. Nope, it's elementary bullshit however well meant (?) or regarded it might seem to be. The Steely Dan song has the words "a world become one, salads and sun, only a fool would say that", hence the post title. It was just going around in my head after breakfast. No big deal.
P.S. Along came the sun (about 12:00) and dried up all the rain. Incy Wincy Spider climbed up the spout again.
The open road, even the bumpy A9 qualifies. Notorious, straight and twisty. Still much improved from what we had in the glorious 70s but not right yet. A hitch-hiker's nightmare then of rumbling timber lorries and lost tourists, my memory fails me, pretty sure we caught a bus instead and the rain didn't stop. Now the towns are bypassed and the trees have matured as the road signs fade. Tourists stop for coffee and tatty gifts. The exhausted camels just marched off into history, never to be seen again. Perhaps the natives captured them and they met with a grisly fate or escaped to the circus. But the steady and reliable River Tay flows past quietly, under the stone bridges, on a long haul down to Dundee and the sea.
We estimated that the tree below was one hundred and fifty one years, seventy two days, eight hours, twenty six minutes and seven seconds old when it was dispatched. We could be wrong. The lower picture is of a folly. Nearby, along the river bank, actual fish jump out of the water to catch flies and insects, just when you're not quite looking.
