In the Blink of an Eye

Anyone know the name of the famous Scottish punk rocker with an out grown but distinct Mohican hair style? Can only be Hawkeye the Noo.

West Lothian Daily Photo

A short circular tour of the wild west via it's pristine garden centres, bistros (did you know that the word bistro is Italian slang for "be strong"?) and temporary traffic light collections. We came close to the purchase of four (yes 4) snails for a fiver. These are not any ordinary snails, they act as mini hoovers and clean up your garden's water features. A sign written in black Sharpie confirmed this. Currently mulling over the ethical questions I have about setting snails significant hygiene tasks in the garden. 

I liked my coffee machine coffee and the free cake from the people at Dobbies too. Our paperwork was correct. I sat there in a big basketwork chair and laughed at the world (well not exactly).  I could rant about roads, weather and things in general but to be honest it was all fun all the way and a lovely day out. Just my better half and me. Strange to think that such a wonderful place exists and is a few mere spectral minutes from our front door. A bit like Narnia must be, were it only real.

Everything is Uncomfortable

 

The feeling that your earthly footprints are too large and unable to be deleted (or even cleaned) isn't nice but it's awkwardly familiar to us. We are the problem. Birmingham artist Foka Wolf knows how to disturb a person's peace and makes a good point. That's art for you. Put it up and make people think for a bit before they move on to think of something else. The thing is, are the kids really innocent and at what point does anyone ever grow up? It seems that Keith Richards never really managed it. Gigging as a life style model now.

Morning After

I experienced exceptionally long shadow legs this morning, something to do with the time of year and us hurtling around the sun at the speed of a 43 bus. Yesterday turned out to be a good day. The gig at Leith Docker's Club went well, great wee audience all up for a singalong and a spontaneous jig or two. It was good fun and the band were buzzing, thankfully mostly for non electrical incident reasons. Big thanks to MW for the piece of work below.

Meanwhile Peggy and her puppies are doing really well...

Feathery Stroking

Dusted and cleaned the old PA and monitor gear properly today. This is in addition to the other PA so these will provide the stage monitor set up. Shake down sound check kind of gig happening on Sunday. A hoover, scissors and some feathery stroking was required. More fluff attached than there's fluff on a fluffy cat. Then the endless testing of endless leads and cables. I did this a few weeks ago but decided to double check again today. I'm mildly obsessive. Everything (amps, boards, leads etc. not pictured because they are all tidily stored in some cases and boxes) seems to be working. 

Leith Dockers Club tomorrow:

Jellycat

This really isn't about anything: Following on from yesterday's on-line shopping moan I've now experienced another purveyor of expensive distractions but for (mostly) younger people.  Many things are there, some iconic: cute, cuddly and plush based around stuffed toys and accessories and it's all the rage apparently. Everything is "adorable". Not very cheap either. Shop until your card maxes out or your Apple Pay money tree withers here. Turns out that shopping is the new shopping.

Vintage Clothing Mafia

More first world problems: You get days where you're just bombarded with a new set of on-line advertisements that seem to come from nowhere but are somehow familiar. Traders and sellers that you've never heard of home in on your precious little corner of the internet and pound you with their often interesting but generally overpriced* wares. Today's offerings are mostly shirts, jackets, French hats (?) and loafers and on and on. 

*Unless based in China.

Are they exotic, cool and expensive? Are you just a little intrigued and tempted? Up to a point I suppose I am but I'm more quizzically impressed and annoyed at whatever  random click or hover that I might have made, quite innocently, that has led me to this intrusive and destabilizing barrage and how that algorithm just keeps on pumping out the sweet and themed consumer juices well beyond it's tolerable shelf life. And no, sorry but I do not wish to have sex with your website ... ever.

Harvest of the Souls

Harvest of the Souls: Only after receiving this piece some time after it fell from the back of a virtual lorry did I realise that it was all a reference to the almost forgotten cult of the "Great Pumpkin". Persecution (of a kind) was rife. Of course this is still a strange and holy festival time of year for the few followers who remain. Some of whom you just may know ... 

You think you're smart but you'll still pay £4.50 for a shitty coffee and £8.00 for lager in a plastic cup at the cricket or horse racing.

Curb Your Enthusiasm is probably the greatest work of comedy writing in my/yours lifetime.

American spelling is OK and doesn't really threaten the "English" civilized world.

Most stand up comedy isn't really all that funny taken out of the live context.

There are too many podcasts. Stop it. 

You don't need a reason to quietly rant other than the preservation of your own health.

Use This?

If we ever go for a vinyl greatest hits collection (this being highly unlikely for obvious reasons) this cover mock up has some potential. Original image found courtesy of CS's Instagram.

Cats having their tea. Hungry but still easily distracted after a healthy dose of fresh air from the Firth of Forth region of central Scottishland.

Usual suspects: Some old gits that make up "Capital Models". An Edinburgh band. Headphones often worn but not mandatory. Playing some tunes at Leith Dockers Club, Sunday April 14th from 1pm.

East End Park, Section North West. Home game against Plastic Whistle last Saturday. 1 - 1 draw.

Eat Beautiful

Better late than never I discover fast food Asian style at itsu. The strap line "Eat Beautiful" is aiming maybe too high as it's not quite what the entire experience is about. It's a high street food machine. Having said that I've not explored the whole menu and probably never will. What I did try was fine, touch screen ordered, served up hot and quickly and it looked and tasted good. Reasonably priced? Maybe not too bad for a quick meal served up in the middle of a rainy Edinburgh.

Deltic

An easy way to feel your age (if you're me) is to visit the repair yard and workshops at the Bo'ness railway museum. Up in the observation deck you can look down on the engineers working on old rolling stock and locos. It's all there; overhead cranes, lathes, heavy presses, drilling machines, greasy rags and gas bottles and the mechanical noise of it all. The glorious whirring motors, clangs and clunks, chatter and banter of a working workshop. Real people working with real metal today but at the same time each one stepping back in time to save part of the past somehow. 

Outside in the yard are piles of precious rolling stock and junk. More than is ever likely to be repaired here. It seems that there's a can't say no policy when equipment is offered here so it arrives and sits. Nobody wants to scrap anything. Some people just love those discarded machines, even on this huge and almost unworkable scale. I don't know what the plan is for the Deltic (above), it's rough and needs a bit of tinkering. The (Deltic) engines are out, maybe being refurbished, so I'd like to think, but the engine and chassis look like they need major TLC. A real tyre kicker and project for the black fingernail gang. 

White Caterthun

Only a few hundred feet up above the rolling Angus fields but it still feels like being on the roof of the world. A biting wind coming in from the North Sea like some icy invader doesn't help either. It's early April but never underestimate the Scottish weather conditions even at a modest altitude. It's an easy wee walk up here but the views are great and the sense of a ghostly history is almost overpowering. People chose to live in this space over 2000 years ago and made an enormous effort to make the hill top safe and habitable. Times were tough ...

Jellytot's Hate Crime

Of course it's all just an elaborate prank for April 1st and to piss off the electorate and right wing press but never mind that, imagine living in a country where infantile images are used in order to illustrate and communicate serious and complex issues. Then for that move to be policed by clumsy, unnecessary and makeshift laws that will all be a bit of a "work in progress". That means the details, judgements, and sentencing will all be done on the hoof*. "Laugh? I nearly voted for the Greens."  

Welcome to Scotland, where we like to make up new laws because we can't quite rely on the simple old laws to be acted upon or to fit the curve of the zeitgeist. We've become home to the brave new thought bully, trolls and revenge junkies and all those anonymous paranoid fantasists. No adult human ever enjoyed Jellytots.

*I do realize that law by it's very nature has to progress and evolve but this is all a bit different.

Dune II

 

Better late than never: Went to see Dune II in the Bo'ness Hippodrome last night. I ate quite a lot of sweets there too. No spoons of actual blue eyed Spice were available to try in the foyer unfortunately, just candy and coffee. The film was noisy, disturbing and impressive. A spectacle. The threat of too much of an earth based and scripted allegory hangs in the air like a dangling sword.  Technically advanced galactic warlords unable to detect and find people hiding a few inches under the sand. Religious overtones. Bloody and strange at times, but that's the Dune universe. Probably not everybody's cup of banana and antelope tea though. 

Dune II, a roaring success with all the right, pretty and successful people making it into the cast: It's already made well over $500m million so everything is OK and the entertainment industry will survive at least until next year. I'll not see it again though, I seldom watch a film twice even if I really like it. Just seems like quite a difficult thing to do. The first cut, first punch etc. I know that not everyone is like this. My time is precious but I still waste it.

Happy Robot Says

The happy groovy robot says that the bestest tiny insult you can ever use is quite simply "You little shit!"  Try it on a friend or enemy today and quietly enjoy the impact and the lifestyle altering outcomes. 

Tesla Ownership

In this ill divided world we're all anxious sometimes about where we might sit, or float, or even sink*. We're part of a battered humanity that needs constant reference points that can give us some positional certainty, at least before the next slump; all suspended in a competitive soup of values. For a few that looks something like Tesla ownership, any badged product will do. A historical name and a set of concepts loaded with meaning, emotion and a confusing history. 

Nikola Tesla must look down in bafflement at the abuse and associations his good name gets now that it's risen to become a badge of honour, tech marketing and social division all across the world. Even David Bowie added his star to the Tesla myth. Tesla's resurrection towards some synthesis into pop culture and branded immortality is complete, (actually this applies to both Tesla and Bowie). Nicely wrapped up in a  cult of redemption and ongoing significance long after death grows, and you can take a long drive in it.

So Tesla ownership is now much more affordable should you crave to become part of such a divisive and crazy but aspirational thing:  £6.99 for four "Future" Gold AA Tesla batteries. I'm done.

*I know, nothing new here really.

West Lothian Floaters

Strolling along the footpath of the Union Canal today, low sun and vanilla drizzle. Chilly indeed. The canal is named after the infamous union of West West Lothian and East West Lothian that took place (on this day) in 1812ish, so unreliable versions of history tell us. Prior to that it was simply known as Onion Canal because of the numerous onion plantations in the area. For a long while West Lothian was the home of serious onion smuggling across this part of northern Europe until the Calvinists poisoned the soil. The other notorious and illegal union of clowns, chumps and parliaments (1707) has of course nothing to do with the name Union here. 

Many strong willed, brave and reckless tattooed people have chosen to live upon these turbulent waters in narrow boats and canoes. These boat people are sometimes known as "Floaters" as in the sci-fi genre of beach combing. Some venture ashore at times to plant great field fulls of crops such as iceberg-blue-lettuce, sweet Chinese tobacco and liquorice root. While living in makeshift yurts along the canal banks these "Floaters" harvest their crops, steal nearby donkeys, burn damp logs and generally mess with the heads of local old people. They are story tellers and mystics. Their vegetative goods are then sold on at nearby markets, mostly to American tourists eagerly searching for recreational drugs and their family roots in what they term their "homeland" or "old country".

The canal winds it's way from Fountainbridge in the charming district of Edinburghshire to somewhere out there beyond the shape of Falkirk. No one I know has ever gone that far into the dark west and lived to tell the tale. The outline of Scotland and it's many warring counties and tribes has never been fully understood or recognized. Viewed from space it remains a vague and fuzzy enigma. Overall the Romans, who actually built the Onion Canal as a watery wall, seem to have done the best job of providing a ruling regime that at least worked for a time in a few regions. They are long gone now but fondly remembered in our many fish and chip and pizza establishments.

Heading westwards on the Onion Canal.

Emergency on Planet Scotia

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We are experiencing rain but not really in a bad or destructive way. It may well be affecting the general outlook of parts of the population but this is the current version of Scotland. Scotland 2024 for want of a more descriptive title. Mist, lochs, missed opportunities and the ongoing struggle with some nameless internal misery that can't quite be explained but is tolerated as some sort of national quirk. We don't want to be understood. At first glance it may be amusing, whimsical even but in the long term quite deadly. Beware the maniacal laugh or sinister snigger at the end of those well structured sentences.

You'll always know us by a mix of our friendly but blank demeanor, the positively negative body language and the overuse of a poetic and over amplified drawl. There's trouble in using too many words too, apart from when swearing. Oh bother! We'll be badly dressed mostly, like somebody who's just come in from a day of picking potatoes in drizzle. History tells us that it'll all be fine once the oppression and the rain stops; then everything will be like the weather ... fine. Nothing new to see here.

Weekender Daily Photos

Visited god's own country, the town of the green oak where quite a lot of faded engineering glory and heavy metal is on display. I'm there in order to witness and celebrate a narrow win for Dunfermline Athletic. Three valuable points as the struggle continues. A day of outandaboutery, sunshine, showers and a reasonably priced Lorne sausage roll at the game. Never actually seen the Pars beaten in Greenock.

Early Sunday morning saw the mysterious appearance of four mystical symbols on the outside wall of a nearby house above the waste bins. This cannot be explained by anything we know about so we just quietly and reverently celebrated witnessing this spectral passing spectacle. Strange events are common enough around here on a mad March Sunday.  Meanwhile we're getting through the equally mysterious "Three Body Problem" over on the Netflix channel. There's been a lot of hype about this show but so far it's certainly delivering and not at all disappointing. Weird, scary and believable. Also a big improvement on continually watching the daytime Cat TV channels on YouTube.

This is George, one of the trio of cats, performing a spectacular head roll and some extendable paw grabs on Saturday night. The inner joy of living lives within and is real.

Fill Your Head With Rock

 

In the interests of scientific experimentation I asked Alexa and some random AI bot that I met in a pub to "fill my head with rock". It was of course too vague an instruction and so fell upon deaf mechanical ears. My requests all just silently clattered into the great imaginary recycle bin in the sky.  My head was not filled with rock or indeed any kind of music or any actual buried minerals or stones. I just can't seem to get through to these things and their adopted devices, it's as if I'm the one who isn't real. And that ladies and gentlemen may just be closer to the truth than any of us dare to imagine.

A once mandatory listening experience: Too old now that it hardly matters and with so many peculiar (and dead) people playing on it. Perhaps the AI culture feeders were doing me a favour or adhering to some censorship instruction from on high, but this was what I had in mind: