Goodbye Pork Pie

 

Farewell and adieu to one illustrious pork pie and one that is most definitely not a piece of headwear. I might say more but probably wont. This brief and lightly worded elegy is to a real pie that has now passed. As must all pies.

Teaser and the Firecat

Well there's a nifty little fire alarm and a black cat made from sugar paper. An actual Teaser character image that fits with this cannot be located right now. I apologise for any confusion. No moon has fallen from the sky on my watch either. Things may have been worse but probably were easier in 1972.

I'm currently existing at a critical point of life where sausage rolls disappear, slow punctures happen quickly, ancient history is unraveling before my very eyes (thanks to Netflix) and I may well finally understand the use of the Oxford comma. Stimulation is constantly there or thereabouts.

None of this is helpful I know, not even to me. Tomorrow some poorly named storm is likely to hit us and it's also my birthday but I already have at least one birthday bottle of whisky under my control so there's hope for us all. The cold never bothered me anyway.

Doppelganger Fog

I recently discovered that George the cat has an overpriced Tuxedo Cat Lego doppelganger. I prefer the real thing.

Football: Bo'ness v Broxburn. A rather foggy night spent trying to follow a disappearing ball as it was booted around in the mist at Newton Park. In the end it was an entertaining but goalless draw. Reasonable pies and coffees on sale helped things. I certainly would go back for further bargain basement entertainment. "Top class" football really does suck in my opinion, for numerous reasons. The lower leagues are the place to be, if you're a fan and don't mind standing while watching the struggle.

A moment for some peace and relaxation in the heart of Edinburgh city. Most modern "chain" eateries are some kind of anti climax and eventual let down. The thin rib cage of economic squeezes and adhering to stark profit margins shines through as the foundational thinking behind pushing whatever products they have. Low pay, uncertainty and lack of staff development bring unhealthy benefits that customers can sense in the tension and delivery style. Care and pride has been bred right out of the system in a race to the bottom that we all have some kind of part in, like it or not. OK it's endemic in everything - as I reflect, invariably thinking "what's the point?", so I'll leave it there. Time for a soft reset. Humans screw up too much of what they do. So, still a strangely quieter place than might have been expected on a Thursday lunchtime. Too much moaning in this post though ...

Nearly...

"Nearly everyone has their box of secret pain."

John Steinbeck.

I wonder how nearly this nearly actually is.

Exercises in Randomness

Over the hills and far away, relatively speaking.

Following a brief period of incarceration George, the mighty cat who always knows best, surveys various aspects of his current domain, all from a suitably high place.

A recent dinner, or at least the main part of the meal deal we had from an M&S store. Tiny onions, tiny mushrooms. Very nice. Serves two adult human types.

When Petrol Was The Future

Once upon a time petrol pumps were found on high streets or main streets. A fledgling roadside amenity. Perched on the pavements like drinking fountains, easily accessible for the odd vehicle that might pull up for a refill. The local iron monger or blacksmith might own the set up and sell fuel in between other more lucrative bits of business. Ordinary people didn't really own cars or much else back then either. It was the age of the famous moustache too. I'm sure that there are photos or records of black limos with small boys running alongside them looking for a hidden horse. A world long gone. One with no real health, safety or fire prevention regulations ... we don't want that again.

Every so often you'll see dead electrical switches like this on odd walls, mostly in rural locations, the rusty pumps and storage systems long gone. Petrol and diesel were not the dirty words they are today. We know better now but we don't really because it's all someone else's fault and we're as much the victims and part of the cash/taxation fodder as the third world crude oil workers who's products are cleaned up and sold on to us. Sad to say, interesting but ultimately ugly and over weight EVs shipped over from China don't really do it either. You know they'll be unsupported tech junk in seven years. We just might need a better solution.

Lost in Kinloch Rannoch

We took a wee break off and into the bright Perthshire amber of autumn's passing. The four seasons in a single day magic still happens. Rain, sleet, hail, snow and sunshine passing before us in a single afternoon. Nearby Schiehallion getting a white top as did the further away peaks of Glencoe. Hotel breakfasts, big glasses of wine, comfy beds and all manner of people determined to run marathon distances. The long and winding roads to there and back again made good driving, all reasonably well maintained as if to prove that an independent Perthshire might be a viable thing - even if it's run by a small Conservative majority in the council (?).

And on the subject of independence, the untimely death of AS surprised us on Saturday night. History will not be kind to him, the media, the current SNP lineup and the establishment's own mechanical grindings will see to that. What ever narrow side of things you inhabit never forget the long screwdriver of colonialism's inbred injustice and the power of privilege will always have their sway in this country (other countries are also available for this). Thirty nine years spent in the thick of it, via the military, taught me that, but thankfully I remained a successful misfit and am still able to enjoy this land for what it is (whatever that might be). If I hadn't taken the Queen's shiny Shilling I'd write a book about it all.

 

Nice Artwork

The band "Five Card Draw" has two gigs in the St Andrews area this weekend. One of my grandsons is part of the line up. He's on drums for these dates as far as I know. I like the arty poster for the gig on the 12th. Nice work whoever put it together. I understand that their set will mostly consist of a mixture of genres but mainly jazz/funk, whatever that is these days. Hope it goes well for them.

Evaporation

After the October rains, out comes the sun and despite it's feeble seasonal warmth the steamy late morning evaporation begins. As chunks of the fallen rain return heavenwards, presumably to fall again elsewhere. Almost poetic isn't it? Pearly dew drops start glinting and become exaggerated and visible on the nasturtiums and you become aware that there's a few brief moments of a slow golden peace taking place. Even some of the tougher bees have returned (not pictured as they're the very busy bees, zig-zaging and camera shy) to enjoy the bright morning rays. 

Heat Seeking Snickers

If you leave your Snickers on top of a 100w amp head during a gig* this is what it looks like afterwards. Happily I can report that though melted and fairly distorted by the heat, the Snickers still tasted fine - the next day.

*Leith Dockers, 5th Oct. Unplanned and somewhat unrehearsed power trio line up that could have gone badly wrong but thankfully went rather well. Nice and loud too.

Complex Simplicity Part Two

Even as I slept the complex simplicity concept continued to morph and evolve by generating hundreds of seemingly simple images that still retained their potential for complex and varied overtones. Their meaning so far remains unclear. Some kind of digital cry for help perhaps? I captured a few (as above) but decided to release the rest into the wild so that their transformative breeding plan can continue without the obvious hindrance and contamination of any further human input. My work is done.

Emergency Leith Docker's Slot

We're back, perhaps slightly blurry around the edges but that's to be expected. Another evening of live, common and curious covers that you can dance to, sing along to, drink relatively cheaply to and if you want just talk quietly amongst yourselves to. Whatever you do you'll be captivated as we do our very best to entertain you on October 5th. 8pm at the famous Leith Docker's Club, somewhere in downtown/uptown Edinburgh. 

Complex Simplicity

Complex simplicity: Just when you think that AI artwork isn't really giving you anything new or not obvious, along comes something, some images, that are quite unexpected. There's no recognizable evolutionary path here, no route map. Just something that doesn't quite fit with any prescribed description or instruction. 

"Out of the blue and into the black. You pay for this but they give you that."  The old growler NY. 

McGuinness's

Random Fife history moment: Currently known as the Coastal Inn, previously the Boat, before that McGuinness's -  a pub in Cellardyke on John Street. Old names tend to stick so I still think of it as McGuinness's. It's set into the narrow rows of tightly packed cottages and houses that hug the Fife coast, born of sweet and bitter memories from fishing's glory days, world wide seafaring and military service. My granny's house was a few doors away to the right of this photo so I've early memories of the pub as it was 60 years ago or thereabouts. It was a no frills drinking shop and only men used it in those days. Now it's remodeled as a small pub that does food and B&B in a colourful corner of The East Neuk.

Space Saver

In an effort to move on in the age related battle against skills fade I decided to swap out my annoying slowly deflating tyre and replace it with the spare; a space saver. Years ago vehicle tyre rotation was encouraged and I'd do it from time to time to spread the tyre wear across the axles and so stop excessive damage and repeated stress. Most DIY blokes did this, it was a Sunday afternoon ritual every six months or so. 

Anyway I changed the offending tyre without any real problems and hopefully will get the puncture fixed this week. The strange satisfaction of doing something like this is ... strange. I felt like an old dog catching a flying stick in mid air. Nothing to prove but something to prove. It's finally come to this - unnecessary self capability tests just to show that you can carry out a simple, mundane task (without personal injury or making things worse).

You're Doing It All Wrong

Fabulous but unproven garden advice coming up: We inherited this bee dwelling when we arrived here. It's been ignored by bees for all the time we've lived here, despite our garden being a bit of a bee gathering place. Our lavender is a prime bee magnet. I know bees are regularly said to be in peril because of slack regulations on pesticides and all the pollution in the air but it seems our various bushes and plantings are helping the bees fight back. Having said that they've ignored this fine chunk of property (the bee bungalow) and stayed away from it. I still don't know where they go at the end of the day after a hard shift in the garden.

We did wonder why it was ignored by the bees but often these animal house just don't work. A quick google however told us that bee homes should face south and of course this one was stuck facing north and so ignored, even by homeless bees. Now I'm going to renovate the place and put it in some sunny south facing, sheltered spot and see what happens. Gardens need bees, wasps, spiders and all those other annoying flying and crawling things so let's give them a bit help and shelter with the right plants and little Chinese built timber cabins set securely in the best garden spot. Amen.

Call Any Vegetable

One of the joys of gardening is harvesting your own home grown crops. In this instance the home grown crops are represented by a potato (it's been baked). The onions and tomatoes came from a shop and are only there because I liked the photo. Our potato haul this year was reasonable but not large. The quality of the potatoes is however variable. They're OK for mashing and passable for baking but they tend to deteriorate into mush if over boiled. The deterioration happens quickly so you have to watch and test them constantly. It's stressful at the time, like observing an unexploded potato bomb (I should know). We tend not to eat a lot of spuds so it's not a major a problem. 

Our peas were a wild success but for all the space and care it takes to grow them we only got the equivalent of a large bag of frozen ones. They were tasty though and nice to eat freshly picked during garden meanderings. We also reared tiny amounts of strawberries, gooseberries, plums and a few pears. The apples are still too small to count as fruit so we're not expecting much of a yield now. As for the kale, cabbage and cauliflower, we suffered a total wipe out thanks to invisible pests.

In the end we'll never eat well from this garden and now that the cats are actively using selected chunks of it as field toilets, I'm thinking that we've achieved peak garden. Actually we may have reached it some time ago and now be entering a period of steady decline ending with a scrappy, leaf and moss covered wilderness where exotic insect populations can thrive and expand exponentially, eventually overwhelming us. A fitting end for this postage stamp sized outpost of civilisation I'd say.

Unfortunately

Lots of people have been posting this image* in order to protect social media accounts from AI bots crawling all over them. Unfortunately this is a scam or something similar and does not offer any protection against AI "harvesting" your data or anything else. You're being misled. So if you're tempted to post this on FB or Insta or Threads as a fix don't bother. In other words we're all screwed anyway and any protection option you might be seeking sank without trace some time ago. The only way you can protect yourself is to set your accounts to private ... or something 😏. 

*The reversed image means nothing by the way, I just liked adding it in. The "harvested" tweet below describes my own ongoing problems quite accurately.

Turner Prize Material

 A contender for this year's Turner Prize.

I like art. I like seeing it, hearing about it, reading about it, experiencing it, occasionally actually thinking about it and once in a while perhaps almost seriously, perhaps sardonically, creating art of some sort. Nothing special as I'm not qualified (?). So the manner and means of execution, materials, skill, imagination, originality, saying something, capturing a moment, making it real, are all important attributes and ingredients necessary to bring an art work into the world. As above.

What a diverse and curious world art has created for itself: a world of critical judgement, taste, choices, opinions, prices and costs, fashions, religions and philosophy, AI, treasure, exploitation and junk. Smoke and mirrors abound.

The trick is to never take any of it too seriously. Especially the people who hand out the prizes and plaudits; and to a lesser extent, those who win them. I suppose everything can be interesting but far fewer things are rewarding.

Welly Shoes

Unpaid promotion for Dunlop Wellington shoes: Apart from sounding like a character from a Wes Anderson movie and looking criminally uncool these shoes are very useful. Welly shoes are both practical and (with after market insoles fitted) quite comfortable. They have become my "go to" DIY footwear following extensive trials being performed in gardening, grass cutting, car washing, cat wrangling and nipping across the the Co-op in the rain types of everyday situations. I'm not sure why these aren't as common as Crocs, though clearly they're not as colourful or stylish - but you can easily get knock off ones in Aldi or the real thing on Amazon for not much proper cash ... and they're waterproof.