Don't do "walk ins"

Sometime before v sometime afterwards.

I decided to celebrate the end of the long and dreary month that is January by indulging myself with a full Turkish Barber haircut and shave experience. Being a Wednesday the barber shops were pretty much empty so space and waiting was not a problem. Strangely though in the first shop I wandered into (which was clearly empty), I was met with a polite but robust "we don't do walk-ins" rebuttal. I made out like I understood what a "walk in" was and tried not to look too much like a victim as I exited. Clearly I wasn't hipster enough for a stylish barber's shop named "Bearded Bastards". Things have changed in the few short (?) months since I last had a haircut, I may have the power to drive away custom. Perhaps I should've gone in and just demanded a "fucking decent haircut!" and they'd have accepted me as some kind of deranged but savable hipster. Anyway, just to spite the bearded bastards (and any other white male oppressors out there), I went to the next barber shop two doors down and sought help. This Turkish guy wasn't prejudiced, looked reasonable and "walk-ins" during blizzards seemed like an essential component in his business plan, so he set to work. 

I settled into the chair and we had a brief conversation about clipper numbers, beard removal and money, I think I came out of it well. As I squinted to watch a TV show about the Burmese Railway and how to cross paddy fields with the incorrect materials using only elephants as tools, he chopped away at my ragged glory, shaved my eyebrows and scraped his cut throat razor across my pink but steady facial flesh. He used the hairdryer a lot to blow away the numerous hedge clippings and plastered spicy oil and hot towels across my sagging and now hairless features. There were raw flames as he tackled my ears but very little pain and not a single cut or release of blood. Then, via a strange piece of electrical equipment I was massaged in the top body area in a tough but soulful enough way, just to prepare me for standing straight again after spending 45 minutes pinned down in the frequently readjusted chair. I thanked him, paid him and left the shop feeling like I badly needed a coffee and a time of rest and reflection, so I went to the nearby Tesco cafe. It seems I'm no hipster (Tesco coffee tells you that!), not even close, just grey old bloke looking lost in a snow shower and in need of a good tidy up. At least I know my place.

Surreal Pieces

Sometimes it's good take objects away from their natural setting or situation, take away any evidence of their use or purpose and place them elsewhere. Shift the context or mask it altogether. Here on a pale, vague background where size and location and lighting hardly matter objects might just become something else or just become next to nothing.

The History of Rock and Roll: Part One

One star out of a possible five and that was a few years ago. We are witnessing a steady decline, perhaps the history of rock and roll is now just history. Of course they say and they sing that "it'll never die" but tell that to the Grammys and the general public. Ponderous, repetitive and aimless?

Cheese and Ham Saturday

Cheese and ham sandwich label. It expires on Saturday, unfit to consume etc. thereafter, maybe ok to stick under the grill and toast though? Would a "toast by date" for sandwichs help? Well yesterday was Saturday and that was when I ate the sandwich so there were no further problems.

Most days...

That fight or flight moment.

...I'm not quite sure what I'm doing. Maybe it's because I've recently watched a few of Jordan Peterson's* performances and remained a mixture of baffled, on the fence and impressed (and worried). Also for the first time in my life I understand the term cognitive dissonance. It's as if a mirror somewhere in my soul  has cracked or there's been a great outcry far away in the universe that the Force has transmitted to my inner being. The good news is that I don't feel a failure but I don't really feel like I'm a success either but that's because I'm a lazy reader man-child kind of person who has been hurt (a little) but refuses to hurt in return but sometimes does unintentionally hurt but possibly on purpose. The other problem is watching the slow decline of "Vikings" on Amazon Prime (or watching the slow decline of Amazon Prime on the Vikings). A bloody, battle scarred soap opera where the characters seem to exhibit a great deal of cruelty, stupidity and cognitive dissonance. We're in Season 6 now and civilization seems a long way away. Is it still the Dark Age or something? Perhaps there's just a continuous Dark Age rolling on and on riddled with moaning misunderstanding and, you guessed it, serial cognitive dissonance and we're all doomed to hike through it's battlefields as we trudge towards Valhalla, which as it turns out is in Iceland.

*Jordan Peterson? Yeah...not so sure right now.

The Fall - Victoria (TV 1988)

Self Dep

Sometimes I have daydreams that go on for too long. A little self deprecation now and again never did anyone any harm, ever, probably. Not that that could be easily said about Mark E Smith, strange and sad to hear he's gone at only 60. I wonder if this is the end of the end for the Fall or if some kind of odd, unexpected resurrection or second coming will follow? A truculent man of many surprises.

Guitar surgery opened up today. One major but minor consultation requiring little special effort. Replacing the machine heads on my old workhorse Yamaha acoustic with some randoms I found in the tool box, tightening up the truss rod and putting on new, slightly heavier strings. First thoughts are that it's actually a lot better for all of that, staying in tune, slightly improved action and easier to play. 

Collages in a musical square format

The troubled times of the late sixties and seventies were mostly spent finding crumbs of comfort and meaning by listening to popular music. This music was written and performed by equally troubled and frequently deranged geniuses and other starstruck individuals. However I wasn't listening to any of that, my tastes were only forming so it was the kind of sophisticated claptrap listed/photographed here that took my youthful fancy and soothed something savage and hungry within me, for a short time anyway. Looking back it's all a bit of a blur and most of the evidence has now either been destroyed or airbrushed from my history but once in a while a piece of the wreckage bubbles up from the bottom. When it does the memories that are keyed in are actually quite pleasant. The other thing is, no matter how many lists you make or bites you take at the cherry, some bits always get missed out.

Greenish Day

Just been up to the local farm shop for provisions, came home and realized I'd forgotten the Coca-Cola. Damn! Whilst that is of course complete fiction what is true is that we experienced the quirky joy of cooking up and eating finely chopped broccoli last night. Like a trick we've been missing all of our lives the chopped up greenery is actually better and easier to eat than the complete version. When I say cooking I also mean piercing the film, microwaving it for 4 minutes and carefully opening the container to avoid the possible gush of burning steam. Proper food.

Chorus pedal float

"Hit that long lunar note...and let if float". Don Van Vliet may have said something like this suggesting that musical notes can actually float, here, there and also across vast uncharted parts of the cosmos. Not sure about that but here's a Chorus Pedal making  a floating attempt of some sort whilst holding no notes whatsoever.

Facial Hair: After about a month of not shaving, apart from some slight edge trimming, this beard is becoming both itchy and irritating. It also seems to encourage the growth of nasal hair, as if the hairs were suddenly all seeing and seizing  the opportunity to grow some more because there is now challenge to their progress. They sense that this is their hour in which to bloom so they might socialize with their fellows out there in the daylight regions. Little do they know that I'm on to them.

International Goddess Day

Apparently it was International Goddess recently and of course a (feminist and possibly not really religious, academic or righteous) blog was giving away free downloads of these goddesses, in fact there were 25 of the strangely compulsive dancing figures available, dating back to the dawn of time and the unfortunate invention of religion. I chose these three (as they are the least peculiar or upsetting) in a fit of panic and numerical moderation. Go funky Goddesses Go! Just don't expect me to ever believe in any of you, except for the real ones.

Warning: Contains Snow

Here's the up an coming weather in pictorial form, some say there's snow in there somewhere. The time line is also vague but we'll all recognize the actual effect come the day.

Coatings and Trouserings

Signs in Dundee that survived the Ice Age, the Reformation and the Great Fire. Will they survive the Digital Age and the New Dark Age that follows?

Meanwhile: Funny (or just sad) how all those wonderful and revolutionary glittering enterprises* that once so delighted us with their originality and brilliance quickly crystallize and harden into the greedy, sneaky, cash hungry, manipulative, corporate brick walls that we now allow to dominate and control huge tracts of our economic, entertainment and social lives.

*Amazon, Virgin, Google, YouTube, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, eBay etc.

Seems like the time is right for another revolution of some sort. The question is what direction will it come from? Then of course, once it bites, what direction will it take us in?

Norwegian Train

Here we are (almost) speeding along in a Norwegian train like there was no tomorrow and no place to go. It's all bit jerky though unlike the real thing which moves like the train in Spirited Away. After a while a decent book and a flask of coffee would be the only things keeping you on the sane side of sane on this kind of journey.

Epig and MoonBay

Once upon a time there was no such thing as the Internet so people went to shops, markets and jumble sales to buy and sell tat. When I say "tat" I don't mean real rubbish I just mean tat, bits and pieces of all sorts of tatty stuff. It was OK but you could get soaked the rain, miss the bus home or trip over a kerb or loose flagstone. Going out was risky. Now we can all stay at home and twiddle about on some device and gain or reduce all the tat we ever needed to adjust. You can however easy disturb the fine balance of your tiny mind in the process.

So this week I've been busy decluttering via Ebay, selling tat. It's both rewarding and frustrating. Oh and it's also a bit addictive and time consuming. You can lurk a lot if you're not careful. Watching the bids come in, then I watch then fade away again, wasting time. Queries are common; will you ship to Portugal or Bosnia? What are the precise dimensions? Would you consider bundling together two items and splitting the shipping costs? Things I just hadn't though about before writing the advert. Now I know. The key thing is estimating the posting and packing charge, profit is quickly eaten up when you get that wrong, anything over 2kg costs a bloody fortune via Royal Mail. I'm a wiser man this week, next week my fortune will be made. Lightweight tat for heavy duty customers.

I also decided to buy a job lot of birthday cards from Moonpig, the self design uploading kind. It's actually a good enough site but fiddly. The adjustments are clunky and the options are quite limited but I persevered. No visit to Moonpig is complete however without that moment when you lose your wonderful piece of artwork, just as you're ready to send it to the basket and start the next, up pops the flowers and chocs and champagne option (designed for the truly desperate). At this point any wayward click of the mouse or stray hand wobble sends your newly created masterpiece into oblivion...and you start again...and again. But it's still a good service, in your letter box in 48 hours and almost the design you expected, well a bit more blurry perhaps. Tomorrow, it's those live videos from the cab of a Norwegian railway train. Yahoo! Just learn to live with the disappointment.

Found items

Well I found that old Cranberries cassette but no sign of Ace of Base, presumably one of the many things lost in the fire. Now I just need to find a mechanical device on which to play it. (I did eventually). I'd forgotten how "soft" eject once was some sort of desirable status symbol as well as a convenient euphemism. Kind of melancholy backing music though, even for a snowy January afternoon. Dolores' voice as resonant as ever, swirling along on the ancient and worn out tape. A wee change from the usual ambient YouTube live streams or all out prog podcasts I have been playing. 

Feeds are full of the road problems, driving advice, slippery conditions and the funny names given to the fleet (?) of wobbly Scottish gritters that'll be getting some kind blame for the state of things. Talking to the neighbouring farmer this morning, always good to keep in with a bloke who has access to tractors, he was musing over tales from areas of Canada where there's a foot of snow falling...every day.  Of course we just can't cope with a few inches once in a while. Nice to see that the cows were all in the barn munching on their winter feed and hooting away or more likely mooing. I can't speak much cow. The farm cat was comically perched on top of a gas heater hogging the heat. Sensible cat. 

We need to talk about Dolores

Back in the day we were on a family holiday in the US and for some reason stuck in Boston airport. I was wandering around minus the kids who were sprawled out on some lounger supping cola. I'm chewing dollars and browsing for nothing in particular. It was of course the golden days of the cassette, CDs were still science fiction. In an impulsive moment and subconsciously looking for a soundtrack to the holiday I bought the new Ace of Base and Cranberries cassettes. Eventually we got to Florida and the cassettes made themselves at home in the rental car's stereo. I recall that it was a wine coloured Plymouth. The sunny days  and every drive to the malls, beaches or the theme parks were sweated away to that music. Dolores O'Riordan had a fragile, wavering, Celtic, cut-glass voice that soaked into the very basic music the rest of the band were plugging out, it was a successful pairing. The soulful and the naive, the basic and the unintentionally complex coupled with a ton of fragile heart.  You knew by her voice that there was trouble in there, she wasn't going to go quietly whatever the deal, but now she has. RIP.

The Spiral

Spiraling up or down? I've always liked the word spiral, it just sounds good and sounds a bit like it's meaning. I loved the old comic called the Spiral Path. Can't remember much about it now though. So, it turns out that the French TV cop show "Spiral" is on it's 6th season. I've completely missed 1 to 5 and accidentally started watching season 6 without realizing there were a further 5 much older ones piled up behind. Maybe that's too much for me but I'm stuck with this one until the end, thank you BBC4 and iPlayer. So, in it's own little vacuum of my general ignorance Spiral Season 6 looks pretty good. Hectic, frenetic, gritty and veering on to almost believable it's a good piece of drama. I also love anything with subtitles, not sure why. They force you to watch the screen and to take the proper meaning from the dialogue and this extra effort for some strange reason actual increases my enjoyment and understanding. 

Daft Photo

This slightly daft photo fell into my feed today, you never can tell what the web will bring. Pretty sure this is a picture of Glynis Johns in the mermaid themed film "Miranda" from about 1948. She was never a huge star but she had (what seemed to me as a young lad) a very sexy voice (?). That's about it.

PCC

As an addition to yesterday's perhaps less than positive, slightly reactive, critique of the Glasgow Cat Cafe (The Purrple Cat Cafe to give it it's proper trading name), here's their website. I sincerely wish them well, what do I know about the running of a cat cafe anyway? It's at No2 Trongate, right next to the big tower, ye canna miss it.