Lego - the rules of engagement

Names we give to Lego bricks and the names they choose for themselves.

Over the years I've witnessed the rise and fall and then the rise again of Lego. Somehow in the current rise, a rise inflated by and infatuated with Star Wars and various other George Lucas franchises I see a certain dumbing down of Lego. I'm growing concerned in my areas of growing concern that the pure (dead brilliant) cult of Lego construction and design techniques may be getting diluted or worst of all lost altogether. It is a clear case of style and commercial acumen winning out over substance and actual Lego engineering skills. James May has done a bit to restore the Lego credibility gap but a lot more work and basic education needs to be done or this generation of builders and their latte supping dads may become a lost cause. As a start I'm proposing that the 10 Lego Pillars of Wisdom be republished and taught afresh to younger enthusiasts. You need to hear the truth or get bent:

1. Interlock, interlock, interlock.
2. Name the bricks but never speak those names.
3. Never substitute a round #1 for a flat #1.
4. Make sure your base is big enough.
5. Don't use your teeth to separate stubborn bricks.
6. Avoid gimmicky non-standard bricks - keep them apart.
7. Keep all your instructions in a neat folder.
8. See-through bricks are not windows.
9. Two #4 x #1s do not make an #8.
10. Dissemble, disassemble, disassemble.

There is of course more I could add (don't start me on the 10 Pillars of Mecanno Wisdom) but at this point my work(s) on earth may well be done and dusted.

Regular injections...

...and occasional wormings are not really for me but they are a requirement for most cats. The bad cat, who invades and steals from our house on a regular basis is now due a sanitary and restraining lesson. Plans are being drawn up, traps and complex strategies are unfolding and hopefully none if it will end in tears. So the bad and uncontrolled cat must be tamed, restrained and brought in and confronted with the reality of his heinous crimes. That is the plan.

Meanwhile I've been concocting currys and stirred up stir fries in pots and in large pans during my periods of reflection. Mushrooms have risen to a strange new prominence 9not enjoyed since 1974) in the kitchen and been combined with rice and beans of an exotic ans discoloured nature. Chilly (?) type sauce is added and the after and side effects are few and far between. I think that this week's cooking can be considered a success, for a change.

Life on Mars

NASA's most recent version of life on Mars, obliviously not life as we know it.

I escaped the confines of the frozen west for the mean streets of Glasgow today. Quite a pleasant experience to spend a late lunch in a city centre, I browsed and bought in FOPP, turned a few pages in Waterstones and window shopped and peered in to cafes and restaurants before settling for an apple from my bag. Funny how you fancy eating or drinking out sometimes but cant quite bring yourself to cross the threshold and partake. I wonder if there is a name for this behaviour, now and again I seem to suffer from it (being a tight arse!). The apple as it turned out was mighty fine thought not as sustaining as a steak bake or a carton of noodles.

I was in a music shop, closing down for liquidation, masses of crap gear for sale. Ex-hire leads, mixer and speakers made by obscure manufactures all for a few quid as the business was cranking down. Buyer beware but overall not a good sign for live music. Then again it may all have fallen from the back of a truck on the M8.

As I drove home a debate was raging on the radio about the great Denny pylon project scam and the 18000 objections to it. So I took the opportunity to take a brief detour round the backside of Longannet, Scotland's main coal burning power station to do some geeky pylon spotting. There are plenty in this small corner of Fife, straddling fields, bungalows, dwarfing trees, zapping innocent passers by, downing helicopters and splitting the skyline as they distribute the juice needed to keep the poor supplied with hot kebabs and chilled cola. Funny how the mighty pylons become almost invisible after a time, like mobile phone masts, white dog poo or postmen. In the Swiss Alps they are all over the place, hogging railways and crossing great glaciers, the furore over their intrusion having died down some time ago thanks to the Nazi's propaganda machine. So is the Denny/Beauly project a wise choice for Scotland? Ho hum...probably not but the Nats are strangely quiet on this one unlike the general public. I recall J Page fighting a similar project in the Great Glen many years ago when he owned Boleskin. The power eventually flowed but mostly underground and he sold up and took to heroin and rushing the recording process for Presence. Crowley would have been proud.

West Lothian's new all seasons car wash and valet service gets its first customer.

That woman's still trying to somehow break into a Bruegel snow scene...what price immortality?

The dream life isn't there

The new Beckham tattoo (as above), Jesus sitting on a cross, added to David's collection recently according to rumour and the press. He likes religious icons and artwork amongst other things. Makes you wonder if Jesus is considering getting a Beckham tattoo. The dream life isn't anywhere near here (there), however I'm dreaming of the World Cup and the brace of red cards and mishaps bound to follow.

On a more sensible level altogether this evening's tea was built around another type of icon, the fish finger sandwich. Possibly the most underrated food combination of all the underrated food combinations. The sandwich was served with a generous portion of Branston beans and Budget Brands chips - very popular with tonight's resident teenagers.

Later we hosted an impromptu cat hunt based around the premise that somewhere in the house was a cat with a smelly and dirty bum. Carefully I prepared the necessary surgical instruments:
Oven gloves, scissors, Ajax wipes and paper towels. A first aid kit was also primed ready for action.
After a few false starts and some furniture removal the troubled cat was duly apprehended and the operation performed. Once clear and stable she was released back into the wild or thereabouts. My wounds of course may never heal.

The Kilimanjaros

The long road out from Fargo to the M9 junction. Two minutes in a Police Prowler and twenty five minutes stumbling along on foot. Beware of the branch shredder in the backyard. The money is in the bag (still).

Today I've been overcome by a strange desire to form a virtual band called the Kilimanjaros, I'll get over it eventually. In fact I already have. Now that the BBC has declared a worldwide thaw and the global temperatures are returning to the normal panic inducing levels our mail has finally been delivered. More than week without mail, so when it did arrive it took, despite the 4 degree temperature, the form of an avalanche. Junk mail, packages from Amazon (8 altogether!), magazines that we will never get round to read, energy saving tips, bankers letters, charity begging letters and one welcome wedding invitation. It made me think that getting a bumper delivery of mail once a week isn't so bad, could this radical change save our beleaguered postal system? Could we for once just decide to slow things down, exercise a little patience and not get things rushed to us when it's not really necessary? Answers on a postcard please...by Jan 2011.

A primitive local attempt at a potential winter Olympic ski jumping, downhill speed skating or toboggan stock car venue.

XIMMX

Once in the wardrobe we found many warm and useful coats and hats we could use to shield us from the bitter winds of the Lothians.

It was the day and the year of our Great Lord Aslan XIMMX when I first stumbled into the erect but shoogley IKEA flat pack wardrobe only to discover a land full of frozen shirts, chilled socks and icy and strangely stiff pants. Then, almost at once I noticed a subtle change in the air, distant birdsong and the drip, drip, dripping outside of local, friendly icicles. The great and wise forecasters at the BBC, the MET office and the local Mosque had failed to pass the message onto me that the big chill was now almost over, only a final word from Mr Gorgon "Everything we can" Brown was needed to end the crisis. Soon all my clothing would be wearable and bearable once again and I would no longer need to survive and battle on in the snowy land of "Nah, no me". Once again I'd be able to confidently and publicly declare that Global Warming is real and that by 2030 we will be fighting the flies on the beaches and applying liberal amounts of factor 99 sunscreen just to open the front door. So thanks and good luck to all the experts everywhere, the media and the government for bombarding us once again with useless, contradictory, ill informed and down right ignorant information. Once I get my clothes thawed out it's back to the animal entrails and divine sticks methods of forecasting for me and I'm stocking up on diesel and condensed milk in preparation for the next climate-based crisis.

Aslan says that Christmas is over for good now that the White Queen has gone, so we bunged the tree and few of the dwarfs into the frozen fire pit as part of the preparations for the Easter BBQ.

Monkey Shoulder weekend

The secret of keeping warm these bitter weekends is to supplement your normal basic diet with some seasonal supplements. Today's choice of supplement is the delectable "Monkey Shoulder", a type of Scottish whisky beverage that generates heat, taste and flavour and also provides a rather comforting feeling of well-being and slight light headedness all with little or no after effects. A few two finger glasses of this golden swally, a sausage and chutney sandwich and you can easily enjoy two or three episodes of Bones and the titillation and revelation that goes with any given edition of QI. Not only are we surviving in this winter prison, we are thriving. We are also big in Japan, though there is a bit more work to do on the site.

God love the feckin' Irish, never a dull moment, non-stop hilarity and witty banter spiced up with the occasional bit of innocent controversy. The over 50s are the best the world over, as role models and examples. Meanwhile what is dear Iris doing there with her girly, lily white right hand? It all makes the current crop of Scottish politicians look a tad dull by comparison.

Of course I'm nuts...

...so much so another sister or brother blog has grown like a strange seed gone strange from the ribs, lungs and testicles of this veteran blog. The logo above is a clue and no it is not Thundercats, Jaguar Wanker, Homage to Pussy Galore or Garfield the lovable cat. It's the sumptuously photographed and tinsel scripted Ford Cougar Diaries. The everyday stories of an elderly everyday supercar and it's pedestrian owner. What are they doing today? No idea but tomorrow they may well visit the hairdressers, buy and newspaper and argue with the owner of a Citroen Saxo. You never can tell.

White Britain

Suffering from weather boredom, media tedium a terminally frozen bottom and Jonathan Ross apathy. It will all pass according to my recent philosophical epiphany. I came slithering home to find a poor dead robin in the bedroom, the work of a sadistic cat no doubt. A great expanse of little feathers carpeted the carpet in sad homage to the robin, one we've probably fed and observed. I marked it's sad passing with a glass of whisky, a sausage and mustard sandwich and a few well chosen words as a tribute. I am fluent in the ancient robin dialect having successfully taking an old style O Level on the subject in 1971. The guilty cat looked on, grim faced and defiant as I hoovered up the debris.

Meanwhile we are all instructed by the BBC's doomsday weather service to "brace ourselves" for another cold night. Brace yourself? Are we all about to crash into France? Are we slipping, wheels spinning madly and uncontrollably into good old Ireland? Doesn't the UK have air bags fitted? Have you you securely fastened your seat belt and put your hand baggage under the seat? What bollox.

The day we burned all the Christmas cards

Missie the cat, eyes open, dreams about a warmer world and electric sheep (the directors cut).

That scary card burning and tinsel removal day was yesterday and didn't actually happen by burning or mass destruction. Now we can move on with our lives, unafraid of the Nihilists.

A Counsel of predictable despair.

There's panic on the icy streets, there's no grit and more bad weather on the way, people are outraged etc. etc. The public call for those on community service to come out and clear away the snow, make soup and build bonfires and perform other good deeds within the community, meanwhile local authorities are quizzed as to why the paths and roadways are not in better condition - it's all too much for the common people to take in. Well no, it's January, you live in a screwed up country where you get what you vote/work for (or don't vote/work for) and pay for (or don't as the case may be). If you want your feckin' path cleared then you'll wait a long time for the Magic salt spreading Path Fairy rolling along and don't expect your bulging smelly Christmas bin to be emptied either. As for your precious items due to be recycled, place them in an enormous sack put them outside and forget about them.

It's time to take control!

Learn self sufficiency, survival techniques, squirrel trapping and ice fishing, it's going to be long winter (at least until Wednesday). If you're trembling in your soggy baffies at the prospect of a new ice age then Ray Mears is delivering one to one training sessions on Dave+1 right now and on some similarly, doom laden themed website.

Are you lame enough to admit boredom?

Splinter away the long lonely hours by building a handy and practical extension for your house, Airstream, Mazda Bongo or upright piano...just the thing for the upcoming summer season...

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul.

Darkest Winter

The Shrine to the Queen of the New Year has been dedicated following the festival of winter lights, soup distillation and snow drifts.

More lights and logs.

The snow has stopped thankfully but the freeze continues; I made up to a nearby form of civilisation thanks to the trusty 4x4, duly picked up a few ready meals, nail clippers and wine and returned for further fireside vegetation. Who says nothing grows in the winter?

Facebook, Twitter, text messages and daft web messages are keeping us warm and in touch, for sport we've set up a bed making and sculpture project: a kind of living installation that allows various tog quotients and combinations to be explored and then discarded whilst in the background the room temperature fluctuates wildly. In a more childish diversion I'm Twittering "sausages" regularly following some instructions provided by Ross Noble - it's a complex mind game. As things are bound to deteriorate soon I'm also preparing to participate in the "knit for Victory in the Yemen" campaign that will no doubt be thrust upon us sometime in the next two weeks as daft Gordon pursues more serial head nodding and hand wringing. The western world is headed for Islamic Hell in a Humvee and there's little we can do back here other than worry a lot, knit and make more spicy soup.

They predict...

A glimpse into the future...

Porn star breakfast

Dustbin lorry in the snow.

A burger that looks more like a crab, an angry and bad tempered crab at that, one ready to strike back at anybody who gets a little too close. Not a porn star's breakfast really.

We are still snowed in but now in holiday recovery mode, slowly crawling back to the light. My main concern now is the growing mountain of rubbish and material for recycling that has started to pile up in house and garden. Since the great dustbin lorry disaster on the 23rd, West Lothian council have stayed away from the tundra hard and avalanche devastated area we inhabit. We are abandoned on a frozen mound of frozen toxic waste, some is of our own making of course but some was deposited by Mr Santa Claus - a real environmental criminal in my book and I'll have to do the clearing up.

Meanwhile I cheered myself up with some warm curried parsnip soup touched by the fair white hand of Ali whilst holding a smokey bacon roll and fried tomato creation. A healthy mid morning breakfast fit for any Italian porn star (none of whom were around or injured in the making of the soup).

People in Tokyo caught asleep. For some reason this strange voyeurism holds a strange fascination - fascinating me, changes are taking place, the pace...etc etc.

We are all suspects

Easy to spot, hard to catch and impossible to talk about without sounding like a fascist maniac yourself.

New year, same shit. Radicalised lunatics of whatever religion or political persuasion are hell bent on blowing our aeroplanes from the sky so we must stop them. To do this we'll carry out a review and then let's body scan, anally probe and x-ray everybody with the latest high tech equipment we can get whatever the cost. We'll have it operated by more bored and ignorant personnel who should be looking for the sweaty bomber stereotype but are busy rummaging in old ladies handbags and asking exhausted business travellers to remove their shoes and belts. In order to avoid this bizarre and pointless theatre you'll find me either at home or on the motorway network for most of 2010.

Avatar is a great piece of unmissable cinema but with a plodding and predictable plot, or so I thought. Having slept on it and had some cheesy pasta I'm finally deluded enough to think that I've got James Cameron's point and that is quite simply that nothing changes - a counsel of abject despair. Imperialist bully boy tactics have been with us and used for thousands of years and will continue to prevail. Time, experience and sophisticated technology don't change human behaviour one iota (the basic human plan being to kill the natives, hunt the buffalo and then strip mine everything and build a casino on the spoil) or even a fraction of an iota. What is an iota anyway?

Ok, so you're ten feet tall and cute and you won out this time but in the even more expensive sequel (AV2) don't expect to kick any more military ass - you're about to get nuked.

Year End

Edinburgh from the big wheel.

Cold blue fields in the morning.

West Lothian and the lights of Fife.

Stuck in snow and mud.

Pimp my Sleigh

Having had my Santa license for almost 31 years (oldest son's birthday is in a few days) I was keen to see these long awaited developments currently happening in the Christmas transport department, this sledge concept is by Landrover, there are a few others here. I want one. Merry Christmas.

The path to enlightenment...

...is covered in a little drop of snow and ice at the moment so please take care as you explore. Meanwhile the dustbin lorry got stuck and blocked the road, the Sky signal failed and there are miles of hard and frozen ground stretching between us and civilisation.

Thankfully the lack of TV is saving me from those ultra irritating Windows 7 commercials: "We're flying Jack from Berlin to California so he can listen to some music on a shiny black laptop while grinning actors pretending to be Microsoft developers can applaud some bloody silly request he never actually made." Wouldn't it have been better if they'd just made Vista work properly in the first place? Ugh.

Somebody made it out of here - but where are they now?

Shortest Day

Baltic

Carefully chosen seasonal lighting effects hang in each window, orifice and portal.

Tis the season to moan about the weather, something that you'd think we'd have learned to put up with by now but no, it still makes the headlines. It was so cold this morning I had to scrape the car three times, first to find it, then to clear it and then to clear it again - as the ice and snow had re-formed in geological type layers inches deep across the frozen metal. Apart from the fact that I was wearing my "all year round, never mind the weather" regular clothing ensemble I felt like some nutty Polar explorer about to head out onto the glacier to search for his lost colleagues. As it happened I was over the Forth Bridge by the time the windscreen had fully cleared, at least that's where I think I was. The Baltic weather continues which makes me wonder what the weather is like in those often cursed Baltic States.

Another tedious but cute cat picture illustrating one way that cats keep warm, mainly by following a 23 hour sleeping regime.

Holocaust Food

A portion of mashed potato as seen from the Robot Base on the Moon.

"It may be humble mashed potatoes but it is also now a member of the newly formed Holocaust Food Group. These are the foods that we will live on in the long nuclear winter caused by the heavy bombing from the east or possibly the west - the aftermath of Obama & Brown. Then our robot lords and masters will subject us to severe dietary restraint and we will have no choice other than to live on petrol station rations and foragings. This means logs, Pringles and jars of petite pois and carrots will form up as our staple human diet - all across the great European Plains. On a good day we'll get a can of Irn-Bru, a Snickers and a well aged, oak ham and cheese sandwich to enjoy around the bonfire. On a bad day we will eat our horses. Hopefully the evil robots will pick none of this behaviour up on their CCTV, from their helicopter view points or with their mind reading rays." Nostradamus 1661, 1961 or thereabouts.

As you can see an afternoon of furious present wrapping and sorting has left me addled and ready for a long hoped for shepherd's pie themed drinking session. Those mashed potatoes were calling me from deep inside the fridge, now they are deep inside the oven hovering over a rich seam of oniony mince. If only Christmas would come upon us all, destroy us, have it's terrible way and then rescue us from this seasonal happy madness - and it's only the 20th.

Catsnake v Chic Murray v reality

A furry snake with (hidden) legs.

A big thanks to the Scotsman for remembering the great late Chic Murray. A much missed surrealist genius who died about 25 earth years ago. Sadly missed.

"I knocked and the woman answered the door in her night dress - a strange place to have a door."

Like many comics of the monochrome generation most of his material hasn't survived or remains a little too un-PC, slow and abstract for today's complicated and messed up media circus. There are of course quite a few other funny people still doing the rounds, some even younger than 25.

I artificially narrowly avoided artificially buying an artificial upside down artificial Christmas artificial tree yesterday...keeping it real with a real (dead) one, correctly orientated and suitably decorated. Phew.

Cellardyke

The top window on the right was the window of my first bedroom, circa 1955 in Cellardyke, Fife. Everything then was of course set in black and white (425 lines) and mono, today we live in a far more colourful but also more confusing world. Many things have changed since those days, I certainly don't recognise the washing in the foreground.

I thought that the bacon that I had in the George Formby was sizzling nicely, then I realised that it was the cats spitting and hissing at one another. I've decided to rename them for the festive season: Silly, Goody, Oldy and Baddy. Strictly speaking Baddy is not our cat, he is a stray who sneaks in through the cat flap in the wee small hours and eats up all the remaining cat food in a feeding frenzy, a bit like Goldilocks except she was a fictional girl and not a cat. Baddy also has the other cats terrified because of his stealth, his trickery and his sophisticated psychological ploys and plots, like eating all their food.

Cellardyke photo courtesy Ali Graham Photo Torpedoes PLC.

A country without a King

Avatar and the Princess

Ready for another stunning visual experience.

I’m quite looking forward to seeing Avatar in 3D, or 4D or E-motion or Supermarionation or whatever. As someone who still thinks stereo is pretty cool, in particular simple pot-pan ping pong panning, then anything beyond that is far out science fiction. The only problem I have is that the blue people all look a bit like that guy who played George of the Jungle and the rip-off Indiana Jones in Egypt. Something in the lizard eyes and pin point pupils that strikes a distinct chord. If it all turns out to be some Vietnam or Afghanistan guilt trip allegory then I’ve already decided not to make the connection, that’s half the trouble with Hollywood, intellectual credibility has to be built in like the keel on a ship so the project stays upright. Quite unnecessary.

When its minus 3, foggy and gloomy it’s hard to mount a convincing argument for global warming far less start a good riot in Copenhagen to try to make your point. The people who feel guilty about picking up a plastic bag in a supermarket will casually board a jet to Birmingham or Bali without a single thought, I should know I’m one of them. Sobering then to think that one decent volcanic blast pumps more CO2 and resultant earth excrement into the atmosphere than any Ford Zetec or BMW V8 could do running up the fast lane of the M6 at 95 for a year. Why don’t we just dump the rusting fridge mountain into some hyper-active crater somewhere and so neutralise and short circuit the whole process.

And so another Princess Diana moment comes along. That golden time when you realise you are out of step with popular opinion and interest, you are out there, on a limb, aware but uncaring as the awful mess of mediocrity that is the current X-Factor washes over the nation like a cocaine and morphine syrup.

Sensible Shoes

It's hard to stay on the side of sensible when nonsense reigns supreme in most walks of life. I'm currently watching the X-Factor (in the TV background) and reading today's blogs on the Daily Telegraph. Neither position can be correct, the pushy despair and likely truth of the Telegraph's wry opinions and the grinning and smug optimism in X-Factor's all possible but not likely world of recycled pap. The British public's voice must be heard, we just can't quite understand what they are saying and we can't really credit them with thinking because that's slowly being educated out of them - but they will posses a number of useful skills suitable for a long career in the service sector.

2009 has been the year when the collapse of good sense has left us all sitting on tinsel couches angry and disaffected by the puzzling images on our old-style TVs, feeling guilty about sipping one too many unit of wine and refusing to phone the latest telly-vote number. The good news is that you can still lounge back at the end of the working week and laugh at the pompous madness that passes for government and authority and plan to vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party in the new year. Hopefully there will be such a candidate running in West Lothian, the only place in the UK where 2 miles of dual carriageway by-pass costs £200m compared to £12m anywhere else it seems. I'm referring to the HGV beleaguered village of Newton, 8 miles away from the Scottish Parliament but seeing only six buses a day and without a footpath or cycle path to connect it to the apparent but remote civilisation of BP M&S and Burger King, shame on you Alex.

Earlier I watched Tony Blair grin and (virtually) defend everything he ever did in one soundbite, believing his conscience to be salved by revisiting the tattered mess he allowed poor Gordon Brown to pick up and then make worse. No memory, no responsibility, everybody must be right all the time because we can't quite bring ourselves to push the red "no" button. Perhaps Simon Cowell should run the country after all and I'll vote for the vacuous but talented Stacy Solomon and her sensible shoes.

Nantucket Sleighride

In the great gloom, frost and the fog I have discovered that you can listen to the track NS continuously (not the album pictured) all the way from Fife, through Kinross and Angus all the way to Aberdeenshire in a motor vehicle. I achieved this amazing feat whilst eating four Scotch Eggs, one at a time of course and not using a mobile phone but my hands were not free. Should the Labour Party who I believe are having a good go at governing our nation these days find out about it they will naturally make it illegal. The blunt instrument and tired rhetoric school of government applies in all departments. The control freaks have taken over the asylum.

Eventually I made it home and then proceeded to set fire to some sticks and fossil fuel but still the fog prevails, roll on you longest day you.

The shadow of a Christmas tree...

...has not appeared in our house so far.

I remain confused

I'd be a mess without my...

...Chinese Wish Balloon. Yes they fly and of course your wishes do come true eventually. All low tech and pretty simple and primitive but hugely satisfying. Simply light the blue touch-paper, struggle for a few moments and then let it go, and it does fly and you get a rush, particularly so when it floats into a commercial flight path, ("but we are five miles away!"). Somewhere in the distance I swear I could hear Simon Dupree and the Big Sound.

Thankfully no cats, passing rodents, teenagers or concerned adults were injured or overly upset during this historic event. I want to do it again.

Reading is bad for you

It's official, even Scottish rodents don't do reading very well these days.

It's not been a good day for Scottish education, 20% of school leavers have serious literacy problems it seems. Once again Scotland is set in the lower performing scholastic leagues, our once proud systems breaking down like a nine year old Nissan. The modernising views, the well meant but ill conceived initiatives and the lack of governmental backbone has denied a generation basic levels of schooling - we've failed. Thank you Mr Salmond and all your incompetent colleagues and also those that governed before. As if to prove a point I returned home to find a poor mouse dead on the bookshelf, obviously overcome after an afternoon of studying Japanese, poor timorous beastie, (yes and it was on the third shelf).

Homecoming and the RBS

...is not where i'll be stuffing my great wads of cash.

At the most basic level we all want to be proud of our country and feel good about our homeland and the mark we make on the world. How does Scotland look, what are we all about? Sadly the institutions and the events we'd want to succeed and be identified with let us down again and again. The Homecoming wasn't a bad idea but it was hijacked to score political points, as a result it was misunderstood and shunned by most "normal" Scots - we failed to engage. Then to underline the negatives the main event ends up in debt and recriminations but no one is to blame and no one rises up to take responsibility and square the losses. The problem is that the politicians can't see the disconnect, their world, their homecoming and sadly their values and aspirations don't match with ours.

RBS directors want the right to pay bonuses or the toys will be thrown out. Of course they are right to want to be able to compete with the other banks who pay big bucks for high risk but how big and credible are they now? I cringe at every soft focus highland home commercial they run on TV and their blatant blanket sponsorship of international sport with their ubiquitous logo sitting sun kissed miles away from the driech centre of Gogar. It's time the plug was pulled and the teeth of reality allowed to bite. Honour the contracts if you must but just for once take a good look and see how others see you and reconcile yourself with public opinion. Banks actually need punters and positive spin more than they seem to realise. Meanwhile Gordon and Alistair will be doing everything they can...except putting the boot in.

A typical West Lothian street scene.

Banana

Whilst rummaging in my backpack at the airport yesterday I found a banana in one of the pockets. It had been there a while but it's not there anymore. Messy and mushy and a little smelly, other than that an uneventful flight and onwards journey.

We drivers cannot be trusted, we are evil and uncaring and do not obey signage and speed limits. So roadways and car parks are populated by friendly bumps and obstacles, to slow us down from our mad pace and keep us in our place. A big thank you also to those Islamic extremists who have forced the splendid redesign of our airport approaches, nicely concreted and inhuman in the extreme. You have won, your designs have brought us to our knees and so we admire your god and your godlessness but that is about it. In the grey winter the concrete barriers compliment the fine, ignorant and stupid anger you choose to force upon us.

Two nice poached eggs to start the day. Simple things.