Edinburgh Daily Photo #99.5

Some people (like me) get a perverse pleasure from avoiding the use of travellators, escalators and lifts. In the odd and self inflicted one horse race you create for yourself you can occasionally win and thereby enjoy a brief moment of stupid superiority over fellow travellers. The venue? There are many but the airport that lies a simple tram journey from the Heart of Midlothian in Edinburgh is a good place to try this, some of the ideal locations for these indoor sports are:

a) Short stay car park, race top to bottom and beat the two squeaky lifts, it can be done going down, tough going upstairs though.

b) Travellator in the East Terminal (the one that goes past the stupid big wall photos and irritating quotes), almost impossible, no running allowed.

c) Exit escalator. This one is easy-peasy, great for beginners, only one go per flight so don't mess up.

You can do it at the airport and many other places, but not in John Lewis.

Bucket list eggs

Things to do when your over 50 and unsure where exactly your true talents lie: It's something of a dexterity challenge, piano players, puppeteers and guitarists should try it. Wrapping up eggs in sausage meat, dipping them in beaten eggs and then coating them with bread crumbs, six times over. Like putting a jacket on a kitten or peeling apples up a stepladder as they're still attached to the tree. A ready supply of hot water is required and remove any wedding rings or superfluous or ridiculous clothing.

Once you've created the eggy spheres cook them in oven or something similar, (don't go away and mess around on the web and forget about them like I did, they need 25 minutes not 45).

No Photoshopping here, these are the real McCoy, ready to be test driven as an early part of my new fast food franchise; McScotch Eggs. There's a branch opening near you sometime towards the end of the decade, don't be late. (Haven't eaten any yet, I got distracted by Nutella (one t two ls) Lawson once again and I'm not really all that hungry, damn you bucket list.)

Edinburgh Daily Photo #99

A barren and embattled Princess Street, tram reworks for the second time, fixing the badly finished first phase of snagged engineering errors. Rain has of course stopped play for the day. On the left shops sit empty or vacant, the trading heart long since transplanted elsewhere onto out of town retail parks with easy parking and in anonymous big sheds serviced by the web.

Still looking East into the October Edinburgh gloom, more puddles and eerie emptiness; seems to me the best way forward for Princess Street is to focus on high quality hotel and residential development, the days of the big shops are over and I'd quite like a retirement flat with a balcony that looks across to the castle.

Meanwhile over in the sculpture hall in the Art College a choir dressed in black runs through 60s soul and Coldplay numbers as part of the opening of a display of fine Japanese and Scottish art works. The TOKOKU - SCOTLAND exhibition runs from 18th to 25th October and has been put together by Kate Thomson and Hironori Katagiri, Ukishima Sculpture Studio.

Colour me perfect

A more complex look may require a fair bit of preparation time.

Ladies understandably spend a great deal of time making themselves look good, colours, styles and fashion sense all play vital part in this process as does budget (I suppose). Ali and I were discussing this in the afternoon and I now have a better understanding of the complex relationship and coordination issues that must be balanced and the part that colours, tones and shades play in order to make the appropriate statement. I wondered about my own current somewhat casual look and how I manage to achieve it, what elements and processes come into play? This required a lot of thinking time. After a while my head became sore, I needed a Vimto and a flat sausage roll, then in a lightning bolt moment I realised that I've been dressing like Neil Young for the last forty years...hmm.

Remastering the classics: A mono copy of Pet Sounds gave me idea, using my simple to operate home studio equipment I could remaster this and other 60s albums and so enhance them (?). I never thought of this before - a bootlegging personal project; the end product of which will provide a significant challenge to the multi functional dysfunctional and psychotic stereo in my current car.

Lego Bible

Do they mean Brick from the Middle?

Pit stop

Pit stops

I couldn’t be bothered with those huge queues at MacDonalds so I just sat there in the busy car park and fired up my lap top. I did that by switching it on which sounds a lot less dramatic. The wi-fi was there for a few tantalising seconds, like an incoming wave and then disappeared beyond the reach of Google Chrome or whatever it was. I thought about rolling the window down but that seemed like a waste of valuable energy. Instead I drove over to the petrol station and conversed with the cash machine as an impatient lady and her small child crowded in on my personal space. Seconds later I was transported into the shop itself and dodged around plump assistants moving merchandise from plastic trays into large plastic fridges and display units. I emerged with a prawn sandwich and two lottery tickets and all my change used up. The woman's cowboy boots distracted me for a while, what was that design? Was it a tattoo? Why can't we just ask people about stuff when they display things or characteristics that are confusing or at least likely to be misunderstood? Surely everybody really just needs to stand up there and explain myself.

About then I got in my car having crossed paths with the lorry driver with the lorry loaded with sheep, I'd been in his wake before turning in, now he was turning out. It seemed to take an eternity to get across the junction but I hate that bang and crunch and jolt you experience when your car collides with another so I tend to take my time and exhibit patience. I drove to next town, stopped and ate the sandwich and went into another petrol station to use another cash machine. I withdrew the correct amount of money this time.

Mystic sparkle

Heating up the tiny Scotch eggs on a china plate, heating them up thoroughly mind you, 200 degrees for 25 minutes; then depositing them into another room temperature plate so they can be safely handled, as if radioactive. The hot plate is plunged into the sink, spitting sounds and sizzles and a ripple of mystic sparkles sweeps across the surface water like molten glass and dribbling gold. You had to be there and yes and no the plate did not crack. N.B. the Scotch eggs in question were laid by French hens. Www.handmadescotcheggs.co.uk

DNA revisited

Scientists in Holland have the sequenced the DNA of a woman who lived to 115, apparently at the time of her death she had the mind of someone decades younger. I wonder who that person was. If this true it does fit in why one or two of my pet theories, particularly the one about Karmic people hopping (aka Barclay's Inner Self Cannibalisation) and the other as yet unnamed one about soul-sneezing. (You will by now have noticed that the Queen, top politicians and captain's of industry and commerce never, ever sneeze.)

Who can resist...

...the opportunity to soar high up above a conveniently located stuffed giraffe and take a tiny photograph? Yes, such things are possible but only in museums and other types of educational establishments where there are collections of well preserved tall dead creatures.

In other unrelated animal/amphibian news Squawkie the frog may have been sighted once again, in or around the washing machine and in or around the toilet. N.B. wildlife sightings in washing machines and toilets are notoriously difficult to confirm.

(P.S. @ 1630 found a toad and released it back into the wild, not a frog, not Squawkie.)

Health and Food and Ingredient Warning: Sharwood's Sweet Chilli Sauce (SSCS) packs more of a chilli punch than you might imagine, you may wish to use it sparingly in your own DIY recipes. Also it is much less viscous than it's rival sauces and the jar top is too narrow, so narrow in fact that the easy entry of a humble tea spoon is denied and a long thin knife must be used to extricate dollops of the stubborn but tasty and potent sauce. In extermis an unused lolly stick, chop stick or a clean index finger would do. You read it here first.

Low flying angels

We visited Edinburgh's newly fixed up museum today, clambered up the stone steps and then down again; the old brass and wood doors were closed tight, redundant in the brave new museum model. The entrance is now via a vaulted basement, formerly hidden away under the old great hall. Inside familiar exhibits remain, moved around like victims of some domestic removal strategy, shiny bright on new plinths and displays to be ignored or pondered over by the drifting, shuffling and confused masses. Lots of good things to see still, my favourites being the aircraft and auto gyros, just a shame that few of the exhibits were already out of order and some of the snagging and finishing isn't quite right yet. The kids enjoyed it though, I'll return some rainy day and wander around alone, hands behind my back whistling to myself, I might even take my glasses with me.

Flower People

The guerilla flower children are stalking us, hiding out in the woods, scrambling across roofs and sneaking behind stone walls. Their wild music drifts across the hedgerows, sometimes tuneful, often tuneless, the sing and whistle along, random drumbeats follow. Slow and long. It's as if they thrive on the anarchy they produce, self perpetuating energy, running down time and chasing the fade. We've never really spoken, never made eye contact, never been close enough to see more than blurry detail. They are like foxes or badgers, in the night mostly, in the sun occasionally, drifting away into the landscape of changeable weather. Rainproof and unafraid of rampant mud. All they do is leave disturbing traces, messages, signs and sticks, piles of twigs, parcels of dung. Frog and elongated lizard conversations; misheard.

In chalk on a dry road I found a paragraph from their manifesto, I might have written it myself: “I'm no longer searching in the media for answers, for wisdom or for any collection of things that I might at one time have considered useful. I feel a barrier going up; the world is no place to live but is the only place to live. The news repeats itself with increasing regularity as do I. Nobody really knows what they are talking about and all power must be some form tyranny.”

When I say that I might have written it, that's true of many things. I might also have said that I made a cottage pie from local cottages and locally grown potatoes (all known by the name of Charlotte). There are many things I might have said and made. Meanwhile in a field not far away a man stands with a high powered rifle leaning against a small Japanese 4 x 4, part of me thinks he might be up to no good, part of me thinks otherwise.

At night, in the dark, as we sleep, mice scamper across the ceiling about our heads carrying the raw materials needed to make shoes for hedgehogs. Not many people know of that and the related endeavours.

Lettered up and distorted

Messing around with some photo app or other, it makes the trees grow which is useful, nice quirky font.

Squawkie

The wild places beyond the window.

Toilet trilogy, day two: today's toilet event began at about 7.30 this morning. I was relaxing (maybe not quite), in the downstairs loo in a somewhat exposed position when I observed a strange green object jumping about behind the cistern, then I heard a loud "awk!". I looked down to see a small frog jumping along the skirting board clearly somewhat upset at my presence in what I think he considered to be his private space. "Awk!" he cried, not hearing that properly I immediately named him Squawkie, it was more of a squawk than a croak or any other traditional frog sound. As I recovered from the shock of the discovery I tried to apprehend the little fellow with a toilet brush, but he was having none of that and darted around looking for an escape. He then hid in the drain pipe area, beyond the reach of me and the toilet brush.

Resigned to the unsatisfactory fate of not catching him I made a cup of coffee and quickly briefed all other potential toilet users that they were now not alone. I returned to the toilet area and he was still there, making less noise, presumably in some kind of sulk and beyond reach. Ten minutes later I returned to check on his progress but he had vamoosed, back into the wild, the drains or thereabouts. I miss him a lot, he seemed a stout and robust little beast but I've heard it said that time heals. His arrival marks the sighting of a new species, not a toad, a mouse, a vole, a mole or a badger but a proper shiny green frog, or maybe a fat and agile newt impersonating a frog. It's pretty hard to tell these days, one from 't other, and he did sound like a parrot.

Unknown events

Who knows anything about the unfortunate circumstances leading up to this poor fellow meeting a watery end in our downstairs toilet? Not me.

Spot the super car

An idle hour at the airport can tip a person into insanity. It may be gadget shopping, eating overpriced sushi, drinking at ungodly hours or (in my case) entering stupid super car raffles. Of course I 've always look disdainfully on as tourists and travelling business victims hang around at these dream counters, gazing at the ridiculous cars and emptying their wallets in a futile bid to own one, egged on of course by the nubile Asian girl or the tall male student. Both of whom are decked out in Steve Jobs' black and appear to be in the pay of the devil himself. It's an attractive, magnetic and absorbing little scene that I struggled to ignore.

At least I only paid a tenner for this brief flirtation but apart from a nice line in chat from the Asian girl (and the promise of a date if it won (?)) all I got was a computer screen version of spot the ball and guaranteed email junk for the rest of my life. My soul, once again well and truly sold, oh to be a little less feeble minded and starry eyed. Just think I could have had a memory stick from Dixon's, an expensive paperback from WH Smiths or three pints of this month's real ale from Weatherspoons. All I'm left with is a possible crack at an Audi TT and that (unlikely) date - all will be revealed on the 31st when I get that personal phone call from the founder and CEO of the company; fair enough then, a tenner well spent.

Fungus in a little more detail.

Daily cartoon

Popular fungus

No #17 in the series, here is the local "Battle of Abercorn" fungus seen in it's natural element which is as you might imagine outside, sucking up to an old, rotting piece of wood. A high quality and nicely composed piece of fungus. Stay tuned for more next week as the growth season continues and the tension heightens.

The Great British Bake Off on BBC2 is entertaining tosh. Contestants and eccentric judges get wildly enthusiastic about cakes mostly (and of course good luck to the winner). You can't help but worry about the kind of undocumented havoc this kind of TV show creates in kitchens and households across the country as enthusiasts have a go. Hours of shopping, mixing and pushing around uncompromising ingredients wasted as ordinary people try to emulate these bizarre but attractive creations - and then the dismal failure, gluttony and family arguments that must follow. All in a good cause I suppose.

Post apocalyptic microwave.

Trugfulls of recycling

Every so often somewhere in the western world a potato explodes in a microwave. Today it was our turn. Starch is a persistent and stubborn enemy that finds it's way into even the smallest and furthest away places, I'm sure there are valuable lessons here for terrorists and demolition men, one day I'll share them. On the positive side the chicken pie survived almost intact and may even have been edible.

The trugs of junk were taken on a long and rainy journey to Dalgety Bay, from there they will travel by diesel barge and parachute to Korea where they'll be turned into the kind of useful household objects you find on sale, upstairs in TK Max at the very back of the shop in a dump bin for 99p. It feels great to be looking after Mother Earth in this way, I would hug her if I could just get my arms around her.

October Festering

Potato harvest

Apples in a sack

Now that it's MoT is about to expire I wondering whether or not now would be a good time to somehow convert the Cougar for time travel or failing that the possible use of a light speed upgrade in order to undertake some interstellar exploration. At 134k it's already been round the world 5 times and needs to broaden it's horizons a bit, motoring can put you in a rut at times. In truth I'm not sure the old girl/boy is up to and my back a little gippy thanks to digging up potatoes and plundering apples, the vibrations may be just too much. It is Oktoberfest so the harvest must come home and I should spare my failing strength for that.

Growing potatoes is quite a rewarding experience, first you buy a bag of potatoes and carefully plant them in the ground, you can also add various fine dung combinations, chemicals and salt and pepper to taste. During the summer months when the temperature is high and the air dry and pretty girls are everywhere you need to hose them down a bit, the rest of the time they can be ignored apart from a little unobtrusive weeding and gentle whispering (my particular forte) Then six months later you dig them all up and you have a lovely bag of potatoes.

Unexpected item in the bagging Area 51

Panic at the Tesco: Buy one get one free on strawberries and other soft fruits - the mixed fruit and vegetable aisle is a weird place where little makes sense. Everything is set out looking nice, in shiny boxes but I remain confused, the packaging sizes change all the time, the fruit is from different places, nothing is clear other than that blueberries are way too expensive these days. A squishy victim of foodie propaganda and daft TV shows. There is something sinister going on, a plot is hatching: the Innocent Smoothies are now in smaller cartons, the Muller corners are two packs for £5.50 (?), green bananas are called "eat later", the stuff you want is never on offer and the rules on multiples of alcohol purchases changed a day ago (and of course retailers will stick to the spirit of the regulations say the SNP) so wine is err... still available. Food is not in short supply here but if we only buy what they give us, what choice to we really have? Out here in wherever we are there are no easily accessible markets other than the self proclaiming super ones. I'm bored with this routine of foraging for meal deals for a tenner, pizza v pasta, club card points and that bloody unexpected item is still in the bagging area - how can it be unexpected when the whole science of shopping has become so predictable? Maybe we need to move out to the great green spaces of Morningside or Stockbridge so we can support the fictional, virtual and struggling vintners, fishmongers and greengrocers of yore, anyway I've had my tea.

Life, love and the end of social networking

Molly the lovable dog from the big hoose always looks like she needs a good wash, which indeed she does. Today I decided against letting her and her mucky paws into our house as we'd just spent most of the morning Octoberfestingly cleaning things. Then the BT repairman arrived and order was restored.

Facebook's desire to morph into an even more irritating version of itself has caused me to reflect on the future of social networking, I think we've passed the peak and we're finally bouldering down the other side and into something possibly more straightforward and effective - just meeting people normally. This week we'd a pub meeting with friends, a music night and a meal in a local Indian restaurant with friends, all much more enjoyable than posting one liners and random status messages.

Every so often a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, here's one that fell earlier and presumably nobody caught the audio crunch - I certainly didn't, I was most likely engrossed in Newsnight, the Borgias or perhaps the Tom Morton Show. Bit of a shame really. This fallen tree is halfway down Badger Street, just up from Deer Lane if you'd like to come along and inspect it or respect it.

Post from the cloud

Due to numerous technical problems and an irritated phone and router I'm connected to things via the McCloud. A lot faster than at home, sometimes the wrong kind of progress is good. I'll be here the next time I'm uploading any music or feel the need to be hacking into a double cheeser. However I might choose a more comfy seat a little further away from the door.

Thanks to CBQ for the bizarre and distorted bar panorama from Wednesday, what a creative he is. He made a trick photo out of a gig that was not a gig without a venue and everybody went home happy, reminisced (?) and fulfilled as far as you ever can be. Can you spot the cultural and artistic luminaries in the pic? No, neither can I, but I've got the wrong specs on.

What they all say

I'd like to be able to stick with this but frankly it just doesn't work or to be precise it only works for the few. That's those with a) lots of talent and b) those with less talent but a good agent or manager.

I'm finding the latest batch of home brewed lentil soup hard work but highly sustaining. It just seems to expand in the stomach like a pulse filled balloon. One bowl and you're not hungry for days, everyday is like Christmas in fact.

Today I considered putting my foot down in Norway but then changed my mind, now it's someplace in the background.

Some signs of the times

What can you really believe on the web or afford to take seriously? I'm easily confused and duped but thankfully usually take a moment to consider my actions - so I've managed to avoid this nonsense for at least 18 months; I presume everybody else knew. That feeling of being behind, dumb and in the dark isn't so good but having now managed to get used to it at least I can understand it.

Deer in the headlights

Spotted these two wandering Bambis on the way home from the Blue Blazer last night, both just about to dodge back into a field and then into the wide open woodland between here and the Bo'ness backyards. As they are clearly on the left side of the deer park wall I doubt that they have come from the domestic herd. These chaps are wild and free and probably covered in ticks and nasties.

Meanwhile back at the pub we both enjoyed the Wright Brothers last gig; "Portobello Slam" impressed as did "Arty French Film" and a nicely remembered version the Kinks "Tired of Waiting". Some fine mandolin swapping and guitar tickling efforts were on display. Also present and all very polished and entertaining were Fi & John F, Nyk and the ever resolute Mr J Whyte who did an unexpectedly soulful version of "Guitar Man" by David Gates, somebody I'd not heard of in a long while. Sunday nights at the BB are of course known as "The Listening Room" and feature a wide variety of singer-songwriters relaxing and playing their tunes unplugged. The music and few squibs of whisky caused me to temporarily forget the mannish flu bug that appeared from nowhere and planked me between the eyes in the afternoon.

Time traveling advice for the bemused drinker on the hand drier in the Blue Blazer bog.

Lost in Glenrothes

Gilvenbank Park in Glenrothes is hard to find. Shielded by mature trees and shrubs, surrounded by houses and other types of piles of bricks, it's green spaces and copious amounts of dog poo finally yielded a couple of secret football pitches. Of course the Sat-Nav was right all along, why would I ever doubt such a device? In the end we got a result, coming from 2 down to win 2 - 3, more than the Pars could manage yesterday against the Currant Buns. The sun (?), the early morning and the relentless driving of the weekend did produce a fine headache in me, it lingers on even at 1900 today. Classic.

Free Sky and new Billys

After running about spending £s getting football tickets I discover that we've got free Sky Sports for the weekend - they never warn you these freebies are coming up; Murdoch's revenge I guess. At least there was double Modern Family last night, that may have rebalanced things between me and my Sky user anxiety and guilt.

Right now I'm waiting on the arrival of a mattress and in an unrelated move a consignment of IKEA Billys. The Billy manufacture and transfer plan is now up and running: Build a Billy, empty a Billy, sort a Billy, hoover behind a Billy, fill a Billy, recycle (or even sell) a Billy x 3 at least. A Billy progress report will be published in due course.

Oh well

It all makes perfect sense.

Can-opener angst

Living in a branch of the sticky part of the sticks our broadband is water and wind powered. This means the uploading of .wavs is tedious but I am persevering. I wouldn't want the good folks of Japan, the further out colonies, the North & South Poles and the many distant islands to be denied the opportunity to download our tunes and so swell the many swellings that make up our great pile of music related cash. So my struggle goes on.

Facebook continues to irrigate or even agitate us by morphing again into some other irritating monster version of what it was last week. Don't these people in California realise that some of us are dumb, clumsy and can't reality be arsed to relearn what button we have to push? Don't they understand that we struggle with railway ticket machines, electric can openers, Sky Plus and MS Office 11 on a regular basis and are soundly and roundly defeated by them all? Probably not.

Creating in the kitchen

Of course I would rather be cooking up an actual robot or even an android (before the name was stolen by stupid phone companies, androids were chemically based robots that regularly appeared in some of the better DC or SciFi books and comics. Mostly they were stirred up in some steaming broth mix which I guess cooled and, though the mould process was never revealed the android version of whatever the real person was would be released in order to play havoc with the comic's plot. Then Blade Runner came along with replicants, which were of course androids but a bit more confused over their own actual identities and things moved on a notch), anyway I made some tomato soup from scratch. It may even have been a success, all soups need time to settle. Look for reviews tomorrow.

Anyway as it's cold out and the soup season is prematurely upon us here's the top TV tips for folks who like to stay indoors and sup:

Modern Family - brilliant show, reruns on now, new series on Friday this week, can they maintain the standard?

The Borgias - a clattering and less sensual version of the Tudors but full of maniacs and bad acting. The spectacle and CGI does work even if the cannons are unbelievable. Good diverting stuff.

Shooting Stars - the format is exhausted and it's quite unfunny and laboured at times to the point of being embarrassing, then along comes some completely daft and wonderful joke or sequence. Hard work but worth it. How come I can only think of three TVs shows?

Sideshow Bobcat

Today (yesterday by now) we ventured out into the garden and cut up the badly behaved mutant plum tree, we healed the broken branches with a session of drastic outdoor surgery, we cut into the wood with a gentle saw, ignored the feasting wasps, the rain and the wind and did the dirty deed. Now we have a smaller tree, fewer plums, a pile of damp fuel in the fire pit but it’s all now neater and possibly healthier. All in all our policy around here is to accept the mutant trees, encourage them, mentor them and scoff any decent fruit the mutant trees might produce, in that process we may well change the world and make it a better place. So that’s the plums sorted for a kick off. The apple tree remains a challenge, knotty and cantankerous in broods in the corner, spitting out pre-bruised fruit and holding it as high in it’s gnarled branches as possible, I’ve no idea how to fix this. The cherry tree is stunted and a little infertile, pale pink hard cherries are all we get. I suspect we may need to bring out the donkey manure. The other two younger apple trees are in their own wee world and need counselling, I think they’ve lost their tree identities somewhere but sadly I don’t speak the language nor do I whisper it. They remain close but mysteriously out of reach. There are other trees but we don’t feel the need to talk to them just yet.

Dunfermline V Hibs was always a game to look forward to and yesterday the great day dawned. Hibs are rubbish with a tactically naive manager and a baffled set of players and under achievers. We should have cuffed them 4 - 2 on the day but we struggled to pull a draw out of the black and white bunnet, next time it‘ll be different.

I like steak but I wouldn’t /couldn’t eat it every day, unless I was working on an Australian cattle station and you got a fried egg on top of each one.(I did once stay in digs in Alloa for three months and had a local version of that for tea each night but that was then). So I was really pleased when Ali cooked up a lovely steak dinner with all the hedge trimmings on Saturday. I felt spoiled and full up. We followed last night’s beefy binge with a breakfast at F&Bs. Still feel full.

Nice to see that some bunch of anonymous toadies are passing out best mortgage broker awards to RBS and to Nat West according to their stupid peak time advertisements. Do they really think that the public are so gullible that they’ll believe this tosh? The caring, sharing, here for you image they try to perpetuate with airbrushed and artificial assistants and perfect smiles makes me cringe. Banks, just do what you’re supposed to do, look after the feckin’ money and stop pretending, do that simple thing and we might just forgive you your recent over indulgence and actually begin to respect and believe you.

No idea

Sometimes you just have no idea what to do next. That doesn't mean that there are not things to do, it just means nothing really.

impossible songs

1955

As a time traveling tourist I've recently had the opportunity to visit 1955, the year of my earthly birth. One thing I'd say is that time travel is not for the faint hearted or those of a nervous disposition and despite whatever you may have come to believe from too many Dr Who and Star Trek episodes, fashion choices and hair styles do manner. Anyway I'm glad to say I fitted in perfectly and not a soul suspected where I was really from, my cultured Fifeshire accent paved the way into many interesting conversational encounters with the somewhat dimwitted locals. I did have to cut the visit short and get back to what you might call the present (time travelers call it the Coalition Dark Ages or CoDA) in order to eat. I've made a solemn vow and a kind of cute little pact with the Devil not to eat any food whilst indulging in the time manoeuvres so imagine my surprise when I returned, hot, sweaty and time-lagged to find these bad boys were on offer at a minor burger emporium around these parts. Come to think of I've not made any Satanic pacts with anybody about not taking the odd piece of food backwards in time with me. I sense an interesting experiment coming on.

I left the office

Today: I left the office when I saw that the wind on the Forth Road bridge had been measured at 59 mph. At 70 mph they think very seriously about closing it when it hits it, at 80 you're going nowhere. With a mere 11 mph between me and a windy, traffic queueing and gridlocked disaster I made my escape only to find that few thousand other tortured souls were trying the same trick. Ho hum, but soon the virtual and spiritual border between the hostile Fife weather systems and the evil Lothians weather system was duly crossed - all a bit of a fuss about nothing really, apart from the relentless passage of blown about soot. It's time for back to winter measures and anti-soot routines to be established.

A home due to a complex technical error the heating appeared to be on, the cats were behaving as if they had been desiccated Turkish style and then spun out to dry, some were lazily sporting sunglasses, dipped to expose their in-coma eye effects. I wasted no time in doling out healthy rations of over-age chicken cutlets and sympathy before calling the RSPCA and spraying them with perfumed water. Then it was a tea of fishy leftovers, Nutella & Greek yogurt and random curry explorations, oh I stuffed more stuff onto bandcamp, hoping to have an oldie and a newie done by close of play today - the music business is a hard taskmaster.

A dogs life...

...is probably pretty good if set within a modern, balanced family environment. Here's Indy, now almost 5 months old and thriving and growing her new adult teeth in her mouth in Aberdeen. Shame about the perpetual damp weather but some say dogs get the maximum sensory smell experience when the air is moist, so they must be happy a lot of the time in Scotland. We can't have our own way in everything.

The music world has been rocked by us getting a five star review and some air play on Spanish Radio (?), particularly when a fictitious album that I simply made up last week is at the centre of it. The music is real enough (as are the stars) and this odd event adds another line to the mysterious history and legacy that is impossible songs. We actually have a real (new) album, more an EP I suppose, it's out now, it's here somewhere. The spit and polish part will follow.

Album of the weekend

Song for the day - Maybe I missed the point:

I know somebody whose life is tough.

I help a little, but it isn't enough

Cuz I go an' spend money on stupid stuff

When I know he's strugglin' to stay above.

An' I have so many chances to be

The hero I believe's inside of me

But I get busy and I get distracted

And I do nothin' when I could've acted

I laid low when I could've stood high.

I said nothin' when I should've asked why.

I saw somethin' that I might've done and I didn't,

A chance to speak my truth and I hid it

Inside, I'd like to believe I'm cool,

Easy to love and hard to fool,

But I know there's more I could've enjoyed.

Sometimes I find myself thinkin'

Maybe I missed the point.

So many times I turned down love,

Stayed in the dark when I could've lit it up,

But every time I did take a chance

Makes me happy when I'm lookin' back

I'm not sayin' my whole life feels like a joke

But I've been a master of mirrors and smoke

And I don't wanna live

No mo' without you.

Deaf cats like noise

Deaf cats like noise so we leave the TV on, the deaf cat can then relax in front of World Championship Athletics. Deaf cats like Channel 4, I wonder if their programmers know about this. It's a great opportunity for someone.

Hurrah! Tomorrow is Friday and an impulsive M&S food shop is predicted, a selection of quality products will be selected and the with a little forward planning the pesky red light on the oven can be overlooked or ignored. My intake of friendly and useful bacteria is set to increase.

At the Voodoo Rooms last night another Jim Igoe planned extravaganza; as expected Sam Barber and Outcasts (action photo above / obscured by PA) did not disappoint nor did quirky headliners Lost Telegrams. Nice to get out and see the good people of Edinburgh and drink a little Guinness.

Space Monkeys

For some alien reason mostly likely based around space junk, space dust or space monkeys, the web is moving very slowly in this part of the world. Frustrating. I may well venture out and visit the Voodoo Rooms to sample the various delights set up to delight, err tonight. Sam Outcast and the Barbers being a significant draw likely to bring together musical chums of all backgrounds and preferences. As I have a personal taxi standing by I could partake of at least two if not three large beers if finances, weather and those pesky space monkeys allow. They are watching, not sure if they are listening though.

In other space related news: Today I saw a photo of the moon showing the Apollo tracks and debris, I never doubted for a minute, I knew those brave young men had made it. In fact the whole moon generation experience came flooding back, I was so young and innocent and in the Army Cadets.

Upload

Uploading: The things that go through your head, waiting to upload. Artistic temperament is a strange beast, throwing out random phrases, ideas, strange phases, unpredictable, sometimes barren, sometimes busy, crazy, boring. This is none of this or that. It's more like buying three T shirts that don't fit and wearing them inside out, as a protest against the price of petrol. I forgot to stay that they are Shell T shirts, I wish they were BP though, that would mean more and be more effective, more relevant, more edgy.  Daft to protest but we still think we have freedom of speech.

There are many more ways to protest, more things to to be said about more injustice, more noble causes to champion, not just over  a stupid petrol based economy. In twenty years we'll think nothing of it, there will be no petrol stations, there will be no forecourts, no pumps and pump prices to bother about. There will be other things to protest about however. Hydrogen, electricity and Mr Fusion. I'll be 75 going on 76, ready to be uploaded.

Lazy repetition

Still busy doing nothing other than holding things together in the cut and thrust world of the Scottish music business. At least we've got a little more product delivered into the market place and we're only awaiting approval from the EEC mandarins and the Sentinels of the Golden Pacific Coast and Guardians of Californian values - we need to pay them a visit soon. Once we've done that it's uphill all the way and our fortunes are assured. I'm also written a spotty and snotty letter to Soptify which should clear out the whole rancid sewers of blank artist's profiles and peculiar revenue streams and will that person who keeps playing "I miss that boy" 10 times a day just find a copy to down load and have done with it (or send us a stamped addressed envelope; AKA an SAE).

Back in the soup kitchen Ali made a load of seasonal chutney, I made a video and a pot of tomato soup. It looks like a vintage year ahead for the ever versatile and sticky chutney - the cupboards are fit and ready to bulge. Once we've tested it on the cats (now that they don't need the steroids or the cat mint) we'll start including it in all our recipes, though I draw the line at scrambled eggs and New York Cheesecake.  That line is particularly fine.

Books: Mostly about Francis Vincent Zappa, Marianne Faithful and Shakey (old) Bernard Young. The Keef phase seems to have died with the eternal promise of a sunny summer even if "Exile on Main Street" remains stubbornly stuck in the car stereo. Is there a special tool anywhere that can be had to extricate it and why is it that Radio Scotland fills it's barren schedules with repeated long passages of accordion music? This is not what the people want and yes, Karl Marx was right about quite a few things.

Great album covers of our time

Busy for a period of time today on various music related undertakings. First task was to upload more music onto the Pan-European monster of pop-rock that is Jamendo. It seems that their servers are powered by Swiss cheese or some other sullen and belligerent agricultural power source. Two hours to upload ten tracks and that's after converting each one back to a wav. format. The upload percentage bar is really some kind of modern torture device. What a grindingly slow procedure and still ten more to do. Then in a sudden outburst of enthusiasm I had a go at scanning in and so revisiting some old pieces of art work, our album covers, lovingly created in various formats but now at least (almost) captured for posterity. Wild West Lothian (above) is the latest unpublished masterthingy and remains a bit of a work in progress but is as near to completion as anything we've completed so far. A few more turns of the screw and it'll be ready push out into the ether and to sell in millions like it's predecessors.

 Scapes - 2003 or thereabouts

Heartburst - 2004 exactly