Harvest

Up and down ladders, stretching, grabbing and catching, throwing away the bad apples and bagging the good ones. Now to find something creative, worthwhile and wholesome to do with them. Of course winter is coming and as we are apprentice doomsday preppers we must fill the freezer and the larder. If only we had a larder and some decent barricades and sandbags. 

Naked and Afraid XL

At first I thought that it was about some kind of spreadsheet fetish but no, it's worse. It's a TV show where neurotic, white, middle class Californians who all have some kind of "survival skill" try to survive on what looks like a Colombian waste tip but without the waste or the rest of the population. Everybody preaches to themselves and the persistent camera while keeping the fire going, moaning and revealing their tattoo collection. It's on the Discovery Channel of course. Like Jesus they are trapped for 40 days and 40 nights but there's no revelation, just lizards and electric eel on the menu as they test themselves and their ideals. It's like a grumpy cocktail party where everybody is way too tired to have sex, admire their clothes or talk sense. Nobody ever goes to the toilet and there's always clean water and I imagine some big reality TV director is hiding in the long grass drinking beer and smoking cigars. It's OK to say fuck but nipples are pixelled out. Compelling TV? Bizarrely yes and obviously no but the season finale is on next week so it could go either way.

The Palace of Westminster

Here's  a fine piece of comic artwork. We live in an eternally stupid and  perpetual age of renaissance, mind control and civil war with only science fiction and games technology to save us. There is no believable god and no credible government, at least that I can find on the Internet and Google through these very pages is sucking out our consciousness and replacing it with slices of watermelon. If you don't believe me then take a good long look inside your own head. Today's despairing but optimistic rant has been brought to you by more Captain Beefheart (than is good for you), Fast n' Loud, a tin of sardines, instant porridge and various text and Facebook messages. Thank you all.

Ex_Machina

"Dates from ancient Greek times, where "deus ex machina" ("god from the machine") in a play referred to the act of lowering a god on stage using a cable device (therefore, a god from a machine) to decide in a dilemma and give fate a nudge, so to say. These days, deus ex machina has the negative connotation of an utterly improbable, illogical or baseless plot twist that drastically alters the situation, as if the "deus ex machina" came down to give fate that little push."

Another evening spent anticipating the potential problems of allowing any kind of AI other than a Hoover to enter your life or worse your kitchen where sharp knives may be freely available. Films do sometimes affect me. I thought that the first law of robotics was don't ever point a pointed sharp pointy thing at the soft and fleshy body of a nearby human. I was wrong, that's been missed out in the code. These clever people always make basic mistakes. I guess that's why scientists and doctors can't cook. Strange when so many other things have been coded in, like sexual energy, flirting and having a nice soft voice etc.  So what's the point of being rich if all you do is spend your time building robots and drinking beer? Maybe that's it really. Eventually I fell asleep but my pattern was disturbed...doctor.

HOBBIT Gif

Some say genius

Anyway, how does anyone every know. Here's Captain Don with a vacuum cleaner that could be mistaken for a rocket or Flash Gordon's ray gun. I'm not sure if he's getting a bad and grizzly tune out of it. He did sell vacuum cleaners door to door at one time, Kirbys I presume. A possible source of inspiration? At one point in my existence I sold eggs and potatoes door to door. It was about that time that CB was recording Safe as Milk in California or some other unimagined sunny and crazy place. Ry Cooder was 20 and had already been playing guitar for 16 years. Of course I had no idea that anything like this was going on until I shook off the school bullies and sexual predators and headed for a new life in third year at Dunfermline High. It was the first time I truly really realised that the sun was hot and that music could be interesting and that most sport was dull. Life as it turned out could also be unfair and black and white, who knew? I still have the horrific memories and the bruises but I now find that few people care about the past and it's recurring nightmares, particularly me so let's just not talk about it.

Glasgow, jazz and elsewhere

Glasgow street scene; feeding pigeons alone and unnoticed.

A truly wonderful lump of a building somewhere in Glasgow in the rain.

In the past few days I've been to Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bristol, Dundee and Glasgow...and a few choice places in between.  These journeys have been enhanced and augmented by the rediscovery of Captain Beefheart, Matt Monroe and the Lovin' Spoonful's sweet and ugly sounds. It seems that as I travel forwards in time my listening taste continues to travel backwards. Is there a beautiful equation anywhere, scrawled upon a blackboard in chalk dust that describes this? Then again all music is from the past; except jazz. They just make that stuff up as they go along. As for the future? I've seen it, don't worry, the politicians and the comedians all got it wrong.

Still not sorry

 

I saw those washed out, lost, tearful and stupefied faces of the Labour old guard on TV today, those career politicians, those toads who've failed both in opposition and in power...I'm not sorry for them. As for JC, what's he like? An ill formed and uneven politician if there ever was one but I wish him well, he's better than that lot and though I'll probably never vote for him I hope he actually opposes and does some damage to the current crass, insensitive and incompetent team we have in charge. Meanwhile back in Scotland we remain confused, convicted and will proudly continue with our tribal sleepwalking traditions.

Pineapple Head

What is new in the world? Chaos, confusion and stupidly prevail. Tesco have run right out of 10p bags and are stocking Christmas gifts...September 11th.  Here's to flat sausage on a roll that turns out to be three round sausages, but they were tasty enough. Then reverse parking and getting 10 out of 10. Carrying a suitcase up four flights of stairs. Drinking tea and fighting the cold. Life in the fast lane but moving slowly. Stir fry. Sticky petrol pump filling frustration and relief. The hot ironing of six cold shirts and no more flights or travel or hotels or anything...till tomorrow.

Modern Dogs and Amazing Spaces

Modern, plastic dogs set in an amazing space at Bristol Airport.

Tea was an unremarkable toasted bun, salad and sardine ensemble. The plate turned out to be too small but I improvised. It was a poor foodie construction that had both a crusty and slimy consistency. Formed up it challenged the senses in ocean smell and salty, oily taste. There was mayo and badly sprinkled seasoning and one of those hard tomatoes that will never ever go soft sliced thinly and always falling from the edges of the sandwich. Did I say sandwich? There were of course two but each one identical as to itself in a pair. I supped on a milk bomb between bites as the warm bread cooled and the salad and fish squished together. On the TV there was a second hand episode of Fast n' Loud, a Discovery Turbo rerun with bikini girl contest and the usual car auction. The cats looked at me, sheepishly and catishly hoping for a handout of Dreamies and chicken. These came along eventually, just a little bit before George Clark's Amazing Spaces turned up on More 4 and sure enough it was full of spaces filled with things and all on a tight or pretty eccentric budget of some sort. It was that kind of evening more or less.

Unrecorded history

Lovely pic from ELH.

There's a lot of it about, down by the byways, away from the highways and bridges are homes and empty fridges and journeys and pointless conversations, thanking the bus driver, thinking someone's a skiver, listening to a tune or looking at the moon, seeing a bird fly past, a flag at half mast, litter on the road and gravy stains on clothes and unlaced shoes and making up a twelve bar blues, having ideas and forgetting them, passing on a smile or a thoughtless word, musing over the absurd and abstract, laughing at cats and facts that may not be facts but lies or opinions, twisted and needy, placed there by the greedy and powerful, those we never see who, despite all the things we might do, ultimately write the official version of our history...and that includes twitter. Are you going to let them away with that?

Quiet life

A slow return to civilisation after a birthday (not mine) weekend of guitar playing, eating, drinking and blethering marathons. The sun shone and the midges bit those with certain types of attractive blood and it was all rather nice most of the time - marmalade sausages and wine mostly. Now I'm tired, as tried any man of my advancing years would be but I seem to have had a good time and so far am avoiding leading too quiet a life. Nights in bunkhouses don't come around so often and they can take their toll on weak human flesh. Back to the grind tomorrow with an early Easyjet set.

Go North

Flags fly across Loch Long in a suitably patriotic style as the sun sinks slowly.

The clear white light at the end of the car wash.

We're going north, just one of numerous other directions that we travel in from time to time. Come to think of it and to be properly precise we're going more of a north westerly direction. Then we'll return in a neat south easterly move and once we've got our bearings and established our whereabouts we should be back where we started. So as it's Saturday I'm going to switch off and for a few hours not think about governments, international stupidly and greed in all their evil forms, football or the weather. These things and the issues they create are well and truly parked. I'll also do a spot of Zen ironing.

Retrospective

A large part of life seems to be spent looking back, wistfully you might say. Exploring the past on a regular basis to try to find meaning and almost ignoring all the good, contemporary stuff that surrounds (Or am I kidding myself, there must be some of that somewhere.). Anyway my challenge is to reflect upon music from the past and find value there, mostly it's from the early 70s though. Last week it was the Stones, Grateful Dead and Steely Dan - an album at a time. The Stones and the  Dead had something musical going on but their producers clearly had cloth ears and dodgy equipment or they were stoned. Strangely Steely Dan fared the worst, over produced, over blown, tampered with and patchy. Whole albums (the Royal Scam) just don't work and listening to all those funked up jazz washes was an effort...or am I too lazy a listener now? So this week; the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Captain Beefheart and Nick Drake. I will try my best.

Photogenic cat.

Technology

Yeah, it makes us all fecking fat, lazy and totally indifferent to the actual change process and potential benefits. Somebody please read this in the future and share the cry for help so that some time travelling tourists can break free from their contractual restrictions and maybe try to sort us out with a quick word or a self destruction short cut - or have they already done that and I missed it? Hmm.

What makes this interesting?

Well nothing really; pointless, everyday trivia. The car wash forecourt just happens to be getting resurfaced whilst the ritual motor washing ceremony carries on regardless and within inches of heavy plant reversing and workmen busy working. The plus side is that I got a good car wash and some odd miscalculated discount presumably as a pay-off for not grassing or as extra danger money. In other parts of life the day was spent struggling to upload tunes to Amazon (which has serious limitations), shopping for the future (just around the corner), laundry (in the future there will just be Google-pants) and renting property in the USA (well making tentative moves). Oh and there was another dead mouse in the bath; no suspicious circumstances however. Interesting? Not particularly.

One dead tree

Some say that this already dead tree does not deserve to live and should be cut down and removed. I'm confused by this.

That was my tea that was: Today's tea was brisket from M&S and vegetable rice. I'm not sure quite what brisket is other than a meaty piece of meat that seems to stick in your teeth for an unpleasantly long amount of time once you've eaten it. Perhaps meat is murder (for your teeth) after all. Try as I might my tongue can't quite prise the stuff out of the cavern like cavities that have opened up and expressed their new found sensitivity and irritation by making me want to claw them out of my mouth. Gin and orange may dull the thing that's not truly a pain but could best be described as "having your teeth on edge"...Ugh!

Lost and found

Saw these lost / found keys in Edinburgh today. There in the late summer sun, on a street, the name of which I can't recall. Without their lock they mean nothing but still somehow hanging, forlorn on a wrought iron railing they mean something. Many passed by but few noticed, such is the pace and indifference of modern life. Then it was off to the BOOK FESTIVAL for books, blethers and a little bit of clay modeling.

Random Cat Portraits

After two hours of sonic immersion in the Rolling Stones during that "just past their best but not quite rubbish yet" stage of their career I've had enough of everything except gin and macaroni & cheese so all I can do to numb the mystery pain is to share a few cat portraits from the other evening. The cat is not called Random either.

Music to punch clocks by

Music: On a lengthy commute the wit, wisdom and puerile journalism of Radio Scotland can wear thin. So thin that it becomes inaudible to the brain and assumes a grey and mumbling kind of sound shape. So I've reverted to type; back to listening to the Grateful Dead and despite only wanting to like them actually starting to enjoy them. Strange audio feasts of badly sung and corny songs that are full of energetic and busy, shrill guitar parts and a great concrete bass and drum bottoming. Eventually the earworm in the song gets you, like some illegal legal high and time passes magically on. A lifetime can be lived in a day some say. With this positive experience now imbedded in my mind's slow system of learning and acquiring thought patterns I'm moving onto Exile on Main Street tomorrow just to cement me into my own personal driving oblivion.

Words: A fox invites the stork to eat with him and provides soup in a bowl, which the fox can lap up easily; however, the stork cannot drink it with its beak. The stork then invites the fox to a meal, which is served in a narrow-necked vessel. It is easy for the stork to access but impossible for the fox. The moral drawn is that the trickster must expect trickery in return and that the golden rule of conduct is for one to do to others what one would wish for oneself. There, that's today's fable for you.

Early Morning Clarity

The best thoughts arrive in your head like a eagerly anticipated power breakfast early in the morning. Shower thoughts and songs, strange word combinations and tricks, tunes and rhythms, white space suddenly and annoyingly easily filled up. The flow of the newly regenerated creative mind seems to know no bounds. There is a thirst for knowledge and a real possibility of gaining it. Colours are brighter, grass is greener and there is some tangible electricity in the air, in the ground, in the trees and circling in the brain just behind the eyes. These are the moments I like best (when they happen, it's not every day) but they only last five minutes or so before the familiar daily fog descends and blots them out with some caffeine and concern shaped blanket. Of course I'm not overly affected by this, it just happens and tomorrow is always another day.

Anyone who had a heart

Anyone who has ever performed knows this feeling...an audience of one, if you're lucky. The show must of course go on.

Instagram

Now I've got an Instagram account. I've yet to use it in anger. Maybe my phone screen isn't quite big enough or maybe I've just not found the right thing to share. Perhaps now my life is headed in some new direction; no coffee, connected fully into social media, in a set pattern of haircuts, waking up early, eating porridge, feeding stray cats and taking regular showers. I didn't take the photo below either.

Jack Kerouac's 30 Beliefs

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven.

Lifted from here...

Coffee hype

In the never ending, relentless experiment that is sometimes described as life I have (nearly) crossed another line that has remained uncrossed for at least ten, maybe twelve years. A day without coffee and indeed a day without tea and also, now that I think about it a day without chocolate, even thinly coated on some cheap biscuit. Naturally I feel fine, calm and my thinking remains as clear as...well I can't quite remember. It was an unplanned event really, this morning I just had plain water with my porridge and super charged banana breakfast and in my head a bulb began to dimly glow. I quickly extinguished it and had an idea; let's spend a long period of time, maybe even a day without drinking that hot brown stuff that we're all conditioned to think we're addicted to and actually like. So far my metabolism has remained as steady as a ship in a medium to rough sea and my pupils are back to their normal size.  There are no cravings, panic attacks, dry mouths or any feeling of listlessness. On the down side life makes no more sense and I'm a day older and only slightly wiser but that's how it goes. Will I awake tomorrow to find that this has been some kind of average dream? Will I even sleep?

Rust seldom sleeps

Charles Darwin might have said that everything came from sea, and it seems that everything is destined to return there, but very slowly and at it's own pace via rust and decay. This really is quite a meaningless photograph but at the time I took it I thought it meant something. Now I know better. I'm posting this as a lesson to myself, a warning and as a monument to a moment when I clearly had little to say. Sadly all a bit like the Scottish Labour Party these days.

Chain Daisy II

Photos featuring a lost chain minus any kind of daisy, an anchor in the sand and an abandoned boat moving device. Just the kind of things I like, there, scattered across the world and awaiting either rescue, discovery or continued indifference. We all know that feeling well enough.

Winter is coming

So Longannet is going to close in March next year, well that's a perfect, visionary piece of work that will bring this proud, short sighted and daft nation to it's knees come the day. God, the ghost of Nikola Tesla and the Great Pumpkin please help us all and save us from the renewable and sustainable watery green madness that provides nothing in the way of a backstop. Best ditch all those funky new power hungry devices now and invest in a Honda generator, a can of Shell unleaded and a few tons of logs. Winter is coming.

These fine plastic glasses (?) were in good order until they had an encounter with the dishwasher which seems to have done them little good other than making them clean and oddly photogenic.

Meanwhile out in the garden we have at least 87 apples growing on three trees of various sizes. Strangely they are all apple trees. I'd like to offer a special seasonal thanks to the world's remaining bees who've done a stalwart job in buzzing about and fertilising or pollinating or whatever it is they do all day. I've no idea where they disappear to every evening or when the weather is bad but wherever they are I'm a fan. I'm sure there are lots of things we could learn from bees but they never stop for a blether as, a bit like cats, they are wisely untrusting of the clumsy and dim humans who get in their way and who strike out at them for no good reason.

Upturned boats

Upturned boats: For various complicated social reasons and lack of height due to inter-breeding and the Vikings being a bit angry at times all sorts of things have happened. So the people of the Farne Islands have resorted to living in upturned boats that they've clearly stolen from fishermen and pulled heroically up the beach well past the high water mark. These robust dwellings are rough from a design point of view but are well fitted out inside and surprisingly comfortable. Don't take my word for it, just try spending a quiet night there some time. Elsewhere in the drowned village there has been a serious outbreak of tourists, all pointing and wearing sunglasses. Apparently some have even travelled all the way from England to be here. The pubs remain open all day as a mark of respect to the Roman Catholic church and the memory of St Adrian the founder of the Mead Society and the pastime known as "prayer walking". There is also a shop full of tat and a local distillery. Some people even bought books. That was about all that we saw on our day out and it ended without event.

Emptying the dishwasher: Always best to do this when it is warm and asleep and you are not suffering from the complaint known as "stupid fecking butter fingers", I know that I am not at present - and always take care to wipe out the badly shaped hole where the pellet of dish washing and tranquilising compound is inserted. Never suck the dry pellet. Any dampness will seriously affect future performance I am told. When it comes to programmes pot luck is recommended.

Carrots: Carrots are an alien species that are related to the octopus in terms of DNA, nationality and colour. Both can be grown under glass apparently. Take care when chopping them up so that the tentacles and vegetable slices will look neat when placed within a pot of boiling minced beef and Bisto. Beware of the ink as it might carry a nasty message. If in doubt stand well back and pour yourself another glass of red wine. Tomorrow I'll be eating lukewarm potatoes.

Tank traps

My life in cars: viewed from a car window on the approach to Lindisfarne. Tank traps from WW2 that now form an immovable boundary to the coastal path.

Goats and chickens

As if in answer to that eternal question and conundrum over separating sheep from goats and chickens from tadpoles this Fife based device has been invented and launched with a small but audible fanfare. The goats seem happy enough, bereft of sheep and the chickens, apart from the occasional melancholy moan seem almost happy. Who knows quite what fate awaits them? We tried it out for ourselves using a simple mixture of ginger cakes and Haribos as bait, the results being patchy but in some respects promising. The trials are unlikely to continue mainly thanks to lack of funding and other vague holiday plans.