Season of the which?

"Impossible, gently, fingery twitch on the wah wah pedal and the volume switch, gets you high and makes you tick tick tick, like a bomb with a melody and a bullet with an itch... /music."

impossible songs play.. kerplunk!

impossible songs

Slash music I’m not.

After doing nothing musical for about a month I started messing around late last night on the guitar whilst Ali continued her weekend long “sort”. It’s been a kind of dull weekend for me, mostly working and lounging apart from the Friday night dance. So for no particular reason I picked up my old resonator semi-acoustic, detuned it (E to D) and started messing with a slide guitar piece I wrote years ago called “Mother Russia”.

As my rusty technique became a little more lubricated I added some wah pedal and less slide and more finger. This led me to plugging into a proper amp and turning on the reverb, delay and chorus effects until I got what sounded like a decent mix. By this time I was playing an elongated version of “Twin Song” from the “Scapes CD” which eventually morphed into a new “Russian Twin Song”.

Anyway the spacey bedroom sound was pretty good I thought and got me back into at least doing some music after weeks of floundering, flapping and not much else. The thing is now the countdown to our ecstatic move to the primeval village of stony retreat has now begun and we still have 88 boxes to fill and a trampoline to dismantle. I think I may be entering a season of rare creativity…

Build a better beast

Designs for life, leaving, staying, coming back, moving on, beating control freaks, taking a break, getting yourself "over the rainbow" without tears.



impossible songs

The idiots guide to starting your own cult.

First be wise, charismatic but flawed in a likeable way.
Have a warm house with lots of tea and plain biscuits on the go.
Have a pretty wife.
Have very strong views and refuse to compromise them.
Call other people idiots, but not to their faces.
Develop difficult belief systems that appeal to people.
Make people think it’s tough to join and stay.
Befriend odd balls and weirdos and misfits.
Ask them for money to help the cause.
Ask them for more money to help the cause.
Tell people that the outside world is corrupt but you can escape from it here.
Make up flyers and leaflets that tease people and provoke enquiries.
Always use emotional blackmail in your dealings with people.
Have secret knowledge but hold it back.
Tell half the story.
Tell kids that their parents are beyond help.
Quote from a worthy book of quotations.
Make it seem exclusive (because it is).
Run meetings where only you get to speak.
Control, control, control…

The idiots guide to joining a cult.

Follow your friends who have already joined.
Don’t have any ideas of your own.
Have ideas of your own but you don’t feel sure about them.
Take pride in thinking that you are open to anything.
Be on the lookout for answers and certainty.
Be lonely.
Be easily led.
Be fed up with your life.
Be on a downer.
Wander into a meeting drunk and broke.
Join so that you can gather material and write a book exposing them.
Do it for a laugh, but then the laugh never comes along.
Have a desire to change the world but don’t know how to.
Fancy somebody who already goes…

The idiots guide to leaving a cult.

Fall out with the leader(s).
Get your own ideas.
Fall out with the members.
Do something absolutely unspeakable.
Steal from them.
Run very fast in the opposite direction and change your name.
Move house.
Publish an expose.
Stop fancying the person you fancied.
Run and when they come after you foam at the mouth.
Run and when they come after you just smile.
Start a whispering campaign.
Tell everybody that you have a big knife.
Tell them that you want the money you gave them back.
Join a martial arts club.
Become a heretic, a witch or an intellectual.
Get them to leave you.
Join a rival cult.
Start your own cult…. (Oops).

Tinkering with a toffee ES335

You will be glad to hear that those deadly rivals (well that’s not quite how it was) the lion and the zebra are now the best of friends and have found a nice place to share together: an Australian tinny-cooler.

impossible songs

Tinkering with life.

A great plan is spread before us, a fine scheme, a drawing of ornate and complex designs, turns and twists, facades and windows, entrances and exits. Such is life, hidden and open, a thousand things passing through the eye of a needle all at one time. It was noodles last week and perhaps they raised my blood pressure or gave me cold sweats, I don’t know, life goes on and this week it’s chicken salad today, and is it another week anyway?

Dancing to a Gibson ES 335.

The old ES 335 sunburst is great guitar; from time to time I really wish I had one. It was one of the first guitar styles I was aware of as a youngster and it still looks great and business like today. Anyway I was at the company do at the weekend and the cabaret band contained a fine example of the six stringed beast. Dancing in amongst the fine ladies in their best bling and party frocks and the men in their tuxedos and kilts, I loved hearing this really nice guitar chewing away at some old sixties covers. A pal of mine had a red one (without Humbucker pick ups) in the 70s, I played it a few times and it was remarkably ordinary, no frills, no nice touches or inlays, perhaps that’s what I liked about it, unpretentious quality.

Not for toffee.

As you get older eating toffee becomes quite a challenge, not I hasten to add because I have dentures or tooth problems (apart from my errant crown) it’s more a jaw ache that I get. After two or three bits of Thornton’ s mulled wine toffee my jaw begins to go numb, as if it was wearing shoes two sizes too small or had just run a half marathon, the exercise is just more than the poor muscles can handle, they hurt. Where will this end, will my jaw need physiotherapy or special training or will it be case of safe soft cheese and medical strength rice pudding only as the years pass?

Tired Ikea house

impossible songs

These are in our kitchen and are growing like Triffids and are every new day lying at more oddly acute angles than ever. What are you supposed to do with such errant bulbs at this time of year?




impossible songs

IKEA

A visit to the great blue and yellow cavern, home of the cheap, the nasty, the tasteful , the bizarre and the bargain was today’s centerpiece. The highlight of any IKEA outing is the strange experience of eating a large hot dog, lined with their special non-flavoured mustard and washed down with the bleached brown coffee in some kind of recycled cup. The kids always enjoy coming here and love all the shortcuts through the store, many of which they seem to have memorized. The main purpose of the visit was to buy tot-sized furniture for the grandchildren, which after wandering aimlessly around the warehouse for half an hour I eventually managed to do. Oh and we bought a cat shaped cushion for the cat, (would you buy a people shaped cushion for a person?) but why the fizz do they charge you 70p to use a credit card?

Tyres

I also bought two tyres today; sadly this meant bidding a fond farewell to my faithful nearside rear tyre. This long suffering tyre has had a slow puncture since around late 2004 due to a small unwanted nail embedding itself in it at some unknown point in the past. We’ve twice been to France with this as well as racking up 20000 miles in the UK on that poor, unwell, imperfect rubber circle. I hope it burns for a long time in some contractor’s furnace or is recycled as some useful rubber implement (?).

House

Way out on the A71 there is a place called Currie, why it bears that name I’ve no idea as it is neither warm, spicy or meaty. Anyway I looked at house there today to see if it might suit us. Apart from being near the main road and somewhat hazardous for cats and children and being adjacent to some industrial sheds and mysterious processes, but it was clean looking, spacious and handy for the city and the by-pass and even IKEA. If ever we ran out of pickled herring, meatballs, couches or fancied a hot dog there would be no problem. Oh Brother where art thou?

Can blue men sing?

Can blue men sing the whites? Can Mr Bump ever be well again? Well at least he looks happy enough for the time being.
impossible songs

impossible songs
What is happiness?

Life, like history is just one thing after another. Time spent searching for something that continually escapes your grasp, isn’t accurately clearly defined and means different things to different people. We don’t understand the perspective of others as we are all so entrenched in out own positions and so seemingly focused on our own ends. The best solution and the likely secret and meaning of the universe is, as far as I can tell a bowl of Japanese style poor man’s noodles. If there is a heaven, if there is bliss, if there is ever a time of deep satisfaction to be had, the noodle bowl can never be very far away.

Pretty Flamingo.

What a great song this is, sing it in the bath, in the shower, in the car. Hope and expectation, beauty and love, aspiration and realization – it is all there and it also has a mournful, soulful side to it that provides a deeper satisfaction. All those who feel down, bored with themselves or the victims of buzz word culture and pop’s apparent inability to satisfy at the moment should hum this tune for a few minutes everyday.

Twelve monkeys.

That’s about twelve too many of these over exposed, under-understood creatures for me, I don’t know why I don’t like them, well real ones, but I quite like cartoon ones, particularly the mischievous and deadly (I presume) radioactive monkeys that appear in the Simpson’s from time to time and the ones in Madagascar (the feature length cartoon). I think I like the droll Home Counties accents and the world weary attitude that these monkeys display. By comparison real monkeys are inevitably both a threat and a disappointment at the same time.

Knocking the dottle out of your pipe.

Grandpa Broon was always doing this before smoking his Rougy Bowl (or was it Bogey Roll?). I don’t know much about pipes and their constituent parts or how you maintain them but I do like the phrase “knocking the dottle out” (or oot). I guess it must be the ash or carbon that remains in the pipe’s bowl once it has burned out. Sadly there are few if any of Grandpa Broon’s generation around now to explain or demonstrate this lost technique – hmm…

A house is not a fallout shelter

impossible songs

Our house is a very, very, very fine house (very fine house), with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard, now everything is easy ‘cos of you…

(Graham Nash & CS&N 1969.)




impossible songs

Running to stand still

Something resembling a rather awkward and trying seven day week has finally passed in five days. A new and unexpected requirement to move house has rather fragmented and unfocused our thoughts over the last few days. Then of course, in full “flight or fight” mode our thoughts re-fragmented and focused (a bit). Mine firstly focused onto a South African apricot and mustard sauce, into which I added and cooked some chicken, then they focused on Dunfermline’s win over Hearts in the cup and then on how best I could lay claim to being the individual responsible for unleashing “Dark Side of the Rainbow” onto an unsuspecting and innocent world some twenty years ago. Ali’s thoughts of course focused onto finding somewhere for us to stay and getting her car washed.

Monster House

The world is full of many safe havens and sheltered harbors; we are now sailing onwards, searching the blank horizon for such a place – for habitation for a short time. One possibility is an idyllic, run down, battered but soulful property about a mile away in the heart of the estate. Engineered straight out of an Enid Bylton book or some CS Lewis allegorical story this rambling pile, complete with about an acre of neglected and desecrated gardens (abandoned chicken coops, mysterious concrete bases, rotting timber poles and assorted bits of woodland) impressed the kids and I (and a grandchild). The surrounding history, latent ghosts and stony memories, village bonfires and rites are a further attraction. A significant amount of minor works and negotiations will be necessary for a proper move however, so the jury is out at present.

Imagine a very small amount of possessions

So our nomadic phase has come around again and we realize that really you should never settle for settling anywhere, sooner or later you need to make sure that all your best possessions will fit neatly into a normal sized shoe box. I do feel truly sorry for the mad, shopping fixated masses (usually female and in the age bracket 25 -35) upon whom this truth has not dawned as they stuff cupboards, wardrobes and houses full with impulse purchases that have just been containered across the world from the Far East. (Having said all that, what is wrong with a little fun and retail therapy now and again? I think I’ve flipped out a little at the prospect of another house move, although the opportunity to revisit a few basic inventory control measures on my stuff always has a certain abstract attraction for me.)

Extra long broccoli raises etiquette issues

For some a nightmare, for me a marvel, broccoli you can pick up and suck and dip and (err...) crunch. From the far away green fields of Mozambique or Malawi or Tesco comes a versatile vegetable that cannot ever be acceptable in any high class eatery due to the amount of personal involvement that the consumer must enjoy. Pick it up and bite it, suck it – if it flies it’s ok to pick it up, flying broccoli? Well I can’t imagine it making it to the UK by boat.

Circular Nomadic Octopus

impossible songs


Isn't Doctor Octopus (by Steve Ditko around 1968) pretty cool looking? Well he does seem to share my dress sense... unfortunately...




impossible songs

Nomad

Where you put down roots is important, but its not everything. Life is an adventure and the unexpected and the unplanned can sometimes mean opportunity. Ok I guess this sounds a bit like some sort of second rate advice from a Sunday Post letters page or a Red Top horoscope. Maybe that’s all it really is but right now it has the ring of truth about it. Maybe all of life’s lessons are simple and clear, we just like to wrap them up in a showpiece veneer of cleverness and sophistication. Even if you can’t be a nomad for real and range free and far and wide into the sunset, you can be a nomad in thought.

The circle of music

When I first started to get into music I was always drawn into listening to the unknown and obscure, bands and artists that were “underground”, not played on radio, (what little radio there was) and only known to the select few (those in the know as we thought). Then when these bands became famous they’d be discarded (usually after the third album) and some new musical horror or joy was dragged up from the depths. Gradually however these listening habits changed, discovery and innovation no longer became important and I became mainstream and dull. I listened to chart music, bought new albums without thinking and ignored my old friends down in the underground. Of course what goes around comes around and I’m back now in my (rightful?) own place out on the margins listening to the unknown, the unsung and the desperate. Can you blame me? I picked up this month’s Q, another 27 page homage to U2 (if it’s not them then it’s Radiohead or REM) as it rattles on paying little attention to emergent music of any kind. So why not get away from the glam and the glossy, listen to podcasts, indie bands, pub music, buskers and all the things your parents told you to avoid.

OMO

impossible songs

impossible songs
On my own. Ali’s gone away to visit the Big Smoke on a working course, so for a brief period of time I feel alone and a bit rudderless. A whole evening to myself and how to fill it? There can only be one way to kill at least an hour in a painless pointless way. Firstly realizing that my natural habitat is, I suppose the normal everyday domestic environment and that my natural occupation within it is quite simply mindless pottering. So what the hang is pottering and where does it get me (or anybody)? So, some examples of my current “pottering” include the following generally unfulfilling, unsuccessful and wasteful activities:

a) Taking an unnaturally long time to empty the dishwasher and then putting things away in the wrong place.
b) Walking past yesterday’s news paper and beginning to read it and losing track of time.
c) Sitting fidgeting and looking at a pile of CDs and other things that need to be sorted.
d) Having to wipe the freezer because I forgot to close the door properly yesterday.
e) Picking up cat biscuits that have scattered for no reason.
f) Arranging a duvet and cushions on a bed.
g) Looking out of the window in the dark.
h) Running the bath because there is some black fluff there that must be sent down the drain.
i) Moving unopened letters on the worktop, realizing none are mine and then putting them back.
j) Deleting unused icons on the desktop.
k) Sorting out socks from the laundry basket and puzzling over the amount of odd ones there are.
l) Flicking through TV channels and not stopping at anything.
m) Fiddling with messages on my mobile phone.
n) Removing burned candles, picking at the wax and enjoying how it feels.
o) Looking at food in the fridge but not eating any of it.
p) Watering only certain plants, the ones that seem to me to be neglected.
q) Looking for the correct Alan key to adjust a towel rail.
r) Watching the final quarter of the Channel 4 News.
s) Taking empty coat hangers out of the wardrobe and putting them in a pile, then wondering what to do with a pile of coat hangers.
t) Standing next to a radiator to check if the heating is on.
u) Turning hyacinth bulbs to face the sun in a different way, ready for the next day.
v) Sucking a mint.
w) Re-reading used post-its and deciding which ones are not important, then doing nothing with any of them.
x) Searching for my driving license (reluctantly).
y) Listening to a 1571 phone message and deleting it.
z) Sorting the trash for recycling but in a half hearted way.


The pottering part of the evening is finally over…whew!

Dakota

The other Datoka building. The one in NYC featuring the Lennon's old place. Photo taken by me from a tour bus roof in October 2005.



impossible songs

This week's things

Visiting other people’s websites it a bit like trying to cook a meal in a strange kitchen. You open one cupboard expecting all the packets and herbs and seasoning and you find the cat food. Open another and you find glasses when you wanted a cloth and some dish towels and so it goes on. So is this my best / only thought from what has been a busy but not wholly satisfactory week?

Well one thing I did learn was that putting a mike inside an acoustic guitar (that is mounting it within the sound box) and then putting a delay and distortion effect on the pickup provides all sorts of wild sonic opportunities. A lot of gaffer tape also seems to help. Anyway a young chap at this week’s OOTB had the technique for this down to a fine art. He’d really mastered hammering on with his left hand while thumping out a rhythm with his right, combined with the subtle use of effects and some dexterous use of the OOTB PA (thanks to David O’H) he produced a brilliant and unique sound. One performance on Jools Holland and he’d be a superstar. Didn’t quite catch his name but I’ll check out the review during the week.

The black build of Dakota: What has South Queenferry got in common with New York? Well it has to be our very own Dakota Building, which has just sprung up light a giant black and blue liquorice allsort in Tesco’s own shopping trolley back garden. How very strange. Overlooking the A90 with its permanent road works and the rooftops of Frankie and Bennies, the golden arches and NHS 24, it’s the perfect spot for a quiet weekend. I guess that on a clear day you could probably see Dundas Castle or the scaffolding on the railway bridge. So what kind of clientele will this fine building attract? Mark Chapman look alikes? Confused tourists on the 39 Steps walking tour of Scotland? Trailer trash refugees from Fife? Rejects from the ill-placed, ill conceived Orroco Pier or just plain folks like me who yearn to drive up in and stagger out of a very dirty Bentley? Perhaps they’ll send us poor locals a voucher for a free cocktail.

This week I have also visited Birmingham, Freuchie, Elgin, Aviemore, Edinburgh and Dunfermline. Best cup of coffee? An 8.00AM regular latte in Aviemore, a motorway service centre without a motorway and masquerading as a highland village.

Big Brother is a pain in the arse, it’s official. Mind-numbing, abusive to all including the viewer, vacuous and superficial and painfully exploitive. I don’t care who wins or what happens and I’m avoiding it as much as I can because it is like opening a box of chocolates and when you start…

Postcard from the edge of Freuchie

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impossible songs
A bit of a day in Freuchie

Random events and notions:
Waiting on a delivery from John Lewis
And reading a newspaper
Wondering if the clouds are friendly or full of snow
And where they will go later
Hinges without doors and handles still not fitted
Horses standing stiff and chewing in the field opposite in grey cold
So will I look out of this window in ten years time and if so who will I be by then?
Shifting circumstances and chances that led me to today
Waiting on a delivery
Typing with two fingers to log these slow words
No New York diary or glamorous location today but..
Just still and noiseless with whispering traffic
Trapped in potential living space.
Buddha is hidden in a cupboard incase he offends workmen
And visitors who may not share our legatorial beliefs.
His eyes seen only the closing door and a thin shaft of occasional daylight
His is a secret tribute to the world’s religions and the many meaningless pursuits that surround them.
Bags of plaster
Drinking a mug of soup because it still is January around here
Neighbors are possessive about their car parking spaces no doubt and harbor many puzzled thoughts about the threats we pose for them.
Outsiders
Old gentlemen in their winter hats walk dogs
Funny noises emerge from a lazy central heating system that is unsure of how to react to a human presence in the house as the system slowly warms.
Friendly drafts sneak in for chilly conversations with ankles and fingertips,
Then the retreat to the warmth and are absorbed into the smell of fresh paint.
Will we retire here and vegetate over some mutated internet and look out onto the fields and hills with reluctant bones and aches and things that make movement difficult?
A wee walk to the shop for some essentials and a delivery from Tesco every Thursday.
People make incorrect assumptions about you once you are over fifty, then again they do that anyway regardless of your age.
The friendly joiner drops by with many keys for a door that as yet is not attached to any house – remarkable.
The neighbor cut the grass one time, it has stayed short as a reminder, now we must walk upon egg shells and grass clippings until we know them better and they know that we are reasonable people who pose no threat. Human relations are very often quit ridiculous and for no reason. Are we North or South Korea in this relationship? How far are any of us ever from burning cars or building barricades, drawing lines in the sand and putting up posters to remind the others that this tiny space is ours? Anyway none of that for the time being.
It’s nearly lunch time but I’m not hungry, the Maca is working already.
The furniture delivery men arrive at 1215. After much scratching of heads, puffing and sweating and hard labour (due to the tight staircase) the large brown boxes and beds are checked and upstairs awaiting assembly some time in the future.
Time to go home.

White fluffy dog

impossible songs


impossible songs
White Fluffy Dog

I realised today why I don’t like putting our white fluffy bathroom mats into the washing machine. It feels a bit like shoving a big dog into a washing machine and that to me is not a pleasant thought. This must be why I tend to avoid the task or seem to see it as a lot less important than the other packages of laundry work. For some reason I do enjoy throwing socks into the gaping mouth of the washer however, that reminds me of how you feed dolphins.

Food Supplement

We are now undertaking non-clinical trials of the food supplement “Maca”. No it is not some Beatles tribute product nor a drug made from recycled maracas. It is a South American root synthesised into a small magic pill and it has many “special” properties. These trials will last for one calendar month and a full report will be published at the end, my eyebrows are starting to sprout already, I hope Ali does not become infected in this same way.

Corinthians 3 – Rome 0.

Ok, we’ve had one and two and read them both (well bits of them), now we have Paul’s third letter to the Corinthians. A fine, if rather small piece of theological study and brimstone that we can mull over during the long winter nights. This letter was originally rejected by the spiritual / political council that convened in Rome in the third century to decide on and design the packages of writings that would go onto form the modern bible. So Third Corinthians was cut, edited, condemned and consigned to the biblical dust bin, along with numerous other failed pieces of theology and gospel orientated works ( an early example of the “difficult third album syndrome?”).

It does make you wonder how well things work when they are designed by committee and what the group dynamics and motivations are. Of course believers view this gathering as an inspired group of serious and visionary individuals carefully considering all the elements and listening, at each turn of the page, for the small voice of God in order to vote a passage in or out. I guess to doubt the validity or integrity of the exercise is a pretty heavy form of heresy or even, in extreme cases blasphemy. If you imagine you were god and wanted to provide your people with written guidance and revelation, how would you go about it? Would you pick a group of odd ball power brokers in third century Rome for such a task? Personally I can’t think of any time in history when you could expect to get a bunch of trustworthy, upright and honest people together..”after all, we have all fallen short...”

Jack Kirby

impossible songs v jack kirby



impossible songs

Jack Kirby

Norman’s comments (Steve Ditko) drew me back to the artwork of Jack Kirby, a contemporary of Steve Ditko and another founding father of modern comic strip artistic style and conventions. Staring for long periods at Jack’s artwork is bit like listening to Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground over and over again – mad, wild, splintered, and extreme and a real sensual onslaught. I’m thinking mostly about his Fantastic Four material from the late sixties as it featured huge chunks of machinery and equipment, often floating in other dimensions or exploding in some universal entropy-like state. He really was a great and imaginative draughtsman and whilst Steve Ditko concentrated on a dark, surreal and film-noire inspired world, Kirby built huge and unwieldy constructions, bleak and expansive landscapes, tortured mindscapes and depicted the graphic hell that is the likely centre of the comic strip universe. Of course I can't ignore the Silver Surfer, particularly now that I am one.

HMS Daffodil

(Photos of HMS Daffodil afloat in 1945 and as a sunken wreck on the seabed close to Dieppe harbour in Northern France.)

HMS Daffodil

The kids are working on school history project centred around World War 2, so in order to help them get original material I googled up some of the details of my father’s WW2 service. He was in the navy from 1939 till 1945, and saw action on European waters and all over the Mediterranean; he was involved in three shipwrecks.

He died aged fifty five when I was nineteen, while I was in an “out of order” portion of my life. We were not as close as I’d have liked (or as he’d have liked) and he seldom spoke to me about his navy exploits on minesweepers and auxiliary craft during the war years. Looking back now I am starting to appreciate what, for him as a twenty year old, it must have been like to be caught up in a war, which for him was long, unglamorous and unrelenting.

His best friend and over a thousand other men were killed in the sinking of HMS Hood some where up in the cold North Atlantic. I don’t think he ever really got over the loss and like many of his generation remained tight lipped about his feelings. Often, when I’m moaning about some trivial incident in my life, I’m stopped in my tracks by the thought of how he must have been affected by the loss of the Hood and as it turned out, the Daffodil.

HMS Daffodil was a converted Channel ferry; a real rust bucket built in 1917 and used as an allied transport for D Day and beyond. On March 17 1945 at 11pm she struck a mine just north of the harbour wall at Dieppe, she sank the next day at 5am. Nine men from the Daffodil’s small compliment lost their lives. Thankfully my father survived, retaining his own quietly held memories of the incident and what was no doubt a night of horror. He had already survived an earlier sinking in the Channel when a crew member on the “Vindonia”, a trawler converted for mine sweeping. Records are vague but I think that one foggy night in October 1944 she was cut in two by a large American cargo ship. He was also involved in another similar sinking incident earlier in the war but I don’t know any of the details.

The wreck of the Daffodil is now popular with divers as she is apparently relatively easy to find and safe to explore, sitting 20 - 24m deep on the seabed outside of Dieppe harbour. Her sister ship “Train Ferry 2 “ (T.F 2) lies a few kilometres away at Point de Ailly following her destruction from a shore bombardment sometime in June 1940. These ships were built in Fairfield’s Yard in Govan, Glasgow between 1914 and 18.

Yesterday we visited the "Anne Frank + You" exhibition in Kirkcaldy. Ali’s sister (Kate Brown) has been busy behind the scenes of this event, coordinating and organising what is a stimulating and thought provoking look at intolerance and prejudice then and now. The display and tableaux on the death camp at Auschwitz, featuring testimonies and many photographs, is particularly touching and disturbing. The viewing made me remember once again the friends of my father who sacrificed their lives on the Daffodil in WW2 and how they were playing their own small but vital part in securing a future for my generation and beyond.

impossible songs

Steve Ditko

impossible songs

Steve Ditko

As a child my favourite cartoon illustrator was always Steve Ditko. His artwork, like many childhood things had vanished from my conscious mind until the other day. Ah! the mysterious seas that the brain trawls into and the fields it ploughs over. I never did grow up into any kind of expert “Comic Book Guy” thankfully, by the time I was fifteen reading comics had gone for me and I moved on. In a way though a legacy of half-baked artwork stayed with me till my early twenties (I drew comics for fun) before I completely abandoned my day-dreams of being a comic artist. Anyway Steve Ditko had an odd, always developing, angular style that concentrated on expression and drama. In many ways his drawings were not really very good, they were distorted or contorted but had that biting edge of pen and shadow of ink that really made them different. I don’t know what happened to him later in life but his early Dr Strange, Spiderman and Iron Man works for Marvel were light years ahead of anything that DC Comics could produce and still look great today. Ok, maybe not compared to Pixar’s material but it all seemed great at the time. Judge for yourself and Google the man.






impossible songs