Back to the garden

impossible songs

impossible songs

Don’t fear the bleeper.

Another birthday has passed and today I feel normal again. For one thing I’ve not died on my birthday, something I don’t fancy doing, especially early on in the day before you’ve received all your presents, that would be pants. I suppose a bit like dying on Christmas Eve or just before you go on an expensive and well planned holiday. I’m sure views on this vary depending on religious and philosophical beliefs but I’d much rather die on a day when I’ve nothing special planned for the next. It would minimise any feeling of loss or being cheated out of something and I guess be less of an inconvenience to others.

Having wrestled with the controls of my funky new phone and in true baptism of fire style texted hurried and essential messages (beyond normal new phone training) to practice using it, I’m now finally getting there. This means that I have now forgotten how to work my old phone - but he/she won’t let me go, oh no! (a potential Steven King script idea?). My old phone woke me with a 6.25am alarm yesterday from deep within my briefcase and then asked me if I wanted to switch him/her back on. I did the only kind thing and said an emphatic no. I hope he/she didn’t have too many elaborate plans for the rest of the day.

My birthday was a very pleasant affair (apart from a certain 0 – 5 football result due to bad Karma over my a views on English rugby), quite a few family members flitted across my day and Ali produced an excellent surf’s up meal that seemed to last all evening. Cards and presents were duly received and appreciated and I had no hangover at all on Sunday morning.

We plough the fields and scatter in all directions.

The new electric rotavator had a trial run around the garden this afternoon. Ali remained at a safe distance on top of the hedge doing a fly past with the Black and Decker trimmer while I wrestled single-handedly with the banana coloured ploughing machine. Like Luke blipping across Endor on a speeder bike I cut through the weeds, soil, grass and rubble. By next year this brown field site will be a cricket pitch surrounded by palm trees, orchids and other lush vegetation. It proved to be an exhausting couple of hours work mind you, I’d spent the morning erecting goal posts and then taking them down at the boys football so that’s two sessions of actual physical labour to endure today. My soul however felt pure and satisfied afterwards and I fell into a smug sleep on the couch watching the end of the Brazilian Grand Prix (yawn).

B52

impossible songs v the B52s

impossible songs
B52 forever.

Today I am 52 years old and it’s been a nice day and a feeling so far. By and large I am however finding that 52 is not all that unlike being 51 and 364 days. Of course I have only ventured out so far, so far anyway, but later I intend to venture even further. I am also trying to avoid any mention of rugby, Paris or England or English fans or glorious or Jonny Wilkinson or sports commentator, it is not easy today, on my birthday of all days. One solution is to fill part of the day with watching Dunfermline take on the stripy shirts and weegie accents of Hamilton Academicals at football – a decent alternative to rugby I say. This evening I’ll eat, drink, daydream, muse and maybe watch cartoons or read the paper.

Life in general.

Some tips / suggestions on how to behave and some actual conversational examples:

When asked I replied “I was just in that kind of mood at the time”.

When approached I said “I’ll do that because I think I should”.

When ignored I said nothing that is repeatable here.

When invited I said “I’ll certainly be there”.

When offered a seat at the table, I took it quietly.

When offered the cash I said “Thanks very much”.

The fat shall inherit the earth

impossible songs & the obvious picture

impossible songs

So it has been confirmed that by 2050 the diet dodgers of the UK, the obese, the corpulent and the clinically overweight will be in the majority and a threat to all other life forms on the planet. Well I’m not bothered; they (the fat people) can take pride in their evolutionary success and at the same time take responsibly for their own size and the running of the world (or UK) as well. That’ll teach them, some decent real life stress and having to think about problems instead of puddings might just help shed a few of those precious pounds. The rest of us may now have a fighting chance of getting a shot of the arm rest on a flight and a reasonable increase in private personal space at the same time. Of course if the government was serious about this they’d treat fat people in the same appalling way they treat smokers, gum chewers and TV personalities. All you do is ban fat people from restaurants, cafes, burger bars and the sweetie counter and Pik-a-Mix bar at Woolworths. That way, using the proven road of social exclusion, you will drive them back into conforming to the states’ desired eating regimes. The only problem is that in order for social exclusion to work you have to have created a society that people actually want to be included in. Me, I’m with the unreal Vikings, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, onto this in an unscripted way.

Other things you won’t be able to do most probably before 2020 or by the end of the next Labour government's reign:

Smoke tobacco unless in a private submarine, a barrel going over Niagara Falls or on the moon.
Buy alcohol in bottles/units bigger than 50ml and certainly not at all in a Scottish supermarket.
Carry a Mars Bar or Twix onto an aircraft.
Have sex up in a tree unless wearing a harness and safety helmet and the tree consents.
Urinate into bushes unless involved in a near death experience.
Say anything at all about someone else’s religion.
Tell jokes about fellow human beings or snigger to yourself.
Drive a car above 20mph or anywhere on a road without traffic calming measures (eat that Subaru boys!).
Have zips on your trousers (just too dangerous).
Squeeze spots while looking into mirrors in toilets at Motorway Service Stations.
Criticize the wisdom of having street furniture and warning signs that are in ten languages including Welsh and Polish. This includes multi-lingual signs saying “caution scalding hot water” on all scalding hot water taps.
Be in the same town as a product containing traces of nuts.
Use cash to buy anything other than drugs or sexual favours.
Wear odd socks, hats, checked shirts or a loud tie.
Kick dogs or squirrels if they bite you.
Not wear a condom at all times - just in case. (Applies to both male and female.)
Blog any weird stuff like this.

A passive pot at clouds

impossible songs

impossible songs

Weather Report

It’s the time of year when cheese puffs are rebranded as Witch’s toes and innocent pumpkins are gouged out by reluctant adults and turned into repositories for surplus IKEA tea lights. Nobody ever eats the inside of the pumpkin but we all say “I’ll do something with it this year, perhaps make a pie, that would be nice”. Poorer people break their knives and skin their knuckles and bellow at their impatient children whilst hollowing turnips out for the same smaller effect. Their tea lights come from the Co-op. Yes! Halloween is upon us, the nights are drawing in (yawn) and the great bonfires are being built on green areas and recovered land on which to burn the bodies of unbelievers, adulterers, doorstep Mormons and Social Democrats. It is of course a metaphorical bonfire but it can still be viewed through any housing estate white plastic lounge window on a flat screen TV set to BBC2 or the History Channel (this is a type of modern suburban irony). After these events a long winter, mainly a mixture of floods and frost follows.

Weather in the UK is apparently very similar to that of Patagonia on the southern tip of South America. Nowhere else in the world is there such a volatile mixture of climatic extremes it seems. The thing is nobody lives there so they don’t whinge about it the way that we do, particularly on Tuesdays and when subsequently comparing the real weather with the Technicolor weather icon that sits with your postcode on your homepage or to the right on the BBC website. I think that’s enough of this for now.

Weather Report were/are a tedious jazzy rock band made up of fine players who floated like a fat, passive barrage balloon across the musical skies of the late 20th century. Good luck to them anyway.

We can bee strong

impossible songs

impossible songs

Homes fit for Bees.

Despite taking a battering from mobile phone signals, poor weather, pollen pirates and aggressive shell-suited wasps, the bees are fighting back. Clearly some government minister (from an office near Mr Prescott’s former stomping ground) in association with lifestyle style gurus and marketing giants “Dobbies” has decided to tackle the bee decline problem head on. Now you can adopt a colony of the furry bummers and house them in these neat bee condominiums. They can be dotted around your garden or anywhere not too close to a mobile phone mast or bonfire. Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer and the many English kings who shared that great name would be proud at how this proactive purchasing and bee breeding action may save the civilised world. It is important that in your enthusiasm to begin a bee colony that you don’t make the possibly fatal mistake of attracting a group of African Killer Bees into your garden. No matter what type of political system they may say they are fleeing from or how oppressed and persecuted they might say they are, don’t believe them. NIMBY.

Smile please

impossible songs

impossible songs

Laser Lollies.

Invention is the mother of necessity and so it was only a matter time before one of our highly skilled researchers here at the Abercorn Institute of Naval Gazing Medicine came up with a white chocolate lolly that incorporates a strawberry laser centre. We’re hoping to market these items around the Balearics all next summer long from a well pimped Ford Transit ice-cream van. Packed with a certain bohemian punch it certainly beats 99s and Mr Whippys into a cocked hat.

A frog of plagues.

There’s nothing quite like coming home from work to find that one of the cats has peed by the back door and that a small frog is happily paddling in it. The orphan frog is removed and returned to the wild in what has now become a well practised ceremony and the yellow stream of territorial marking is wiped up and disinfected. Life then resumes.

She came in through the drive-through window.

Dumb. It is dumb to eat two McDonalds sausage and egg McMuffins back to back, or in any other less than normal seated at a table physical dining position. And another thing, why are there no Taco Belles or Wendy’s in the UK?

A quiet night at the Stag

impossible songs PA crisis

impossible songs

Ali, Norman and I braved the hysterical October weather and South Queensferry’s spiralling property prices to host a flat as a “Flat Earth Society Sat Nav System” Open Mike at the flat Stag. This evening was in honour of the SQ Arts Fest planned for sometime in the future. We jammed along on a few of each others songs for fun, chatted about comics and supped shandy for a while and then ritually dismantled the PA. Of course we could’ve been at OOTB in the fabled city doing honorary John Peel duets. Still I got to bed at a decent time and the nightmares were less vivid. Signed myself out today....

Radioheadwig

impossible songs

impossible songs

TinTin is happy today

impossible songs

A sense of true completeness.

A cup of tea and a chunky Kit Kat, Sunday newspapers scattered and unread. Things done, odd jobs chalked out, some materials used up and a few odd bits left over. The sun coming in through the kitchen window, looking out and noticing that the grass has been cut. Putting fairy lights on the arbour for visiting, fee paying, paid up and flaked out smokers. Buried solar lights that rise and surprise in the Indian summer evenings - we hope. Rubbing Brasso over the scratches on my car and plugging a leak in the radiator with a compound that looks like it’s made out of crushed herbs. Watching a squirrel bury nuts in the lawn and then inspecting the tiny holes he made in it. Stir fried veg and meat in oyster sauce, red wine and a strawberry and vanilla smoothie. Recording loads of programmes on Sky Plus and knowing that we’ll never get round to viewing any of them. A sore throat still being sore but not getting any worse. Swotting up for the next day at work on the couch in a cosy lounge. Looking forward to next weekend, holidays, weddings, Christmas (for no clear reason) and my birthday. Missing traffic jams (until tomorrow).

Brown Bomber and a frog

impossible songs

impossible songs

Things of the spirit...

If you choose to dive into that cool swimming pool well that’s fine by me but don’t expect me to do the same unless I actually want to. Don’t presume or assume that your thoughts and urges are always similar to mine and that your opinions and beliefs some how mirror mine, why should they? And while I’m on a rant don’t even think that I really care about what you think or feel or wish to sell to the rest of the world, I don’t. I do however respect your position, rights and space – so get on with what you have to do.

Afterlife

They say that in Valhalla it’ll be nothing but Guinness and Stovies. An idea I’m not altogether against so I’ve decided to join this Facebook group and in so doing hopefully determine my eternal dwelling place and a basic diet. Everybody needs a plan for their future.

Cat life

Clint the kitten killed his first frog today, before I could stop him. Of course that led on to me experiencing some inner conflict, (and nostalgia in the process) by wondering whether or not I should even consider stopping him from being the natural killing machine he is. The frog is in the wrong place at the wrong time (our kitchen) and it’s only natural for something a step or two higher on the food chain to have a peck at him. So moved was I that I wrote this little snippet in honour of the event:

“Alas and a lack, that little grey frog won’t come back.
Now a kitten has grasped, a frog can make a tasty snack.”

Brown Bomber

As a teenager I wore two copies out, it is the blurry soundtrack to the best and worst of times. It is a fusion of the best of rock, pop, blues and folk and it touched a nerve like nothing else with its energy, guitar technique, noise and latent mystery. I now realise that I’ve been looking for some other musical effort to better it ever since and to date that has not happened - though a few things came close (generally in a genre not far away from this but in forms less well defined), so I’m stuck with it. The strange thing is that I have no real need or desire to listen to it all the way through ever again.

Tiger Balm

impossible songs

impossible songs

The Smiling Angel of Divine Retribution: When she visits the children dance in the streets, bees buzz, the sun sneaks out and away from the thickest cloud, the rain dries and steams on grey pavements and buskers spontaneously sing a newly composed song and then combust. So glowing will your Universal Karma be at the time of the angelic visit that the area surrounding you will light up in a pale but warming radioactive-green and soul sanitising way. Meanwhile a small still voice inside will say to you “Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over, hey how, hey now, when the world closes in”. You’ll repeat this simple mantra 1001 times and then on completion allow your natural cynicism a few brief seconds of life before you crush it like a wasp with the latest copy of Hello magazine.

Thank you: Thanks be to all those who let the gypsy traveller in, who relinquish a space to a white van, to a family in their grubby, sticky people carrier, to a Tesco lorry delivering the bacon, to the football teams and stag weekends and sundry grim faced motorcyclists, the knights and ladies of the road who leave a gap to squeeze a desperate bumper into. Thanks a thousand fold more to the brainless, idle and blind politicians who have stalled and stammered at the prospect of a new crossing for the River Forth. Your lack of balls and action and interest in your fellow Scots has led to weekends, mornings and evenings of misery for your people (thankfully we are not in any decent sense yours!), punch ups, arguments, divorces, horn honking, over heated cars and time wasting on a grand scale while the Road Bridge rusts and it’s successor is still in an iron foundry somewhere in Poland or Germany. To our leaders and FETA thanks a banana bunch.

Tiger Balm is a smooth and spicy little number that contains no tiger components, or rodents or unnecessary quotients. I now have a little jar, a gift from Thailand afar, to rub upon my sore and tired out places, to resurrect and so it my strength replaces, to put heat into the coldest space. I’ll rub some in some day and eat a jelly baby and light a sacred candle to take all the pain away. Having said that I’m not a big fan of Eastern religion(s) or books that you have to read backwards.

Much pasta has been cooked, some even eaten with a rich meat and tomato sauce, but large cold, buttery yellow slabs of the material remain locked up in an open fridge. These then tempt the feeble-minded and hungry into adding into their metabolism some extra micro waved calories of hot, heavy pasta. So is it true that if you micro wave food for over three minutes, 25% of the calorific content is removed? I believe that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh & Pitreavie near Paisley gas works are working on the theory even as we eat, sleep, drink and read the Sunday papers.

All hail the dome

impossible songs

impossible songs

The dome of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology, London, England - as photographed by Ali last Friday.

Spirit House

impossible songs

impossible songs

Home safe

The newlyweds are back from Thailand with all their luggage, gifts and souvenirs, not a great deal of leftover money but both in good health. They tell of a strange land where water gypsies flourish in stilted communities, hotels have resident elephants, lizards appear in the toilets, each house has a little spirit house and a mini monsoon happens every other day, spicy food is served round the clock, city traffic is indescribable, the beaches are beautiful and clean, the streets are lined with orchids, Buddhas and yellow flags are everywhere and having to haggle over the price of a meal is common place. Sounds a bit like Edinburgh in August.

Problems of a metabolic nature

So what is the best balanced human metabolism? The high running, hungry churning and burning Porsche type, the steady, uneventful and regular Volvo, or the skimpy, minimal and economic, slowly revolving Smart and are there only clichéd types like these? Probably not but the best one to have is of course the one that keeps on running and gives you the least trouble over time relative to actual mileage. Naturally I’m a bit fuzzy on metabolic management, “you are what you eat” is now trite and irritating and true in the same way that fish don’t need to swim up hills or push wheelbarrows. So if you have a slow metabolism can you speed it up by eating more hot curries, drinking smoothies and munching on shredded wheat and doing exercises? I suppose that might work but I can’t be bothered with any of that or the Okinawa way or power eating and any other think that I might have to actually brood over and plan. There lies the problem; I really do not want to have to think about what I eat or how it may affect me. Of course I know I should but I don’t, I just want to fly through this life eating and drinking nice, tasty, brightly coloured and well prepared food (in reasonable but not large amounts) regardless of the consequences. With this attitude it’s obvious that a day of reckoning is clearly not far away - some may say.

I did laugh out loud when I read this quote from Jack Dee in the paper today: A woman wrote to the Daily Mail saying: “I for one am glad that ‘Jif’ has now changed its name to ‘Cif’, as there already is another product on the market known as ‘Jif’ and I found this really confusing”. Really? Did you really? How confused were you in all honesty between a lemon-shaped, lemon-filled, lemon-coloured, plastic lemon and a bottle of scourer with a picture of a bath on the side?”

Prawn day

impossible songs


impossible songs

Sunday we were up without hangovers at the crack of eight for football at Inverkeithing and the usual piddling around with restricted bridge traffic. We were well beaten by a Kirkcaldy side that had an appetite, passion and organisation you don’t see in many teams of twelve year olds. Joe wasn’t too disappointed as he hadn’t expected much in the first place, the team’s reputation saw to that. I also enjoyed my weekly does of exercise by helping dismantle and carry the goal posts after the game.

Not too much road rage today on the bridge either, a few duffers seemed to think cutting into the line 100 yards from the contra flow was clever and some people of questionable intellect braved the bus lane. I always wonder what inner justification these people have for their actions. Heading for ER with a bleeding artery, visiting an ailing relative with lifesaving drugs, delivering a quick frozen heart for transplant or are they just sociopaths with no life? Primary offenders are the pilots of Golf GTIs, Peugeot 307s and people carriers of different origins, generally the drivers are male, wearing shades, appear to be indifferent to their own actions and are chatting on the phone – why am I bothered?

Saturday was designated prawn day. The idea being that we would eat prawns for lunch – pretty simple and unspectacular really. We had some big fat ones with a hot dip sauce, some smaller Scottish ones, wedges and a large amount of salad and not quite enough wine. Prawns are not everybody’s cup of seafood of course so while Joe and I scoffed them happily, enjoying the entire messy experience of shells and spiny bits and the resultant sorting and sifting to strike meat, Liv and Ali took a slower and more measured eating route. Following the feast nobody suffered any serious after effects and we spent the afternoon grappling with a double dose of first year homework, War of the Worlds and the football results. Ali wisely avoided this by heading for Freuchie to tidy up after a month long let.

On Friday Ali returned from London where she had witnessed her father Tom Brown receiving a special honour from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology for his ground breaking work on ultrasound scanning. His main body of work was done back in the late 50s but he has retained an interest in its progress and not lost his appetite for all things in this area and engineering in general. Tom has finally gained a place in scientific history and is now highly regarded for his work in this field and for the many health benefits that have accrued from it all across the globe. Ali, Kate and Rhona were present and enjoyed basking in his reflected glory as the “Daughters of Tom Brown” (not forgetting Mrs Geira Brown either of course!).

Get your retrospective groove back

impossible songs



impossible songs

Sins (if you like) I am most guilty of:

Procrastination.
Fidgeting.
Secretly enjoying hoovering.
Liking the music of the agnostic gospel choir.
Trying to figure out the best ways of recycling then giving up.
Dodging in and out of lanes on motorways.
Drinking coffee when I don’t really want to.
Putting a big pile of papers on my desk at work and never starting work on them.
Singing along with songs on the radio or cd and getting the words completely wrong.
Losing count of alcohol consumption.
Going to the supermarket and getting things but not the thing I went into get.
Thinking about gardening more than doing it.
Being early for things.
Ignoring phone calls.
Honking my horn at dummies who block the exits on roundabouts and junctions.
Forgetting to cut my toenails.

My better points:

Checking emails every day at home and at work (sometimes checking too quickly).
Always keeping on top of the laundry.
Generally being happy inside though not reflecting that on the outside.
I snore but am in denial.
A regular purchaser of a Saturday newspaper.
I’m actually proud to be Scottish.
I can cook rice.
My impulses are generally creative and positive.
I can detach myself from situations.
I don’t mind cooking breakfast at weekends.
My car has that comfortable lived in look and smell.
Feeding the birds.
Negotiating free Sky for a year.
Feeling sad when I hear about death in a family.
Keeping my fingernails short.
I usually have a contingency plan - somewhere.

Cats eye view.

I couldn’t help wonder what might be going through the little minds of the kittens as they watched me scooping out the **** from their litter tray and delicately putting it into a poly bag and then knotting the bag and then taking it outside. Human life must be a complete mystery to these tame but wild beasts.

Big log

impossible songs


impossible songs

Idiots guide to Progressive Rock

I think I’ve lost my way in music at the moment. I’ve been doing a lot of listening and background reading and web browsing but very little writing or playing. Of all our years of working together this one has been the least creative and productive. The good thing in all this is that I don’t feel too anxious about it nor have I the need to strive, wring my hands, sweat and kick and somehow produce something for the sake of it. It’s like a time of recharging or resting. I’m sure that the neurons and electrons and whatever buzzing things exist in the head are still in there spinning wildly but just making some different connections amongst themselves. The other thing is that we have a back catalogue of old half written, half baked songs that could be jacked up and worked on should some emergency occur but revisiting older material can be the hardest thing. Song writing needs to be generated from some place that is on an emotional edge, it can’t happen in a neutral or sanitised space or if lodged too deep in a comfort zone. Of course busyness and stress are creative killers if you let them reign and there’s been a lot of that this year so far. So what’s the next step? The darker autumn nights, the crack of the wood burning, the twist of the sobriety, the gate at the end of the garden, the sneak and scent of the hunt and chase, the closure and the openness, the pay off and the payout, the stretched perception and the withering backlog, some home cooking and a sharp frost on fingers and toes and the magic light in a loved ones eyes.

Recording music is the greatest thing – and then hearing it, fresh some time later: I was listening to some of our older stuff in samples on the web. I loved the little random chopped up songs sailing in from some clunking American server miles away. Mp3s edited by chance and ordered in no particular order. Heartburst sounded great and evocative and pink and the memories of the sessions back in Germany came to me, bright as buttons. That was a good time. Maybe this dip is no dip at all but a slow climb to the surface.

Simplistic Things

impossible songs

impossible songs

In praise of the simple things in life and digestive biscuits.

House to house cat searching isn’t all bad and some information has been uncovered and sightings confirmed. This is a long drawn out process. This is a long game but we’re in it.

Don’t be afraid of doing Pink Floyd or Abba covers.

A decent bonfire cheers up the entire countryside and provides new and intriguing smoke odours with which to colour the garden at dusk and of course your clothes.

Why is the moon so small? (From here).

Disturbing the home of a large frog is an unkind thing to do.

The forgotten lottery ticket haunts me.

The night flight of the aircraft is noisier than the day flight.

Give a rabbit and a guinea pig a straw tunnel and in no time at all they will turn it into a toilet.

Cleaning out the shower isn’t so bad.

Firstly it’s stir fried chicken with peppers, the curried chick peas and carrots, rice, salad potatoes and egg noodles. That was tea. Secondly we all ate our chocolate in secret (with coffee or beer). Saturday night TV is nothing to speak of and probably never will be.

I just know that finding my way around Glenrothes to seek out a football pitch will be a pain. (It was and we got beat 4 – 2 but a double cheeseburger and some funny voice practices cheered us all up).

A laser toy for cats.

Dock leaves cannot travel two miles from the sight of their picking without expiring.

When you’re wandering around in fields and woods the sun comes out and it’s all pretty good.

I’ve forgotten how to do many things but I still remember how to iron (unfortunately).

Reflecting on last week’s wedding is currently my favourite pastime. Some days you wish a Groundhog Day thing would happen, just once, but I have the photographs.

In handbag fight between Bebo, Facebook and Myspace who would win and would anybody really care? Once you get stuck into these things they build up an irritating inertia that starts to govern little chunks of your life: but that’s true of anything you like doing. It’s pointless to analyse what it is that gives you pleasure and meaning and a sense of well being. Just sip the wine, stroke the cat, look around and enjoy the warmth, from whatever direction it comes, for as long as you can.

Planes, trains and weddings...

Big dress in a bigger car.


A long stretch looks likely for both.


Emma Smith and Ali Graham display their head wear.

impossible songs



impossible songs

Planes, trains, weddings and...

Yesterday was a grim day for the most part. It started of well with me attending a very positive meeting in the Midlands and then on the way home buying a very comfy pair of Timberland shoes at a retail outlet. I was happy. After a quiet bite at Birmingham airport I boarded one of Flybe’s finest little blue and white jets. It left the stand a trifle late and then half way down the runway a few seconds before the full take off speed might be achieved, braked sharply. This gave all the passengers and staff a nasty shock and a few minutes of deep breathing and revisiting aspects of past lives followed. The rest the story is long and tedious, it involves over heating aircraft brakes, confused avionic systems, being towed a mile back up the runway and then spending three hours sitting in a plane going nowhere. This was followed by an hour in the terminal and then the slow realisation that the night would be spent in a hotel and not at home. I checked into the hotel about midnight and was up again at five to get my revised flight back to Edinburgh. I finally got home to collect a clean shirt at about ten this morning and headed over to work. All in all I’ve had about four hours sleep in the past thirty six. Thinking about last weekend has however kept me sane.

Wedding snaps are fun, here above are some I like.

Wedding of the century

Guy and Erin - married at Culross Abbey.
impossible songs



impossible songs

Wedding of the century

Erin and Guy’s wedding took place on the 15th and it was quite simply a wonderful day. The bride was (is) beautiful and the groom as smart as a new pin. I was in every way the very proud dad and really enjoyed each part of the ceremony and celebrations. Erin and Guy both have big and boisterous families and the reception and the subsequent party, disco and the drinking and blethering went on well into the wee small hours. Next morning (after a comatosed kind of sleep) those of us who’d stayed over in the hotel breakfasted and lunched together, relaxing and chatting after the previous day’s excitement. Erin and Guy are now jetting away to Thailand for a few weeks...

Complicated

impossible songs



impossible songs

Things are getting complicated. At the moment in order to get out of the house we have to check and feed the rabbit and guinea pig, feed the kittens, catch them and then put them in their pen (something that is getting increasingly difficult) as well as all the normal everyday early morning things you do. At all times, whatever we are doing we have to be careful not to let the kittens out. On the way home in the evening a Syrus search is carried out, generally at some local countryside spot. This involves dish clanging and a lot of trudging across fields and listening intently. Then once home the kittens need fed and cleaned out and the squeaky rodents need a salad prepared and laid out before them. Then they scratch you and the kittens eat your shoes.

Today is the day before my daughter’s wedding (gulp). Yesterday we had the rehearsal, which was fun; today some kilts were picked up, house and car cleaning done, a rodent pen constructed, shopping attempted and various odd jobs tackled. I also managed to complete my father of the bride speech; hopefully this short speech will come across as funny, neutral and sincere. I dare not however underestimate my own strange ability to be misunderstood by friends and family alike. I’m looking forward to the wedding the way that you’d look forward to a parachute jump, it’s going to be scary, exhilarating, great to look at, quick and (for the mean time) a once in a life time experience. The weather forecast is a bit iffy also, we shall see.

Why do nettle stings hurt for so long these days? I just need to look at a nettle now and red poppy mark appears on me and lasts half a day. Perhaps in my lifetime I had built up a high level of resistance to the native Fife nettle which does not now work in the strange sub-tropical landscapes and wide open spaces of West Lothian. I actually hate nettles, if they were insects they’d be wasps.