Ultimate Brownie

Here it is, the cut cross section of a home made chocolate brownie. Made by my eldest daughter it may well be "peak brownie". Sweet, crisp on top, moist in the middle, a good chunky bite sized portion, it ticks every brownie box that I can imagine. Brownies like this have been on my mind since Bake Off was all about them a couple of weeks ago. Nice to try a home baked one that was so much better than anything you'd buy in a shop.

In other unrelated food news, sourdough bread certainly gives your gut something to do. Also if you add French mustard as a topping to sourdough bread the mustard starts to taste (as strong as) like English mustard. Tuna was also involved ... and mayo ... and tomato.

Unrelated sports news: Family flag flying (or fixed more accurately) amongst many others in the home stand at East End Park on Saturday. Handy that the Pars won their first league game of the season 3 - 1. Flags for spectators, never thought it would come to this.

Lego drone patrol

Incoming Images: Had the old/new Lego drone* out on patrol the other day, caught up on a few local locations. Firstly a home scene, nearing completion, already some furniture and appliances are in place. The designer and builder are currently on a break. Then zooming in on a fast food joint where a burger, fries and a milk shake await consumption. The ketchup is by the side, strangely enough dispensed from a bottle. Yum.

*Lego drones are as yet not readily available to the buying public. The military, the police and the secret services are busy conducting trials. There's a waiting list. It's exclusive but long. You wont be on it anytime soon.

Bin Bag Art

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#ITSALLBEENDONEBEFORE.

 

Olla Podrida

 

When you first hear of a new name in Spanish for something you already know: If you're going to get into a stew then why not just make it a Spanish stew. Regarding recipes, methods and ingredients; they all may vary according to your taste and what might be available to you. Stew is stew I guess, make of it what you will. What a time to be alive.

Whilst on the subject of food here's a weird rendering of our crop of possibly inedible Scottish pears. Home grown and picked from a wonky tree that's the fruit tree equivalent of Bernie Ecclestone as a new parent. Pretty sure, however we prepare them, that they will not taste as good as this picture looks.

Recurring Themes

 

In a medium sized font for the good of economy and to retain balance in the ecology of ecology: I like this shape, it may be a snake, it may be a probe, it may be underwater or through glass. I've used it a few times now. Here and there. I can't quite recall all the places and times. If it was a voice it might be an IT helpline, calm, in control and working to a precise script, icy but appreciated and effective. 

Also, as is the custom these days, further career advice/guidance (or at least possible suggestions) from the archives of oblivion:

After dark but bathed in artificial light. The old harbour at South Queensferry. Taken whilst everyone else is either staring into space looking for the brighter than ever Mars or fixating on the Forth Bridges.

Daily Pigeon

 

Above: A pigeon pointing left and below that a pigeon (the same one in fact) pointing to the right. There are a number of pigeons that seem to reside in our garden, but you never really know where they go, what they do, they're just there. The flop about and only really fly if they need to get to the top of a tree or onto the roof apex. Local chickens may have corrupted their ideas around flight and how to do it. They may also be reincarnated friends or family, making their solitary way on the long journey back to redemption, you can never tell. Fortunately they don't bother the cats and the cats don't bother them either. 

All is remaining in balance, in quite a fine balance of things in an unbalanced world. Occasionally one might fly by and bump into a window. They probably are quite dumb but have happy faces. That's about it, hardly Blue Planet standard of wildlife monitoring, photography and depth of content I know. I'm just glad that these birds like it around here.

PTSD

 

Series 2 is done: Without disrespecting anyone suffering from PTSD I have to say that "The Boys" (currently running on Amazon Prime) is a tough show to watch. Twists, turns, jump scares, unexpected and instant deaths and fruity language and a sprinkling of social commentary. I'm not sure how we started watching this and despite myself I'm not sure if I could have stopped. Perhaps we're being slowly desensitized by the media in advance of some awful predicted or planned event. All in the name of entertainment. A true blue version of Trump's American dream come to life with all of his integrity, self awareness and self control on display (sic). I wonder what any of Trump's supporters watching the show make of it.

Spoiler alert: "It was so beautiful how the three of us sat there, in the shade of an apple tree. Do you remember the day Frederick? Chloe's arms out of the car window. We found the perfect spot by the river, in the shade of an apple tree. It was the first time Chloe ate fresh apples." - (Translated).

Sweet Dreams

 ...and flying machines in pieces on the ground. Life is a series of birthdays, each one a milestone and a marker. A way of trying to remember people and places or a prompt as to life's slow but steady progress and the confusion created along the way. My first pandemic birthday is now on the muddled horizon despite my best attempts at denial. Pubs and restaurants are closed, travel is discouraged and gatherings are prohibited. Fun sucked up by the Covid sponge. The window of opportunity has closed as we struggle with the quirks and paradoxes of staying safe and alive and being human. An unfortunate and unavoidable state we all suffer from.

Society: It's never been easy but now it's mostly confusing and the sense of inner conflict we all feel rises like a bad smell from each crossed out diary date. We're enduring a slow death in order to live, smiling on in the margins, standing in the cold supping coffee like amateur detectives on a tough case. Casing the joint, just waiting for a break, it's not here yet. Hoping that party hungry idiots don't blow up in our neighborhood with their lack of distancing as they skew the infected numbers and condemn us to solitary confinement for Christmas and beyond. 

Entertainment: I probably should be more bothered but I'm puzzled, do you run away from or run towards the threat? Do you simply stand still and obey as the angel of pestilence and inconvenience passes over killing our hopes for 2020? What TV show or film should we stream to dull the pain? What steps to take? There's too much shouting going on and social media is a mess. The phone line to the Chinese take away counter is permanently engaged and the apps are jammed. Try again later. We are experiencing high demand and higher volumes (regardless of the time of your call). The new contract to free up the systems will be awarded soon but not to anyone competent or with relevant experience. 

Trouble: Four Romanians in a black Audi are patrolling the streets looking for a business opportunity or to make trouble. Not all Romanians behave this way, though these guys are stealing tools from sheds and trying door handles. They're real but they're in a fictitious disguise, nocturnal, a clear and present threat, possibly not in your area yet, they may have indeed moved on, such was the fury and indignation expressed on Facebook. They're to blame for the litter, the excess revving of engines, the broken glass and the flickering of a hundred security lights ... and still they come. Their presence invades our dreams, bogey men and undesirables forcing us to pull up drawbridges and close the blinds. Eyes shut tight we sleep on. We will awake in the spring, assess the damage and submit a well put together report. It will be ignored, the courts have more pressing business to deal with and there's a high volume of calls. Sweet dreams.

Hidden in plain sight: And another thing, I'd always imagined that our leaders, as we lurch into dictatorship and downright corruption, would have been better looking and better dressed. Hmm.

Ideas used as maps

What is it about those old Bob Dylan songs covered and performed by the Byrds? There's an almost perfect pop quality in them, a lightness of touch, an innocence and a freshness in the dreamlike delivery. The simplicity and brevity of the arrangement, nobody trying too hard. It all just works. For all the styles and genres of music I've enjoyed over the years this still pleases me the most, well most of the time (?). I'm probably losing it. Don't look back, don't go back.

Crimson flames tied through my ears

Rollin' high and mighty traps

Pounced with fire on flaming roads

Using ideas as my maps

"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I

Proud 'neath heated brow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.

(And so on)...

National Careers Service

 

Above and below: Just some of the wonderful career advice I received from the National Careers Service when I stumbled into their website. In a highly optimistic and positive manner, having analysed my answers to various questions the helpful site offers up possible careers for the bewildered and the confused. I've always felt at home in that type of category but their recommendations did surprise even me, particularly in these peculiar times when retraining and upskilling are being advised by the powers that be as a sensible course of action for those out of work. 

It seems their outlook is biased towards a kind of "anything is possible" or "be all you can be" form of thinking with all the tonal variation of an episode of Trumpton or Camberwick Green (a reference for readers of a certain age) or Blue Peter on a bad night. The harsh reality of the big bad world of work is played down and swept away in an almost narcotic and fanciful fashion. There's fake fairy dust scattered across every web-page.

I was naturally intrigued by how they assessed me now that I'm into my twilight years but it seems they don't give up on anyone and the possible variations for the things I could do are many and varied. I've only included a couple of tell tale screen shots of the outcomes, I kind of had to walk away after a few minutes browsing the results. So it's boxer, football referee (nice and specific I thought), actor, or editor for me. If these don't work out there is also stockbroker, engineer, dressmaker and leather technologist (?). 

In the end I'm a bit puzzled and quite unlikely to follow up on these suggestions. I'm reminded of the old Ian Dury song "What a waste" and left with a strange, hollow feeling of just what might have been.

Hold on to yourself

Like something from the last days of Pompeii we toddled on, on our fitness route we meandered and then we ate out yesterday, a very pleasant brunch. We failed to share it via Tweeter or FarceBook so I'm sharing it abstractly via Blowger now. No images however. I may have missed a bit here and there and my camera wasn't used. We enjoyed brunch as the sun peeped through busy windows by the waterside, on a brave new morning. There was coffee and bacon, pancakes and French toast and syrup and a kind of serene atmosphere of pretend masked up normality. We sat and chatted but not for too long. How long does a welcome last these days? Don't overdo it.

The staff were attentive and friendly but I guess by 1800 today they'll be packing up and heading off into the sunset till who knows when. This is the new reality, living and working in the moment. The cruel uncertainty of what might be around the corner. Some peace and order or some fresh eruption? I hope the promised safety net is tough enough and big enough. I hope we can do this again soon.

P.S. We have dead mouse odour circulating. You see the signs, you apply the treatment, you wait, no signs of life ... just the feeble but pungent smell of a dead mouse returning to nature in some unreachable part of your property. No need to explain but you want to know it's fate and those unbothered by mice simply don't understand.

Not going out

So for the foreseeable future (currently looking at about a fortnight) we're stuck in Lothian. Lothian is a vague kind of a concept of a thing, a mythical place and a set of boundaries that exists only in some Health Board definition of where things might be or should be put. I guess the provision of health services looms large in the thinking but not in the same way as the emptying of dustbins, allocation of parking permits or postcodes. 

It's abstract in a way that challenges spacial perception and makes a person question quite where they might be standing in the universe (or if that is even possible). So as my shoes touch the muddy earth or the damp and rotting autumn leaves on the path or the new tarmac on the road I live near to I'll wonder to myself, "Am I really here or am I really in Lothian?"

In the end I concluded, after some slow coffee and rapid chocolate, that I knew what I always knew but perhaps due to educational influence or societal programming I did not dare admit it. Like Camelot or Middle Earth, Valhalla or Narnia, Lothian is quite simply a state of mind, and for the time being nobody can leave it or enter it. Peace be unto you all on your abortive travels.

In other news the nearest Aldi store is in Borrowstone Town Ness and the nearest Greggs is in no man's land between Broxburn and Newbridge. I'll just play relaxing music during the essential journey.

Meanwhile far away across the water, Fife burns like a Big Country lyric. (Photo Tom Duffin.)

Over our heads

I walked by this the other day, the steps on the left are a particularly poignant little detail in the photo. It's an empty boathouse, the flood whilst an unfortunate event didn't harm anyone.

I saw the image below yesterday having seen the message* repeated all over social media. I guess the government have truly given up on anything remotely creative now. The UK is just a royalist, delusional, colonial minded dustbin. Only drones are required in this Brave New World of continual TV repeats, no fresh ideas, lift music playing quietly in every venue, human rights eroded and all design and innovation fully snuffed out. Great work at a time when imagination and inspiration is badly required. Here we are, wriggling around under the thumbs of idiots. (I'm sure we'll still prevail in the reworked underground). So much to get outraged about, so little time.

 

* I understand the great man and financial mastermind has taken these remarks back or played the "taken out of context" card. Ho hum.

RIP #EVH

 

The River

As per the previous post: I was out the other day just idly standing by the river checking for the bodies of any of my fairly few remaining enemies in the torrent. Nothing to see so far and the river was flowing well above it's normal level (see the handy park bench indicator above), it'd been a wet weekend. Maybe tomorrow. I guess I don't really care enough to actually wish a watery grave on old enemies and I doubt I'd even recognize any of the bloated, discoloured bodies ballooning by after all this time. They'd probably be the enemies of other, random people hoping I'd adopt them in death because their own enemies have grown bored with the exercise and ignored them, no longer being on station on the river bank.

Title

Suffice to say walking away from a working project generates mixed feelings. I've experienced this recently following a bit of a meeting of minds and subsequent departing of minds. It was all reasonably good natured but in the end the final straw was the final straw. I walked away a free man but one without a "title", a label or an occupation. I no longer contribute. I'm in that limbo that is, as actors might say, between jobs. I'm too gravely perhaps, too unsettled, too difficult to influence, too old ... I'm OK with that. Things come and go and usually come back again. "If you stand by the river long enough the bodies of your enemies will eventually come floating by", I've never quite seen that actually happen and I've stood on the banks of many rivers.

War Criminal

 

"He always had those cold, dark eyes that you could never trust," said the prosecuting inquisitor. " He would repeatedly say things like 'I can't imagine I'm the only person thinking this', when he clearly was the only person thinking that (based on experience and as far as we can ever know what other people are actually thinking, assuming that they made honest and truthful admissions). Terribly misguided and lacking in self awareness, one to be avoided".

Over the years, as I've aged, I've somehow managed to cultivate the look and perhaps the demeanor of some kind of second rate (?) war criminal. This is not who I am I assure you, it's just turned out that way due to some lifestyle issues, questionable diet, haphazard choices and the poorly executed use of photographic tools and effects. I stand or more truthfully, slouch a bit, as a warning and signpost and an example to you all.

Our Covid Love Affair

The fine art of getting by.

Covid isn't going away any time soon:  Nobody is going to rescue us from the imminent threat to life and civilization we've slowly come to love or at least get used to, the unseen beast that is Covid. We're all fully fucked up in a global Stockholm Syndrome that punishes us all, rich and poor, we're caught up in this abusive but loving paradox. Covid walks behind you and whispers in your ear. "Life on the edge isn't a proper life but it's better than life over the edge, let me in at your peril." 

This is science fact not fiction, ugh.

So we're lost in a post Covid world where there are no rules, the fields are already alight, travel plans are a thing of the past and Christmas looks as dismal as if Banksy had re-imagined it using only neutral tones. But as compensation, there's still that terrible sense of joy you get watching the government's twists and turns and lies as they try to avoid blame or take responsibility or simply explain themselves. When you are in a hole stop digging, as wise man alone in a muddy field once said. 

I dislike all of these sentences.

Now all the old school chums and cronies have had their slices of the contracted out works, and have failed to deliver workable solutions. What next, who do you blame? The young, the poor, the people who went to the raves or pubs, the immigrants, the refugees, the care homes, those fucking over 60s boomers, the NHS and the Chinese. We're all jolly hostages here and our leaders and power brokers are out of their depth. 

Things that the BBC/establishment media knows and understands but wont say because why would it?

For the time being we're kidnapped and bound, we adopt that mentality, we fall in love, gradually, gingerly, taking tiny steps with the great beast, the bringer of destruction and pestilence. We are the love slaves of Covid our captor. Now we have direction and purpose, just the wrong direction and a warped purpose. So that needs to change, fight the virus, resist the brainwashing of the government and the media, wear a mask and think carefully about what you're doing and any possible consequences. I sometimes that wish I, like most of the human race, wasn't such a conflicted hypocrite.

None of these bigger things will happen, we'll soldier on, pay the higher prices, hibernate, quietly sing in the shower and watch more Netflix. A few pensioners might die*.

*Wait a minute, that's way too close for comfort.

               

P.S. Donald and Melania Trump have tested positive for the virus. Thoughts and prayers go out to the poor virus.

8:55

 The clock that seldom lies, unless it stops.

The cock that cannot fly that sits on top.

The bell that chimes away the hourly slot.

The people down below say, "What, what, what?"

"You're making the High Street one way?"

Robert Burns 2nd October 2020.

The pandemic will accelerate the evolution of our cities.

 

Frankly I disagree but I understand where you're coming from. Enforced evolution seldom produces the results you expect. Art will destroy itself, a culture vacuum will strangle initiative, capitalism will erode the very idea of health and welfare and the green movements will destroy humanity in order to save the planet. 

Please don't blame the pandemic for things and outcomes that are fundamentally human in origin. We may well look back and yearn for this time of opportunity and the clear chances to make changes that our rulers missed.