Sunday, October 10, 2021

The Main Ingredient

 

I'm doubtful this is correct but if it is thank you very much, as I'm double vaxed I'll be doubly demonic I guess. What I need is an extra dose right now, to finish the job and the virus. As Jesus might have said, flesh and blood did not reveal this truth to me or you. 

Saturday, October 09, 2021

Firth of Froth

 


Local brew, two and a half pints in. In the pub. Ferry Brewery with glassy fingerprints and beery overtones. We live at the dirty end of the river, where the silt is visible in the water as it travels downwards and outwards, the colour of cloudy beer mostly. Great brown particles and shoals of whatever silt is made of, passing our windows and litter bins with each tide. 

I often wonder when, after all these years of outpouring, Scotland's silt will run out and what may happen then. The waters of the Forth might be clear and drinkable for all, until that is they finally meet the rowdy and uncouth oily, salt and vinegar flavoured H20 of the North Sea. 

The silt exporting and processing industry* may no longer be a viable business and many jobs will be lost and once bustling waterfront communities will die. I may not live long enough to see that strange, unfortunate but sparkling day, but I can still imagine it because it's a common experience.

*For dyslexic folks: not to be confused with Scotland's slit industry.

Why has no pub or brewery around and along these coastal parts not used the title "Froth of Forth?" There probably are good reasons.

Friday, October 08, 2021

Sucker!

 

File under Old News: Always a sucker for a good, almost plausible conspiracy theory, that's me. This tale is about the fuel "shortage". Some say there isn't one. There's a fuel glut brought on by low sales during lockdown so the oil companies need to accelerate demand (petrol and diesel have a shelf life) to move static stocks. What better way to quickly empty the storage tanks than declare a mythical shortage (because of convenient HGV drivers issues) and so create panic buying in order to turn over stock that's aging? As a bonus you can up the price (supply v demand etc.) and make a tidy profit along the way. Nice.

Also raised are the regular questions about supermarket fuel quality against the quality of actual big oil petrol stations. Some say the supermarkets sell nearly out of life petrol in the same way that Wetherspoons buy/sell their (?) beer, nearing the end of it's life. Lots of anecdotes about vehicle fuel systems burping and coughing on recent Tesco/Asda/Sainsbury's petrol fill ups. Just watch for that little blip on your rev counter when the engine is idling, followed by poor performance no doubt.

Do I actually believe this? It certainly fits with the Tories jingoistic resetting history narrative. Well I've just been to the barbers and blah blah blah.

Thursday, October 07, 2021

Cleanse Your Soul

1. Days away from the internet, ration style phone use.

2. Read any book, play a musical instrument, sing to yourself.

3. Wear comfortable and practical clothes.

4. Walk whenever possible.

5. Sleep without any alarm device nearby.

6. Eat yogurt, fruit, milk - lay off coffee.

7. Reflect on past decisions, take a journey in your mind.

8. Nap when you feel the need to.

9. Limit TV viewing, avoid newscasts and serials.

10. Spend time outside, watch the weather, study the sky.

(Then wake up from that pleasant enough dream and have a good moan to yourself about trivia or nothing really, get bored with Twitter and shouty headlines after thirty seconds exposure and then go out and step in some dog shit and sniff the pungent unpleasantness of a nearby blocked drain as some idiot growls past you in a Ricer modified Honda painted purple and a man standing in a bus queue spits into the gutter and throws down some litter.)

Time moves on as it must:

"When that fragile moment of cleansing finally arrived it was more spectacular and magical than I could have ever imagined."

Wednesday, October 06, 2021

Rainbows all over your blues


The daily rainbow: I remember rainbows, invented by Noah, then  hijacked by LGBT flags or whatever groups, My Little Pony, unicorn arty stuff and cheap Chinese toys, pop festival types, questionable woolly jumper choices and so on. We reached peak rainbow saturation point some time ago but still there is no clear sign of the once heavenly sign receding in popularity and over use. Poor exhausted, misunderstood rainbows. 

Mr Roy G Biv has a lot to answer for with his pre-rain messages. His pelting downpours brought via global warming with their flash floods will lead to a plague of malignant rainbows eventually. Instead of signifying God's fairly dodgy covenant with man it'll become a sign of warning, imminent danger and destruction with the possibility of drowning in fast flowing muddy waters. Or not as the case may be but I'm pretty sure Jackson Browne said the planet would be washed clean one of these days.

Tuesday, October 05, 2021

South Specific


Evidence of ongoing rotten leadership whatever happens next: Down there in the beautiful south* you can be sure the Metropolitan Police Force will prevail, untouched and unchanged in their attitudes and behaviours. Institutional misogyny, racial prejudice, corruption, cover ups, it's all in there somewhere, festering away nicely. The reasons the Met is safe are simple, they hold a lot of information, dossiers, accounts of historical abuses of power and have first hand experience of the antics of the so called "elite". 

All of Boris Johnson's lies, indiscretions, violent outbursts, exploits and crimes (petty and otherwise) are known and recorded. Along with his grubby history, information on all the creeps, paedophiles, fraudsters and gangsters in the House of Lords, Parliament, the Royal Family, the ruling classes and media controllers is in the same soup pot there. 

This is how things stay in balance, how the wheels are greased, how the machine sustains itself. Always has, always will. So calm down and choose your battles carefully.

*May also apply in Scotland and elsewhere within these septic isles.

Monday, October 04, 2021

Squid Game v Bake Off

 


Back to back TV watching creates a consciousness confusing genre mash-up that's both entertaining and thought provoking. The juxtaposition of competition, games and challenges with real or imagined circumstances and effects. Some people fail to bake a good cake and are eliminated, others fail at a Korean kid's street game and are eliminated. Some succeed in life, other's struggle.  Actors playing realistic parts, real people acting. Whatever the mix there is always drama and consequences. Destruction is always entertaining. Which reality is real I wonder?

Sunday, October 03, 2021

Accidental Kitchen Flowers


Flowers in transit. Stopping by in the kitchen for a short time. A staging post and watering hole. Soon they will move on. Placed in a space in a vase and regarded, positioned, watered and in the sunlight. Maybe far away from this grey kitchen. And then what? ... Chill time.

Saturday, October 02, 2021

Pasteis de Nata


I made these myself ... heated them up myself. There, from the middle of Lidl, the mythical, strange, fantastic place where nothing is quite what it seems or is ever quite the same again. A portal once crossed and uncrossed it can never be returned to in the way that it was first explored or entered. Thins appear, shape shift and vanish. I hope this makes sense. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. I'm assuming hope well might be abandoned should you forget or omit to purchase some handy fresh frozen pasteis de nata (in a six pack) when visiting this legendary and shimmering market place.

Friday, October 01, 2021

Uptown Top Cat Funk


It's the 1st of October! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you possibly the greatest piece of written/choral music ever, along with some of the best lyrical content, with the added bonus of some old school hand drafted animation artistry coupled with brilliant characterization. 

Top Cat!
The most effectual!
Top Cat!
Who's intellectual!
Close friends get to call him "T.C.,"
Providing it's with dignity!

Top Cat!
The indisputable leader of the gang.
He's the boss, he's a VIP, he's a championship.
He's the most tip top,
Top Cat.

Yes, he's the chief, he's a king,
But above everything,
He's the most tip top,
Top Cat!

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Lichen and Stone


Looking out into the west, over the stone wall of the cemetery across the dark loch's troubled surface. Already the waters are eroding the old wall, the rock barrier between the graves and the cold blue/black of the loch. The waves lap, they pound, they hold back and then they pull forward. The graves and their hidden, ruined bodies can do nothing, they are simply there, old and overgrown, weathered and stuck down in the clay and dead among the boulders. The long tussle for power goes on daily. When will the wall tumble and wash away as the loch finally passes over and across?

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Underwater


My thoughts on an aspect of climate change: When the whole world is underwater* in 2121 there will be no need for publicly operated trains, 3D printers or privet hedges. I imagine that fish and rainwater will figure quite highly in our diet and that the newly water based primitive peoples will find solace and comfort in the story of Noah and other flood based accounts of early civilizations. Our clothes will be made by harvesting floating plastic bottles from the sea and recycling them into opaque robot suits using cable ties. We shall live and float on artificial islands where we will hope for the best and urinate gingerly over the side. After a while some people will develop gills. We'll be able to eat them as they can be legally classified as fish according to the UN charter, so it's not all bad then.

The artwork shown above is conveniently titled "Underwater" and draws much of it's inspiration from a long and soggy meditation taken whilst considering mankind's impending watery doom. 

*Don't mention the movie "Waterworld".

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Inner Voices

An inner voice whispers: “There is no internet. No phone signals. No shops or pubs or amenities for 14 miles. We’re at the road’s own craggy end. Whatever you do don’t get into an emergency situation of any kind.”

The roads are narrow, clogged with errant sheep, confused pheasants and the occasional brooding stag. The sun, moon, the glacial, battered landscape and the clear, warm unseasonal breeze are magnificent. We are in “the Glen”.  A short period of minor adjustment to the new reality will be required.

“My Jaguar is in the workshop” said our landlord as he apologized for leaving us alone, whilst driving away in an inferior but clearly more reliable car. Jaguars eh? Dusk was descending so I made friends with the birds. There are a lot of them here, always quite angry with each other as they bicker at the various overflowing feeders. We’re not the only stupid things on the planet it seems. Red squirrels eventually pick up the confidence to raid the feeders too, they’re a bit more violent, they wrestle with the tops and poke at the nuts and seeds or bend the wire frames with tough buck teeth that I presume are worth risking to attack the metal larder.

We wake up early. The garden is full of sheep, well four sheep, two ewes and their faithful, fatty lambs. We’re concerned but there are sheep in all the fields so this is probably normal, so long as they don’t eat the plants or the chicken food and so on. The next day there are twenty seven sheep in the garden.

At night the skies are dark with no light pollution, there is no one nearby, no vehicles or streetlights. We can see into space. There’s the moon and Jupiter and some other blingy things. Wispy clouds allow the celestial fairy lights to peep through at us. We’re alone. Like Joni and Graham we light the log fire. This is our house now.

Out in the glen we hear the sounds of dogs and quad bikes. The shepherds are at work, driving the flocks down from the hills. Then a darker shadow grows across the glen. It’s 8AM, there’s a large blue HGV parked down on the single track road, it’s engine running. We hear the sheep bleating as they are led towards the wagon. They are quickly scuttled inside and so off to wherever. They won’t see the glen again, that’s for sure. Today there are no sheep in the garden. As I grow older, I’m mostly ambivalent than ever about Indian food.

At times we will crack and seek out civilisation, there, shining at the end of a forested tunnel way down the potholed and beaten track. Blinded by the sun going out, blinded by the sun coming back. A pheasant ricocheted across the windscreen, thankfully unharmed and we live on to eat a canteen breakfast in a garden centre. It’s surprisingly good complete with an almost perfect fried egg. Like the rest of the clientele we are of a certain age and attitude, killing time before we take in the final backwards view from the bottom of a shallow grave or inside a plastic urn. (I don’t really think about these things often, just at garden centres). We will be the last of the boomers one fine day, they’ll all miss our purchasing power and wit and wisdom then.

The weather is always just outside, we try to ignore it as we walk into the hills. It comes and goes. Today we are in the footsteps of Queen Victoria. Not my favourite queen, royalty being something of a peculiar human invention albeit leadership of some type is always needed. It’s the lack of “qualifications” and the family connections I object to, that and the abuse of privilege and rank.  The walk is unplanned, we leave the house and turn right and trek onwards, already we’ve broken all the rules by being unprepared and vague in our intentions. We do however have an extra, older walking companion who has planned all this but simply forgotten to tell us about the details. 

We move up the glen through a variety of conditions and surfaces. There are trees, stones, and the sounds of rushing waters as time ticks down slowly in God’s own country. It’s a “there and back again” kind of trek so we’re back before the dinner burns up, down from the hills and eating shepherd’s pie in the cottage.

At night, when the books are exhausted and the keyboards are quiet, we take refuge in a grainy TV signal’s output, looking much as it might have done in the 1960’s but with washed out colours. For some reason the volume is also governed down so a high level of concentration and focus is required just to get through regular, pastoral TV otherwise it’s just another blurred experience. Any bodily creak from a stray bone or couch can render the program narrative quickly incomprehensible. I find a few glasses of red wine apply the necessary numbing quality needed to adjust to this pace of broadcasting and so enjoy the variable and distorted content. Misheard dialogue and blurred vision is always entertaining.

Alone.

Life here is not without it’s drudgery. The regular filling of the bird feeders being an essential task. Sometimes also removing struggling birds trapped in the feeders is required. They just get lost in some feeding frenzy at times. Sunflower seeds are their favourite, even though it takes time and technique to split them open and consume them, the birds don’t mind. Peanuts are more run of the mill, pecked at and eventually destroyed with the hammer action of the bill, pulverised and gone. I scatter random nuts and seeds on the ground, the squirrels, chickens and Guinea fowls don’t seem to mind. Everyone gets fed.

It’s been a mostly sunny and blue skyed break; the strong September sun is unexpectedly bright and strangely warming. The house faces south so we bask in it all as the friendly clouds allow. I’m reading a book about young arty types on Hydra in Greece, a historical work of fiction. At times the alien heat almost works and some slight transportation takes place if you just close an eye for a moment and forget about Brexit and fashion anxiety. The glen, but on a Greek island; perhaps not quite yet and no Leonard Cohen striding around, making conquests, stringing along fickle muses, buying houses and then carelessly warbling off into the sunset. No. We are firmly in Scotland and the dead grey churches are out there as a stiff reminder; empty, standing like some strange presbyterian theological litter, comatosed now but once intent on chewing up all the green grass at the edges of the fields.

Eventually I finished the book, a bit later on in the week. It was both profound and flimsy. A lazy holiday read so as you might expect mildly irritating, those Bohemian types are hard work, but that’s just my take on it. Over time I’ll reflect, I’m less than good in the moment, I need space for my thoughts to either ferment or mature. I’m not sure what they do naturally and they can’t be left alone for too long, they only turn on themselves and become feral.

By Friday I’m back to having a second attack on actually reading the final book in the Knausgaard saga, part 6 of My Struggle. I’m struggling with this one. It’s heavier and more reflective and I feel it strangling every thought in my mind at times. I’m blinded by the tirade of words, like some verbalized Mozart or shredded guitar figure. I’d planned to finish it sometime during lockdown last year but didn’t even bother. I decided to allow myself to coast over those unreal months.  Now we’re on the sunny uplands of further self-inflicted austerity I might as well try, there may be some comfort in his bleak but busy with the minutest detail, elongated prose and self-exploration.

I'm still reading...

We made it home safely, fuel shortages and a stupidity surplus all failing to slow us down. Thanks to the weather gods and my lovely wife for making it a very enjoyable and peaceful week. Our first break away since everything went crazy last year. The glen leaves it's mark once again.

Monday, September 27, 2021

Until Today

“Her mind is Tiffany twisted. She’s got the Mercedes bends.” 

Posting this in as large a font as is reasonably possible because until I saw this in black and white on FB the other day I did not know this was the correct lyric and it does somewhat elevate the overall lyrical quality of the song in my opinion (whatever you may think of it and the rest of the tune).

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Mint and Clissie


Clint and Missie caught by the cattery CCTV (That would be CCCTV). The all seeing eye that never sleeps. Shame about the dead sheep that they are sharing the room with but it'll be worth a discount I imagine.

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Figure on the hill

 


As I'm just making this up as I go along it would be a shame not share my concern with regard to what might be going on in the background of this mysterious and indistinct image. So who is the strange, dark figure on the hill* in the distance? A black cat, a hermit, a wise old owl, a spirit guide? To guess, to speculate, to imagine more I dare not dare (as breathing is my life).

Perhaps it's just me, haunting myself.

*When I say hill I may be really meaning a tree top.

Friday, September 24, 2021

Whitedicks

They were called the "Whitedicks", Jane and Bobby Whitedick. Their's was an old European name, they'd traced it back to France where it seemed they were descended from the Blanc-Ricard family. A noble house that had done quite well for itself up until Napoleonic times. Somewhere along the line, they suspected when a great, great grandfather had landed in New York, the name changed to Whitedick. No one knew why it had been changed or clumsily translated. The English derivative would be Whytdyke, or so they understood, it was the old Saxon version. Family history was patchy, records had been lost and there was a bit of here-say in the detail. 

When a TV producer friend was chatting to them a few years ago he seemed keen for them to star in their own reality show, "At home with the Whitedicks!" That was the proposed title. It never happened. They were all quite drunk at the time and in the end settled for obscurity.

A coin of the realm.

"In no currently surviving art works, Charles Blanc-Ricard is portrayed as a shadowy figure, lost in the passing of history. He may have been an agent operating between kings, queens and red-cardinals. Passing messages, arranging meetings, sealing contracts and trade agreements with Australia and Darien. Today he would have been a spin-doctor and/or a special advisor. Born into the then upper-class Blanc-Ricard family, minor noblemen with lands west of the Loire Valley and up into the Vendee,  he was a sharp tongued and ruthless operator up to his neck in cheese. No biscuits. His wheeling and dealing eventually led him to the court of the King, Louis XII in about 1490. His career progressed via both complaints about his behaviour and compliments about his shrewdness. He made enemies easily but he also created alliances and dependencies. Common wisdom says that's how it works."

"Charles, via influence and factional bribery eventually caught the eye of the King and bit by bit became a leading advisor. He assisted with the King's "Pragmatic Sanction" ( The Pragmatic Sanction excluded the papacy from the process of appointing bishops and abbots in France. Instead, these positions would be filled by appointment made by the cathedrals and the monastic Hell's Angels chapters themselves). He also produced a devotional "Book of Hours" which the King grew to rely upon for his spiritual welfare and as an aid to his meditation and prayer."

"After a short but violent courtship, Charles married the Countess of Forte, they had two sons and two daughters, all of whom survived their parents. The Countess died of embarrassment in 1501."

"When the King Louis died in 1514, Charles found himself out of favour with the new King, Francis I. Charles returned to his estate and effectively retired from life at the court. As a gambler and confident card player he frittered away his remaining years. He passed on in 1527 following a strange incident where, after a night of normal medieval feasting, he hit his head on a low stone lintel and fell backwards onto the head of a pig that was being carried from the feast by a servant. The pig's head was on a spike and as Charles fell he landed upon the spike and was cleanly skewered from the buttocks through to his groin. The swift cut removed his genitals with almost surgical precision and he bled to death."

"Legend has it that the hounds of the household were quickly on the scene due to the smell of blood and instinctively picked up the genitals and ate them in front of the dying Charles while the servants stood back aghast. The offending  and indeed fatal pig's head was used to make a large pot of broth that formed part of the funeral buffet and was enjoyed by the many mourners who traveled from far and wide to attend."

"There are no records of any further peculiar events involving the Blanc-Ricard family until at least 1550. Something else almost as bad as Charles' fate  happened about then but it is unrecorded apparently."

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Nov 74


Thanks to Iain Mackinnon who posted this old photo on Twitter the other day. Strangely I immediately recognised it as an actual Pink Floyd gig I'd attended a few years(?) ago in Edinburgh's Usher Hall, November 1974 as it turns out. They played all of Dark Side of the Moon, One of These Days and Echoes as I recall.

Little did I know that in the next year or so I'd have lost my job, get barred from pubs, move to Glasgow, move to Jersey, live in a barn, get a brand new Telecaster, see my band start up and break up, watch my father die, become a rubbish "Christian", join two cults, get a dog, stop smoking fags and weed, meet my first wife, meet my current wife ... phew!

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

If you're feeling ecstatic

 

... please just calm the fuck down, it'll only end in tears. We all know this. True happiness is found in the mid-range of a golden glow, not the cold blue of the thin stratospheric heights.