Thursday, November 05, 2009
20000 people standing in a field
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Ordinary things
Tomorrow the huge bonfire at Hopetoun House has summoned us to it's fiery interior. We will make a rare and shadowy appearance in the winter darkness. Effigies will be burned, trees scorched and the cold earth made warm once again.
Monday, November 02, 2009
If you are feeling sinister
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The cult of Lego frees a man from fear
It's the one hearty meal a day that is creating this unusual situation and like most things it is not sustainable, which as I reflect on the fish, chicken and pasta, the green, green salads and the luxurious fulfilment of my basic needs is indeed fair enough.
Mr Cougar is looking fine and sitting square on the road sporting new suspension things, most likely they are called bushes, branches or arms or some other adopted natural name. I'd love to say that I notice the difference and that all my motoring moments are like sliding along a silk road on a sunny day but the fact is I've still got the same two slow punctures in the back that I first noticed in June. It thankfully passed the MoT mind you and all I need is the odd 20p to spend on free air and the steely will to avoid doing 140 on the motorway. Easy enough really.
Mostly listening to chill out stuff.
Bits of Abbey Road and Frightened Rabbit.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
How not to cook
By Aleksandra Mir for the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2009.
While the typical cookbook format gives you a recipe for obvious success it does not take into account the many ways in which its execution can fail due to the cook's lack of experience. Based on Aleksandra's personal history of cooking disasters, the project invites 1000 people from all around the world to give their advice of how NOT to cook. With this volume, any reader will be more than well equipped to avoid making the same mistakes in their kitchen.
Aleksandra is interested in how we are taught or teach ourselves through trial and error. By making our guilty failures public we may even be creating an original and subversive form of art, rather than simply be aspiring to obvious and repetitive results.
Kate Gray, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh
Strangely enough I find that I'm in this nice book (my name is on the credits!), I just can't remember the bit I contributed.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
All roads lead...
Food: After resolving a brief misunderstanding with the trouser buttons on a new suit purchased for work I realised that an emergency diet was not now required. I celebrated with an apple, beer battered chips and some chicken nuggets and two episodes of the Simpsons.
Songwriting: Having a real piano in one room and a drum machine in the other both playing loudly may seem like an odd combination for instrumental locations but it seems to work. We tried it last night, the drums thundering at a stately 86 BPM in the dining room and the piano plunking away in the lounge, strange chords and melodies arose while I sat in the middle gently strumming on a dobro. In the end some good music was created and will be completed and recorded one fine day.
Priorities: These are things that tell you what you should be doing next but can never quite get round to, often people, time and cash dependant and subject to short notice changes and unplanned adjustment. It's nice when diet is less of a priority that piano plinking.
Dead pedals: Wasted two hours yesterday trying to figure a power failure in the pedal board - all it takes is one cable round the wrong way...blame in on the slow but steady expiring of various cherished brain cells.
Monday, October 05, 2009
South Queensferry daily photo
The cultural and financial centre of the 'Ferry, part of the great Co-op Scotmid empire flanked by a Chinese restaurant, curry shop and peculiar clothing retailer. I always feel guilty about not using the apparently unloved Co-op, set in it's dreary car park and flanked by nothing in particular. It is compromised by being half a mile away from the larger Tesco that sells everything cheaper and is generally much busier, leaving the poor old Co-op forlorn and abandoned looking - but it does contain a proper post office. The trouble is you can never quite get the stuff you want in the Co-op, the TV ads portray nice green and ethical ranges but when you get in it's just miles of Irn-Bru promotions, stale looking cakes and very tired out and pale vegetables. I just have to learn to live with the guilt of regularly going elsewhere.
We watched "Burn after reading" last night, a fine portrayal of mid-life crisis, greed and paranoia with a lot of added laughs. Watch it and see numerous car crash situations come alive before your very eyes and then spontaneously combust. The names were no doubt changed to protect the innocent.
I uploaded three random tracks onto Amie Street last night, less than 24 hours later the money has already started rolling in, well almost. It's such fun being part of the modern, dynamic and completely unpredictable music industry.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Packaging and octaves
Halfords White Spirit: Bought from this reputable store to clean paint brushes, easy enough to use you would think. It should all be so simple except for one basic problem. The two reasonably fit and sane adults in this household couldn't open the "safe and secure system" i.e. the bottle cap. I had no choice other than to breach numerous health and safety guidelines by attacking the bottle with a Swiss Army knife - it seemed like the easiest way to gain access to the precious contents, by now desperately needed to save the life of a quickly hardening paintbrush. Then the remaining spirit had to be decanted into a leftover Lenor bottle creating obvious comic possibilities and more potential for accidents. The list of things I can't easily open grows, these are the current Top 5 problem packs I'm struggling with:
1. (New at No1) Halfords White Spirit - you'll stink and the sink will be spattered.
2. Rice Crispies Breakfast Bars (all flavours) - finger gym workout needed before tackling these bad boys early in the morning.
3. Cellophane on CDs - want to hear a tune? You'll need a sharp knife first.
4. Tinned mackerel - try to get the lid open without spattering yourself with a fine selection of Omega 3 enriched oils.
5. Tesco Bread - sealed with a tiny bit of tape and a weird tab that the Incredible Hulk couldn't open.
P.S. Just noticed this on a Toilet Duck Brush pack, "If accidently swallowed, seek medical advice", once you've done that (swallowing a toilet brush) you can also sign up for a lucrative circus career I'd imagine.
There is nothing more annoying than some twat tuning and fiddling with guitar strings, plinking and plonking around. This weekend it was my turn to re-tension the truss rod, file the frets, adjust the bridge and chase octaves up and down the neck. In the end I'd made no significant improvements but I hadn't broken anything either - something of a triumph I'd say.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
and the tramp
I woke up this morning (as has been said many times) with "the lady is a tramp" running around in my head (the song, not wide-eyed cartoon dogs). I realised, as my version of the lyrics replayed within the great grey place of thinking, that I didn't understand quite what the song is/was about at all. That same deep lack of knowledge applies to a load of other songs, aka the big pile of misunderstood or not understood songs and lyrics, not even my friends at Wikiland can help out. I remain as ever an ignorant and useless lyrical correspondent.
Some people were upset, angry or possibly spitting out their pies over Jonathan Meades' "Football Pools Towns" docu-babble on BBC4. "Negative and ill-informed and unbalanced" some said. Not me however, it's tone was a kick in the footballs for Fifers like me (we become used to that) but in other bits, particularly on council house architecture, the decline of community and the aftermath of the Scottish industrial decline it hit the penalty spot. Truth is sometimes best served up by itinerant strangers and then left with us, like an unexpected present or time bomb. After an appropriate period of reflection it may all make sense...
"She gets too angry for Corrie at eight, she likes the bingo, puts the sugar on the slate, she never bothers to clean out the grate, that's why the lady is a tramp."
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Blog could do better
To celebrate the first day of my birthday month (after an irritating day at work, the kind where you realise you seldom ever get things right and your vocabulary is far too small for an adult) I bowled into the local Tesco in the vain hope of finding some tasty teatime bargain in the stacked and crowded shelves. As I joined the shuffling, shopping masses mortal indecision quickly set in robbing me of free will and the ability to choose. Ten minutes later the fruit of my labours was two bags full of nothing in particular and I'm £18.50 lighter only to realise that what I really wanted was an Indian take away. I came home to be presented with a useful free sample sachet of toothpaste in the mail and two dead mice curled up like Inca mummies on the door mat - I ate a pork pie and an overpriced Cumberland sausage and returned to the happy place near the back of my brain, happy MoT and birthday when it comes.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Isle of Wight in the distance
When I got home a double disc special bells and whistles edition of "Magnolia" was waiting for me, a snip a £3.00 on Amazulu. I suppose I should insert the numerous discs one by one into the DVD player but I cant be bothered right now. I'm too excited about "It might get loud" magically manifesting itself soon to concentrate on any thing else at all. It's likely that bitter disappointment looms but who cares, living in wild expectation is great.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Death of a lifelong Socialist
Mr Brown announced a string of new policies, including:
- Ten hours of free childcare a week for 250,000 two-year-olds from families "on modest or middle incomes" - paid for by scrapping tax relief for better-off families
- A plan to house 16 and 17-year-old single parents in state-run shared houses rather than council flats
- A £1bn "innovation fund" to boost industry
- A new National Care Service to "provide security for pensioners for generations to come"
- A commitment, enshrined in law, that allocates 0.7% of GDP to international aid.
- Ten hours of free childcare during the stupidly planned "in-service days " that compromise the lives of every parent with schoolkids.
- A plan to house 16 and 17-year-old single parents in supportive family environments.
- A £1bn "innovation fund" to invest in some much needed public sector projects - filling up bloody potholes in the roads.
- A new National Care Service to "provide the offer of a £75k grant (paid at age 65) to those who volunteer for euthanasia at 75."
- A commitment, enshrined in law, that allocates 0.7% of GDP to UK based charities and not corrupt despotic African governments.
- Getting some adult level of responsibility, honour and accountability back into politics and banking for crying out loud! (I sneaked this extra one in).
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The perfect scone
We spent some time yesterday on the roof of Hopetoun House, looking across at Fife and the bridges and fine selection of period chimney pots. Despite staying in this area for years it was the first time we've actually been up there or inside the great house and it is well worth a visit. Once we'd fallen back to earth it was into the old stables, now a tea room: The scone score was 5/10 from Ali and 7/10 from me. The kids declined to mark the Brownie and ice cream but managed to force it all down just the same. Turns out that they make all the stuff on the premises so no white vans and pre-packaging, in the light of this information and a brief tour of the kitchens (I was chatting to the waitress) I revised my score to 8/10. The problem with that being I'm not sure what a 10/10 scone would be like or if I ever will find one, it could however mark the start of a new purpose and mission for me as the twilight years of pension and coffin dodging approach.
In the evening it was home for a huge meal back here at the ranch with Fraser and Karen followed by a jam session and impromptu concert featuring Fraser's shiny new saxophone. The material being a lively mixture of both of our songs conveniently extended, this was followed by some decent conspiracy theories were being well and truly explored. Despite these fresh new sources of worry I slept well - with a cat under my feet for some reason.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Psychic spys from China
Today we welcome mini Shogun "Messy" into the family, charcoal black, rugged and ready for the fields, the ditches, the potholes and the motorways - all in real time 4WD and black leather.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
My plastic Bambi
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Walking in the clouds
Nothing like a day spent in and around airports to remind you of the absurdity of life and the pain of modern travel. Observations abound as these travellers run like plague victims, delusional over their need to travel and pained by the stress of getting nowhere:
Chavs and their out of control off-spring, shouting instead of talking and making little actual sense.
Successful looking people chattering loudly on their phones, tapping their laptop keys and supping poor quality cups of coffee.
Air line staff clattering like iron flamingos, looking for a place to perch and park their 4x4 travel bags.
Bargains that are not bargains cry out to be bought by the drunken traveller who is too bored to resist the lie.
Old and tiny Irish nuns, baffled by their position, frozen in their tracks and anxious for help.
Dan Brown books in ugly piles.
Food that is unattractive, over priced and served and swerved at you by Polish assistants.
Security staff, glazed over by their trained up state of alert and lack of common sense and manners.
Unexplained delays and pointless apologies.
Idiots with huge bags squeezed into small spaces.
A seat next to fat man reading a broadsheet.
The scramble to retrieve bags from overhead lockers.
A plane that tries to land, aborts the landing and then provides an unscripted flight over Fife, into the sun, into the clouds and finally onto the runway.
Japanese tourists in a huddle, burdened by their need to take in details and unfamiliar with enjoying themselves.
Speed bumps and traffic management systems that slow everything down.
Building works that last forever.
Evidence of bad design, screwy thinking and uncomfortable interiors - everywhere.
The good part - getting home eventually.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Magnolia
She comes in colours
The good news is that I am no longer angry nor am I a young man. Two kinds of conflicting stat us worth avoiding and ones that if brought together can be disastrous. I put my newly acquired peace of mind down to downing large quantities of blue milk, red wine and green vegetables. This colourful diet is also supplemented by eggs (whites and yellows) and more of the ubiquitous Muller corners. You are what you eat - I am not referring to the famous Bernard Manning joke here either.
Magnolia
I spent some time reading a few essays and extended reviews about the film Magnolia. I watched it once some time a go and naturally missed a few of the connections. I may watch it again - there is something interesting about the range of modern films that have been set in the San Fernando Valley: Crash, Boogie Nights and 2 Days in the Valley but I’ve no idea what it is.
TV
Kids let loose with shouting presenters and multi coloured puppets that belong to no recognisable species and behave in alien ways. News and weather that repeats and repeats interspersed with novelty items, most of which are a week old and have been battered to death on the web. Advertisements for dubious services that can only be required by a minority of viewers, it can only be early morning weekend TV.
It’s the end…
Lehman Brothers massive risk taking come unstuck a year ago. Where did that year go and how come are we still alive, shopping and functioning?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Dangerous fixations and unhealthy fascinations
Dangerous fixations and unhealthy fascinations
I heard this phrase last night as a part of a trailer for the show “Medium”, a show I’m highly unlikely ever to watch, however something in the trailer recipe worked because the phrase has stuck. All I really have to do is find somewhere or something in which to use it. It also set me thinking as to what “Dangerous fixations and unhealthy fascinations” I might have. This could see a return to another stupid “things I like” list or it could be a starting point for something more sinister and darker altogether. You might also expect to see it, signed in neon in the underbelly of Gotham City or dripping with water down in the lower reaches of the Bladerunner set. It’s comic strip stuff, sixties Detective comics, with blue and purple inks, yellow searchlights and headlamps and red lipstick that has that white, uncoloured sparkle.
It could sit nicely in Film Noir, cheap and roughly cut, sweaty and unforgiving, a self centred and punishing description of some monochrome lifestyle, spattered on the edge of the edge itself, a cliché for the exhausted genre, framing it nicely. Then it came to me, epiphany, revelation or whatever you may want to call it, my own, best dangerous fixation and unhealthy fascination - scallops . They just made it, edging into the number one spot in front of onion bhajis and the questionable but satisfying practice of numbing mouth ulcers by gargling with mouthwash. There is of course room now for free-fall parachuting, train spotting, waterfall jumping, daytime TV and shouting out rude things at traffic wardens and Conservative candidates and smartly running away.
So exorcising these primitive thought processes has cured/relieved/ unleashed/ crushed/ illuminated/ motivated / spiritualised/ depressed me up to a point. I’m now looking forward to the next exploratory phase generated by the trailer scriptwriters, sometime next week between 9 and 11 on the Living Channel.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Things I like
1. Looking over the top of my glasses.
2. not using capital letters or punctuation
3. Making fun of the Edinburgh Trams.
4. The East Coast.
5. Guitars that are quirky or unconventional.
6. Haggis, neeps and mash.
7. Skyplus.
8. Lightscribe as an idea but not in practice.
9. Feeding the cats.
10. Expecting the disappointment the Sunday papers provide.
11. Not checking lottery numbers.
12. Not having to be right all the time.
13. Lists of 13.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Ditto to Beth
Fat girls all dance the same way.
Watching Beth Ditto on Jools Holland it was difficult not to note that she danced just like one of Viz’s Fat Slags, you have to imagine a still cartoon image dancing of course. That characteristic lift one leg, put it down one leg then lift the other (ditto!) and so a primitive and clumsy dance step is created. Expressive? Not really. What you’d expect? Pretty much. In case you are offended by this then of course I would agree that all generalisations are wrong, generally. Florence and the Machine are more interesting, “the Machine” is good band name unless coupled with Miami and Sound, works well with Soft also. The always flawless performances have however got me puzzled, five or six live acts every week and no bum notes, twiddles or forgetting the words. Some musicians clearly need to get a life, either that or they are in fact superhuman robotic freaks - something I always suspect when making comparisons.
Afternoon.
Today the sun has been beating down, pulsing and stretching and finding a way through the near perpetual East Coast gloom and into our chilly lives. I celebrated with some free form strimming, avoiding the manoeuvrings of a dying pigeon and covering myself from head to foot in grass and weeds, quite unintentionally.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
My parents may well have been aliens
A wise young son of mine once said “there are some things you just don’t want to know about your parents”. He’s dead right, parents (the living ones) occupy a strange, mystical, terrifying and unrealistic place in the hearts and the childhood memories of their offspring. In many ways they should correspond to some Enid Blyton model, caring but remote, sending you of to school and then not really meddling in your world unless to provide food, money or rescue from immediate disaster. These parents don’t exist but if they did etc. etc. As children grow up the mask slips and they see their parents as they are, that can be good or not so good but it is inevitable, like getting to the bottom of a beer glass on a sunny afternoon.
It might sound crazy but I’ve only come to appreciate and (almost) understand my parents now that they are dead and gone. They occupy a new position in my life and memory, above the petty wars and issues, the mistakes and the disagreements. Now they look down like Obi Wan Kenobi or Anakin Skywalker, from some high and starry place, smiling and waving and not really interfering at all. This of course is part of an ongoing mid life crisis that I suffer from coupled with a perpetual state of bewilderment that produces golden sun flakes around the edges of things long past and completely blots out other less savoury, darker incidents.
My father and getting to know him has become a strange and occasional obsession for me. He died when I was 19 and we never really had a level, man to man relationship. The years from 16 to 19 were spent for me in a bit of a blue haze (1971 onwards) that made our disconnection and mutual frustration complete. Once he had died I felt a sense of obvious loss but I couldn’t put it into words or even acknowledge it. Now I understand that feeling is simply one of being robbed unfairly and immeasurable missed opportunity, the paradox being that even if he had lived on I might have never had the imagined relationship that now occupies my thoughts. In the competition between the real versus the unreal, the unreal wins most times. So now he’s a war hero, a loner, a traveller, a smoker and drinker, a troubled soul affected by personal loss and an inherited sense of duty that made him settle down and try his best to manage a small and insignificant family. When things failed to work out perhaps he didn’t understand and no doubt blamed himself and held onto some deep disappointments. Then a cruel illness came along and quickly killed him at roughly the same age I am at now. Nothing makes sense and neither God nor Karma or fate can explain the small hole that I observe in the universe that surrounds. Now I struggle to recall the sound of his voice, things he did or even remember quite what he looked like - tricks of light and mad shadows.
So enough of this tiresome reflection and sentimental circumnavigation, the next question is of course, as a parent and well rounded individual myself (apart from the occasional, minute flaw), what kind of alien am I and what would I wish to be remembered for?
Monday, September 14, 2009
On the margins
Another weird scan...
WHAT IS WABI-SABI?
The Japanese view of life embraced a simple aesthetic
that grew stronger as inessentials were eliminated
and trimmed away.
-architect Tadao Ando
Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered - and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent. Read more here...thanks to the author for covering WS better than I ever could. There are many books, many hidden gems and many tiny examples...
If you are bored by any of this please try saying "blue bug's blood" four times - at least. The rapid consumption of a double chicken burger (no lettuce, no mayo) may also improve your diction.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Urinal this way
Next it was back to the Auld Grey Toun where Tesco have expanded their premises but unfortunately not their ideas - so the oddly named Carphone Warehouse came to the rescue. Don't judge a book by it's cover or a superstore by it's advertising or it's relative floorspace.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Find value in the uncomplicated
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The secret of happiness
It's out there somewhere, possibly hidden in this bizarre website of odd album covers. Thanks to Tommy Mackay, enter at your peril, adult themes are contained therein.
Apart from the few crimes that I regularly commit against food and fashion nothing unplanned or illegal has taken place around here today in this island of peace and civilisation. Hopefully that will remain the case as we lurch into another weekend. I've lost count of the times I've lost count of making plans only for them to be high jacked by the wind and weather (much of the same thing really).
So the secret of happiness? Flat sausage, two fried eggs and brown sauce I'd say.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Burglary and reflection
There is nothing like the demystifying of crime and an encounter with the hard edge of abrasive human nature to cause you to pause and check your relative position in this cracked universe. Loved ones and family always comes out on top, friends and employment follow, leisure and creative impulses fill the next few carriages of the derailed, steaming and hissing train wreck. Then it becomes a scramble to make sense of possessions and objects, tools and toys and knitted things we might use to keep out the cold. There in that new and sanctified panic room of refreshed learning and enlightenment you can give a clear and concise statement and let it hang in the moist air. Probably nobody will be listening but that doesn’t matter, it’s a reconciliation exercise that you need to undertake, more within than without, more found than lost, something, something, something. (I intend to keep my laptop in my cavernous boot and there are guards everywhere.)
So the bags of spoil and evidence were piled up on the table, sad and muddy after their ordeal, time out in the wild, unloved, rejected and almost returned to nature except for the intervention of Linlithgow’s finest. Our shopping list has diminished but the electrical goods remain out there in pubs, on eBay or Gumtree and the Sky card is in the back pocket of someone’s jeans. They were promised Sky Sports, Movies and all the good music channels when they handed over their forty quid, sadly all they got was Living, Sci-fi and Dave. He-haw.
So what’s done is done and I console myself with bottle of cheap red wine, a smoked sausage chopped up and basted in pasta sauce, eyeing up evolving plans to buy big dogs and bigger jeeps, because we can. There is no doubt we are where we are meant to be, I’m at a fizzy point of peace and I can load more free music up onto Jamendo as a charitable gesture of thanks to the rest of Europe, for still being there.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Motorcycle Diaries
Meanwhile various crimes and misdemeanours have been committed on our patch and the beginnings of a new and brave new world of siege mentality are building up. Then of course it will diminish as time passes and other experiences build up in their place. The tide forever turns...and we need a dog and a flock of geese.
Great to hear that the UK Government and big Gordy will pursue the Libyans for victim related compensation for innumerable IRA crimes. Then of course we'll need to pursue the various US groups who financed the procurement of bomb making materials and then we can follow that up with rearresting the many guilty terrorists and extremists released as part of the NI Peace Process. Bloody Sunday marvellous - an exercise in double standards that must be the envy of the rest of world. Were is Bono when you need him?
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Sunday PM
Often on a Sunday afternoon the mind turns to bigger questions, we reflect, he hope, we consider...we also peel shed loads of apples and take long coffee breaks in between flicking across the acres of available Sunday news print. Slow news day today it would seem.
Pickles & Beatles
The chutney diaries
There was a certain air of cottage industry in the cottage yesterday. The effort began with some strenuous stretching and pole dancing in desperate attempt to pick apples from the apple tree and a few odd plums from the plum tree. So using a combination of a step ladder, a pole and a picking head we harvested about six pounds of apples in the rain and also in buckets. The procedure was reminiscent of something that might have been depicted in a Spike Milligan cartoon, all spiky lines and scaffolding. The apples and plums form the base ingredients for the chutney, other herbs, spices, vinegar and mysterious substances were added after the marathon peeling session was done. Then a handy cauldron was placed on the open fire and we allowed the mixture to stew and simmer. In a parallel exercise glass storage jars were sterilised, castrated, vulcanised and baked in the electric Aga in anticipation of being filled with the brown boiled broth. Once two months have passed we will know if we have succeeded.
The Beatles etc.
The Beatles work, play and general level of exceptional genius is being celebrated mostly in black and white on the BBC. 40 years since this and 42 years since that and time has passed we are told. Everything is significant and everybody involved had a hand in changing popular culture as they built a chain smoking road out of the sixties that funnily enough got us into the seventies. They regularly remind us of these things when wheeled out on chat shows and chatting interminably in the Sunday supplements. John Lennon had a blacked out Rolls Royce which was understandably very difficult to steer from 60 to 70 or even at relatively slow speeds. All of that made getting out of the seventies a bit of a struggle but eventually pop music made it to the eighties: good in places I‘m told, some remarkable births occurred and stray mullets were contrived before surprise surprise along came the nineties. Disappointment was all around and unbridled up to a point. So I’m not sure about this at all and whatever happened next had a smiley face, big films, drug references and air conditioning attached and sadly a number of good people didn’t quite make it.
Back in the sixties things are still the way they were and that’s relief to all of us who remain resistant to change and move outside of time, according to the BBC we are somewhere in India. I believe Ringo owned a special Mini filled with drums but not oil drums, they don’t make them like that anymore. Still we listen to Sgt Pepper, the album and the stereo sound, perhaps not appreciating the music and invariably misunderstanding the lyrics, but I am constantly reminded that nothing is real and I was rather immature at the time and so were you. Some say that Abbey Road is a better record anyway.
The chutney diaries again
The chutney is now in the jar(s). The diary is closed for the time being.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Motor Museum
Sometimes our house is quite busy, full of friends and family or the same but in the reverse order. It’s nothing like this photograph however but I’ve taken to being rather fond of it (the photo), a feeling that will rapidly pass. I quite like the horizontal figure in the floor level basement beneath the mock-Tudor Chapel.
So we trailed along the trail that is known as the Fife Coastal Path and came upon the fine West Lothian town that is Borrowstone Town Nessnessness or Bo’ness for short. At that point we realised that we had strayed quite away from the silvery Tay and had little alternative other than pay a visit to the motor museum, mostly on account of the incessant rain (see previous blogs) and the need to chat. It was well worth the loss of a fiver to see a fine line of James Bond vehicles, 50’s relics and a shining example of my favourite car of all time, a Delorean. These magic beasts could have been all over our streets and motorways had it not been for the buffoonery of the UK government, the failure of the tax payer to stump up some cash, the Troubles and the uncovering of one or two of JD’s more unfortunate and ill conceived business practices. I’m sure that in some parallel universe the venture succeeded and that gleaming Deloreans are out there now, cruising down leafy boulevards, hogging the fast lane, school running only and petulant children and taking a bashing in ASDA car parks.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
49 days of rain on Skye
I was going to write a lengthy piece about the rather bizarre, wooden and knotted legs that belong to TV and movie superstar Sarah Jessica Parker. However on starting this project I realized that I was unable to find the original photo that first sparked the idea. Needless to say I’ve now looked at numerous photos of the said SJP but as yet not found the weird leggy one so the piece has been abandoned or at least put on hold pending further research.
The 40 days of rain on Skye was a reference to an article in the Daily Telegraph Pole that said something about something regarding at least 49 days of consecutive rain experienced by the small Scottish village of Skye on the island of Cloud (made famous in various boat songs and Vanilla themed films). It may well be touching 52 or 53 by now, we certainly are here in West Lothian although our counting skills are lamentable so I’m less than sure.
Meanwhile “devil may care” raconteur Mr Alexander Brother Salmond has released a series of policies and proposals on the numb and unsuspecting Scottish public. This followed his previous release of a mass murderer on the grounds of chronic “international class” attention seeking and the over use of inverted commas. Anyway we’re now getting the chance to vote for a new Forth Bridge, fiscal autonomy and also freedom from the oppressive English based weather, a phenomenon that has troubled us since approximately 1314, or quarter past one. I may scrape a pencil on paper and register a vote or two once my opportunity comes then again I may avoid the Newton community centre altogether and head straight for the village pub now made safe thanks to number of swinging regulations that prevent the sale of alcohol to Chavs and other minority groups. There is of course only one word for all of this and that is Draconian. “A pint of Draconian please my good man“.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
40 days of rain on Skye
So where would you rather spend your last few days? Within one of the world’s harshest political regimes where human rights are a joke, where a despotic dynasty rules, the media is corrupt and controlled and health care inconsistent and is patchy, or would you prefer to die in Libya?
Google maps and sat pics are officially unreliable and out of date. We’ve not lived in Inchgarvie House for over four years but according to the great G our cars are still parked there. (Maybe they are and maybe some good looking doppelganger couple are driving them around and managing to avoid us). You do have to twiddle with this:
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Monday, August 31, 2009
Golden Wonders x 2
Question: How long to you have to leave a loaf in the bread bin before it develops strange sweet smelling growths that are white and wispy like alien spiders webs?
Answer: Only a few days it would seem, well maybe a week at a push. It can happen though and when left to it's own devices domestic science never fails to prove it's point with mould, fungus and weird growth spurts.
Dumped this vid on Facebook a few minutes ago, it's about 18 minutes long but worth watching. Deserves to go viral as some might say.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Dunfermline Upper
The news that the nasal and whinging Oasis brothers have finally had a final tiff and jacked it all must surely come as a relief to music lovers from Manchester to Mexico City. Only the tabloids will miss them albeit their musical nosediving will probably continue to keep them in the public domain till Friday (latest). Glad to see their shameless Beatles rip-off finally grind to a foul mouthed halt. Progress.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The road and the miles
I was (and you may be as well) shocked/appalled/indifferent/suicidal/quite happy/grim faced/philosophical/pleased* (*delete as applicable) to discover this vintage bootleg CD recording of the first proper, grown up gig I ever went to. It's out there on the web somewhere and you can probably buy it if you are mad enough. Some sly Dundonian obviously crept into the Caird Hall with a Grundig battery operated cassette recorder concealed inside his greasy combat jacket and then pressed the play and record key to capture the event on some Woolworths (Winfield) C90.
As I recall the overall noise level in the Caird Hall was at ear splitting level and there was a high degree of riotous assembly going on within the audience. Some chaps with long hair and scarves were smoking Players No6, drinking from bottles and carousing with willowy young women in tight jeans and peasant tops. Perhaps the brave bootlegger stood to one side in some perfect acoustic zone so that the music flowed into the primitive microphone he was holding thus avoiding the mayhem in the auditorium. I presume he managed to avoid the attentions of Mr Peter Grant who would have quietly cracked his skull for such an offence, then again it may have been a roadie who did it as an inside job.
I noticed that the review gave it 2 out of 10 for sound quality and 6 out of 10 for content: no surprises there then. At the very least I'd give the front cover a decent score, I think it may include some older members of the Broccoli family who have sadly moved onwards and upwards since ending their chosen careers, hammering spikes into railway sleepers.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Heard it on the tiny speakers
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Poor Man’s Noodles - the return
Selected media moments
Tales from Earthsea. Somewhere on the Skybox ex-Film 4.
“When you dance I can really love” Neil Young.
“Cinnamon Girl” Neil Young.
“Silence of the Trams” See it on UTube.
Scotland on Sunday - various topical articles.
Candide on Wikipedia - climbing the cultural mountain.
Channel Four News - Channel 4 presumably.
Learning about Annualism.
Annualing about Learningism.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
My city in ruins...
The rain returned with a vengeance beating down as I hurried over to the kingdom early this morning to deal with some unplanned working events. It was dripping down my nose in the early morning light and down my back: Must get me a Barbour and a sturdy 4 x 4 if I am to pursue this outdoor lifestyle successfully.
Next was an attempt at the classic Sunday morning occupation of goal post erection coupled with net untangling: this should really be an Olympic sport, done by teams of two, denied the essential Velcro, no ladder, ill matching uprights and crossbars, no mole clamps and done in a howling gale against the clock and under the disapproving eye of an eager referee. Surely a sport our beleaguered footballing nation could triumph in and in a small way we'd be involved in the beautiful game at some level, it might in fact enhance our crumbling coefficient. At the very least it could be part of the pre-match entertainment at the World Cup.
Lunch was provided by the local House-Elf garden centre, roll-mop herring, celery salad and a scone on jam. Just about odd enough to keep me going till the mince and tatties platter arrives tonight, it's a common enough meal amongst ethnic minority members and outcasts.