Everybody's been burned

Back home at last: Just hearing that Alan Rickman has died. Heroes and villains passing away, cancer battlers or something like that. I'm not sure how you battle with cancer, how you wage a war on a part of yourself that's destroying all of yourself. It's cruel and unfair. The world, life, death and the illnesses that precede it and stalk us. Winter is upon us, war and refugees, remote from our lives here in the frozen north but real and painful. You can hope, hope for the best but what do you get? Time; hopefully.

Hunky Dory

This is a great album but one I've not listened to in a while. That's how time plays tricks on you. It passes way too  quickly and before you know it there are layers of other things there; blocking, competing, covering up and distracting. Busy being busy doesn't work. So there's a dark, black, clever message in this album, hidden in plain sight. It almost changed my view of the world. At the time I didn't think it through though, I just reacted, I moved on, I lived on. I disagreed with so much of it and I've still not come around to the message. That superiority and super evolution theory never fitted, even if it wasn't serious. Now I don't know, it was just stupidly misunderstood and missed by me. So it's passed and past. And that my friend is the nature of all things that come and go; good, bad and indifferent. It seems we can all be heroes eventually.

Take the Floor

Why does Radio Scotland persist with wall to wall accordion music on Saturday and Sunday nights? Is the work of the Devil, the Masonic Lodge or the Free Kirk or something worse? Where is this foot tappin', happy humming along wee radio audience? Do they even exist? Or is there some terrible assumption made in the great brain of the BBC that our body of work in accordion dance music represents the pinnacle of Scottish culture and must therefore be preserved? Or is it simply that the PRS costs for playing this stuff are a whole lot cheaper than anything available from other sources of music set up in this century? Sorry I seem to have inadvertently set some kind of personal record for a sequence of dumb questions that clearly have no simple answer.

Meanwhile on Instagram

Meanwhile on Instagram the world either freezes or passes on by, like opening a thousand windows and looking out at a thousand scenes and vistas. Private and elusive, hidden and shared. No need to wander and explore, no need to breathe fresh air. Life comes to you...and you follow.

End of the Superbugs?

I'm relieved to hear that common sense has in a way prevailed and "food experts" have agreed that black pudding is now a super food. Unfortunately red wine and all alcohol is once again very bad, pasta might now be OK (seems to be conditional as to how processed it is), full fat (blue) milk is good, the less treated it is the better and kale is, well good but tricky to serve up in an attractive way. Sauerkraut is helpful to the immune system but again yucky to eat, digest or even look at. Anyway none of this continually variable and baseless list of shoddy opinions and bad science will change my eating habits; a little bit of everything you like now and again etc. I'll do what I please until some super bug meets my non-super system and that'll be it.

Something brought me to this

Today I was was once again proved wrong by a drum machine. Outwitted  by some flashing silver tray and Chinese electronics. It's no wonder I've low self esteem and stupidly high white sugar and black alcohol intake (or is it the other way around?). Somebody once said that drum machines will be the death of us all, possibly Shakespeare coined the phrase or was it Ginger Baker on bad day. Anyway none of it is true and I would be unable to survive without my virtual kick drum, hi-hat, cowbell and M&S chicken in red wine sauce; all at a reasonable price and 90 BPM (that's Beats Per Masochist).

Warm Testicles

Having had the Mini Cooper for nearly a year I've somehow avoided using the heated seats feature. That may be some measure of global warming, poor circulation or simple loss of memory. Anyway today's unexpected (?) temperatures of -2C or thereabouts turned the wee car into some kind of icy tomb and a rather unpleasant place to be. Also it hadn't moved for about a week hence the high chill factor. Well the seats certainly work, almost too well. It was a warming and invigorating experience making finding space in the Tesco car park distracting to the point of almost being hallucinogenic. I hear that out there there are actual cars with actual heated steering wheels. Ooh! Technology would be wonderful if it wasn't killing us and the planet.

Cultural Normality

Another Dreamies moment

Those awkward January moments: apart from eating, sleeping and going to work much of early January has consisted on Season 3 #Vikings and Season 1 #TheAffair. For some reason this narcotic and soporific mix of cultural normality is working it's slow and potent magic. Seems that I am seasonally afflicted with unseasonably appropriate happiness and simple satisfaction factors that make no proper sense nor need to.

Shut up and play

This cigar box, slide racket requires a steady hand and a high level of concentration and some stamina. This applies not only to the listener but to any human form within hailing distance. Apropos nothing, just reminded that Jimi managed all of seven gigs with the Monkees before the whole tour fell apart. Seems like a lifetime ago.

Pudding Surplus

It's official: The Pudding Season has no obvious ending but we have a surplus of puddings remaining. Quite a few anyway and in assorted sizes and flavours. Dogged by the usual provisioning problems and poor planning our system has gone screwy and here's the result. You can't even give them away for age and health and safety reasons. They'll have to be eaten by careless and carefree volunteers who must first sign a stiff and possibly illegal disclaimer. Once done all will be well in the world and the cupboards can be put to better use.

Ghosts of the new year

This strange apparition appeared to me in a 16th century en-suite toilet almost on the stroke of midnight on the last day of what was known as 2015. I kept my cool. This was simply a result of imbibing large amounts of alcohol and beef as well as the loss of inhibitions due to the season. The ghostly time traveller / alien said very little. It just glowered from a floating position above the cistern. Naturally I appealed for world peace, general calm and scientific cooperation and any hard information on possible lottery outcomes in the near future. What he said I cannot repeat. That's because nothing was said but I think it's fair to say we had some level of rapport and understanding, at least for a short while. Funny thing is that as soon as I switched the light off he/she was gone.

Pooh what thou wilt

Winnie on a day trip and honey picnic at Boleskin House a few years ago.

Seasonal reductions time: I ventured out into the wild today noting as I passed through the bleak terrain that many unfortunate folks in both the public and private sector are being forced to work, or at least to turn up, sit in the correct place and appear to be interested.  In the supermarket, where bread and washing tablets were necessary purchases, there were many tempting seasonal reductions in that forlorn  aisle where barbecue stuff and inflatable swimming pools used to be. Now there's just lots of bargain nuts in packets, Christmas Pringles in strange flavours, wrapping paper and biscuits for cheese in sparkly tins. They'll all be gone tomorrow of course and the edibles scoffed long before next week's dazzling (?) episode of the BBC's War and Peace airs. Meanwhile, just in case you can't wait for chocolate fix a consignment of Easter Eggs has arrived from Milton Keynes via the Kincardine Bridge and are now in the place where the festive bulb planters  and neon elf hats once were. Get them purchased soon because they'll need that spot for the weedkiller, garden machetes and suntan lotion by early February.

Avoiding social media explained

I know it's now a cliche type of overkilled, over shared thing but I do like this picture, because a) it's a great natural and unstaged dramatic shot, b) it's clear and sharp in a way you'd not expect and c) it's nothing like any of my recent real life New Year experiences. This is a proper opium for the masses, expose the thick turds/working class heroes, Chavs and drunken drones of society at their best. See, this is how they behave when simply out on their own trying to celebrate the change of some numbers on a calender in non-public space in some city. So it plays right into the hands of the right wing press and media and reveals that soft and ignorant underbelly that we all love and hate within ourselves. This is Britain and frankly it's not so great. It is however honest, embarrassing and captured in that  unlikely moment in a classically artistic way. Strange things happen all the time it seems and now and then time just freezes.

Aside from the odd dip into Twitter (capturing gems as above) I've steered clear of trying to gauge my own and other's feelings towards 2016 via the web. Same shit different year I'd say and avoid making dumb promises to yourself about lifestyle or plans. Just get the next few days under your seasonally adjusted belt and life will eventually take a hopefully pleasant course as the year unfolds. That's a reasonable expectation. Ultimately it'll all make as much sense as the latest Sherlock episode, be as predicable as the Ten O'clock News and as repetitive and familiar as The Force Awakens. I wonder if it'll taste like this cake?

Bye bye 2015

I don't make resolutions, I don't start revolutions. I'm not reviewing the year or looking back either, that's for others to do and they're welcome to it. Anyway sometimes I chop vegetables for soup or stew or as a form of meditation and mind clearing, though next year most veg around here will be tastily and conveniently steamed in the new vegetable steamer. That's just a start of how things will be, I'm meditating over dropping the whole meditation thing though. I might just resort to simple medication.

Forces to be reckoned with

I'm with the popular view that the director of the new Star Wars film, "Return of the phantom force to be reckoned with and all that other geeky malarkey" had a pretty simple remit from the big boys at Disney. "OK, we have about $4 billion riding on this investment. Make a film for us and whatever you do don't fuck it up." I hope that he hasn't and I'll find out this afternoon when I finally get to see it. I suspect I'll not be disappointed, I go back all the way with this franchise as do most of my family and no doubt, come rubbish films, unexpected character deaths or the reemergence of old ones we'll stick with it. Turns out that Star Wars is for life pretty much.

Loog

Behind the times as ever, asleep at the wheel, up my own bahooki, etc. just discovered the Loog three string guitar project, concept and possible pyramid and finger injuring scheme. Naturally I'm there in mind, body and spirit. I would include soul if I had one but I think that I may have misplaced it in some previous post or accidentally sold it on to the devil or some other strange historical/pantomime figure. I might therefore become a Loog disciple or maybe even a heretic sometime in the year of our Loog 2016.

Of course all of this means something...

The Dead

Interlinked nonsense: Sometime this year I decided that "The Dubliners" by James Joyce was the greatest book ever written (albeit it's short stories but interlinked stories nonetheless) and that the "The Dead" is probably the greatest short story etc. etc. I still think that (and that). So despite the fact that we're damp and snowless those final paragraphs in "The Dead" still seem to resonate and reverberate nicely at this time of year. Nicely isn't a work you'd use to describe the effect of or the writings of Joyce, no not at all, but it works for me. Toffee and writing spring to mind. The cold and soulless moments emit a strange warmth and comfort and sense of common feeling and a sense of meaning for life and for literature. The other dead are properly dead too (despite what their website may say), the Grateful Dead; strange also to get back to liking their sometimes bland and insipid music, their irritating cultural position in some smoke filled American version of the world and their incompetency. Perfectly imperfect, that's what I must be pursing these days. Not even pursuing, more like falling into a black hole having been pushed or tripped up by some clumsy cat whilst searching for, there it in the dark. 

So there is no such thing as a dark night of the soul. It's just another trivial point on that continuous procession of stuff that you sometimes ride on, sometimes get trampled by and sometimes avoid in life's great (dark but with occasional flashlight moments) experience.

Post Christmas = too Decemberist

Now it's post Christmas and in this outpost of post Christmasness procrastination I'm being even lazier than ever about posting. That's because I'm way too busy with the seasonal stuff to think straight or straightforwardly. I haven't even seen the news or read a newspaper since I don't know when and I'm none the worse for that either. I did venture out today, not sure I'll try that again. Too busy, too frantic and too Decemberist.

Strange Christmas

When you're drifting, close on to the edge, outside of the law, far from religion and civilisation, bereft of beliefs and wandering a lonely road...or just living and existing in Fife then Christmas is a strange, disturbing time of year. (Thought not as bad as Easter). Really nothing makes sense, the meaning, the lack of meaning, the greed and industry and the pointless sales that precede and follow the great and misunderstood day. Anyway it turns out I do like raiding the fridge and pulling crackers, giving and receiving presents and so on. Maybe it's not so strange after all. So Happy Christmas, I'll say no more.

On a break for Christmas

Well actually not on a break yet, have to work a bit tomorrow, feeling a bit like the fellow in the card above. Those Victorians really knew a thing or two about the Christmas message.

This could be a tiny bird or a cartoon version of my good lady. Depending on how seasonally overcome you are you'll see what you want to see I suppose. Meanwhile here's a reminder that it's tea (drinking wine) time and some good career advice from the Guardian newspaper. Good to see that Mr Balls is putting his pension pot to good use.