A tree - i.e. a thing that newspapers used to be made from. 

Is it a good thing to 'have news'?
For fairly lengthy spells in the '70s  I lived in parts of the Highlands where you didn't have news. You'd access a TV maybe once every few weeks and a paper maybe once a week.  You might have a radio and get the odd snippet from that, or someone would mention something in a pub.  That would be about it.
'News' as we now know it didn't really exist.  It happened somewhere else.
I'm still aware of what occurred back then.  I have a sense of the history of the time, I think. I don't remember ever feeling I was missing out.
You didn't worry about 'the news', as such. You kept in touch with friends by letter and occasionally by phone. It was enough.   Nowadays your every move is tracked on Facebook, which is why I don't use it.
'I see you've been here.  Seen that person.  Liked that thing.'
Sod off and mind your own business.
It's beyond my comprehension.  As people say now, 'I can't even.'
But that's a digression - that's the personal side of news.  In terms of proper 'news' - 'news' news, or perhaps rather, 'the' news - we now have local, national and global news, 24 hour news. You can now get 'news' on a watch, for pity's sake.
How did we manage before?  Why do we need to know all this STUFF?
We don't, of course.  It's simply put in front of us, larded with targeted adverts and cookies and other tracking devices.
I find it quite addictive sometimes.  It can be gripping following dramatic events online.  On the other hand the rolling news on TV is dire, especially their inane, flailing questions when they desperately try to fill in time.
Can you imagine if there had been Twitter during World War Two?  Nobody would have done ANYTHING except look at their timelines.  Hitler would surely have run even more amok.  Well no, perhaps not.  Someone would have started a petition to stop him. LOL.
And it concerns me that we don't know if what we're ingesting online, news-wise, is accurate. Who's answerable if it's not? Everything's so fast, so plastic, so disposable - it's almost as if it doesn't matter who says what because it's gone in an instant.  Gone before you know it.  It used to be said of newspapers that they were tomorrow's chip wrappers.  Virtual news seems even more transitory and perhaps that might sometimes be a good thing;  if you're the subject of an intrusive news story of course you want people to move along quickly, nothing to see here - yet there's something unhealthy and invidious about it, as if the awfulness of it all doesn't really matter because it was only awful for a short while.
AND I really don't like that it's all chosen for us, all this rubbish.  Who's behind it all?  I'm pretty sure it isn't usually a human being. Of course there are still 'proper' newspapers, of course there are, and thank goodness for them but they're being increasingly squeezed into a corner as all 'news' seems to meld together in a gelatinous squelching mass, produced and prioritised by algorhythms and..er...stuff that I don't understand and am not quite sure I want to, although I think I really should.  Perhaps an algorhythm is an improvement on Bob Maxwell or Rupert Murdoch,  I really am struggling to decide.
If you look at what is fed to people in the guise of news on Facebook, especially, it's astonishingly crass and shallow.  And cynical.  Can the people who produce all this tripe be held responsible - sued, even - for inaccuracies - not to mention for intrusions into people's personal lives, in the way that newspaper editors and owners formerly were?  Will apologies be published to the person who was pictured parked badly in a disabled bay at Tesco, or with their bumcrack on display as they bent over to pick up their shopping in Asda?  I doubt it.   I worry that people don't trouble to look beyond all this.  Why should they?  Their lives are busy enough.
Move along here, nothing to see.
Well - nothing I'm prepared to admit to online anyway.

Batshit Crazy

'Oh she's bat shit crazee
She's batshit mad
The batshit it has taken away
The little bit of ummm....something something...
Whatever.'

To be sung to the tune of Football Crazy, by Robin Hall and Jimmie MacGregor. Preferably in a cellar with the door shut.

Bright Shiny Things and Dirty Little Secrets

I’ve got another Diary to read*.  

This time it’s Kenneth Tynan’s.

It’s spiky and incomplete and full of quotations that caught his eye.  I’m very much enjoying it, so far (I’m on page 44, just).

The thing that popped into my head is this.  He had a bright shiny life full of dirty little…secrets.

That is not a bad thing.  Everyone has dirty little secrets.  They’re the things that drive us on.  He was only fortunate to have the bright shiny life part, as well.  I’d go so far as to say that he wouldn’t have had the bright shiny life part without the secrets. I’d perhaps venture even further, and say the dirtier the secrets, the brighter and shinier the life.

Dirty big secrets aren’t really interesting.  You want a dirty little secret.  It’s the grit in the oyster.

When you read a Diary you think you’re getting the nitty gritty. You’re really not, of course.  The only Diaries in which you’d get that are raw, pure diaries that you might find under a random pillow of a random maniac, or at the other extreme, a 1920s ‘housewife’ recording her seasonal jam-making** and such-like.  Someone who writes unself-consciously because they don’t imagine themselves a writer and who seeks simply to record the daily grind.  Which in itself is full of miracles that jump from the page as you read.  Published Diaries, of course, are carefully edited. Nevertheless they're probably my favourite type of book***.

I suppose if nobody had secrets nobody would write.  It’s secrets that drive some people to write, some people to paint, and others to hide themselves away in a cave, with a supply of custard creams, a sleeping-bag****, a flask of best brandy, and all of their secrets, dirty or otherwise, locked away in a strongbox.

I could go on.  But I won't.

*Two pounds eighty one off of Ebay, by the way, including P & P.  If ever I come into money, I'll pay full price for books.  She says shamefacedly.  Till then... 

**George Orwell recorded such things in a section of his Diaries.  A wonderful read.

***As I was typing that, I knew it was wrong. I also like biographies and, well, anything really.

**** and earplugs, to muffle the sound of the secrets fighting to escape from their prison.

Remember when....we had privacy

Remember before the internet - when we had 'privacy'? When we had - for want of a better word - 'boundaries'?  Before emoticons and DMs and photographing your own bottom and transmitting it round the entire planet?  Remember when you actually had to make an effort, if you wanted to spy on somebody?  You couldn't just do it from under your duvet using only your thumbs while working your way through a tube of Pringles.
Now we're all being spied on - all of the time.  And nobody cares.  Nobody cares!  It seems normal! NORMAL!
It's not normal.  Nothing about life in 2016 is normal.  The weather's not normal.   Food isn't normal. And being in contact with people ALL the time isn't normal.  It's freakish and unhealthy and creepy. Where's the psychological space?  We're all under constant surveillance, all of the time, whether it's the obvious things like having your shopping 'choices' monitored and scrutinised so they can sell you more, and your so-called friends and family poking their noses in via the internet and thinking they know all about you, or darker things like the 'security services' (who are they?) and stalkers that you'll never ever know about because they live in their bedroom in Nebraska and you live with your son's ex-girlfriend in a semi in the Wirral and earn your living videoing your own bottom and your husband's dead in the freezer with a tattoo of I heart David Attenborough on his left artificial pec, and - and it certainly isn't 'normal'.
Everything's done 'online'. Banking.  Shopping.  Listening to music.  Watching telly.  Making stuff up. Like what I'm doing now.
It's not normal, I tell you.  Not NORMAL!  Nothing is, nothing is.  I used to think I wasn't normal till we got to this appalling stage and now I think I'm the most normal person alive.
Nothing's done 'outside' any more. By 'outside' I mean outwith the parameters of the internet. Because nothing CAN be done outside any more.  Or so it seems.
Remember when you could close your front door and take the phone off the hook and that was IT? Peace and bloody quiet.  If someone wanted to spy on you they had to stand outside your house and WAIT.  Writing stuff down in a real notebook with a real pencil and taking photographs with a real camera containing a 'spool' or 'roll of film' which they then had to get developed in a 'dark room'.
Remember that film, One Hour Photo, with Robin Williams, where he spied on that family via their photographs?  It seemed freakishly hi-tech back then and now it's like the dark ages.
And oh yeah - remember when, if you got fed up, you could get on a random bus to Wick or Land's End or Milton Keynes and VANISH - and nobody would know.  You weren't traceable via CCTV and your mobile phone, and you wouldn't have your coupon blasted round 'social media' until you were 'found', whether you liked it or not.
  

Welcome, 2016

This year's resolution (I can only manage one) is to write more.

I've been writing off-line, and I'm thinking I might put some stuff on here again.

I've quite a few ideas, but I'm quite put off by the internet and social media in particular,  because while I enjoy following the news and so forth,  things seem to turn awfully aggressive if you venture to express an opinion beyond the bland.  I don't want to have to engage with that.



Word of the day is 'milque-toast', by the way.

The Night Before Christmas, by John Cleese

Do Made-up Characters really exist?

...or are they figments of your imagination?  Well of course they are.  But do figments of your imagination exist, in and of themselves, independently, once they have been released from your brain?  Do they shop in Aldi and worry about the gas bill?  Or do they move from your brain to mine, becoming figments of 'my' imagination, vile and dreadful thing that it is?
And where does the phrase 'figment of your imagination' come from?  Who 'coined it', to 'coin a phrase'?  Who coined the phrase, 'to coin a phrase', and should they be hunted down and destroyed before they do any more damage?

Egg - I Will Be Absorbed [HQ]

Genius.

Animals vs Humans

'I want to go and stay on the Wintry Isles.'
'You don't know what you want.  You're too little.'
'I'm not too little!  You weren't saying that when I smuggled in extra baccy and drink for you five years ago (as detailed in Sea Penguins One to Five).'
'No.  Well, that was different.  I'm a better person now.  And besides, you're going to have a Named Person-style Guardian soon and I want to keep on the right side of them.  No more smuggling for you.  And no more piloting planes, firing pistols, or staying up late playing prog rock on the Moog synthesiser (again, I refer you to Sea Penguins one to five for details of all these appalling exploits). It's warm milk and early nights from now on, young man.'
'But I'm forty six...'
'That isn't humanly possible.  You were only born twelve years ago.'
'I'm not human.  And neither are you Uncle Tuppy.  We're animals.  And as I read in the Daily Record problem page last week, anything is possible.'
'Humans are animals too Tuppence.  The same as us.  They're just too egocentric to realise it.'
'Eh?'
'It was something I read somewhere.'
'In the Daily Record problem page?'
'No.'
'On the back of a cornflake packet then.'
'No.  They don't have such things on the backs of cornflake packets any more.  It's all E numbers, fat content and warnings about sugar diabetes.  Anyway, wherever it was, I'm pretty sure that someone somewhere once said that we have souls, and free will, and self-consciousnesses. We're as human as they are.  Unless I imagined it.'
'I thought you said we were animals.'
'Yes.  We're animals, just like humans are.'
'You're making it worse now.  Anyway,  I know what you mean.   At least I think I do.  Or at any rate I don't care any more.  Can I go and stay on the Wintry Isles now?  I might find Unkle Funkle.'
'Oh all right.  It'll probably be best for all of us.'

Prog track of the Day > Egg - Fugue in D Minor

Grammatical Anomaly - 'oaves'

Vis a vis my previous post - is 'oaves' the plural of 'oaf'*?  And if not, why not?  'Loaves' is the plural of 'loaf', after all.
It's an anomlay anomaly and I think someone should be Doing Something About It.  Not me, obviously.

*of course it isn't. I know that.  I'm not stupid**.

**actually, I am quite stupid in some ways.  And even stupider in others.  

Bedwetters and Brainless Oafs

'Dark skies over yonder, Unkle Funkle.  Hoist the main-brace and crank up the -'
'Thar she blows!  The Great Whale of the West!'
'That's not the Great Whale of the West, you blind fool. That's Mrs T-G, sunbathing on the Fulmars' decking.'
It was half past ten on a Tuesday morning, and already Tuppence was raving.  His Unkle Funkle obsession was well out of hand.
He'd stormed in at eight, demanding rum, and wearing a patch over his left eye and a fake 'peg leg'.  Receiving the reply that we hadn't got rum, we'd only Madeira, and precious little of that due to 'austerity cuts', he'd stormed out again till ten, spitting over his shoulder as he went, and cursing horribly.
'Best ignored,' I said to Geoffrey, 'Like most things in life these days.'
 We then had our usual 'triple bacon' sandwich, accompanied by five cups of tea and an argument about pigs, and why it was OK to eat them and cows, but not OK to eat sheep or horses.
'It's because we don't know any pigs personally,' explained Geoffrey, wiping some red sauce from his snowy white breast feathers.  'I'd never eat a sheep, because I know one, i.e. YOU, personally.  Just as you'd never eat a gull, because you know one, i.e. ME, personally.'
'True.  We don't know any cows - oh!  Except Mr Spockfingers.  But he was a Highland cow and perhaps - '
'PerHAPS you should enlarge your circle of acquaintances,' snapped Tuppence, who by then had reappeared.
'And perhaps YOU should keep a civil tongue in your head and lay off the rum.'
'Why on earth should I listen to a pair of old bores like you?  You're not experts in anything.  You've no moral fibre.  You're fat and lazy. You're failures in every possible respect.'
Geoffrey began to sob.  I knew Tuppence had hit a nerve; Geoffrey lacks my capacity for denial.
'It's true Tuppy!  We ARE fail - '
I interrupted, shaking my head and gesturing for him to be silent.  'Easy to criticise from the dizzy heights of youth Tuppence. What are you an expert in, then, other than catapults, bed-wetting, and raspberry chews?'
'I was not criticising, merely suggesting.  You brainless pair of oafs.'
'Well!  Unkle Funkle must be turning in his grave.  He'd be shocked to his marrow if he heard your cheek.'
'Two problems with that last statement Uncle Tuppy.'
'Oh really?  Do pray continue.  I'm all agog.'  I yawned in a faux-theatrical manner.
'I fully intend to continue.  If you'd stop interrupting and yawning in that pathetic faux-theatrical manner.   Firstly, Unkle Funkle was unshockable.  Secondly, he was stone deaf, so even if he had been shockable, which as I've already said he was not, he could not have heard you. Or indeed me.  Thirdly - '
'TWO problems you said.  Now it's three all of a sudden...'
'Is it?  Oh.  I can only count to two.  Being young and all that.  Anyway - as I was saying - '
'Oh DO hurry up.  I've sausages to fry.'
'All right.  Thirdly - he's not dead.  Ergo, he is incapable of turning in his grave.'
'WHAAAATT???????'

more later.

Here's a link to my Amazon page and more Tall Tales

A Couple of Short Walks.

The island

Reeds, Loch Clunie

Horse Chestnut Candle

A wander by a familiar haunt,  Loch Clunie.  Hoped to see an osprey - didn't. It was sunny-ish, but very very cold for May, and I was tired, so I didn't linger.
I did see a Great Crested Grebe, and a swan...
Next day I walked by Loch of the Lowes; in the fields were several pairs of lapwings (more than I've see in years), and numerous brown hares,  with swifts, martins and swallows flying across.  I also observed a little grebe in another loch, and quite a few tufted ducks.
Still no ospreys.
But it's only a matter of time.

By Loch of the Lowes

Loch of the Lowes

Tuppence reads - Wise Words from Unkle Funkle...

...he of the Wintry Isles circumnavigation fame.  Or notoriety.  Or infamy.  Or nothing at all.  Whatever.

'What are you reading,  Tuppence?'  Imagine him, reading, I thought.  Him!   Of all people!
'Don't you mean 'HE' of all people,  Tuppy?'
Geoffrey was at the mind-reading again.  Tiresome at times*.  'He of all people? Does that sound right to you Geoffrey?'
'Well, it sounds about as right as 'him' of all people.'
'Are you talking about me, you fools?' said Tuppence, glaring at us over his golden pince nez. Not that he needed 'eyewear' of any type.  His vision was perfect, even at night. Convenient for his exploits with the rats (see e-books for details).  The pince nez, therefore, were a mere affectation.  A phase.  Next thing will be tattoos I imagine - ghastly depictions of his fave prog rock stars, such as Rick Wakeman and Mont Campbell of Egg. 'If so, 'he' has got a name.  And I'm  reading Unkle Funkle's Diaries.  I found them wrapped in oilskin in a rusty tartan tin under the stairs, along with a packet of Lipton's tea, three tins of rice pudding and a Kendall Mint Cake wrapper with a use by date of June 3rd, 1920. The tin was labelled 'KLEENING MATERIELS' - that's why you wouldn't have ever opened it.  I only did cos I was bored and looking for - well, anything really.  But preferably cash.  The Diaries are ever so interesting Uncle Tuppy.  I think he went completely insane from time to time, what with the sea water drinking and the unfortunate incident with the albatross and all, but in between bouts of madness he made some useful observations.'
'Oh yes?' said Geoffrey, settling down and fluffing his feathers on his favourite end of the  mantlepiece.
'Such as?'  I said.
'Such as never work for a living, if you can possibly avoid it.  And if you must work, never ever work for someone else as an 'employee'.  Especially not in catering. He wrote that bit while employed as cook on the clipper 'Violet Carson', tacking round the Cape of Good Hope.'
'Well before he found the Wintry Isles then.'
'Yes.  He didn't like working as a cook.  He jumped ship in South Georgia and made a raft from balsa wood and a sail from his erstwhile cook's apron, and steered north, by the stars.  Only he went south, due to the prevailing winds and his getting mixed up with the northern and southern hemispheres and stuff.  And he ended up at the Wintry Isles, with a case of rice pudding, a pound of Lipton's tea and five bars of Kendall Mint Cake to see him through six months of Antarctic darkness.'
'Did he ever regret chucking his job in?'
'No.'

*useful at others

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 65, Rebecca West

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 65, Rebecca West



Very interesting.  I like Rebecca West a lot, or used to - I haven't read her for many a year. I have several of her books (The Fountain Overflows,  Cousin Rosamund, among others) and I've now ordered a biography from Amazon.  I badly need some fresh reading material.

I've also ordered another Graham Chapman book, Calcium Made Interesting, because I enjoyed A Liar's Autobiography so much (see blog posts about this from, oh, goodness knows when...).  And The Haunted Hotel, by Wilkie Collins, which also sounds pretty good.

Meanwhile I'm re-reading Titus Groan.

I might give my verdict on these at some point....although, why I should bother I don't know.  Who's going to be interested?  They aren't new books, and so many others have written about them already.