King Crimson - Starless & Bible Black

Silentless Movie / NOSFERATU in 4 minutes

This is very good.

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways by William Wordsworth : The Poetry Foundation

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways by William Wordsworth : The Poetry Foundation

A violet by a mossy stone

         Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

         Is shining in the sky.

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear : The Poetry Foundation

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear : The Poetry Foundation

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

   In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

FLEETWOOD MAC - Oh Well (1969 UK TV Performance) ~ HIGH QUALITY HQ ~

I've blogged this clip a dozen times and I'm doing it again because it's great - the BBC4 subtitles aside.  I loathe music programmes on BBC4.  The ones about the 70s anyway.  They're depressing as hell.  There's something about watching it on the telly....years later.....it just feels wrong.

Peter Green. Marvellous.

Nukkel kraking

Have been neglecting my writing this last week or two, due to 'life' and stuff.
I'm expecting to have plenty spare time this week though, and am flexing my fingers and cracking my writing nukkels, ready for action,  so stand by, if you can be bothered.

The Doors Land Ho!

Sutherland Brothers - Lifeboat

Scottish Islands Explorer: Staying on Flannan

Fascinating photos of the Flannan Isles via >  Scottish Islands Explorer: Staying on Flannan: Not the easiest of landings, nor the most secure-looking steps, but this was the landing place for an expedition to the Flannan Isles ...



A place of (unsolved) mystery still - though for my taste much of the atmosphere is lost through the 'medium' of modern technology.  It seems in a way a shame that you can go there on a fast boat with powerful lenses and take the place apart, in a sense.  I can't help feeling that it's equally regrettable that visiting remote places these days seems to involve eye-popping amounts of ugly orange lycra, portable toilets, and hi-tech equipment. Oh for a wooden boat or a coracle, and a decent set of tweeds....or perhaps not....I suppose one must be 'practical'.  Very unattractive however. But I suppose you aren't thinking about appearances when you're desperate for the toilet in the middle of a Force 9.  Perhaps that's what happened to the three lighthouse-keepers!   One of them made an especially violent curry, and they all....no of course not.

I wonder if they suffered from scurvy.  It is possible, if they were there, unrelieved, for long stretches. I must read up on the mystery, and theories thereof.



Best account of Flannan that I can think of (the poem aside) is the fictionalised encapsulation in Neil Gunn's The Silver Darlings - they sail away, away west, beyond the horizon....and encounter wondrous things...



Haven't read that book for about ten years - not sure how much of my remembering is really from the book and how much is from my own imaginings.

Brain Fuel

One of the joys of life is food.  When you're on a budget it can be difficult to eat well;  I've had to learn how to do that.  Food is fuel - fuel for the brain, fuel for the body, and most of all, fuel for the spirit.  Without a healthy, varied diet, you might not actually get ill immediately, but you simply just don't feel good.  I think even if I had lots of money to spend on food, I'd hate to waste it.  I have a huge respect for it;  I don't like ready-meals (been there, done that).  I'm not keen on much out of packets - exceptions being Tesco crumble mix (39p), tinned tomato soup, Mr Kipling's French Fancies and sausage rolls out of the baker's.  Home-made is almost always best. I rarely eat out and when I do I'm almost always disappointed with what appears before me - and actually quite annoyed.  Why can't they cook, for God's sake?
I 'splashed out' on a bargain hotel break a few weeks ago ( as mentioned in a previous post).  The food was so disgusting and repellent I could barely eat it.  Over-cooked, bony fish, mushy potatoes, dry 'gateau', vile-tasting 'Lincolnshire' sausages at breakfast, liver pate that looked and smelled like dog muck - I could go on, but won't.
Well actually I probably will at some stage.  Probably fairly soon if I'm honest.
In the meantime I've made a page to share some of my tried and tested low-cost recipes.  I like them - you very well might not, so take your chances.
Here's the link.  The first one is Lovage Soup.  It's not everyone that has access to lovage (I do, obviously) but hey.

Clunie

The ramparts on Castle Hill, Clunie, Perthshire.

Loch Clunie and the island from Castle Hill

On an ancient gravestone,  Clunie churchyard.  'Set thy House in order for thou shalt Die and not Live.'

Two of my favourite book illustrations

from Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows, illustrated by EH Shepard

from The Gashleycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey

Paris Review - The Admonitory Hippopotamus: or, Angelica and Sneezby, Edward Gorey

A lovely piece by Edward Gorey.  Paris Review - The Admonitory Hippopotamus: or, Angelica and Sneezby, Edward Gorey

Simone de Beauvoir Would Have Been 106 Today

From January 9th.  Simone de Beauvoir Would Have Been 106 Today



Reminds me to re-read The Woman Destroyed and She Came to Stay.  I'm currently reading Iris Murdoch's The Sandcastle - similar theme to She Came to Stay, but not nearly so 'astringent'. As I recall, at any rate.  It's been twenty years or more since I read it.  Jealousies and emotional threat and all manner of insecurities.  Middle class intellectuals do them so well.  The rest of us have to either ignore them or repress them or suppress them with medication (prescribed or otherwise) and pretend we have wonderful lives while we get on with earning a living, cleaning the toilet and doing the shopping.



Then we go berserk and kill ourselves and/or whoever else looks at us the wrong way on a dull Wednesday.



Or perhaps we only dream about that while we wait for some ghastly disease to finish us off.



Ah, happy days.