Teeth-gritting Sound of the Week

'GNNNNRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR........................'

Book of the Week: Gruts, by Ivor Cutler

I got this from Amazon ( as usual).  I think it's probably out of print, although it shouldn't be.  This edition dates from 1962 and is published by The Museum Press.  Price 7s. and 6d. on inside of dust cover.  It cost me £6.37 which is a heck of a lot more than I usually pay for a book, as anyone who reads the blog will know, so you will understand how much I wanted it.  And that was by far the cheapest option available by the way.  It was sent from the U.S.A., oddly enough.
Anyway, it's a book I will treasure.  It contains a load of tales,  poems, drawings, songs and stories, some of which I already know.  For example,  'Old Cups of Tea', and 'The Dirty Dinner'.  ''OH!  What's that on the dining-room table?  Jim!  Jim!  Come here.  What's that on the dining-room table?''  ''It's a big pile of dirt, Mammy.''
And so it goes on.  'The rent had not been paid for 31 years and the landlord was becoming restive.'  A gem.  I would write more, only I don't have time.

Fact of the Day - A Lot of Stuff on the Internet is Bullshit

I don't think I need say any more about that.

Fact of the Day - The Human Brain looks like Cod's Roe...

The brain is a strange and fishy thing that looks quite like cod's roe, if you narrow your eyes and turn the lights down a bit.  As a child I was given fried cod's roe to eat and I really liked it, especially with Heinz tomato ketchup, or 'red sauce' as some like to call it.
Although I remember liking it, I haven't eaten it since I was about eight I have to say.  I can still remember the texture - sort of like under-cooked cous cous or polenta.  As a child, I wouldn't have been aware of what I was eating.  The cod's roe would have been simply cod's roe.  It wouldn't have been fish ovaries. The thought of it makes me heave these days, despite my belief that if you're going to eat animals and fish you should really do them the courtesy of a) killing them decently and b) eating the entire creature.  But I'm sure it's very healthy and it does look awfully like a brain.

Still Reading...Michael Palin's 'Diaries'

Still reading Michael Palin's Diaries and although they're a little 'pedestrian' in parts, I've grown accustomed to his voice and I'm going to really miss them when I get to the end.  So, I think I'm going to have to buy the next volume, which I've already spotted on sale on Amazon for 1p or thereabouts.
It's quite odd reading his account of his life, because it seems so normal (the trips to Barbados and the jetting back and for'ard to New York and the multitude of showbiz pals and encounters aside).  Emotionally balanced, I think is what I'm 'groping for'.  When I think of the sketches he was in (Blackmail,  The Spanish Inquisition, for example) he seemed completely off the wall, but in 'real life' he must be totally different - very grounded and quite reserved I think. Nothing much seems to 'throw' him, or at least that's the impression I have.
It's interesting to read about his writing routine - he worked very very hard at it, to an extent that surprised me.  Mind you, it was his living and had been since leaving Oxford.  So he had the motivation and the time, and possibly most importantly, he had the contacts.   To paraphrase - 'he had three things - motivation, time, and contacts.  And success...he had FOUR things, time, motivation, contacts, and success...and a conducive environment...FIVE things....' and so on and so forth.  Not to mention a vast amount of talent.  'SIX things....'  And energy.  'SEVEN...'
Nevertheless, he was incredibly productive.  One thing in particular that made me take note was his attempt (successful) at novel-writing.  'I'm going to set myself a target of 1,000 words a day, and I'm going to get the whole thing done in three months.'  And he did.
I can easily bang out 1,000 words in a day - whether they're any good or not is another question. My main problem is not the word target but the plot - I have not got one.  I'm a rambler.  But, nothing ventured, and I think I might try the thousand words a day thing and see where it takes me. That's on top of any posts I produce here on the blog.

Whinge of the Week - Sudoku

Geoffrey's in a Right State.
'It's the Whingers Anonymous club meeting tonite and I've no idea what to say.'
'Don't say anything then.  Just sit in a corner eating crisps and say you're having an off nite.'
'It doesn't work like that Tuppy. They're all top-notch intellectual thugs and they'll all turn on me using the combined force of their lethal brain-power unless I come up with a whinge that meets their rigorous standards.  And as if that wasn't bad enough,  even if you DO think of a whinge, if it's not a popular one with the others you get publicly de-badged.  I like my badge Tuppy!  I don't want to get de-badged.  Especially not publicly.'
'How horrible. I wouldn't go at all then.  Just stay at home with me and we'll sit and stare into the fire and eat sausages and drink Madeira until we go unconscious.'
'No Tuppy.  After twenty years of it I'm bored doing that.  I need some mental stimulation and I'm sure Whingers Anonymous is the very thing.  I need to stretch my brain.'
'Suit yourself.'  I yawned and tapped my the embers of my pipe into the fire, and contemplated another bacon sandwich. 'I find doing a Sudoku or trying to work out the number of Rice Krispies in a family-sized pack does the trick in the brain-stretching department, but each to their own.'
I was lying about the Rice Krispies, of course.  And about the Sudoku.  Surely Sudoku is one of the most mind-crunchingly dull inventions ever.....what kind of MANIAC would think up a so-called 'game' that involves adding up numbers in a square until your eyes fall out?  And why is it so popular? And why has Carol Vorderman made even-more-money-than-she's-already-got for herself by writing a book about it - and what kind of losers actually BUY it FFS....
'Geoffrey, I think I might have inadvertently come up with a wh - ....'
But he was still rattling on, pacing the floor and clutching his head. ' It's not all stick though Tuppy,' he raved, 'There's a prize for Whinge of the Week.  Last week it was a hamper.  I want to win the hamper Tuppy.  It would give me a real sense of achievement and that.  I've no idea what to whinge about Tuppy.  I'm perfectly contented. I don't know what to say and I'm afraid they'll all laugh at my confusion and embarrassed silence and then do the de-badging thing.'
'Why on earth are you even going then?'
'For the company Tuppy.  I'm lonely.'
'You've got me, and the neighbours, and the Tupfinder General on the odd occasion.  I'd have thought that was enough.'
'It isn't enough Tuppy.  I want to spread my wings and learn new things.  Meet new people. Maybe even...well...meet someone special...'
That was it.  I stood up briskly and brushed the crumbs off my tartan knee rug (it's one of my five eating days today).
'I'm making another bacon sandwich and then I'm fetching the big syringe Geoffrey. No, no,'  I held up my hand,' I'm afraid you've lost the plot altogether and you'll have to be strapped down and sedated until you see sense.  Or at least until I've finished reading the paper.'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kate-Smart/e/B008MFK3NE/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

Interesting piece from the Guardian about an encounter with Graham Chapman - my favourite 'Python'.   http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jul/01/graham-chapman-monty-python-star-and-me

Diet Food of the Day - Keesh

I was featured in the local newsletter 'The Enterprise' this week as part of their 'health and fitness' promotion.  It wasn't a good thing.  Mainly because there was a photograph of me looking rotund, captioned 'How NOT to do it - One Sheep's Weight-loss Hell'.
I don't think that you'll be surprised to learn that 'The Enterprise'' is one of enterprising couple Dave and Val Nark's latest enterprises.  Or that its vile and clumsy motto is 'Boldly to Go Where No-one Has Gone Before - or at least, Not for a While.'
Val came round to ours far too early this morning with a copy hot off their bio-fuel-powered printer.  More of where precisely the bio-fuel comes from, later.
'There you go Tuppy!  I know we've had our differences in the past but Dave and I are nothing if not emotionally-generous and so we've put you right there on the front page!  I'm sure Geoffrey will be so proud.'
'Yes that's right - thank you V - ' began Geoffrey, before I kicked him smartly behind the knee. 'Ow!'
'Well I'll be off then!  Time waits for no-one and I've a pilates class at ten and I need to be on the door before they arrive so I can get the money up front.  Not to mention I also have yurts to fill, goats to milk, and a post-office to run. Do stop by the post office for a lo-cal goji-berry flapjack - I've got some stale ones on special.'
And off she whisked, power-walking back up the hill to what used to be the bare and empty tourist car-park, and which is now a sprawling mass of eco-yurts, the largest and pointiest of which has been converted into a post-office-cum-eco-minimart.
'Why am I not losing weight Geoffrey? I've had keesh for tea for the past five days,' I said, as I flung 'The Enterprise' into the fire and watched my own face staring back at me before it vanished forever into ash.
'I don't know Tuppy.  Keesh is supposed to be healthy.  Everyone eats it when they're on a diet.  You've also had salad with everything, as well, so what with that and the keesh you should be really slim by now. It's a mystery Tuppy.  I hate to say,  but you might have to consult Dr Wilson.  You could have a glandular problem.'

more later.

The Whingers Anonymous Club, Badges, & Gel Inserts

'I've got a new badge,' crowed Geoffrey as he flew through the hole in the kitchen wall and landed on his usual perch on the end of the mantlepiece.
'Really,' I replied, staring out of the window in my usual morose manner, while puffing on my electronic pipe and adjusting my belt inwards - yes, INwards - by yet another notch.
'Don't you want to see?' he badgered.
'No.'
'Why not?  It's lovely and shiny.'
'Oh do shut up.  I'm not interested in seeing anything shiny if it isn't baccy or food.'
'I know you'll like it.  It's just up your alley,' he continued doggedly, 'You'll never guess what it's for - you're completely foxed, aren't you?'
'No, I'm not foxed as you put it.  I'm never foxed.  I don't DO foxed,' I said standing up, and flexing my plantar, 'Cattiness isn't in my nature as a general rule, but I've had more than enough of the animal verbs and adverbs.  Crowing,  badgering, doing things doggedly, being completely and utterly foxed and so forth.  And before you say it - I'm not horsing around.   No more am I cowering in a corner, feeling cowed and looking cow-eyed.  Besides, I know precisely what that badge is for because I saw the notice pinned up outside the post office last Monday when I went to collect my gel inserts.'
'What notice?'
'The one about the new Whingers Anonymous Club that meets in the church hall on Tuesday evenings at 7.  It's like the Hellfire Club except there's no dirtiness, there's tea instead of port, and it's open only to whingeing old domino-playing half-wits like your good self.'
'What gel inserts?'
'The ones I got off Ebay for my plantar fasciitis.  Which, might I add, is giving me absolute gyp this afternoon.  Not that you'd care, with your shiny new badge and your new friends at the Whingers Anonymous club and all.'
Geoffrey looked crestfallen, and I immediately felt alarmed. If I didn't apologise pretty swiftly there would be no chance of his making the tea.  'I'm sorry.  I'm just hacked off is all, Geoffrey.  My feet hurt despite my new gel inserts, I hate my new-fangled electronic pipe and I hate being on this five two diet.'
'It was your own idea to go on a so-called health kick.'
'No it wasn't.'
'It was!'
'WASN'T!  And stop looking crestfallen. You're making me feel even worse.  Here am I with an electronic pipe,  starving myself for five days and eating rabbit-food on the other two....'
'I'm not crestfallen.  I'm cowed.  And by the way Tuppy - I haven't liked to mention it before, because you've been in such a toweringly bad mood - but you're doing the five two diet the wrong way round.  You're supposed to eat for five days solidly, then starve for two. You've been doing it wrong. No wonder you're feeling a touch out of sorts.'
I sighed heavily.  Or as heavily as I could manage, given that I was losing more and more of my 'body weight' by the second.  'I'm such an ass.  Have we any sausages?' I asked sheepishly.
'We always have sausages.'
'Good.  Now pass me the opium.'

Next up - Geoffrey stabs himself in the face with the un-safety pin at the back of his badge.

Monty Python- Lumberjack Song FULL

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.

Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier (7/9) Movie CLIP - Approach to Sha Ka Re...

There will always be something magical about Star Trek (original), for me.

Link to article about Tolkein

I am a Lord of the Rings fan.  I didn't read it until I was about twelve or thirteen, and I read The Hobbit, after that.  I also love Wind in the Willows.  I can't really be bothered to explain why, so here is a link to a lengthy article (which actually I haven't quite finished reading!) in the London Review of Books by someone who, I think, feels similarly.  Germaine Greer apparently described LOTR as her 'nightmare'.  I don't think I'd get along very well with her.

People go on about the elves.  The elves are not the point.  If you don't understand that, then you won't like the book.  #thatisall 

 ‘I am in fact a hobbit,’ Tolkien wrote once,

in all but size. I like gardens, trees and unmechanised farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.'

He sounds like my kind of person.

I liked the Lord of the Rings films by the way, hugely, but I do not like the Hobbit ones, at all.

Ambitions of Age #1. The Road... is Everlong...

I was half-watching a programme on BBC4 about the A303 when the presenter mentioned a quote from Hilaire Belloc's 1923 book, The Road.  It appealed to me tremendously and I looked it up immediately.  Ah, the miracle of the internet.  Within a couple of clicks I had ordered the book from Amazon (yes,  I know...)

"There are primal things which move us. Fire has the character of a free companion that has travelled with us from the first exile; only to see a fire, whether he need it or no, comforts every man. Again, to hear two voices outside at night after a silence, even in crowded cities, transforms the mind. A Roof also, large and mothering, satisfies us here in the north much more than modern necessity can explain; so we built in the beginning: the only way to carry off our rains and to bear the weight of our winter snows. A Tower far off arrests a man’s eye always: it is more than a break in the sky-line; it is an enemy’s watch or the rallying of a defence to whose aid we are summoned. Nor are these emotions a memory or a reversion only as one crude theory might pretend; we craved these things - the camp, the refuge, the sentinels in the dark, the hearth - before we made them; they are part of our human manner, and when this civilisation has perished they will reappear.
"Of these primal things the least obvious but the most important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it; it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest of our race. It was the most imperative and the first of our necessities. It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made."

One of my long-held ambitions is to follow one of the ancient pilgrims' roads.  There's something about travelling slowly, and walking.  It's good for the soul.  Perhaps travelling in a fast car or high speed train is also good for the soul.  But it's different. Obviously.  A bit like the difference between looking in a real library, or in a real bookshop, perhaps even travelling to a different town or city to find a certain book or bookshop, as I used to do when young; and finding and ordering a book within thirty seconds of hearing about it....

Graham Chapman interviewed on Grampian TV 1987

Graham Chapman comes across as really charming (I'm not being sarcastic). He's my favourite Python, along with Michael Palin.  No idea what happened to the interviewer. Style very much 'high 80s', I'm afraid.  Shudder.

Interview with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

Fascinating stuff.  Subtitles are pretty bad though.

Roots of Blues -- Blind Boy Fuller „Pistol Slapper Blues"

Mulligan and O'hare 1

Question of the day - the answer.

Oh - I forgot.  The answer to the previous question, viz. 'why is fruit round?' is, quite frankly - although why I'd want to be anything other than frank about fruit, and why I feel I even have to introduce an element of doubt, is a moot point - 'I don't know.'

Question of the Day - why is fruit round?

It isn't all round.  I know that,  of course I do - I'm not thick.  *Neither have I been living in a cupboard in John o' Groats since World War Two.  *Nor have I been living since birth in a hut in darkest Antarctica.  *Or on the Moon.  I wasn't raised by wolves in the wilds of Siberia.  *Or anywhere else where they don't have fruit.  I know about bananas and pears, and probably other non-round fruit that I can't quite think of at the moment,  and I am putting it out there before anyone starts.

However, the fact remains that most fruit is round.  Apples, oranges, grapefruit,  Sharon fruit, kiwi fruit (yes, oval I know, but basically that IS round), grapes (again, an elongated form of round, but still round-ish),  lemons (same), tomatoes (controversial), pomegranates, blueberries, strawberries (sort of round) - I could go on, but won't.

*I do realise - because I'm not thick, right? - that I've made mistakes slash errors with my nors ors and neithers.  But right now I have a life to live, a cup of tea to make, a biscuit to dunk, the toilet to go to, nails to file, nose hairs to pluck - and I cannot be arsed looking up the correct grammatical 'usages' or 'use', even, and so for the moment at least they must stay as they are.  Imperfect - like non-round fruit.

Tomorrow's question - linked.  Why are raspberries hollow?

Toilet Paper Soaked in Arsenic Klaxon

'OKAY OKAY OKAY WHAT'S GOING OOOOOON???'

'Nothing's going on.  It's all going OFF.'

'How d'you mean?'

'I don't know.'

'You must know.  And if you don't know,  I must find out.  I won't sleep unless I do.'

'You're such a control freak.'

'I know.'

'You know it all, don't you.'

'That didn't sound like a question.'

'It wasn't.'

'Ah.  It was a Statement of Fact.  And rightly so.'

'I HATE when you say 'ah'.  Sounds like you're sitting there with your arms folded, in your leather wing-backed chair...'

'Going aaaahhhhh.'

'Going aaaaaahhhhhh.  Counting your metaphorical chickens.'

'I don't need to count them.  They hatched last week.'

'I seriously doubt that.  Anyway.'

'Anyway.'

'Anyway.'

'Anyway what?'

'I hate it when you say ah.'

'Just as well you're not a doctor then.'

'One day I will kill you.  You should know that.'

'Why?  That is not at all the kind of thing I want to know.  Besides, you haven't the stomach for it.'

'Stomachs don't come into it.'

'That's what you think.  You're too stupid, anyway.  You've just proved it by informing me in advance of your murderous plan.'

'No I haven't.  I haven't said how I'm going to do it. Or when.  For all you know I've been planning this for months.'

'I bet you haven't.'

'Yes I have.  I've been soaking your toilet paper in a clear, odourless arsenic solution, then carefully drying it out and replacing it on the roll so's you wouldn't notice.  Each time you've gone to the lav or blown your nose, you've been absorbing arsenic via the mucous membranes of whichever orifice has been wiped.  And I've been rubbing my hands with glee - which is not a type of soap by the way.  Your body, according to my rigorous calculations, must now have reached total arsenic saturation point, or T.A.S.P..  So there.  And before you ask - I can see your mouth opening and I know just what's going to come out - I have a separate roll, so I remain quite unaffected.  You however will die a truly horrid death at some point within the next twenty six hours and fifty two minutes.'

'I won't.'

'Yes, you will.  You smug git.  There's no point arguing the toss.  It's too late.'

'No it's not.'

'It is.'

'It's not.  I swapped the rolls.'

'Oh...........'

'Oh indeed.  Or as I prefer to say, ah.  You now have twenty six hours and forty eight minutes to plan your funeral and make a few last phone-calls.'

'Jeeeeez...........'

'Quite.  Cigarette?'

'Might as well.  Nothing to lose now, have I?  Holy lavatory paper.  I didn't see that one coming.'

'Course you didn't.'

'You're not pulling my leg, by any chance? Or indeed, 'yanking my chain'?'

'No.'

Gram Parsons - Return Of The Grievous Angel

Haven't posted any Gram Parsons for AGES.  My day doesn't go well unless I listen to this.

Out of the Trees (1975), by Graham Chapman & Douglas Adams

Haven't seen this before, or at least can't remember it.  

Bill Hicks BBC Interview

I've always been a fan of this chap.  And this interview clip is one of my favourites.  I've read some unnecessarily snarky things about him recently, following the 20th anniversary of his death. 'Today, he would be in some dreadful sitcom' and so forth.  'Three hours of material'.  So what?  He died at 32.  Arses.  He never fails to make me Laugh Out Loud, he was clearly a Good Bloke, and I hate to imagine what it was like playing those dives he mentions.

The Genie, the lamp, and the triple cheeseburger scenario

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What helps?  If I was were fortunate enough to have the lamp in my sweaty clutches (doubtless after an Indiana Jones-style chase down a mine-shaft), and if I was were busily polishing it to a hi-shine with the frayed sleeve of my favourite stripey jumper, and if the Genie-feller were was asking me to ask him a - no, make that two or maybe three - question(s), what then?  I'd ask for Money, if I'm honest.  And plenty of it.  I've not got any, at the moment, obviously - well, not enough of it to feel like it makes a lot of difference.  And to be frank, not to mention earnest, it gets kind of pressing at times.  Immortality also,  in a state of prolonged youth, beauty and robust physical and mental health.  That makes four, or if he's being picky, five.   Oh Dear.  Perhaps if I squish squash them all together into one sentence slash question, he mightn't notice.


As if.........

Those Genie-fellers are nothing, if not tricksy.

Would anyone ask for anything other than the above, if they was were offered three wishes, by the way?  World peace, maybe?  It would depend entirely on the circumstances, I think.  Unless you were extremely altruistic and strong-minded. Which, let's face it, most of us aren't.   We can't all be Nelson Mandelas, or Lindsey Hilsums.  Or even Effie McGumphys from number 57s, who's been saving up every single one of her milk bottle tops in a series of bulging Lidls carriers crammed in behind the Hoover in the cupboard under the stairs for so long that she's forgotten why*.  And she doesn't even like milk.  In fact,  she's lactose-intolerant.
Take the triple cheeseburger example.  Imagine this scenario.  You're starving, having dragged yourself out of one of those deep underground caves after being trapped, foodless, for about a fortnight.  You stumble upon a lamp, and you give it a quick rub, not really expecting anything, but hey! what's the worst that can happen? You end up with an old lamp that is shinier than it was.  Or so you naively believe. Is there a teeny, weeny little corner of your mind that doesn't believe that?  Surely. Let's hope that Nobody is THAT stupid.   Anyway, of course the Genie appears, curly-toed slippers and all, and of course he asks you what might be your heart's desire, at that very moment.  There is a snack van two hundred yards away to which you could easily manage to crawl to, only it's hidden behind a rock and you can't see it.  Only the tantalising smell of cheeseburgers wafts towards you on an otherwise undetectable zephyr of wind  .  The Genie knows about the snack bar.  In fact, he and his life-partner Jeanie have been running it for five years, and turning a nice profit.  He decides to make things complicated.  He folds his muscly arms, Genie-style, and booms, 'You have two choices.  You can have three wishes, or, you can have World Peace for all eternity.  Which will it be, o fortunate one?'
'I'll have a triple cheeseburger please, with chips, and a large cherry coke.  Then I'll have everlasting beauty and lots of money after.  I'll feel so much better after that, that I'll be able to manage the World Peace bit all by myself without your help.  Or at least I'll have tried, or meant well, or whatever.  Don't forget the ketchup. Thank you!'

Only the Genie insists that the 'triple' bit of the cheeseburger IS the three wishes, and you don't get your coke or your chips, never mind the ketchup and a half-hearted, bilious, indigestion-ridden attempt at World Peace.

What an utter, out and out b'stard.  No wonder he turns a profit.

Ummmmmmmmm............................................

*it's for a special wheelchair for a local child who was badly injured in a car accident.  The child is now fully recovered and no longer requires the chair.  Probably best not to tell Effie, in case she dies of shock.  What with her being elderly and that.

Gil Scott-Heron - 'Where Did The Night Go'

Mendelssohn: Fingal's Cave Overture (The Hebrides)

The Ship "Terra Nova" Leaving Harbour Towards the South Pole (1910) (+pl...

Trinket-flinging is the New Black

We've gone trinket-flinging crazy here.   I decided just to go for it after Geoffrey's episode of selective deafness;  Hell Mend Him I thought, and I seized every knick-knack and trinket-y style object I could lay my hands on and threw them willy-nilly into a Lidls shopper.  Holiday souvenirs,  miniature horse brasses, broken biros, porcelain clogs filled with carpet tacks, marbles, and even the battling tops out of last year's Yuletide crackers that gave us HOURS literally HOURS of fun during the long dark days of winter - they all got swept off the mantlepiece and into the bag.   Then I ran to the cliffs and emptied the lot into the sea.   "Deafness is it?" I shrieked, into the howling gale, "I'll give him deafness."
Geoffrey joined in, of course.  He can't see 'green cheese', as the rather dreadful saying goes.

Walk of the Day - Loch Clunie

The road leading down to the church and loch.

Reed beds at the western edge of the loch.

Clunie church, from the loch side

A walk round Loch Clunie to the church and Castle Hill.  It's a strange place, full of history.  When I first visited about twenty years ago I was chiefly interested in bird and wildlife watching, but I was also immediately aware of an odd atmosphere and I started doing some research.  At that time there was a sign on a stile leading from the car park to the loch stating that the site was managed by Historic Scotland, but it's long gone, and so is the stile, and I now have no idea who owns it or manages it.

I generally park just off the A923 and walk along the road that goes round the loch to the church and Castle Hill.  It's about a mile at most.  There is occasional traffic, but you get good views of the castle and island, and you often see deer, buzzards and small woodland birds, as well as a range of wildfowl on the loch.  The first building you see as you approach is the former manse,  now a family home, and then the church,  a  rather dramatic and gloomy Victorian Gothic structure which like many of similar age is on an ancient site dating back to pre-Christian times.  It has an interesting graveyard with lichen and moss-encrusted headstones dating back to the 1700s, complete with skulls, hour glasses and so forth.  'Here Lie the Dust and Bones...'  'Memento Mori', et cetera.

There is an engraving on a stone under the ivy* at the entrance gate, 'Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God', dated 1672**.  There is also a small, even older outbuilding by the church, possibly the remains of a medieval mausoleum. In summer it's full of swallows' nests**. 

As you head towards the loch you find on your right the terraced Castle Hill (see photo below), site of a hunting lodge which dates back to the time of Kenneth MacAlpine, the Scottish King who united the divided kingdom of the Picts and the Scots.  Edward I had a stronghold there.  The castle was taken down and the stones used for other buildings***, but some bits of it remain and can easily be observed if you climb the hill and walk across the flat top, towards the back.   I read somewhere that there is a hanging tree there, but I can't identify it, if indeed it still exists.  About half a mile from the loch and Castle Hill is another knoll marked cheerily on the O.S. map as 'Gallows Knowe', so perhaps there has been confusion with that, although I tend to think it seems unlikely.

There's an overgrown path which leads down from the car park by the church to an odd wooded area with the remains of what seems to be a folly and hints of other man-made constructions.  I believe it was once a formal garden connected to the castle/hunting lodge.  A few years ago there was a thriving colony of red squirrels.  I used to sit quietly under the beeches and watch them.  Once I saw a squirrel sitting in the bole of a holly tree, apparently sharpening its teeth on a piece of bone.  One of these occasions where you wish you had brought your camera.  However, like the swallows in the mausoleum, the squirrels seem to have vanished.  I've often seen roe and fallow deer there too, and occasionally stoats. Buzzards nest in the trees.  And there are usually mallards in a pretty inlet of water.

I wonder if the squirrels have been scared off by some of the rowdier elements, campers who light fires in the trees and dump bags of rubbish in the water.

The loch itself is known for pike, and is popular with fishermen.  It's a mesotrophic loch, and a SSSI.  Birds I've seen regularly on and around the loch include great crested grebes, goldeneye, wild swans, coots, and ospreys, as well as buzzards and the usual small birds such as finches, robins, wrens and tits.   In summer you usually surprise a pheasant or two, and there are lots and lots of damsel flies. Cormorants roost spookily on the trees around the already fairly spooky Clunie Castle, on the island, and remind one a bit of Noggin the Nog.  The best place to watch birds is from the top of Castle Hill - a wonderful place to spend a summer's afternoon, with a great chance of spotting ospreys, so long as you have the place to yourself.  All too often there are campers and fishermen, many of whom leave the place in a disgraceful state with fires, broken bottles, cans and lots of other revolting human detritus****.  On one occasion I saw a plane land on the loch, and take off again.

It's also worth wandering round the loch side to the remains of an old boathouse.  The island (which is actually a crannog) with its amazing ruined castle (or tower house) can only be reached by boat.  There are no boats on the loch now that I know of,  except those brought by fishermen and campers.   Sadly the castle, which was the former home of a medieval (pre-Reformation) bishop of Dunkeld, burnt down in fairly recent years, and only a shell remains. Apparently there was a chapel on the island at one time, St Catherine's, and human bones were found there, so I presume there is also an old graveyard.  James Crichton, 16th century polymath and the inspiration for J.M. Barrie's 1902 play the Admirable Crichton spent his childhood there.

I visit Loch Clunie often and never fail to be aware of its many ghosts, even on the sunniest days.  In winter, I think it is possibly one of the gloomiest places imaginable.

Castle Hill - site of Kenneth MacAlpine's hunting lodge, and a castle used by Edward 1st

Inscription at Clunie church gate

The island (or crannog) seen from the road - gable of ruined castle just visible

A very rainy Loch Clunie - the wooded island or crannog on right of photo

A walk along the road by the loch

UPDATES JANUARY 2018

* the ivy has been cut down recently

** I read recently that this was originally part of the medieval building.  I wonder if the gargoyles on the church finials (not the Victorian faces lower down) are also medieval.

** I haven't seen any swallows' nests in use there for two years at least

*** I now gather the stones were used to build the tower house on the island/crannog in the 1400s.

**** visitors/campers have increased dramatically during the last two summers and the resulting increase in mess and damage (to trees especially)  is at times distressing to see.  Fires are lit, broken bottles and all kinds of rubbish left. Paddleboarders and kayakers now access every corner of the loch leaving wildlife no refuge from human activity.  The loch has traditionally been a popular spot for visitors, it's easily accessible and attractive for camping, so clearly this will continue to be an issue.

Egg - Fugue in D Minor

New Short Story - the Mysterious Death of Clint Clanton

Clint Clanton

Plan of toilet

The Dumper Truck

“The Old Asylum burned to the ground last night.  So I heard on the bush telegraph.”

“Don’t tell me Stinking Maggie’s been round already.”

“Round already and had two cups of tea and a shit.  Maybe the smell woke you up.”

Granny Mack was using one hand to crack eggs into a pan of bacon as she spoke.  The other hand wasn’t a hand at all.  No.  It was a hook.  Nobody knew how she’d lost her hand; everybody knew it was an off-limits subject.  Presently, the hook was resting on the shelf to the right of the cooker, with a smouldering cigarette skewered on the end.   Granny Mack was pretty dextrous with the hook.   She said she was so used to it now she wouldn’t swap it for her old hand even if she could.

The front door of the cottage was open, and a brown hen wandered in with its feathers fluffed up, pecking at the filth on the carpet with its broken beak.  One of its feet was swollen with some sort of ghastly hen-disease.

“High time that one was in the pot,” she said, taking her cigarette and placing it between her lips.  “We’ll wring its neck tomorrow and have a nice dinner.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Do they know who did it?”

A gust of wind blew the ram-shackle front door shut and then open again.

“People are talking,” said Granny Mack.

I took a handful of grain from the sack at the front door, and threw it on to the grass to make the hen go outside, which it did.

“People always talk,” I said, leaning against the jamb, and reaching into my trouser pocket for my tobacco.

“Don’t bother with that,” said Granny Mack,” Your dinner’s ready.”

“I said I didn’t want any.”

“I know what you said.”  She slid the bacon and eggs from the battered old frying pan on to a chipped dinner plate that had once been decorated with something akin to Willow Pattern .

I sighed and took the plate, and went outside to sit on the upturned cast iron bath by the front door.

”Knife and fork.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll take some bread and butter as well.”

“Oh now…”

“Oh now nothing.  Come on lassie.  Body and soul.”

Granny Mack sat down beside me.

We ate in silence, apart from the sound of the gulls and the rushing of the sea against the rocks, which was such a constant that we barely noticed.  In front of us the hens clucked around the coal heap and the washing poles; a yellow-eyed ginger tom patrolled the cliff edge beyond, hunting for mice and fledglings among the hummocks of grass and the foxgloves.  Far out to sea sailed the eleven o’clock ferry  to the Outer Isles.

“Do you ever think,” I said, wiping my plate with a piece of bread, “That we’re in a strange place here?”

Granny Mack belched slightly behind her hand, and wiped her mouth.  “Everywhere is strange. “

“No, but I mean where we are, on the island.  We’re between the mainland and the Outer Isles.  We’re half-way between there, and somewhere else.  It’s almost like we’re nowhere at all.  The ferry doesn’t even stop here.  No wonder they built the asylum.”

If we’d walked half a mile up the dirt track which led up behind the cottage towards the metalled road that led to the town, and turned the corner beside the burn and the stand of stunted alders,   we’d have seen the smoking, blackened ruins high on the hill at the far side of the island.

Granny Mack pressed her lips together and stared at the horizon.  Her eyes were the same blue as the rain-washed sky at that time of day.

The ginger tom had returned, and jumped on to my lap.  I rubbed his ears and scratched the scabby, hard-to-reach bits where the fleas were.  He produced an obligatory purr, staring all the while at the doomed hen.

“Now now.”

“Well…”

“Well nothing.”

“Why did they build the asylum then?”

“I’ll tell you over a smoke.   Roll us a cigarette, and I’ll put the kettle on.  And remember…”

“What?  What?”

Granny Mack winked as she got up. “Back in a minute, “she said.

 She was still remarkably spry.  I had no idea of her age.  Granny Mack.  She wasn’t my granny, or indeed closely related to me in any way.  She was just Granny Mack, who had always been.

The cat jumped off my knee, and followed her into the kitchen.

I rubbed my hands on my trousers to get rid of his fur;  then I made two good, fat cigarettes, and put them carefully on the bath beside me.

 Then I leaned back against the grubby, white-washed wall and closed my eyes.  

"You were going to tell me about the asylum." Sometimes I didn't speak aloud. Sometimes I attempted to communicate using telepathy. Sometimes it worked, such as the time when I willed Granny Mack to use a new teabag instead of the one shrivelling on top of the marmalade jar that had been used four times. Or when I willed her to kill the white hen instead of the brown one that I liked. I was just developing it really.

On this occasion I spoke aloud, because I was afraid that telepathy might work both ways, so to speak. I didn't want her finding out about the three bodies in the black hut unless she absolutely had to.

"Yes. Well I don't think I can do it sitting here. There's an awful smell coming from somewhere."

I bit my lip and pulled at a strand of rye grass in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner. "Stinking Maggie must have blocked the toilet again," I ventured.

"Likely so. I told her before not to try to flush those rags. They've to be rinsed off in the burn and re-used. She tries but she's got no idea that woman. She's just not accustomed to mod cons."

I stubbed my cigarette out on the wall. "Coming inside then?"

"I'll be in in a minute. I just want to kill that hen with the diseased foot first. Get a pan of water on the boil, will you?"

As I headed indoors, I glanced across to the black hut. The hen was perched on the roof.

I decided to try telepathy after all.

"Do you ever wake up in the morning and feel like you want to fucking kill everybody?" I asked Granny Mack, in an attempt to divert her as she made her way towards the black hut.

"Och I used to feel like that every day," she replied, without turning round."But now I tend to think it's best to leave well alone, except for HENS!!"

Suddenly her right arm (the one with the hook) snapped out like a whip and before you could say, well, hook! or death! or kill! or anything appropriate with one syllable really,  the hen had been seized round the neck by the hook and was now securely but understandably rather glumly gripped under her oxter.

"That's tea sorted," she grinned, revealing her three brown and misshapen teeth.  "Now don't you think you should get rid of those four bodies?  The neighbours are going to start complaining and the nearest one's two miles away."

"FOUR bodies?  But I thought - I thought - "

"Yes four.  Did you really think I didn't know about that key in the manure heap? I added Stinking Maggie this morning.  Now fetch the dumper truck and get them shifted."

I did what I was told and went to fetch the dumper truck.  Driving back to the croft I saw a piece of torn paper with something printed on it fluttering on a fence post, so I yanked on the handbrake and skidded to a halt.  It  isn't often that you see a piece of paper with something printed on it, hereabouts.

I don't have much book-learning but I know a few letters and I always recognise a face.  I certainly knew this one, even though it was in black and white.

Clint Clanton!

That square-jawed, chisel-featured, stetson-totin',  nudie suit-a-wearin', geetar-twangin' sonofagun.  (Country and western singer, to the sane half of the population.)

I screwed up my face and stuck my tongue out as I spelled out the rest of the lettering, just the way Granny Mack taught me.  And she taught me good.

"CLINT CLANTON - MISSING.  There was a bit torn off after "missing", then REWARD £1, then another torn off bit.

I felt sure that the reward must be more than £1.  And I needed that money.  I needed it real bad.  It would help me to make a new life, away from Granny Mack and her hook and her three brown teeth and her half-witted homespun wisdom.

I revved up the engine and sped off down the track in a cloud of dust and sheep-droppings, rolling a fag on the top of the steering wheel as was my wont. 

In the distance the blackened walls of the old asylum still smouldered.  But I had no time to think about that now.

As I lurched down the dirt track I began to worry about that £1 reward.  How many noughts after the one? None, perhaps.  In which case,  why bother?  There'd have to be at LEAST one before I'd even think about considering looking beyond the end of my own boot.  For anyone - and that most especially included close family, or "clan".

I also began remembering (quite coincidentally!) what an utter shafter Clint was, according to what his drink-sodden rival Clant Clinton said in his tell-all autobiography, On the Road with an Utter Shafter...I'd found it in the skip behind the burnt down asylum some weeks previously...

I'd gone up there for a walk to get away from Granny Mack and her endless platitudes.  Oh yes, she looked the part, with the hook and the three teeth and the roll-up cigarettes and the hand-on-hip and the narrow-eyed stare, but her conversation!  God! it was like listening to an early 1960s edition of the People's Friend being read on a loop-tape.  Mind you, she HAD murdered Stinking Maggie and dumped her body in the black hut, with the others....or so she claimed...

ANYWAY - I'd found Clant Clinton's expose of the nastier side of life on the road with Clint Clanton in the skip behind the old asylum, just before it mysteriously burnt down.  It was a pretty racy read and only a shame that half the pages were missing.  I'd raked through the skip in an attempt to find them but there was only so long I could stand waist-deep in strait jackets,  used inco-pads, discarded syringes,  rubber clamps, polythene sheeting, blood-stained white coats, funnels, naso-gastric tubing, bottles marked "POISON" and these huge rectangular metal food containers that nobody ever cleaned because the food (usually liver stew) was so badly-burnt-on that they just binned them.  Anyway from the half I'd read it was pretty clear that Clint was a total shafter and Clant was a thoroughly decent bloke and the one with all the talent.

!!!!! CRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUMPITTY BUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Suddenly a half-clad body landed on the the truck  and immediately slid off leaving me with a burst windshield and a large smear of blood on the bonnet.  I hadn't even time to think as far as "What the -?" never mind slam the brakes on, and before I knew it I'd run whoever it was over.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw - to my amazement - a blood-stained hand raising an equally blood-stained stetson.  Was it Clint, or was it Clant?  It had to be one or the other, but who knew?  Who cared?  And in any case I'd be doing whichever it was a favour by putting them out of their immediate physical pain.  I wrenched the truck into reverse and stepped firmly on the accelerator... ...meanwhile........

The lame hen had escaped Granny Mack's clutches by fluttering on to the top of the Black Hut and hiding behind the chimney.

And Granny Mack herself was up at the smoking ruins of the Old Asylum, with a large wheelbarrow.

"Sod the dumper truck.  I'm 93 years old and I can still manage to push three dead bodies - no, make that four - up a steep hill.  In a wheelbarrow.  A large one mark you.  Now I'm going to wheel them down again, just for the hell of it.  And I'll think up some fresh homilies while I'm doing it. Might even whistle a wee tune on my comb and paper as well.  One of Clint Clanton's mebbes.  Here goes.

#OH MA GEE-TAR'S A-TWANGIN' AN' MA BACK DOOR'S A-BANGIN'

LIKE A SHIT-HOUSE DOOR INNA GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYLE!#  EEE-WWWW.......YYUKKK........"

Suddenly Granny Mack halted and wedged the wheelbarrow against a rock.  Niftily, she hefted the handles into the air and tipped the top-most body on to the turf, where it tumbled down the steep embankment on to the cliff's edge.

"Sorry Stinkin' Maggie.  I liked you, I really did, but I couldn't stand the smell a minute longer. The wind'll get up tonight, and you'll have a decent sea burial when the tide comes in."

#OH MA GEETAR'S A-TWANGIN'.....#

Granny Mack continued wending her way downhill with the remaining three corpses.

Behind her, on the cliff-edge, Stinking Maggie opened a bloodshot eye, and began to growl......

"Ah wisnae always called Stinkin' Maggie," growled Stinkin' Maggie, as she hauled herself to her feet. "An' thon Granny Mack thocht she'd feeneeshed me aff wi' her poisoned cup of tea in the cracked cheeny cup.  But she didnae. Ah'm hard as fuckin' nails me."

Stinkin' Maggie pulled a clay pipe from her apron pocket and stuffed it with shag.

"When ah wis young - an' am no' that auld noo mind - ah wis oan Page 3.  Ah wis a Page 3 tapless stunner.  Page 3 o' th' Bunfettle Enquirer, that is.  Ah wis Tapless Stunner o' the Year 1982.  We a' took pairt in a competition at Bunfettle Public Baths.  We hud tae parade roon' and roon' the swimmin' pool, tapless, prancin' along in high-heeled mules like a right bunch of erses. Weel ah say "bunch", but there wis jist the twa o' us.  Me an' Granny Mack, an' she wis weel-pastit.  But try tellin' her that!

Onyway.  Stuff this fur a game o' sodgers ah thocht.  Nae mare prancin'.  Ma bunions are killin' me.  Ah deid-legged her when naebuddy wis lookin'.  Even if they WUR lookin',  ah didnae care.  She fell intae the pool heid-first an' cracked her face aff the flare.  That's how she lost a' her teeth.  She's hated me ivvir since. 

Ah dinnae hate her back tho'!  Ocht no.  Ah feel richt SORRY for the wummin.  Ah find sympathy is much more corrosive than hate.  Altho' the two do go rather nicely thigither.

But enuff aboot me.  How are YOUSE a' daein'?"

Stinkin' Maggie drew deeply on her pipe and cocked her head to one side.    Of course there was nobody else there…

Geoffrey's Christmas present

It's Only Fairy Liquid (but I Like It)

Trees - with and without spreading propensities

I was sitting by the fire after breakfast, enjoying my favourite hobby i.e. staring glassily out of the window while stifling a poisonous outbreak of wind.  My gaze turned towards the tourist car park, and the Narks' ever-expanding yurt-collective, which they are trying vainly to mask with trees. Well, they say they're trying to mask it with trees, but knowing them I suspect it's the other way round and they are trying to mask US with trees.

'Why do some trees have a spreading propensity,  and others do not?'
'What?' Geoffrey popped his head round the kitchen door.  He was up to his armpits in bubbles, having squirted too much Fairy Liquid into the washing-up bowl.  We're accustomed to the Value label kind, which has almost no bubbles, even if you use half the bottle.  I got the Fairy Liquid for him as a Christmas present, but I knew he'd get over-excited at the prospect of using a high-end brand and sure enough he's gone too far.   The kitchen looks like the set of the Rolling Stones vid. for It's Only Rock and Roll (but I like It).
I sighed heavily.  I LOATHE repeating myself.  'Why do some trees have a SPREADING propensity, and others do NOT?'
'I don't know.  Shall I put the kettle on?'
'Yes.'
'What?'
'YES!  For pity's sake.'
'I heard that!'
'Bring the biscuits as well.'
'What?'
'BRING the BISCUITS as WELL!'
'Fling the trinkets and yell?  Is that what you said Tuppy?'
'Yes, that's right.  Trinket-flinging and yelling is my latest craze.  Fetch me my trinkets so I can fling them.'
'I'LL BRING THE BISCUITS AS WELL SHALL I?'
'Whatever.'


All five of my blog compilations are available via my AMAZON PAGE *shouts*

Stella Street - S03 - Part 4

Breakfast

Geoffrey and I were sitting together on the couch first thing, feet up on an old tea-chest, sharing the warmth of the old tartan knee rug before the dying embers of last night's fire.
'Make breakfast, will you?'
'No.  It's your turn.'
'If I lived in a city I'd be roaming the streets right now looking for a diner.'
'It'd have to be an American city then.'
'Not necessarily.'
'Where else do you find diners?  You do mean diner as in restaurant, don't you, and not diner as in diner - someone who eats?'
'Ummm....not sure....'
'What would you have to eat, anyway?'
'Bacon, pancakes with maple syrup, corn muffins and two eggs over easy.'
'Wow.  That sounds good.  I can't stand this.  What have we got in the fridge?'
'Nothing.  There's a tin of tuna, some goji berries and a packet of Val Nark's flapjacks in the cupboard though.'
'Is that it?  For pity's sake.  Have we nothing that can be fried?'
'No.'