Back from beyond

Go to Brora. It's WAY North, but it's incredible. And quite cold. I drank a lot of wine, got a lot of work done and talked a lot of rubbish. Wonderful. Several pics are available here.

And cypriot pointers are awesome dogs.

And everywhere I go, there's a wee fat pony. How weird is that?

the butterfly effect

The menagerie in and around Manuel House has grown. The new resident is small and I think a bit confused. It may be a moth but I prefer to think of it as a butterfly. Not just for aesthetic reasons, though it is too pretty to be a moth, but because I've grown fond of it. As such, I hate to think that this small creature is eating my jumpers behind my back. So a butterfly it is.

It's living on the fourth step of the main stairwell. Most of the time it sits still, its wings folded up like a great sail over its torso. This afternoon I spied it walking to and fro with its wings spread, stretching them occasionally. It didn't move from the step. It never even attempted to fly.

This has left me with a small dilemma. Do I take the butterfly and release it back into the wild? It doesn't seem to want to go anywhere. Has it chosen that step to die? I searched the net a bit and nothing online suggested that butterflies favour heinous orange carpets as their final resting place. Is it stuck, or injured? I have no idea. Again, there's little on wiki about it. But I get the feeling it's not long for this world. Fortunately the cats aren't allowed in that area of the house. Bagel's not as picky between moths and butterflies as I am. I check the step on both ascent and decent to make sure I don't squish it.

There's a small chance that before the week is out I'll be posting submission chapters and a precis to one of the world's top publishing companies. The butterfly is spreading its wings and not bothering to fly.

Not me.

Wooden Miracles!

Incredibly Beautiful & Lovely Barmaid: "What are wooden miracles?"
Yours Truly: "What?"
IB&LB: "Wooden miracles? What are they?"
YT: "That says maracas."
Fits of giggles followed. The maracas were for the band of course. Well, the audience really. If it's a band of two and if they're both on guitars or bongos or harmonica, then they can't be playing the maracas can they? Or the tambourine for that matter. So the maracas and the tambourine were shared among the small and enthusiastic audience. I drank sherry and Guinness, banging the tambourine and trying to achieve some sort of rhythm. I boogied. The bar staff boogied. My nachos arrived and the barman took over on the tambourine. I got up and sang. I locked eyes with a pretty girl who danced with abandon. I danced with abandon. The air bounced with tunes and good vibes from good folk. The sherry bottle was finished after the tunes were. The pretty girl with pretty eyes and dancing feet invited me and Broomy back to her flat for a party. We grabbed a bottle of whisky and some beers and accepted the invite.

Not a bad Sunday night really. Wooden miracles indeed.

evidence & resolution

I've posted a heavily edited selection of photos from last weekend's parties. They're here. Some of them turned out well, some not so much. Not sure I needed to take 300 in total.

My resolutions for this year are not coming as easily as I'd like. Last year they were obvious - finish the book and exercise more. Amazingly, for the first year since I quit smoking, I accomplished both. People aren't supposed to fulfill resolutions. Not all of them anyway. They're supposed to lay in a crumbling heap with all the rest of the damaged goods after new years: broken by the third. It's the fourth and I've not worked mine out yet.

Listening to Takk by Sigur Rós and it all seems resolved.

Draw again. Write more. Keep exercising. Do stand-up at least once. Get a job. Get published. Read more.

Some of those are more difficult than others.

Psychosomatic Detox

I'm not crazy.

If you accept that as fact, then the following are not the words of a lunatic.

I can talk to my cats. And they talk back to me.

I just don't know what I'm telling them.

It's easy to work out what they're saying, though. It's either: 'feed me', 'let me out' or 'stroke me'.

They have their own voices - Sam's is a sort of deep whine, whereas Bagel's has a bit more of a chirp to her meow. I imitate Sam's voice when speaking to him and Bagel's when chatting to her. Sam's banshee wail is more fun to do.

Sadly, as another season of seclusion has begun, just chatting to the cats is already losing its novelty value. If I knew what I was saying, I could be assured that my rapier wit was appreciated, but mostly I just imitate what they're saying. That makes it boring for all three of us. No one likes they're sentences repeated to them ad nauseum. Five-year-olds throughout the world have known that since time immemorial.

Resigned to the failure of my feline chat, I've cast aside inhibitions and decided to sing to them instead. Humans wouldn't tolerate this. I'm not a very good singer. To be fair, I think the cats only barely tolerate it. They view it as a necessary suffering while I dispense their dinner to them. Their stomachs drive them far more than their ears.

To be honest, I enjoy singing to them. They get a bemused look on their face and I'm sure release a giggle-like purr. And they get their food of course, so it works out for the lot of us.

When I'm not singing to the cats, I'm attempting a some sort of detox. It's a cynic's exercise as I think the vast majority of 'detox' practices are total bollocks. But I need the change of pace. It's detox for my brain and the habits and dependencies it builds up. If my body happens to benefit as well, so be it, but I'm not expecting it to. Nor is my detox quite what a hippy nutritionist would recommend. I won't give up marmite or white bread or any such thing. It's the hardcore junk food, stuffing my face and the endless fountain of beer, wine and all else that I've been drinking deeply from that are finis for a few days. The invigorating buzz of multiple espressos are on hold as well, replaced by herbal teas and mineral water. No booze, no stilton, no beer, no pizza, no wine, no fun.

It's dreadfully boring.

However, like singing to cats, it's suited to seclusion.

And it's only until Saturday.

Whirligig of time

"...thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."
(Twelfth Night (or What You Will) V,i)

It's arbitrary, I know that. The difference between 2359 and 0000 going from Sunday to Monday is only that of a minute. It's my choice to make that minute important, to take stock of life and see for only a moment the future stretching ahead, bright but out of focus. I know the cynics brush it off as just an excuse for a party (and there was a party, of that I can assure you). They're right, to an extent. It's just another day, another night, and another day again.

I see it as a new year. I buy in, gleefully, to the idea of closing the door on the past year and facing the new one with a big grin and hope of adventure.

Sometimes though, the past year shoves its foot in the door, not wanting to leave, not going quietly into that goodnight but rearing the uglier aspects of its 365 days gone by. The party was a roller coaster, some moments sheer joy and giggling delight, the tickle of champagne bubbles a tease, the laughter of good friends a song, and the road ahead clear. Then came the downs; the memories and emotional detritus of the last year and some before bubbling up thicker and more viscous than the champagne. Wonderful, beautiful, awful and horrible, surrounded by friends and sometimes very alone, the party New Year's Eve was epic on an intimate scale.

I finished the first draft of my book. Sometime between the late afternoon and early evening on New Year's Eve, perhaps later, I wrote the last sentence. I tried a couple of small celebrations - parties within the party - bottles of fine champagne with a few select friends. It was lovely, but left me in a daze. Only tonight has it sunk in entirely, when I've realised that I don't have any paper to print it out, and I haven't read it yet.

Now I feel I'm on a precipice, and I'm trying to work out whether I've just climbed up it, or am about to fall off of it.

I choose the former.

Happy New Year all, the best is yet to come.

mist on the river

I have a lot of catching up to do. My recap of awhile ago did much to establish what's going on in my head and life on a large, if slightly random, scale. However, as a chronicle, this blog has slipped over the past few months. I've been trying to work out why.

The simple answer would be that I can't be bothered anymore. It's such an easy answer that I've almost convinced myself it's the truth. It paints with a broad brush and sorts it all out in a oner. A buckshot answer - precision unnecessary and bang zoom it's a brace of pheasant. It would be ace if it were true.

Sadly, it's bollocks.

The truth? I think it's something to do with the book and my life in general. I'm nearing the end of the first draft. There's a rush of conflicting emotion that comes from this that has spilled into everything else. On the one hand I'm excited, on the other I think everything I've written is a pile of dreadful rubbish, not just the book, but the scribblings in my notebooks, the outlines and ideas on my computer and, of course, the blog. It's not true. Well, I hope it's not true. But there's a part of me that feels it with such conviction that even starting a new post on the blog is difficult. So I've been starting posts and trashing them after a few short sentences.

Not that there's been much to write about. Most of my days are spent writing and talking to cats. Life in the country has become uncomfortable and lonely. Brief respites, trips to Edinburgh or Fife, bear little comfort. I'm a guest where ever I go, and while welcomed (I hope), I need a place where I am the host. Which brings me back to the state of the book in a roundabout way. While I look for jobs it's the book and those that follow that will provide proper independence. Independence and validation.
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In spite of these bouts of self-doubt and discomfort, life still amuses. Last weekend I went to Stirling. It wasn't my fault. It was a friend's flat-warming and for some reason, best known to himself, he lives in Stirling. Disregarding my misgivings, I hopped into Fifi with a print out of the AA's directions and Xfm Scotland playing loudly. The party was drunken. I met a wonderful and beautiful girl: smart, enthusiastic, artistic (professional graphic designer) - she ticked all the boxes. It was too good to be true. So much so that as soon as I'd added all her fine qualities in my head and realised we'd been chatting for twenty minutes without an awkward pause, I knew what the next thing she was going to say was. Sure enough, in the next sentence she mentioned her boyfriend. Ah well - it was a fun chat nonetheless. The cocktails dulled the pain.

Well, the cocktails dulled my pain. The forty year-old wifey whose husband sat on the couch? They dulled her inhibitions. She groped, attempted fondles and smooches, and ultimately straddled my unwilling waist whilst I lay on the floor. Her husband, a mere two metres away, laughed. This was new to me. Flirting with older women? Yup, ticked that box and a few of the ones you tick only if you've already ticked the first one. Molested by an older woman in front of her laughing husband? Nope. And I don't recommend it. Maybe they were swingers. Maybe they were tired of waiting for a basket of car keys that would never come. Maybe the hubby liked watching his wife fondle (well, attempt to fondle - I fought back) wannabe authors. Thankfully their cab arrived and whisked them away before she managed to shove her tongue down my throat. Apparently there are pictures of her advances somewhere online.

There will never be a link to them on this site.
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Now I'm in London and Christmas is upon us. A vital payment from a client of mine has not gone through and as such I can't buy anyone presents. Our tree is only three feet tall - all the decent trees sold long before the 23rd. My laptop is back in the shop as the people who repaired one thing broke another and I didn't realise it until two days ago. My parents are driving me crazy earlier than expected.

As dysfunctional Christmases go, it's low on the scale. Tiny Tim I'm not - there's an amazing meal to come and great friends and family. It will be lovely. But I feel genuinely rotten about the lack of gifts. I have a contingency plan of course...
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I miss the fog already. I know - missed flights, chaos, yadda yadda yadda. I've missed flights due to snow and cheered for the weather. Why? The kid in me, loving snow for its endless possibilities and loving fog for the way it transports you to another world, taking everything familiar and making it a mystery. The mist rose from the Thames as though the river sweat. Millions of pounds lost and holidays ruined but for a few days these isles changed from one world to another, and it was a stunning sight. I wish I'd taken more pictures.
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Listen to The Black Affair: Japanese Happening. Retro techno brilliance with a hint of Brazilian funk.
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This was my four hundredth post. Happy Christmas all.

Recap (in no particular order) *updated again*

I'm 30 1/2 years old. I was born in Boston but have been living in the United Kingdom for the last 17 years. I like it here. I think I'll spend the vast majority of my life here. While I feel I am an American and always will be, my fondness and frustration for my adopted home provides a personal dichotomy that lets me bounce things around in my head when I should be concentrating on other things.

At the age of twelve I became the first and only member of my family ever to beat my grandfather at chess. I've never been able to concentrate properly on the game since.

I went to university in Scotland, before it was fashionable for Americans to go to university in Scotland. This took longer than expected. I started in the Autumn of 1994 and finished in the Spring of 2001. Three days after graduating I started a job as a wine merchant in St Andrews.

I did GCSEs in London, but I decided to finish high school in the States, at a boarding school in Connecticut. These were some of the greatest times of my life. I climbed trees and got into quite a bit of trouble without generating too much ill-will from the faculty. High school in the States is, for the most part, exactly like the first American Pie movie. Honest.

I was meant to do a postgraduate: an MLitt. in mediaeval history at St Andrews. This was to lead to a Phd and a world of academia. It didn't work out. I got distracted - and a lower degree than I was predicted.

Occasionally, I do theatre. It's been awhile, but I've done my fair share of student, amateur and semi-pro. The semi-pro was twenty-two years ago. I love Shakespeare in the same way a fuddy-duddy fictional teacher loved and laughed at by his students loves theatre. It's tonic for the soul, yearning to be spoken out loud. I can improvise dialogue in blank verse. I discovered this by accident, forgetting my lines for one show or another.

My memory is selective and retains vast quantities of useless personal recollection and trivia.

Being a teenager in London was amazing.

I have two sisters, one brother, two nieces and two nephews. I don't see any of them as often as I should.

I used to breakdance.

Photography amazes me, and I try to take as many cool pictures as I can. My inexperience and lack of understanding frustrates me. This applies to all manner of things, not just photography.

For five years I did both stand-up comedy and improv comedy. I think I was better at the latter. I never prepared for the former and as such my routine could be excellent or dreadful.

I've been single since March 2003. But I pulled twice last weekend.

Loads of kids grow up wanting to be something: doctor, lawyer, astronaut, fireman. They don't necessarily become those things, but their dreams fall into some sort of career path. I wanted to be Indiana Jones. I still do.

Friendship is, to me, more important than anything in the world. And my friends are the best people in the world.

If you were to sneak up on me when I thought no one was around, I'd probably be singing along to music I loved very loudly.

I will live in Edinburgh soon. I live in the countryside outside Linlithgow at the moment.

Skiing, baseball and scuba diving are three sports I used to do but don't anymore. Sometimes, when I'm feeling a lack of self-preservation, I'll play rugby. I played shinty (gaelic hockey) at university but wasn't very good and only ever stuck around for the drinking. I ride a horse once or twice a year, remember how much I enjoy it, and then wait another year before doing it again. I run almost daily, except for the last couple of weeks - I've had a cold.

My parents are incredibly supportive, even when they drive me nuts.

I became addicted to wine. Not in the alcoholic sense, but in the craving of knowledge, tasting, discovering, making notes, selling, matching with food, learning the history and, of course, drinking vast quantities. It's under control now, the addiction, but the passion is still there and sometimes I lose myself in polite company, waffling on about vintages, varietals and biodynamic viticulture.

There's a lot I haven't said here.

At the moment I'm writing a book. It's a novel set in St Andrews. The first seeds of the idea came to me as I was crossing the City Road roundabout just up from the bus station in St Andrews. I think that was in 1999. The idea rolled around in my head for six years. In October of 2005 I retired from the wine trade, moved to London and started writing my book.

Sort of.

Becoming a novelist is not something I'd recommend. For starters, I'd rather not have the competition. But more importantly, it's really hard. I've written over two hundred pages of narrative prose now, and am nearing the end of my first draft. This isn't a whim or some one-off indulgence. Whims and one-off indulgences tend to be more fun. I will fight to get it published and know already what the next three or four books I write or going to be. I've found something, finally, to replace childhood dreams of being Indiana Jones. People who think this is some phase or whimsy outrage me, especially those who suggest I'm retired. I've never worked on anything harder, for longer and with such focus. And unlike previous employ, there's no safety net, there's no one to seek advice from, there's no one to go to, because the vast majority of people just don't know. I didn't know. I don't think I do know yet, but I've got a better idea than I used to have. The few people who help and believe and understand are gems and provide strength and nagging to keep going. The heady rush of accomplishment that comes with completing the first draft will be replaced quickly with the drudgery of rewriting.

I'm easily distracted.

above the stove

Habits die hard. Bagel, the world's greatest cat, loves to sit on the hood of the Aga. It is her winter station. She lords over her domain from there, looking bored as we mill about, fixing a snack, flipping the kettle on or cooking dinner. Sometimes Bagel's not bothered by our antics and just sleeps. In her younger days, it was a two-step process. She leapt to the kitchen counter and then leapt from the kitchen counter to the hood and would stay for hours, drifting in and out of sleep, a look of serene content on her whiskered face. Now, age has caught up with her and she needs a hand. She gets to the counter without issue, but the hood is now that leap too far. Now she jumps from the counter to my shoulder and then to hood.

Friday afternoon found me in a foul mood for no particular reason. I sat down to The Simpsons, hoping for a 23 minute respite from grumpiness. My phone rang at the end of the opening credits and I cursed. The number was a mystery. The voice on the other end was not. I needed to go to St Andrews. An old friend had returned and was playing a gig. There were several pints of beer that needed drunk and quite a lot of cheering to be done, was I up for it?

So I jumped in Fifi (I have named my car Fifi - she's French), and shot north with one good omen after another. Fun Lovin' Criminals' Scooby Snacks burst from the radio just after getting onto the A92 from the M90. I bobbed up and down in the driver's seat singing along with Huey and the gang, reveling in my passenger-free environment. Someday I'll be driving and a great song will come on and I'll lose myself to it and notice far too late that there's someone sitting next to me.

My love/hate relationship with St Andrews continues apace. Students still wander into the street, seemingly invulnerable to oncoming traffic. But dear friends still reside there, and the pubs are warm, occasionally serve good beer, and boast the same comfort as an old t-shirt or tatty jumper.

Friday evening was a swirl of laughter, Guinness, sherry and whisky. With little or no cajoling, fuelled by pints and nostalgia, I joined my mates behind the microphone and belted out If I Had $1,000,000. Catching up was unnecessary. Everyone still read from the same page. It might have been 2004 or 2005 again, not the verge of 2007.

The hangover Saturday morning started off with the clinging remnants of drunkenness. Bacon rolls and an angry disgraced former First Minister and I loitered around the bottle shop for lack of anything better to do. I was in no state to drive back to Linlithgow. The shop was heaving. People sought wine advice and I dispensed, reeling unbalanced, voice hoarse, body disheveled, eyes glazed, the ideal matches for food, the best vintages and the perfect gifts - wines that I knew and loved, dismissing rubbish or those simply not good enough. Bordeaux, Burgundy and Port flew off the shelves and from the stacks. We opened a bottle of Nuits St George and I sniffed and sipped, it cut through the paste of the night before and I felt within a comfort zone I'd missed for over a year. Some lady arrived host a champagne tasting and I decided to stick around for another evening. I mentioned my heady sense of well-being to a friend and he told me to get out while I could. The hangover overcame the remains of drunkenness and after lunch I retreated from the shop for coffee and chat.

Bagel's spot above the stove is still hers, she just needs a hand to get there. We've thought of building her a cat ladder.

I don't need a ladder to get back to St Andrews, just a full tank of petrol. It's so easy, too easy, to slip back in, to forget the reasons I left, to avoid my life now by only remembering the good and the great of my life then. But then, it was only a weekend, a brilliant one at that, and there's no harm in a weekend.

Is there?

old pics

As it's December, I've unearthed some pictures of winter last year. They're here. Hope you like them.

Ya boo, sucks to you if you don't.

I don't know, it was on Blackadder Goes Forth and made me laugh.

Listening to The Magnetic Fields 100,000 Fireflies. It's quite groovy. Ta to 'Lish for the heads up.

odd bits

Two bowls of cornflakes and a couple of pieces of toast - a subdued breakfast/lunch this afternoon. I'd forgotten how much I really like cornflakes - hence the second bowl.

I'm considering buying bricks/concrete/flagstones to put in my car at the moment. The wind keeps threatening to pick it up and deposit it somewhere far away.

The weekend ended in a manner far more civilised than it should have: a classical concert in the company of some of Perthshire's finest, and us lot, weary, bleary-eyed, hungover and yearning for bed. The Perth Choral Group's rousing rendition of Orff's Carmena Burana cleared the cobwebs from our heads though, and it was a lovely evening all told.

Bed last night was welcome, though a tad empty compared to the night before.

fingerless gloves

I'm typing this on the couch in the lounge. I like the lounge; it's grand but cozy and well-lived in. It catches the afternoon light well. It's also quite cold. Not as cold as my bedroom, mind, but chilly nonetheless. It has a fireplace, but I've spent a chunk of the morning chopping wood, and the thought of burning it is anathema. I'm wearing gloves until my laptop warms up enough to keep my fingers warm. Typing with gloves is not as challenging as I feared - in fact, aside from the odd typo, it's no problem at all. The trackpad, however, is another story. It's having none of my gloved fingers. In a moment of total disconnect, I couldn't work out why it wasn't responding. I panicked for a second, feeling a bit like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense. When common sense dawned and I removed one of my gloves, the cursor sprang back to life, and my MacBook bore no resemblance to Haley Joel Osmont.

I need a pair of gloves with the right index finger removed.

In other news is a rubbish phone call, a growing wood pile, and cats so smart they know when you need a cuddle.

Small red tractor

The fireworks of autumn fade slightly. The reds and yellows drift to sepia shades of brown. I need the thick fleece socks for my wellies.

My wellies came in handy today, shin-deep in muddy water, trying to push the tractor to dry ground. I'd misjudged the field. It was a messy reminder that no matter how long I live out here, and how much I love it, I'm still a city boy. So my first attempt at driving the tractor lead to a couple of clutch mistakes and getting trapped in a quagmire. I needed help to get out. Reverse gear remained a mystery to me until my second trip to the wood pile. What I'd thought was reverse was third. It could have been worse, and I confess there was a contented sense of well being heading back to the house in the dwindling sun with a trailer full of logs in the back.

I also got to use the word quagmire - always a bonus.

It's not a big tractor. It's one of those wee ones that you need an attachment to mow the lawn. And it's red, undoubtedly the finest colour for a tractor to be.

After work? A cold beer and Ireland thrashing Australia at the rugby. Perfect.

Most photos shall live here from now on - have a gander if you fancy. The road trip ones are up and there should be some more soon, as I've conquered the evil broadband demons. There's also a link on the sidebar to your right ---->

windy leaves

It's windy outside and quite cold inside. We've had a power outage. The broadband connection is dreadful - I've been fighting with it all day. I tried to post my pics from the road trip to my Picasa account but it's having none of it.

There are some pretty leaves clinging to the tree outside my window, in spite of the gales.

They look a bit like happy fish.

tea folly

My first cup of tea tasted odd this morning. It lacked the smoky goodness that Lapsang Souchong (the most fun tea in the world to say out loud) usually has. I thought nothing of it until I went to get my second. It turns out my first cup was Lady Grey.

It's quiet out here.

You may have noticed.

Today is a words and pictures day.