weekend whirlwind

There was driving.
And then there was sand, and sun, and horses. And many many pictures.
Then there were old friends, still smiling and laughing. Some new friends too; more laughs and smiles.
After that came the stage, massive and inviting. A loud audience hollered and howled and clapped and whooped and wailed.
We made them laugh. We made ourselves laugh.
Heart raced, blood rushed, head buzzed.
I'd forgotten.
We took our bow and went to the bar.
The beer flowed afterwards, then the wine, then the whisky.
There were pretty blue eyes, perfect lips, a beautiful smile.
The morning hurt. An hour or so sleep and a short drive.
Shower. Almost human.
Green fields, blue skies, picnics, horses and a headache.
Food, wine.
Home (someone else's) and a comfy couch.
Awake again and dazed.
Dinner, wine and more friends.
Bed. Six whole hours. Bliss.
Wake-up call.
Bumbled. Charged camera batteries. Ate a bowl of cornflakes.
Green field, grey skies, lots of horses. More picnics, stressed friends.
380 photos. Some of them don't suck.
Pub. Beer, burgers, drunken rugby boys.
Car. More driving.
Home again.

first of the season

This afternoon I wandered in the Edinburgh sunshine and supped upon my first frappé latté of the season. Cool, creamy caffeine goodness put a spring in my step and a slight buzz in my veins. I smiled at pretty girls in summer dresses. All was right with the world.

I refuse to check any news websites in order to maintain this illusion.

Wednesday miscellany

The kitchen's a mess and I have a lot of laundry to do. My manuscript is screaming at me, and one particular piece of editing that I've been avoiding for months... well, its time has finally come. The new belfry has survived its first pause, and should be getting a few more bits and pieces in the near future. I survived a last-minute, hectic photo job on Monday night, which may lead to new things. Over the last week I've received two job rejections and no word from agents.

The highlight of the weekend was a loud, mirthful argument with an incredibly sexy lesbian over which one of us loved vaginas more. I think it was a tie.

on air

For those who would rather hear the dulcet sounds of my voice instead of strain your eyes reading the screen, I'm guesting tonight on Old Jock Radio. Should be a good show - former Beta Band guru and current Black Affair ninja Steve Mason will be there with Les, Dod and myself. Be warned, we swear. A lot. And just because they're a bunch of miserable grumpy bastards doesn't mean I am. I am the shining voice of common sense and optimism.

showtime: 9pm-11pm BST.

solved mystery

The utility room in the cottage has two windows: one that opens and one that does not. The one that opens sits above the one that does not. It's usually left open for ventilation while the washing machine is on. Outside the cottage, beneath the open window, there's a large utility sink. It's about four feet below the window, possibly four-and-a-half. Trailer Trash uses this as a step and then somehow manages the vertical leap to the window. It's quite impressive, even for a cat.

It was only yesterday evening we figured it out. We came back from the supermarket to find TT waiting for us. None of us could have let him in, and the small, awkwardly placed window was the only possible entrance. It turned out we'd all suspected one another. I secretly suspected there was a hitherto undiscovered entrance to the cottage - a secret passageway that the cat was using. Well, maybe hoped more than suspected. I've always wanted a house with secret passageways.

Part of me will miss the uncertainty of the last few days, wondering whether there'd be an uninvited feline making a racket and hiding behind the couch when I woke up. But not the part that likes to sleep late.

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I've added a greatest hits section in the right hand column. Feel free to have a look when you get over the irony.

tt redux and other matters

Meowing fractured my slumber at quarter to six this morning. It was so loud I expected to see him sitting at the end of the bed. He wasn't, so I got up, nearly falling down the ladder in half-sleep. A peek out the window found him at the front door, meowing like a machine gun. I'm tempted record it and post it online - people would think I'd looped it. Cats don't meow in rapid fire. Well, Trailer Trash does, and can't seem to stop. I opened the door and yelled at him and then checked the Sox score.

We lost.

Back in bed and a fitful nap later and there's a clamour in the hall and the squeak of a door and from my perch in the Belfry I see TT creep behind the futon couch. I shooed him out the front door and checked the Sox score again, hoping it was different.

It wasn't.

In other news, I've jotted a note and a rant on the wine blog, which had been woefully neglected, and the new belfry is proceeding apace.

tt tom

The history of mankind is littered with sayings, words of wisdom that play with language and state the obvious in a cute, quirky way that can all be collected in a cute, pocket-sized book and placed next to the toilet where they will be read by the bored.

I would like to make the following contribution to that lexicon:

"Never let anything whose name begins with Trailer Trash into your house in the early hours of the morning."

It's not quite as catchy as catching the tiger by the tail or sleeping dogs, but it's apt. I descended the ladder of the new treehouse/belfry/bed this morning to find the local stray sitting on the couch. He stared at me as though I'd interrupted something important. Then he meowed, piercing, like the alarm clock that won't snooze. Which, incidentally, is what my alarm clock was refusing to do. Perhaps the cat was trying to talk to the alarm, tell it in meows to shut the fuck up.

The alarm off, I pondered the cat. He pondered me. I like cats, I really do. Someday, in the reasonably distant future, I will have a cottage in the country with cats, dogs, a big family and a mahogany/leather clad writing room where I will create great literature. What I won't do, ever, is get wrecked on fine champagne and think its a good idea to bring the local stray in to the house and then dump him in the guest room at two in the morning.

It seems I don't have to do that, as my housemate's doing it instead.

The stray's name? Trailer Trash Tom.

Pondering over, I threw the cat out and checked the Red Sox score.

They won, but I didn't go for my run.

new beginnings

I've started a new blog. It's going to be different from this one. It's going to have stories and snippets and possibly even poetry, should the mood take me. It's also an excuse to try different blogging software. I'm a geek, what can I say?

It's here. There will be stuff on it tonight.

I have a hangover and am pretty sure I acted a total wanker at one point last night. I'm at work and wishing I was in the sun.

long distance fan

I wake up early.

The sun is bright.

Part of me wants to stay in bed.

I ignore it.

It's easy to ignore.

It's five in the morning.

I unplug my laptop and carry it to the one spot in the house that gets wifi.

My breathing stops. It makes no difference, I know that. But I still stop it. I hold my breath. Just like I breathe out if I take a long exposure shot with my camera. Just like, I've been told, I'd pull the trigger of a rifle on a hunt.

And then I check the Red Sox score.

You see, if I hold my breath, then they can't have lost the night before. And if they do, well, I might have grabbed a scrap of air when I shouldn't have. Superstitious? Hell yes. It is baseball, after all.

This morning it wasn't sunny, and it was seven. I had to be in work by ten and I debated about whether or not I should go for a run. The haar was in off the Firth. Pirate ghosts wandered the fields around the house and the running path beside the loch. My bed wanted me back in it. I didn't want to go for a run. I held my breath and checked the score.

Red Sox 10, Angels 1.

I went for my run. It's going to be a good season.

truths

Bad white wine does not go with ice cream. That is an absolute truth. I should know better, really, being a born again wine merchant. I should have finished my glass of white and scrounged for something more appropriate, a whisky, or a PX, or something suitably ice cream-friendly. The thing is, it doesn't really matter. Sometimes you just drink and eat what you like regardless. If that means I get booted from the hallowed halls of wine snobbery, so be it.

Speaking of ice cream, does anyone else out there like to eat it with a teaspoon, just to make it last longer? Because I do. I love it. That's another truth, every bit as absolute.

I've moved four miles closer to Edinburgh. Still just outside Linlithgow, but it's the other side that I'm just outside of. It's still the country, but different. There's a cockerel that makes a racket, not just at sun-up, but whenever he feels like it. There's an abundance of home-grown vegetables kicking about. There's a stray cat named Trailer Trash Tom. The sunshine yellow walls boast the remains of hippy home-school geography lessons, with a technicolour atlas of questionable borders. I keep the Raeburn topped up to keep the cottage warm. I sleep in a loft bed carved from a tree. My hosts call it the treehouse. I call it the belfry.

Flat, agent & job hunting continue apace.

for courses

I've spent a week trying not to write about a dog. It's harder than it reads. Canine behaviour is wonderfully idiosyncratic - it screams to be chronicled. A writer's cursed though: as soon as he, she or it mentions a canine, the writer buries himself (etc. etc.) under hundreds of years of literary cliché and universal dog truths expounded by people who were probably better both with dogs and writing than they, the writer, are or ever shall be.

I dealt with a daschund. E. B. White dealt with a daschund. I'd rather read E. B. White's words about daschunds than record my own. Recording requires reliving and I'd rather forget pandering to the pooch, thank you very much.

The non-canine parts of the week have been equine. Horses are just as nuts, have just as many pages of prose devoted to them and I'm even less qualified to share my nuggets of experience, such that they are, with the masses. Or even those that read this blog.

Unlike the canine, I don't want to forget any of it. I've enjoyed learning and re-learning. I can tack up now (not quickly), and even get Pico to stop when I tell her (on occasion). There's a heady rush when you get up to a fast canter and don't feel out of control. Horses smell better than daschunds.

Of course, the heady rush does little to dull the pain of nuts crushing against the saddle when you don't rise on the trot properly. Nothing does.

Cheerios

Breakfast cereal is a cornerstone of childhood. It was for me anyway. My mother and I battled constantly about it. Like all other red-blooded American children I wanted a bowl of cereal designed to put as much sugar into my bloodstream per spoonful as the laws of physics permitted. I read Calvin & Hobbes and was crushed to discover that Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, Calvin’s breakfast of choice, were fictitious. Bill Waterson’s irony flew over my head along with my mother’s cooking spoon when I demanded Count Chocula for the nth time. To my mother’s credit, I never got it. We compromised. Which means she told me what cereal I was allowed and that’s what I ate. It was Honey Nut Cheerios. That was the confectionary limit of my permitted morning intake. I rebelled. I screamed that I hated Honey Nut Cheerios and never wanted to eat them again. I’d claim to go on strike. I’m not sure from what precisely. Neither was my mother, who would shrug and watch as moments after I went on strike I’d pour a glass of apple juice and fix myself a bowl of Cheerios, the episode forgotten with an immediacy that comes only with childhood and old age.

Summers were different. Summer vacation arrived and my treat was that I could have whatever breakfast cereal I wanted. It’s only now that I see the wisdom in this. There’s a considerable gap between loading a child with sugar and sending him into a classroom with twenty other kids and loading a child with sugar and sending him careening into endless sunny days with bikes, beaches, woods and adventure around every corner. The former would result in the disaster while the latter was necessary, the more sugar the better for those summer days. Physicists and engineers seeking perpetual motion machines and better fuel efficiency should look at the output of a ten year-old boy on the Delaware shore after an intake of two or three bowls of Cap'n Crunch. Or, more often than not, Honey Nut Cheerios. My prize won I discovered I actually liked the cereal that was good for me rather than the one that gave me a rare preview into what a comedown from class As would be like. Perhaps I was institutionalised, and like Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption found my freedom to be too much, returning to the familiar in the face of it all.

Perhaps that’s a little melodramatic.

It amused my mother to no end though, that after the histrionics of school year breakfast I would gleefully return from the cereal aisle, wearing only a pair of Jams and a pair of flip-flops, and drop a box of my morning nemesis into her shopping trolley. As summer faded into September battle lines would be redrawn and the fights over breakfast bowls began again.

Trips back home come with little reminders of past behaviour. Every time I order fish, or a salad there’s a bemused comment about my dogmatic refusal to try new things in my youth. My parents marvel at the difference between then and now. I do too. I look at pictures of myself now and don’t recognise the face. In my head, my mirror image is that of my ten-year old self, brushing blonde locks out of my eyes while trying to ride my first 10 speed (grown-up) bike without killing myself. The scar on my eyebrow, the lines across my forehead, the ubiquitous stubble and bald head belong to someone else. I’m kicking and screaming again, not at the breakfast table but at the mirror, not out loud, but in my head.

The face in the mirror is me. I’m not riding my bike and I’m certainly not brushing my hair out of my face. I’m writing a book. I’m hosting wine tastings. I’m looking for a place to live in Edinburgh. I try to chat up beautiful women every once in awhile. Life is handing me the same breakfast compromise my mother did.

I was home for a few days. My nephews had been the week before and they left a half a box of their breakfast cereal. It was Honey Nut Cheerios. They tasted ace.

much ado about...

It's too hot in my parent's new house. I noticed it last summer but wrote it off. It was a hot summer, after all. Houses throughout London turned into saunas. It provided meat for several of my own blog posts, whether as a point of complaint itself or as a metaphor to be twisted sloppily into a complaint about something else. I expected it to be too hot.

I'm a bit surprised to find it too hot in March.

I'm not here to escape from the cold. I'm here, ostensibly, to get my laptop fixed. A hangover from its high velocity voyage out the rear windscreen of my deceased Cavalier, its hinges are askew. If it were a door it would be an inconvenience; a shove of a shoulder to close it and that's that. Sadly, it's a computer.

Every time the door shudders the house around it collapses.

London without money is odd. It's similar to sitting in my room in Linlithgow: a hermitage. Except instead of freezing my arse off, I can't breathe for the heat. And there are no cats to talk to.

My writing's pants of late. This post has set a new record for false starts. The tide's turning though, for this and other things. I'm so used to a sense of impending doom that I'm not sure what to call its opposite - not without sounding like an arrogant or hopelessly optimistic wanker at least.

Some new(ish) pics here.

restart

Sleep is fitful at the moment. I'm trying to restart the book. I never realised there were so many different shades of writer's block. The most recent has been tenacious. The grip loosens though, and I remember bit-by-bit what needs to be done. And bit-by-bit, I do it. It's slow though, almost interminable. It's also deeply disheartening.

I've posted some of the pictures from my St Andrews jaunt last Wednesday. Enjoy. There are a couple that I'm pretty proud of - I love the sheep (even though it's not that great a picture).

flocks

The sun shone bright over the Forth. The careless and optimistic would think spring had come early. I've had too many winters in Scotland to succumb to such foolishness. I've also had too many winters in Scotland to waste such weather.

The bridge sat empty and Fifi's stereo blared boogie-worthy tunes. Further north the light on the bare trees turned the smallest, youngest, branches purple. When, just past Cupar, the painfully slow tractor took the turning to Kenback and Dairsie Castle, I followed it. It's a quiet road, a narrow road. Past the tractor and left after the narrow bridge came a knackered old land rover, hazards flashing, arm waving. I slowed. In the distance an army of sheep, chased by a dog and a quad bike. I stopped. They swarmed around Fifi, bleating and confused. I laughed and assembled camera and lens. Up the hill towards Strathkinness a falcon sat on a fencepost, pretending to be asleep. I didn't stop. The midday sun lit the bay and town below, the mouth of the Eden glowed.

Sometimes the road behind the tractor is the better road.

February is blurry so far.

The wine job is surreal. The routine resembles the memory of a dream weeks after you've woken up. The details fade into broad strokes and the boundaries blur. My shifts are brief and, if in the morning, I forget by the evening that I've worked at all.

I get paid for it. Not very much though.

barometer

While England and Wales recoiled from the strange atmospheric and seasonal phenomenon known as "winter" - taking them by surprise yet again - we received only a light dusting of snow, most of which is gone now. It made for a stunning run this morning. The canal froze over and the fresh snow on the ice revealed the tracks of swans and other birds, searching for holes in the ice to find food. I planned to return with my camera, but all was melting as I ran back.

The barometer in the hall fascinates me. It has a section for 'Change'. It's not qualified by anything else. The other categories are all specific, ranging from 'Very Dry' to 'Heavy Rain'. 'Change' could be anything. As it's a barometer, it's probably a change of weather. A paltry detail. I still like to see the hand pointing to change. I cross my fingers and smile, excited, and hoping it's for the better.

The winter light was amazing today. But the snow was gone.

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Things are odd in Russia, what with killer squirrels and extreme gambling.

Capitulation

It seems like it should mean more than surrender. Perhaps because it has more syllables. I distrust simple synonyms. There should be a modicum of variation in meaning between words, even if it's only a hair's breadth. I prefer capitulation to surrender regardless. Irrespective of their identical meanings, surrender seems to be something demanded by another party, while capitulation is a decision one makes for oneself. That could just be the candy coating on a bitter pill though, I don't know.

I accepted a job at a small wine merchant in Edinburgh last week. I start soon.

The book's prologue is proving excruciating to rewrite, but worth it.

Beethoven's Sonatas and The Be Good Tanya's The Littlest Birds compete for airtime on my playlist at the moment. An odd mix, but a good one.

New pics

destiny, coincidence and the universe

I didn't sleep well last night.

I inadvertently murdered the peacock butterfly.

Yes, the nice one I took a picture of.

No, I don't feel particularly good about it.

Yes, I stepped on it in the dark.

Yes, I probably, as I was debating, should have let it go - or at least moved it somewhere that I wouldn't step on it.

In any case, it put a sour note on the morning debate. The morning debate was whether I was to go to a wine tasting or not. I decided to go. Good champagne at 1030 in the morning, even if I have to spit it out, consoles my guilty, butterfly-murdering conscience.

The tasting was nice. Some of the wines were good. Met some old colleagues. Then, for no reason, I looked at the back of my clipboard. There was an old name tag on it. It said "Andy Cook Luvians Bottle Shop" on it.

How fucking weird is that? My old flatmate/boss/best mate's clipboard? At a tasting I nearly didn't go to, and wouldn't have gone to if I hadn't killed the butterfly? The wines were overshadowed by a sense of weirdness and destiny for the rest of the tasting. I kept expecting something hugely important and life-changing to happen. I had another glass of Tokaji just to make sure I didn't miss it.

Nothing else happened. We ate lunch, I said goodbye to my mates and grabbed my car with 2 minutes left on the meter.

It was kind of disappointing: destiny quickly replaced by peculiar coincidence. I'm beginning to think that's how the universe works.

on meercats, Marmite and other matters

I ran out of Marmite this morning. This has no precedent. No one runs out of Marmite. Jars sit on kitchen shelves for years, thin layers scraped onto toast in such minuscule quantities that they get passed on from generation to generation. The emptied jar may well have been full on my first visit to Manuel House in 1977. I went to Sainsbury's immediately. I needed butter and orange juice as well, but the Marmite was paramount. Like the ravens of the tower, I was convinced the kitchen would collapse without any yeast extract.

I hate supermarkets. Loathe them. My hypocrisy and myself quarrel endlessly about the situation and in the end my hypocrisy wins and I wind up in Sainsbury's. There's not much else Linlithgow has to offer.

I grabbed a basket and wondered over to the organic section and saw red.

Well, pink actually. My least favourite so-called-holiday arrived early. It was a stand of Valentine's Day cards. There were no nearby staff to throttle and harass for having such a heinous and garish display next to organic fruit, so I fumed inwardly. Not before staring at it for a moment, opening and closing my mouth in silence, somewhat like a guppy. A braver, more antisocial individual would have pulled it down in rage, but I'm a big wuss. And getting barred from Sainsbury's is a bit juvenile. Aldi yes, Sainsbury's no.

Recovering from the shock and muttering terrible words under my breath I picked up my shopping.

My thoughts had been drifting around the harmony of the universe and the future of the human race. Like a Christmas carol in October, the pink monstrosity ripped me from any optimism I had regarding human and planetary advancement and left me spitting bile at how shallow, dreadful and awful our species is and the sooner as an asteroid takes out Hallmark and all else the better. Hopefully whatever species survived and achieved sentience in our wake would have better sense than to celebrate a bullshit faux romantic holiday with the same initials as venereal disease (a joyous irony, nes pas?).

This sense of disgruntlement abated with the joys of posting a couple of letters. The girl who works at the local post office is quite possibly one of the most beautiful women on the planet. I'm not kidding. This is not hyperbole. She is. What on earth she's doing running the shit-hole post office in Whitecross is beyond me.

Once, I had a terrible crush on a barmaid in Ogston's in St Andrews (now the Gin House and lacking any character). It was one of those amazing crushes that reverts the bearer of it to the stammering stupidity of a schoolboy in a playground. One fine afternoon I bought a pint from this aphrodite of the beer pumps and was delighted that I had exact change as, in our limited relationship of customer and server, it was the greatest courtesy I could bestow. I felt gallant. I acted, however, like a gibbering idiot, waiting for change. She stared at me for a second as I beamed with an open palm. "You gave me exact change."
D'oh!

My demeanour with the pretty girl at the post office is far more cool and collected. I can order stamps and everything.

Last night I paid for my complacency with nature documentaries. UKTV History spoiled me with hours upon hours of Attenborough at his finest explorations of life on earth. Blue Planet, Planet Earth, The Life of Birds - nature at its most beautiful, narrated with composure and authority. The man is an institution.

Flicking the channels last night I stumbled upon Meercat Manor. If Blue Planet and Planet Earth are the pre-Murdoch Times of nature docs then Meercat Manor is The Sunday Sport. Bill Nighy narrates as though telling a dirty joke. It's hysterical. He actually uses the line "He's not coming to make war... he's coming to make love!" about a meercat. I laughed so hard I scared the cats. I almost expected him to scream "Yeah baby!" as the meercats mated.

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This duck deserved to live.

Recent discoveries

I found the butterfly again. It's on the first floor landing now, so I guess it can fly. Either that or it's a great climber. Or perhaps it can jump well. I'm not sure. A large chunk of its rear left wing is missing.

It's a peacock butterfly apparently.

I haven't seen it move recently, but it's in a different place every time I walk past it.

I got back from Brora to find the wood pile almost totally gone. There's some wood about to be chopped, but there's no fireplace near my desk, so I don't feel compelled. Where the wood that was there has gone is another matter.

The pics I posted the other day have been edited and titled and all that. So if you haven't seen them yet, have a peek.

The days are getting longer. It isn't happening fast, but it's happening. I noticed it today when I fed the cats. It was dusk, and not pitch black.

Yes, I know the days get longer at this time of year, but there's a difference between the academic knowledge of a phenomena and the observation of that phenomena. I love it when the days start to get longer.

Off to Edinburgh this evening. I would be getting drunk, but I'm driving.