The Wind-Up Dog Chronicles

Book Collections

2011-10-11T12:13:00.003+01:00

Been hard at work on my new(ish) website for the run up to Christmas. It's a book price comparison site, and, while there's still a few bugs to be ironed out, it works pretty well. Recently I've been adding new feature pages to try to pick up some traffic over the (potentially) lucrative holiday season when it comes.

The most recent pages I've added have been:

A Mr Men and Little Miss complete collection box set page. I loved the Mr Men when I was a nipper, so this was a really easy page to write.
A page on the Skulduggery Pleasant series, a series of kids books featuring the undead wizard Skulduggery Pleasant, a living skeleton who fights the forces of evil using his formidable magical powers. Fun stuff.

I've still got tons of work to do on it - I've identified 13 different book box sets which it would be good to have a page each on - but it's good to see the site shaping up after all the work that's been done on it.

Here's hopin it might actually make me some money in the long run...

Skiving.

2006-08-11T22:50:00.000+01:00

For those of you who don't know, "skiving" is the noble art of "not actually working when you're at work". In the Far East Zen masters refined and codified the practice into the highly-refined, semi-mystical form of "faff-fu". And you thought they were just meditating.

So, my boss is still on holiday (when will the madness end?), and, to make things even worse/better, my line manager-type guy has moved desks so he's no longer almost literally peering over my shoulder all the time.

Enter the sloth.

I've spent most of this week not doing any actual work at all, but wearing my (now well-practiced) "slightly consternated" face while looking up all sorts of irrelevant rubbish on Wikipedia. I also heard a crap joke that made me laugh -

Q - How do you know when the Devil's at the front of the queue in the Post Office?
A - He takes many forms.

Anyway, as I was saying - lately, the Wikipedia has been my playground during working hours, so if I'm not actually working, I am at least finding out new stuff. Been reading a lot about Outsider Art at the moment: I've always been impressed by the Watts Towers and other semi-obsessive projects like that, so I did a bit of digging and came up with some truly fascinating stories.

There's always been a bit of a correlation between art and madness, at least in the popular consciousness (if there is such a thing). Most of the people we consider as great artists were a bit unhinged, but I think that's kind of true of anyone who really throws themself into something: to be really good at something, to be singular at something, you almost by definition can't be what the bulk of society would consider "a well-balanced individual". You have to be single-minded, passionate: or, to use a less positive word that means effectively the same thing, obsessive.

What I liked about the artists I found when I did a bit of digging when no-one else was looking in my workplace was that they weren't creating for an audience. They created stuff because they had to. It almost felt a bit voyeuristic looking at the stuff they'd made, knowing that they'd never saught a public airing for it when they were alive.

I'd better give some examples. Edmund Monsiel was a Polish shopkeeper who, in 1942, hid himself away in his brother's attic fearing arrest from the Nazis. He remained there for years, scratching out innumerable iterative drawings by candlelight. All his drawings feature repeated faces drawn again and again - they do have strange kind of beauty to them, but that's probably not what Edmund intended. Even in darkness or in the folds of a piece of clothing he saw accusatory eyes and a dissaproving face. See what I mean about the voyeuristic aspect? I'm calling them beatiful, but they were probably painful to him. Not sure how I feel about looking at the signs of a mind falling apart.

I will write more about this later (it's really captured my imagination), but I must head to bed now. Do not pass Go, do not chop off your ear and send it to your loved one.

Back to the Toad "Work" Squatting on my Life

2006-08-04T22:26:00.000+01:00

I've not had a good week. After my wee week away, I just haven't been able to back into the swing of things at all. I'll try not to make this post too moany, but I've not been the happiest of men over the past seven days.

Can't seem to knuckle down to it at work, which just makes the time drag all the more. Took on some new stuff today (which I shouldn't really be doing) just to see if learning something new would enthuse me any, but it's proved to be another cul de sac of procrastination and over-deliberation.

Don't get me wrong - I do like my job: it's just that lately I don't really want to do it. Between every strike of the snooze button on my alarm clock, the prospect of pulling a sickie lately always looms large. Maybe it's just the nice weather sapping my energy, maybe someone's sneaked some kryptonite under my desk - whatever the reason, I just can't seem to muster up the bluster to tackle the stuff I'm supposed to be doing.

Doesn't help that my boss is away on holiday at the moment. The whole atmosphere at the office is one of lax licentuousness, and I think everyone's kind of just kicking back and seeing what they can get away with. Which turns out to be quite a lot. It hasn't gone all "Lord of the Flies" quite yet, but I reckon it's only a matter of time before someone sticks a pig's head on a stick and we all start lighting fires with spectacles and eating each other.

Gahh. But on the plus side - we're all on holiday on Monday, which means a long weekend followed by a short week. And I've been invited to a barbeque tomorrow by a couple of friends who I haven't seen for ages, so that should be good. And I've secured Monday and Tuesday off the week after that, to help out a couple of mates who are moving house and need a free-coffee-fuelled general dogsbody kicking around to assist them. And possibly paint stuff.

I think I really liked my job when I was learning new stuff every day (it was a bit of a career u-turn for me - or, more accurately, a u-turn into an actual career from a dead-end job), but, while I'm still learning new stuff all the time, the things I'm asked to do get more and more samey, so I get less and less chances to use the things that I've just learned. I find myself doing more and more stuff on my own initiative, just to keep myself interested more than anything else, and it's starting to annoy me that that isn't getting recognised by my superiors.

I really need to lug more stones about. Build more (non-metaphorical) walls. Stop thinking about work for three days and just enjoy myself. Maybe push Piggy off a cliff while I'm at it.

And Relax...

2006-07-31T21:39:00.000+01:00

Holiday over, and back to work today. Boo hiss.

Still, I did have a fine time while I was away. Luckily, the weather held for the most part, so I was able to bask in bright, un-Scottish sunshine for almost the entire week. I've even managed to get one of those absurd t-shirt tans, where I'm the colour of fine mahogany on my face and forearms, but still a sickly, pasty white on my torso from the neck down. My arms and face look like I'm quite healthy and outdoors-y, but the rest of me looks a bit like I've been living underground for the past five years.

'Twas a bit of a hectic week, but I loved every minute of it. During the day, I was working like a navvy, lugging buckets of stone chippings, sand and other heavy stuff around for hours on end. And breaking big stones into smaller stones with a tiny hammer, which was surprisingly satisfying.

Me and my Dad are still (perhaps foolishly) entertaining the notion of running the West Highland Way, so there was a lot of running going on as well. My first day there, I flippantly made the comment that I didn't want to run for less than two hours a day - unfortunately, my Dad held me to that, and woke me up at six every morning for a two hour/two and a half hour run every single day afterwards.

God, but Pitlochry is hilly. Lots of beautiful scenery, but it's very up and down (and mostly up). High hills to tackle early in the morning. But it was lovely to run through wooded paths and plant my feet on bare earth rather than the usual concrete pavements I run on here in Dundee. Here in this city I count as home, I run the same course day in, day out - seven days in Pitlochry, we took a different route every time.

Also ran the furthest I've ever ran ever on Saturday. Three hours: up Ben Vrackie, then downhill towards Killicrankie, and back to Pitlochry. Ate a sandwich the size of my head, then ran another three hours (and four minutes) doing the same course the othe way round. Six hours of running in one day. I'm hopelessly proud of that, but at the same time I'm aware that it's impressive only to me.

At one point a butterfly fluttered before me and my Dad - kept pace with us for at least a mile or two. Quite touching, until I realised that, like all the woodland creatures, it had realised how slow we were going, and was probably just taking the piss. Not long after that, I swear I saw a fox giving us the finger.

Holiday...

2006-07-22T22:20:00.000+01:00

As of today (or Monday, if you're a pedant) I'm on holiday. Hoo-bloody-rah. Not a moment too soon - I don't want to bore you with work stuff (I bore myself enough with it already, but then I do get paid for it), but, due to circumstances beyond my control, my current project has just descended into a cut-and-paste fest that seems to be interminable. A brand new circle of hell. With none of it any of my my doing! Aargh! Jam fingers in ears, slam face into keyboard whilst humming the latest maddeningly catchy (but still hopelessly bland) tune that Radio 2 have decided to put on "high rotation" on their playlist. Repeat as desired.

And relax. Full stop, draw a line under it - that's the last little bit of thought I'm going to give to work until I'm back there and have to face the sprawling monstrosity of my current project once again. It breathes fire and everything.

I'm on holiday now. Holiday! My timing being as poor as ever, I think I've managed to miss to the bulk of the heatwave we've been having here in the UK by a very thin margin - I'll be just in time to get the rainy, humid and possibly thunderstorming aftermath of Scotland actually having some nice weather for a change. Looking out my bedroom window as I write this, it's all misty and mysterious out there - very romantic looking (in a pea-soup, Jack the Ripper kind of way), but not the kind of cloudless, sun-kissed skies I was hoping for.

Anyway - I'm off to Pitlochry tomorrow to begin my holiday proper. I'll be staying with my Mum and Dad for a week, laying slabs and generally helping them out with their garden. Do I know how to party or what? Slab-tastic.

All sarcasm aside, I am actually really looking forward to it. Hard physical labour will actually be a relief compared to the cutting and pasting stuff I'm currently doing as I sit on my arse in an increasingly comfortable chair.

Me and my Dad have been speaking about running the West Highland Way recently - it's something he really wants to do, and I think it'd be an adventure and a real achivement to accomplish. Only thing is - the West Highland Way is very, very long, 95 miles, to be exact. And my Dad also wants to run up Ben Nevis - the UK's highest mountain - at the end of it as well.

Now, my Dad's ran more marathons than I've had hot dinners. I thought I was catching up when I had a particularly steaming stew at a friend's house, but that's just a stupid joke. I've never ran a marathon. Done a couple of half-marathons, and at the moment I'm running 12 miles a night, but I've never actually ran for more than three hours at a time. Doing the West Highland Way the way we want to do it will mean running a marathon a day for four days in a row. Then running up a big fuck-off mountain. I'm more than a little concerned, as I hope you'll understand...

So, intermixed with slab-laying, I'll also be running like a bastard. I'll try to take some pictures as I go. I'm sure I'll love it, but it seems a bit daunting at the moment. Me and my Dad have already agreed that we should do a six-hour run (up a couple of mountains) just to prepare for immanent death/long distance achievement.

Degree Show '06

2006-05-20T22:50:00.000+01:00

So I woke up today with an immense hangover after a night of enjoyable misadventures the day before. Unfortunately, I'd promised a friend that I'd go to the degree show at the art college (happens every year - it's only on for a week, but I always make sure I have a wee look round) - I was really hoping he'd have forgotten about it, as I felt fit for nothing but sleep and perhaps a little soft groaning, but he turned up as we'd drunkenly agreed, and we dutifully plodded round the college trying to keep our bleary eyes wide open to see what we could see.

I try to catch the show every year, because (a) it's free, and (b) it makes me feel like I'm all cultured and that. Wandering about the place with a head like lead, I came to a couple of conclusions - (1) most art students are not going to be great artists, and (2) you can't openly laugh at crap hung on walls when the artist is sitting in a chair in the same room as you. Pretending to read a book and feign disinterest at your reaction to their work.

There was some great stuff there. The fact that it managed to penetrate my hangover was testament to how much I liked it - more of which anon. But there was an awful lot of awful stuff. This sums it up - we walked into one "space" which had nothing but a series of series of pictures hung on the walls. Each picture was a photo of the back of a plate. I kid you not. After four years of studying art, this person's best effort when it came to displaying everything they'd learned was a series of pictures of the other side of plates. It moved my soul not a jot.

There was also a lot of "issue art". Art trying to make a statement. I should really have capitalised the "s" in that last sentence. Sledgehammer art, telling you something you already know - apparently, big corporations are bad, and have far too much power in the world: war is also bad, and people shouldn't be doing it - poverty is also not recommended, and someone should really do something about it. Maybe paint a big meaningful picture or something.

I think when you're in you're late teens and early twenties you have nothing to say. Angst? Join the club. Railing against the inequalities of the world - yeah, I did that too, but I didn't have access to paint and papier mache like you did.

Anyway - there was some good stuff to be seen. The highlight of the whole show for me was walking into a room with huge, semi-abstract bird sculptures in it. They were almost just blobs with legs, but their form totally captured the tremulousness of a tiny bird that just flits about, steals a nut from a birdtable and is gone. Walking into a room with those wee tiny birds made into a huge physical presence was great - it kind of took (rook?) me down to their level, and - weirdly - made me realise how far apart we are by bringing me closer to their scale.

Not sure if it's frowned upon or not, but I'm going to make it my mission to photograph those fake birds.

Beetlemania

2006-05-20T22:07:00.000+01:00

So it seems I've got myself a new pet. I think I'm going to call him Eduardo. He's a little beetle who's taken up residence in my bathroom.

He's been there for the past week or so, no bigger than my fingernail, and he seems happy enough just beetling about. Truth be told, the first time I made his acquaintance I did consider scooping him up and flushing him, but it somehow seemed a little unfair. After all, I'm a lot bigger than he is, and he seemed to be having fun.

I'm not a big fan of insects usually, but I'm finding myself quite liking having little Eduardo around. Spiders are quite sinister, and flying insects are just annoying, but beetles - particularly little ones - are kind of like the cadillac of the insect world. All black and shiny as if they've spent all day polishing themselves. Cockroaches are too segmented and chitinous for my liking, but beetles have a simple solidity to them that I almost admire. Most insects seem somehow dirty, but I imagine a beetle - and Eduardo in particular - could wear a top hat and a cane with a certain aplomb. He could even pull off a waxed moustache and a French accent with a measure of style.

I'm a little bit worried about him, though. I have no idea what beetles eat - he hasn't touched the thimble of smoked salmon and caviar I left out for him the other day. I love the fact that my shiny shiny tiled bathroom appeals to him as a place of residence - it must be like a huge linoleum adventure playground for him - but lately he's started freezing as soon as I go in and turn the light on, as if I'm spoiling his fun.

Now that I think about it, it's very possible he could be dead.

Pink My Ride

2006-04-29T20:37:00.000+01:00

And just how many muppets had to die to upholster the interior of this monstrosity?

Good News

2006-04-28T22:34:00.000+01:00

God, that last post was a long one, wasn't it? And a load of rambling nonsense as well. I'm tempted to delete it, but I think I'll let it stand as a warning to us all (well, mostly me) that post-pub blogging is never a good idea.

Anyways - got some damned good news this week. One of my best mates asked his girlfriend to marry him. And she said yes. Which is great.

The two of them have been together for a while, so I can't pretend it was a surprise, but it was still the best news I've had in ages. I've known this guy for more years than I care to remember, and I can honestly say I've never seen him as happy as he's been since he's been with this girl. He's one of my closest friends, and his fiance (as I'll have to start thinking of her now) has been really good for him, and the more I've gotten to know her the more I can see why. She's turned out to be one of that rare breed - a really honest, genuine person, and I'm glad to say I think of her as being a really good friend of mine before I think of her as being my friend's fiance.

They make an almost sickeningly lovely couple. Just to make the saccharine-fest complete - last Saturday, they asked me round for a few drinks. Halfway through the night, apropos of nothing, my mate turns to his wife-to-be and says - "Shall I ask him now?" She nods almost imperceptibly, and I'm smiling fit to burst before he can even say the words. "Martin - will you be our best man?"

I think my exact words were - "It would be a fucking honour." I had a wall-to-wall grin at the time that was knocking ornaments off shelves. No words could I find, but I think I mimed that a group hug was in order. It was a good hour and a half before my Cheshire smile subsided.

How good is that, though - two people who I dearly love are being joined together in love, and they want me to be a part of it. That's truly an honour. It's the most important commitment they'll ever make, and they want me to be there and have a hand in the whole process. Plus it's another chance to wear a kilt, and show off my scrawny knees to all and sundry.

Music

2006-04-21T22:11:00.000+01:00

Funny thing, music. Or maybe it's just me that's funny about music. I dunno.

Anyway. I've got this theory that only five percent of anything is actually any good. Bear with me on this one. Of all the music, movies, books, etc. that get released in any one year, roughly (and all these figures are quite rough. Haven't scientifically tested this theory yet) 50% are utter garbage. Offensive to the ear/eye/both. Maybe 30% will be tolerable, and won't be physically painful to experience. Perhaps 15% will be quite good - but there's never more than five per cent (and even that figure could be a bit generous) that are actually excellent. Things that your life feels richer for having experienced.

Sounds pretty grim, I know. That's a pretty slim percentage. And of course that five percent is different for different people - what's in my five percent won't necessarily be in yours - but here's the good news: that five percent of true quality stuff is being produced year after year, right across the globe, so if you're prepared to do a bit of digging, that skinny wee five percent mounts up to a rich seam of excellence that you can spend your whole life mining.

Think about it - walk into a bookshop and it's immediately apparent that there are too many books there for you ever to read them all. And the staff will throw you out if you try. I tend to gravitate towards authors I've read before, but I'm (alpha) betting that that stops me finding a hidden gem that's lurking somewhere in the "Q" section. Modern bookshops are laid out for people who already know what they want to buy before they walk in - they're not designed to help you find new, surprising authors saying things you didn't even know you wanted to hear.

Second-hand bookshops and (even better) charity shops are a much better bet. Walk in determined to buy something and, at least five percent of the time, you'll walk out with something you would never otherwise have bought. I found "Blindness" by Jose Saramago that way, and, thanks to the kindness of strangers, I'm also working my way through John Buchan's adventure novels (I could probably buy them all in a oner from Amazon, but that would kill the sense of achievement of finding them all one old mildewed copy at a time in dusty charity shops).

Movie-wise - well, I've always been a huge fan of foriegn films. "Carandiru" is still unsurpassed. Only five percent of Hollywood films are any good, but there's a huge raft of other films being made across the world. And the ones that get released over here are sort of automatically good - subtitles are such a huge turn-off for UK/American audiences that if a distributor releases a film with such an albatross round it's neck, you can bet it must be pretty bloody good already. It's obviously already made its way into quite a few people's five percent.

But music is an odd one. A completely personal taste. T'was only a hundred years ago or so that if you wanted to hear music you'd have to corall a few actual musicians together in the same room. Now just a couple of second pressure from my thumb will make my MP3 player jump into life, and I've got an instant soundtrack for my life. Music is so ubiquitous these days that it's easy to overlook.

God bless the Internet. Of course, I'm not condoning such behaviour, but I have heard that there are illicit web-based applications where you can just type in the name of an artist or track, and download it at your leisure. Sounds great.

Completely unconnectedly (m'lud), my musical tastes now range far and wide. From Skip James singing "I'm So Glad" and (officially the saddest song in the world) "Hardtime Killing Floor Blues", to Norwegian folk band Varttina's "Katariina", via Jewish Kletzmer music ("De Vuurvreter Van Sassari" and "Odessa Bulgarish" by De Amsterdam Klezmer Band being my particular favourites) to African Mali music, my musical horizons have been broadened significantly. To the point where I can no longer stand to listen to radio stations anymore.

That five percent snakes its way through time and across many continents, but it's well worth the chase. Your 5% will doubtless be different from mine, but it's well worth the time you spend digging it up.

That said, at the moment "Yellow Sun" by the Raconteurs is fast finding a place in my affections. We had a wee wink of sun today in Scotland, and this song has already nominated itself as my official song of the summer. Whatever that means.

I am an Arse.

2006-03-19T03:28:00.000Z

If I'd woken up this morning thinking "hmmm, my wallet's looking a little dirty," then I could have understood it. Even subconsiously, the seed would have been planted, and the whole thing would have made a little bit more sense.

But I'm secretly proud of the slightly seedy patina that my wallet has gained through years of selfless service. It was a present from my Mum and Dad - apparently, for vaguely abstract "luck" purposes, a wallet or purse should always be a gift, and it should never be given with nothing in it - this charming little slice of dead cow skin ticked all the boxes, and looked pretty good as well. For its benefit, I always made sure I was never in a position to overstuff it with notes - that took some careful career planning - and I always made sure I had just enough plastic cards to fill it, even if I had to make some of them myself out of old ice-cream cartons and strips of VHS videotape.

It only takes a moment of thoughlessness to lose an old friend. Even as I slammed the door of my washing machine and set the cycle to "Economy Wash" I had no idea that I'd sealed the fate of my leathery little buddy. It wasn't until the suds rained down that my hand suddenly flashed to my right hip pocket and felt only a telling emptiness, and by that time it was already too late. Short of a fire axe, there was no way of freeing my wallet from it's dizzyingly spinning death.

Hours later, I still I had to wait for the spin cycle to subside and the water to drain away before I could finally rescue my faithful friend from the watery grave I'd consigned him to. A papery shadow of his former self, even mouth-to-mouth would have been fruitless. His lustre gone, I tried propping him up on on a radiator to dry him out and see if he'd regain his former glory, but he still looks sad, shrivelled, and accusingly frail. The twenty-pound note he was faithfully holding for me has been ground up into its constituent fibres and absorbed by all my pants and socks - I'm pretty sure even all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put it together again, and that dumping a load of wet laundry onto a bank counter and asking for a tenner and two fivers in exchange probably isn't going to work.

But who knows - my wallet's a resillient little bugger (he's weathered many a financial famine and still come out on top), so maybe he'll take this in his stride and come back fighting. I've already massaged him with vegetable oil in an attempt to nurse him back to health - it's touch and go at the moment, but I don't want to lose him yet...

Fishicopter

2006-03-14T22:45:00.000Z

Snow. It's Just Rain That Got Lucky...

2006-03-13T23:44:00.000Z

I woke up yesterday to a marshmallow world.

I love snow. Living in Scotland, I'm well used to rain - a constant fine drizzle seems to be the norm, apart from five minutes of summer in July, or thereabouts.

So snow is just rain with character. Rain with personality - raindrops are like uniformed paratroops, but each snowflake is refreshingly unique. Thankfully, they also don't all scream in unison when you shape them into a snowman (a tragic stab at lasting fame that's always ultimately doomed to failure) or a snowball (a brief, fleeting career that's bound to end in tragedy, one way or another).

"Aye, you're not so unique now, are you," say nameless legion of kids, as they mash thousands of airy flakes together into something a bit more substantial.

I love snow. Not too big a fan of it when it hits me in the back of the head and swiftly turns back into cold water, though.

Dropping Like Flies...

2006-03-08T22:12:00.000Z

Is there something in the air? After my last post about Linda (who?) Smith, today I find out that the legend that once is but now was Ivor Cutler has also popped his clogs in the last week.

Despite myself, this blog seems to be turning into an over-sentimentalised, "tributes to people I never even even met" kind of thing. And I hate that kind of rubbish.

But Ivor Cutler was a true one-off - you were never quite sure if he was being funny or if he was being genuine. Here's a couple of his poemish things:

Coming to Terms With Being a Moth
When Sarah's powdery wings appeared from behind the headboard, we attacked. The old man lay supine, helpless, breathing irregularly but heavily. Fluttering along the thermals rising from between his thick dry lips, we tickled them till his arthritic claw rose to brush us away. We rose swiftly, then landed at the huge runway at the top and walked around till the claw rose and fell, and smashed Sarah. I flew over to see if I could help, but she whispered, "Go! Save yourself!" then perished, a pathetic splat. I flew off, sad yet happy, buoyed by the knowledge that the transmigration of souls would bring us together again, and soon.

Reading
Swalows swank along the sky, braking and skidding. Hear deep thudding in the sky as flies smash against the back of a birdie's throat and plop into the gastric stew. There is a little light down there, just enough to see your chums floating on the top, rubbing their skulls and cursing their luck, or lying on their back, calmly reading their wings.

The man was a genius, and more of an influence on me than I'll ever care to admit.

A Wee Tribute to Linda Smith

2006-03-03T23:23:00.000Z

Just found out that Linda Smith died the other day. Most people probably won't know who she was - she was a superb commedienne who was a regular presence on Radio 4 in the UK. Her own show was excellent, but she really came into her own when she was just being herself on the News Quiz. Particularly if Jeremy Hardy was on the same bill - you could feel the affection between the two, and when they bounced off each other, it was comedy gold.

She made me laugh a lot. This tribute doesn't do her justice, but is stil pretty funny.

The Morning Commute

2006-02-28T21:33:00.000Z

Unlike my last job, my new job is a Monday to Friday, nine-to-five kind of affair. I live a couple of miles away from my work, and, as I'm too damned mean to shell out for bus fares, I have a little trip there and back on Shank's pony every day.

Hoofing it up the pavements day in and day out, I'm always surprised when I see the same faces every day in roughly the same place. Not being a great one for enthusiastically relinquishing the comforts of my bed (personally I believe that all "morning people" should be either shot or sent back whatever planet they came from in the first place), I'm often slightly tardy in getting out of my front door of a morning - scarily, I've found I can judge almost exactly how late for work I'm going to be by the exact point at which I encounter a familiar face.

It's strange - I've got friends who I see less of than these daily moving milestones, but it seems to be an unwritten rule that even exchanging a nod with these characters who play regular bit parts in my life is not the done thing. So (because the walk to work would otherwise be fairly dull), I resorted to making up back stories for them just to make my life seem a little more interesting.

There's a Victorian hypnotist - seven feet tall if he's an inch, and with a waxed black moustache that's so impressive it cuts through the crowds like bullbars on an SUV - if I pass him before I pass the college building, then I'm only going to be five minutes late. I try not to catch his eye.

A little further on, I encounter the Eskimo dissident. He always looks slightly furtive, and smells of fish. He fled his icy home and has been leaking secrets ever since. Lately, his twin brother has been sent over here to track him down and drag him back to Igloo HQ - there's a lot of bad blood in that family, and a personal vendetta that has nothing to do with Eskimo state security, but the twin brother had a score to settle and if he can do it with the backing of the Eskimo secret service, so much the better. Admittedly, it could have just been the same guy wearing a different jacket one day, but the look in his eyes told a different story.

Then there's the Major. He's always on his way to the Central Library, striding past me in a puff of tweed and an intruiging cumulo-nimbus of bygone facial hair. I like the Major. You can tell he was tall, once. Regular as clockwork, he marches down to the library, battered briefcase in hand. I always make way for him - once I think he even aimed a half-nod in my direction. In his briefcase he has the almost-disintegrating military files of a couple of his old comrades who didn't survive the war he came through unscathed - worse, their reputations have been tarnished, and that's something he can't stand for. But the Major is an honorable man - they were his men, and he still feels a duty to them.

And, perhaps most strangely of all, at lunchtimes there's a Lollipop man I walk past who's the spitting image of Pete Postlethwaite and has a child's mitten attached to the non-business end of his sign. Like some kind of trophy. I don't like to ponder on that too deeply.

Let the Linkfest Begin!

2006-02-23T21:13:00.000Z

God I'm stupid. Turns out all you need to do to link to something is just to use HTML. It was staring me in the face all the time.

So - lately I've been playing about with this, which is a good idea that doesn't quite work as well as it thinks it should, this, from which I've been downloading stuff to my MP3 player to listen to at work but is a tad limited at the moment (there's a scary computer-generated section as well, which I haven't quite mustered the courage to venture into yet -
not quite sure I'm ready for Shakespeare's sonnets as performed by Sir Stephen Hawking), this, which my wee brother sent me a couple of days ago and looks like something I'd really like to do but probably am a bit too lazy too actually get round to. Oh, and this, which is just silly.

Phew. That was physically tiring to write. A lesser man might have just copied and pasted all the pointy-bracketed Karate Kid style stuff, but I typed it all with my own dainty fingers. Just to remind myself how stupid I can be.

By the way - if anyone knows where I can get the complete works of H. Ryder Haggard (and I have to say - how cool a name is that? He wrote King Solomon's Mines and a bunch of other Victorian adventure stories, but even his name sounds like a description of a particularly interesting character who appears midway through a story on a horse and saves the day...) and John Buchan (he of The 39 Steps fame) online in MP3 format, I'd be eternally grateful.

In Praise of K_Sra

2006-02-22T22:28:00.000Z

I feel like I'm famous. And like I should really take the time to the work out this linking thing...

The legend that is k_sra dedicated an entire post to yours truly. To say I was touched would be an understatement. Yet again, she made my day.

Bad photo, though. Still, could have been worse, I could have been sniffing someone's a

In Praise of Whims

2006-02-22T21:08:00.000Z

My mate Steve - who I mentioned earlier on in this blog, before the recent ice age thawed - has been going through a bit of a hard time of things lately. He's just moved house, with all the attendant hassles that that provides, his new job (which seemed tailor-made for him) is being ruined by a boss who seems to have no clue how to actually deal with people, and he was due for an operation on Monday (and although he's a sizeable bloke who can readily deal with most stuff that life throws him, the very mention of needles or blood has him donning a dress, clasping a wrist to his brow and swooning like an old-time silent movie heroine. "Big girl's blouse" is the medical name for his condition, I think). So he's not been a happy man lately.

I try to get up to his neck of the woods and visit him, his wife and his wee gem of a daughter as much as I can, but he lives quite far away so I don't get to see them as much as I'd like. We phone each other a lot, but it's not the same as drinking a few beers and talking shite in person.

Anyway, his wife was having a few of her friends around on Saturday night, and Steve didn't really fancy cowering in the corner while drunken women cackled about him all night, so he phoned me up and arranged to make a trip down to mine for the night. "We'll catch a movie or just stagger around a few pubs," said he. "Sounds good to me," I said. And hung up.

And then the fortuitous whim struck. Watching a film or crawling around various pubs is something that I can do anytime - Steve very rarely ventures back to our home town (long story), but every time I go up and visit him he asks about mutual friends who I still see all the time, and every time I visit Steve our mutual friends (that makes them sounds like communist sympathisers) ask about him.

So I thought I'd cut out the middleman. Almost a surprise party. Cooked a three course meal - Cullen Skink, roast chicken, and Apple Crumble (the dishing out of which was accompanied by a roar of "Llllllllllllets get ready for Crrrrrrrrumble" which I thought was funny at the time) - and invited a bunch of friends who Steve hadn't seen for (literally) years.

And a damn fine time was had by all. I haven't laughed so much in ages. It's the power of the whim - anything that had been overly organised just wouldn't have been as good. It was a wee group of people who hadn't been together in the same room for quite a long period of time, but as soon as we were, it was like we'd never been apart. Whimtastic.

So far, so rosey-tintedly good - the only fly in the ointment is (and how rubbish is this) I have no idea what Steve's operation is actually for.

He's definately told me - as I said, I go up and visit them as often as I can, and I remember him mentioning it, and I remember us talking about it (at great length), but there's always a lot of beer and other forms of extravagant alchohol involved (he's the perfect host), so the details seem to permanently escape me.

He went for his operation on Monday, but apparently it had calmed down a bit so they didn't want to operate. Which doesn't help me at all. If he'd been limping or wearing an obvious bandage, I would at least have had a bit of a clue.

It's not like I haven't been angling for clues either - "So, what's the actual procedure?" "Well, they just knock me out and remove it." Not helpful.

Any suggestions for leading questions would be much appreciated.

lostdog unlosted

2006-02-16T21:32:00.000Z

'Scuse me while I blow the dust off this blog. Now please pardon my coughing fit.

Been a long time, hasn't it? Reading back over the other stuff wot I wrote here, seems like a lifetime ago. Much has happened in the meantime - new job being the biggest thing - but I won't bore you with the details. Or rather, I won't bore myself with the details, because I already know the details, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who's ever going to read this.

To cut a long story short - ditched shit job in favour of great job. Kind of bullshitted my way through interview, which resulted in me getting great job but not actually knowing what it entailled. Enter steep learning curve, stage right. Our hero (that's me, by the way) valiantly battles ignorance in his every waking moment, with his Mighty Sword of Google coming in most handy at crucial moments.

Anyways - the upshot of this wee tiny epic tale is that I was really busy for a while trying to find out what I've actually been employed to do, but now I think I have a bit more of a handle on it so I have a little more time to waste writing drivel on this blog. Lucky me/you.

What I do now is write stuff for websites to get them better rankings in Google and other search engines. And I love it. If I can wax poetical for a moment: I've always considered myself a writer, even when I wasn't actually writing anything. Like all other aspiring writers, I had ideas for stuff to write, but never actually put them down on paper. Never even made a stab at writing them.

I think that's what stops most "aspiring writers" from being writers - once it's down there in black and white, it's no longer the perfect, flawless idea that inspired you to write it in the first place. I've got a friend who's wanted to write the actual true story of Macbeth for as long as I've known him - he knows more about that badly maligned bloke than anyone, but he's still scrabbling about for a start point.

What my new job has taught me thus far is this - just write. It's never going to be perfect, and there's always going to be more people who hate it than love it, but if you can capture just one person's imagination for a moment, then it's worth doing. I literally wince at some of the stuff I write - but once the words are down there like physical objects then I can shuffle them about (fire a few of the lazy ones) and juggle with the rest.

Having to write to a tight deadline about stuff I know nothing about for a living has been a real revelation to me. It's teaching me the craftsmanship of writing - at the moment I'm selling all sorts of guff to people I'll never meet - I'm coming to realise that a lot of modern writers are very self-indulgent and are writing for themselves rather than for their readers.

All writing is lying. Words are always a poor compromise for the thoughts that spawned them. Words obscure more than they make clear, and a good writer always hovers in the ambiguous space left by what they didn't actually write.

Still want to saddle up a hippo, though. With giraffes doing a slow sarcastic handclap in the background.

Back to the Same Old Same Old

2004-09-14T23:28:00.000+01:00

Ah, work. Can't live with it, can't eat without it. My wee holiday is over (there's a post brewing that'll tell you all about it, as if you're interested, but it's taking me a while to finish it, as it involves posting pictures and whatnot. Thankfully no Venn diagrams as yet, though), and so I've been back at work for the past few days. And contemplating the arduous prospect of a twelve-hour shift tomorrow. That's a pretty large slice of no fun. Phillip Larkin had it pegged when he wrote "Why must this toad 'work' squat upon my life?" I'm seriously thinking about taking up bank robbery. Think about it - it might be a risky business, but the hours are good and you get to be your own boss. Even when the authorities do catch up with you, they'll just force you to take early retirement. And stick you in an early retirement home, which just happens to have bars on the windows.

On the plus side, though, I've kicked my running up a notch since I got back. Probably because I felt a bit guilty about neglecting it for a week. Fourteen and a half miles on Sunday night, and the same on Monday night. Rubbish times, but there was a pretty strong headwind a-blowin' - so much so that at times I felt like a crap mime as I ran into it. The river was running high as well, so there was no sign of my two heron standpipe sentinels (which I may explain sometime in some future post), but seeing the water seething and roiling, whipped up into a dark, frothy frenzy by the wind almost made up for it.

I also found this little snippet the other day. I had a cataclysmic computer failure some six months ago, and lost a hell of a lot of stuff as a result - not just stuff that I'd done, but also music that I'd downloaded which I've been unable to find again - anyway, I'd thought that this too had been lost in the Great Crash of 2003 (as I think of it), but it turns out that I had a paper copy of it kicking about. Anyways - I would have been paid $25 for this (plus my weight in coffee), and it would have appeared on the labels of coffee cans throughout the US thanks to www.storyhouse.com if my computer hadn't have been feeling a bit peaky at the time.

The Zoo

The entire incident was hushed up - even now when I go back the keepers pretend not to recognise me; although, tellingly, none of them ever look me in the eye. I don't go back often. And when I do, I watch the visitors more than the animals. I always make sure I'm parked close by, and sometimes I even keep my engine running.

It all happened the day after the great storm.The whole zoo had been hit pretty hard, but the monkey enclosure had suffered the worst damage. We were sent in to clean things up. The monkeys made more noise than usual that day - I'd never seen them so rattled.

I wasn't the one who made the actual discovery, but I was one of the first on the scene. It was in the far corner of the enclosure, where the visitors can't see and where the keepers hardly ever go. While chasing a wind-blown plastic bag, one of my co-workers had stumbled and fallen. When she looked to see what had tripped her, she noticed a loose strip of turf laid over a hole in the ground. Puzzled, she'd peeled back the turf, and, as she did so, the monkeys all fell curiously silent. I'd seen her fall and rushed to help her, so I was there when she made her disturbing find.

Inside the hole were six long overcoats - one only half-finished - made from old crisp packets and scraps of newspaper roughly stitched together with dried grass. Six baseball caps, crudely fashioned from used fast-food containers, and six small bags filled with an assortment of small change and shiny bottle tops. And, perhaps most ominously of all, at the very back of that shallow hole we also found an old disposable razor.

I quit my job the very next day.

The Wanderer Returns (by bus, sadly)

2004-09-12T01:17:00.000+01:00

"Drop That Mangy Saddle," Says Well-Groomed Goat.

So - I'm back from my little mini-holiday thingy. And a damn fine time I had too.

Caught a bus up to Aberdeen on Tuesday, and met my mate Steve from his work at quarter past six. It would have been six, but the bus was a little late, as we had to make an unscheduled pitstop in order to eject an annoying (but comically surreal) drunk. He kept muttering to himself about how annoyed he was about Sir Alex Fergusson stealing his eggs ("See me? I'm the Police. Alex? Sir Alex? You're under arrest, Mr Fergusson. Steal ma bloody eggs, will ya, ya bass..."). Eventually he got bit rowdy, though - banging on the windows and suchlike - so the driver had to put him off. He probably ended up passing out in a park or something. Only to wake up the next morning to find that his eggs had been in his pocket all along, and that they were the least of his worries.

Possible root cause of rusty old drunk's rowdiness. Sir Alex is probably hiding in there somewhere too, just biding his time...

Anyway - me and Steve did a lot of catching up in the short time I spent with him. As I mentioned before, I've known Steve for more years than I care to count; and, although I don't get to see him as much as I'd like to these days, every time we do meet up, it's as if no time has passed at all. We're both leading very different lives these days: and I have a sneaking suspicion that if we'd never known each other and we'd just lately been introduced, we'd probably just half-heartedly shake hands, share a forced smile and perhaps an awkward silence, and then walk away from that encounter both thinking "what a wanker." Thankfully, though, through some accident of happenstance, we fell into each other's company when we were both knee-high to a shin. And we've been best mates ever since. Which is odd, because personality-wise, we're polar opposites. Maybe between the two of us we actually add up to quite a well-balanced individual. Although somehow I doubt it.

[...]

The Holiday Begins...

2004-09-07T00:55:00.000+01:00

I was just thinking that maybe I should have called this "The Wind-Up Blog Chronicles". But I didn't. Oh well.

So - I am now officially on holiday. And bloody good it feels too. And thanks for all the suggestions for potential shennanigans for me to, um, shennang. I should really have mentioned in the original post that I don't actually drive, though. Given that small fact, you can see how I saw myself facing a pretty slim set of options.

But - never fear, for all is well. I spent today making a series of frenzied phonecalls and emails, and it looks like I now have a definite plan. My best mate Steve, who I've known since I was about the size of this next comma, has a day off on Wednesday. He moved away some years ago, and I don't get to see him and his good lady wife (and tiny little "!" of a child) as much as I'd like these days (in fact, my next-to-last visit to his inspired my "Light House" HB idea). So I'm going to grab a bus into Aberdeen, meet him after work, and stay with them on Tuesday and Wednesday night. They've even arranged a visit to a Petting Zoo on Wednesday afternoon - ostensibly for their little girl, but I'm actually quite excited about it myself. The sensible part of me knows that they probably won't have giraffes, elephants and siberian tigers anyway, but there's also a little bit of me that thinks, "well, you never know until you get there." It's a bit of a shame it's just a Petting Zoo. I really wish someone would make a Ride-On Safari park, as in "if you can saddle it, you can ride it." It's always been a fantasy of mine to lumber into a drive-through McDonalds astride an African Hippo. "Just a burger and fries please... Sorry - almost forgot. Can you make that 54 burgers and one helping of fries? And if you could hold the salad on 53 of those burgers, that'd be great. My trusty steed is on a diet." I'm fairly sure it's going to be all mangy goats and maybe the odd guinea-pig with allopecia, but still, I can but dream.

Then after that, on Thursday Steve will drop me off in Aberdeen, and I'll hook up with my wee brother Stu. I'll spend Thursday night with him and his charming Aussie girlfriend Dene, eating fine foods and drinking far too many exotic cocktails, if past experience is anything to go by; then I'll be poured onto a bus sometime on Friday, and arrive back home just in time for the weekend, when all my local friends who have sensible jobs will be free anyway.

So, that's the plan. I'm looking forward to it, but now that I've written this, no matter how much fun I have, I'm still going to wish I could return back home on the back of a hippo rather than the top deck of a rickety, held-together-by-the-chewing-gum-under-the-seats bus. Even a giraffe would be nice.

Anyway, I'll let you know how it went when I get back. "Man Attempts to Ride Mangy Goat" - I can see the headlines now.

bwv61

2004-09-06T01:52:00.000+01:00

I just heard on the HB that bwv61 (affectionately known - to me at least - as "bev") died last Monday.

Or did she?

It's a sure thing that bwv61 is no more. What's not so clear is whether it's just been a nickname or an actual person that has passed on.

bev was - to say the least - unique. In the short time I knew her, I found her to be funny, witty, intelligent; but, more than all that, what impressed me most about her was the fact that she took even the harshest criticisms with grace, dignity and wit. Even when people were being downright nasty to her, she was never nasty back. There was always a knowing smile behind every post she made - she always countered cruelty with kindness, and I thought all the more of her for it.

Whatever the circumstances, I'm sad that she's gone. Thing is, though, she's left a more than a few questions behind her. Jutta's memorial post on the HB - which I was shocked to read in the first place - hasn't exactly attracted a stream of touching epitaphs. People whose opinions I value are doubting whether she actually existed in the first place. And so now, I don't know what to believe.

The cynic in me looks back over what I knew of her with a cold, steely eye, and finds much to ponder over. First off - she never made any newbie-typical mistakes. As both a poster of new ideas and as an annotator, she seemed to hit the ground running, She seemed to "get" the site from the get-go. Also, every one of her ideas/annos seemed to progress her story somewhat - "Bubu"/smoking was mentioned at every opportunity, and, rather than giving an opinion in her annos, she almost seemed to give another little slice of her life instead. And it did seem odd that her short time at the HB coincided exactly with her smoking habits finally catching up with her. I also found it a little strange that - given that she'd not been visiting the HB for very long - someone still emailed Jutta to let her know that she had died.

The optimist in me refutes all these points, though. I kind of hit the ground running as an HBer myself - the site chimed in with my sense of humour immediately: it struck a chord, and I struck back. And one of the things that I liked about her was the fact that she would relate everything back to her day-to-day situation - it seemed to me like she was so happy about having met Bubu that she'd share that experience with anyone who'd care to listen. Timing-wise - who knows? Shit happens, and it does so in its own time. As to my last point in the previous paragraph - bev had obviously been spending a lot of time at the HB recently. And she'd mentioned that Bubu had been looking over her shoulder most of the time.

So - all things considered, I have no idea what's happened. I actually do hope that some sick fuck has been hoaxing us all. At least if that's true nobody's died. As things stand, I don't know what to think.

The only thing that's certain is that I'll miss you, bev. I didn't know you well, but I enjoyed reading every word you wrote.

Unexpected Holiday - A Curse in Disguise?

2004-08-31T00:22:00.000+01:00

So - it turns out that, due to various work based-rubbish, I've suddenly found myself with two weeks of holiday time to be used up within the month. I realise that this doesn't seem to be something to complain about (along the lines of "my diamond shoes are too tight"), but it does leave me at something of a loose end. My second week off should be okay, coming as it does in at the arse-end of September, but in order to not lose my allocated holidays altogether, I've suddenly found that I'm going to have to take next week off. Which would be all well and good, were it not for the fact that I've had no time to prepare for it, and will have no actual money to spare for actually doing anything.

Usually when I take a holiday, I visit my parents. They live out in the country, and it's always a joy to take a week or so out from city life and relax in their country idyll. But - with the rusty bite of irony - they're actually on vacation themselves for three weeks (in Canada, no less), so that's not an option that's open to me. There's a couple of friends that I could visit, but, given that we've had no time to synchronize holidays as James Bond would have synchronized watches, that's going to amount to little more than a couple of day trips.

So - any suggestions as to what I can do with a week's worth of free time? Bearing in mind that I'll have no money. And that everyone else I know will still be working. And that I really don't want to spend a week fingerpainting or playing with Play-dough.

Of course, it'll be a good excuse to do more running: but what I really need is a some kind of project with which to while away the hours. This is a "use-it-or-lose-it" kind of holiday; and with no money and no time to plan anything, if I'm not careful I'll just end up rattling about in my empty flat for the bulk of it. Which would not be good.

So if I can help anyone out with anything, gimme a shout. I can do the web-site design thing: not terribly well, admittedly, but better than a poke in the eye. Just. If you can keep me occupied during my otherwise pretty-bleak looking vacation, get in touch. All offers considered. Probably not entirely seriously, though.

Turns Out I'm Not The Best Blogger In The World...

2004-08-30T22:43:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm not exactly a regular poster so far, am I? Three posts on the first day and then nothing at all for a week or so. And that's even with people commenting on my posts - I actually feel guilty that people are reading this rubbish and I'm not even doing them the courtesy of adding new stuff as often as I should. Maybe I just need some time to get into the habit. That and a more interesting life so that I actually have something to say.

In my defense, though, I have actually been quite busy for the past wee bit. Well, maybe "busy" is too strong a word. "Occupied" might be better. I don't mean to harp on about the dearly departed Bob (or "Beelzibob", as he was often known in life) - but an otherwise pretty grim time has been softened somewhat by good friends showing up unexpectedly, having heard what happened. All of my best mates knew how much that little guy meant to me, and I really appreciated having them round in my otherwise lifeless flat. All the more so because Bob had actually peed on more than one of them in his time. And I'm fairly sure the rest were on his "To Do" list.

Still, I'm swiftly coming to the realization that this blog really isn't going to be very entertaining. If I could work out how to do it, I'd put a link to ksra's blog to your right. Then at least you could track her progress on her "American Idol" adventure. Although she's already my Idol for just going for it in the first place.

Me? I'm kind of resigned to the fact that, in order to be halfways interesting, I'm going to have to start making stuff up. "Scots and Idle" is never going to get any pulses racing. But did I mention that I was abducted by aliens over the weekend? I'm still walking funny...

The Passion of the Christ

2004-08-26T00:47:00.000+01:00

So - I watched Mel Gibson's pet project today. And was mostly underwhelmed. It's well shot, and looks pretty, but, as a film, it's rubbish.

First off - most people know the story anyway. It's kind of a given that it's not going to end well.

Don't get me wrong: I have a lot of time for Jesus. I wouldn't call myself a Christian, but I think that Jesus was a pretty good bloke with a lot of interesting stuff to say - a peripatetic philosopher of the old school. Obviously, this blood-soaked saga is Mel trying to get closer to the actual man behind the suffering - it's almost as if he tries to make him more divine by emphasising his mortality. But then he puts Biblical words into Jesus' mouth - "Lord forgive them, they know not what they do", etc. He does convey how brutal crucifixion actually was - but; it's not like anyone ever thought it was otherwise. He doesn't show anything that anyone with any imagination hasn't already thought.

Jim Catweasel (or whatever his name is) just has to look pained and be drenched in fake blood. There are some occasional flashbacks to the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper and suchlike, but they're so brief and short that they might as well not be in there (although I did like the scene when Jesus makes a table. That, rather than watching the flesh being flayed from him bones, made him seem human.)

So - crucifiction hurts. It's not fun. Does the film make any point other than that? No. It's basically two hours of watching a guy getting a wincingly serious kicking. It says nothing about Jesus' message, it conveys nothing about what he actually said (it focuses entirely on how he died) - and actually makes Mr. Christ come across as a smug handwaving git. Oh - and the subtitles? They just distance you from the story even more. And I say that as a big fan of foreign films. "Carandiru" is superb. And says more about the human condition than this movie does.

A Tribute to Bob

2004-08-26T00:15:00.000+01:00

I hate to start this thing off on a depressive note, but it wouldn't feel right if I didn't mention that Bob died a week ago today. Bob was my cat: not so much a pet, more of a moody flatmate who didn't pay any rent, relied on me to buy all his food, and never actually learned to use the toilet. Don't get me wrong - I've had flatmates like that before, but Bob was the only one who used to curl up on my stomach and purr fit to burst as I stroked his soft white underbelly.

I truly loved that little bugger, all the more so because he hated everyone else in the world. He had that "Paddington Bear Hard Stare" perfected, and used it liberally on everyone but me. I'd had him ever since he was a little kitten - and he was always a kitten with me, but a tiger with an inferiority complex with everyone else. I still can't believe that I've lost him.

My tiny flat seems twice as big and ten times as empty without him. He's still around every corner and behind every door. In a way I'm glad that he's still slinking through my head, but it cuts me to the bone to know that that's the only life he has left to him.

The First Post - apparently it's hard to play on a bugle

2004-08-25T23:54:00.000+01:00

So here I am. Inspired by the inimitable k_sra and her infectious blogations, I've decided to give this weblog thing a shot. Will I keep it up? Will it be interesting to anyone else but me? Only time will tell. Still, it has saved me the expense of buying a diary.