Pig Sty Avenue

It’s only been about six weeks since I entered the blogsphere, and it’s been an education. Some blogs I liked at first now seem… pointless. Some people just write too much. From the Rock is a Libyan blog – the only one I’ve been able to locate. It’s polemical but politically naïve, well intentioned, downright daft, but somehow charming… That’s Libya for you. Some bastard was in amongst alt.folklore.herbs, trying a bogus tsunami-charity scam. That Henriette set off the alarm bells. Good for her. Ach well, there’s another one nearly over, eh? I can’t put it any better than Joan Bakewell does, God bless her. To every one who marks the same calendar as me: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Today was like springtime in Jarra. Even the breeze was warm. Aha, I thought, I’ll get a few hours at the allotment tomorrow: I’ve to finish off cutting back next-gate’s brambles, (the thorny f*ckers have encroached nearly 6 foot along a whole boundary... that's nearly 900 sq feet! – I’d tolerated them for two years because they yielded masses of raspberries, but they’re starting to have a laugh), and there are some other wee winter jobs to do afore I head for the desert sun. But tonight the heavens have opened, and tomorrow it’ll be like the battle of the Somme down there, (naturally, sans the military stupidity, death and horror) – it’ll be muddy.

This is great stuff: Pepys’ Diary in the form of a blog, the links being used to excellent effect as annotations. Well, it’s back to canny auld Jarra. It has its limitations, to be sure, but 20th Century British history would be the poorer without our March , and there’d be a sizeable hole in the development of early mediaeval thought without our Bede . And it’s home. Incidentally, whilst I was looking up the link for the March, I surfed away and somehow found Blast , which I like the look of. It’s a trifle more esoteric than DU (thanks to Gypsy for that one), as you’d expect, perhaps, but both worth a shufty. I recall a line from a Hollywood film, in which some fella said to someone else, the latter possibly played by Jane Fonda: “You start out as an urban guerrilla, and you end up growing organic vegetables.” He could have added, today, “… and blogging about it!” What was that film? Or was it a novel?

Now let’s not disappear up our own arses, and blog overmuch about blogs, but this article from The Independent, (which newspaper’s slogan used to be “It’s Independent. Are You?”) is really quite interesting. It’s interesting in itself, of course. The sub text is a bigger laugh though: they haven’t worked out how to do links on that site – you’ve to copy and paste the urls. Arf arf. It’s a bit like an old vicar in the 1960s, telling his congregation that pop music was quite fun and he sometimes listened to the Hit Parade of a Sunday tea time, before evensong, and didn’t care if the bishop found out. No need to copy and paste, though, I’ve done it. This is quite fun; this hasn’t been touched since September. Stephanie Klein knows how to insert a link, but I doubt she’s my cup of tea. Her mother perhaps might have agreed earnestly from the pew with the Reverend's progressive views, if you can follow my logic. Indeed. But what she says in her posting for 29th December is hones...

... that handsome man ? No, no, I mean the one on the left, behind the palm tree? Hmm?

...on the other hand... 

date palms fruiting  

"When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all Icould think of was getting back into the jungle." [from Apocalyse Now , screen play Coppola & Milius] It's not quite like that, and there'll be no-one shooting at me, hopefully. But a long time away from alcohol is beginning to appeal, for one thing. Also, the short cold dark days are becoming highly dispiriting. And I'm as bald as Brando was in that film. Hey ho. But the Martin Sheen character was talking from the perspective of being there , whereas I'm still here . I bought the "Redux" version to watch out there: at which time I might recall this post and feel very foolish and homesick. Maybe it's in our natures to be dissatisfied. Or something.

The Magic Kingdom have insulted Col. M, after the Libyan press had some harsh but interesting words to say on Xmas eve. Hmm.

... this is the LAST word on the whole bloody business? Oh no, there's still New Buggering Year yet. Don't get me started on that...

There was a fly in the kitchen this evening. I think it’s been living in the lavender plant on the windowsill. Actually, it wasn’t a fly as such, I mean, not a housefly. It was some kind of small flying insect. But, in these latitudes, I remember auld wifies saying years ago, a housefly in the house at Christmas is really good luck. But I googled it and came up with only this . Central heating, see? There’s a tradition clearly dying on its six feet. Speaking of flies, this is good fun.

The terrible wave has got me remembering an earthquake in Istanbul. It was evening. I was in bed, watching The Brittas Empire on BBC Prime. The bed began to shake, and then the whole flat, which was at the top of a six story building, began to rock gently, side to side. The ironing board was propped against the wall, and fell over. The telly was sat on a frail table, and I was sure it would fall off. It didn’t. And I was thinking “Wow! What a rush!” It lasted a minute or so. Only when the building stopped moving did I feel afraid, in my stomach.

My chum, Malcolm, who I worked with at West Tripoli, was visiting Thailand. Don’t know if he’s ok or not. Fingers crossed. Goodness! Microsoft really pissed me off the other night, did they not? Really, I wish there was some kind of software that could tell when I’ve been drinking – perhaps based on number of typos per minute – and shut the computer down, or at any rate block my access to the blog. Indeed. As my body struggles to overcome the damage done by alcohol in the last few days, I could almost wish I was back at work in dear old dry Libya. As Cassio said in Othello: Not tonight, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment. I don’t really enjoy the effect of alcohol any more. But it’s a habit. And being drunk is the only way to enjoy the company of drunks. However, the main symptom of a hangover is a tendency to pious thoughts regarding the booze. After a few d...

snow!

...for common sense!

well foreget about MSN. Cocksuckers. Shitheads. Fuken biggest cheeses in the virtual world and they get fekt on xmas eve? how much do their site security masturbators get paid? wankas

not posted a pic for ages 

That weird old american guy is in iraq, apparently. That must have cheered the boys and girls endlessly. The Grauniad has it: "There's no doubt in my mind this is achievable," he said. "When it looks bleak, when one worries about how it's going to come out, when one reads and hears the naysayers and the doubters who say it can't be done, and that we're in a quagmire here," one should recall that there have been such doubters "throughout every conflict in the history of the world" Oh yeah. And there've been losers in every conflict in the history of the world, too, Donald. You sinister old twat. Sorry 'bout the ageism. But it fucks me off when the over 60s send the under thirties to foolish death and injury.

I posted this on alt.folklore.herbs. And then I'm thinking: will this cause a row? Probably not, though i noticed the other week that a big bit of Tennyson caused a few snotty remarks in a gardening ng, though it was one i just passed through. You can't go wrong with a bit of my old mate Roberto, though, eh? That's what i call poetry: love and nature and sex and The Seasons and SNOW, all in a few lines. I'm curious to see which of the fekkrs at a.f.h are scoobied by it. But that's stupid: if they're scoobied, 1'll never know. The blighters.

When you get to tea time on xmas eve, that’s it, game over. The stress ratchets down several gears and you can try to have a bit of fun. Because, for 36 hours or so, capitalism’s going to take a back seat. Once in the year when they shut most of the shops and shut the fuck up. (If you don’t have a telly. If you do, I seem to recall the book-your-summer-holiday-the-fuck-NOW adverts starts, well, about now). The fun starts because the capitalists are out of it for a wee bit, and you can stop thinking “What must I buy?” Temporarily. Will it snow tonight in South West Scotland? We got caught in a nasty sleet shower coming up the road just now. But snow’s forecast. Snow would make bairns happy. And some grown ups. What’s wrong with that? Yes, I know it’s all about cultural constructs, climate change, Charles Dickens, Prince Feckin Albert, and God only knows what… But I want snow!

In my twenties, I’d drink like a loon and get up the next day, quite the thing. In my thirties, I could drink like a loon, but write-off the next day. Now I occasionally drink like a loon, but we’re looking at a 72 hour recovery period. Hilarious. Maybe that’s why we drink less as we get older, mostly. And last night it struck me: only two weeks left at home afore duty calls and I’m away to Libya again. Really hilarious. I notice Libya and The Magic Kingdom are having a row . Meanwhile, Gypsy sent me this . Funny, but a bit disturbing.

The trouble was, we had a pint in Irvine, wine with dinner at the Wetherspoons , and bought a BOX of wine to have at home, and oh my God! Miraculously, I posted in the wee small hours somehow, and it’s relatively articulate, if a trifle surreal. One of us washed, dried and put away all the dishes. So today we’re both very fragile. Very. Not to say poorly. It’s on days like this I question our tellyless status. It’s a hangover that makes you want the comfort of cable: Dad’s Army or Bergerac . Enough. The keyboard’s making me nauseous.

the proclaimers i'm anti-capitilaist, but credit where it's due.

...when i was... 

We don't have a car because... all kinds of reasons. My God though, it's hard, sometimes, this doing public transport malarkey. Like today. Went to Irvine. Shared the bus with a load nice people. And the family McFuck . Small girl who has the loudest voice in Ayrshire. Dad who was massive, and declares his intention to get a wee nap in the seats designated disabled. And the Ma who'll glower at any body whose eyes say else... Then you get to Irvine. Do the bloody shopping. Go to the Kings Arms, which looks from the exterior like Rabbie Burns might once have sauntered in... and then you go in and oh my God! There's a load fellas whose conversation stops just so as they can look at you. Luckily, I learned how to play that at school, that Mr Starey-oot, so it went on ok. Initially, we wanted a half and a glass a wine, but as Tom had it, nobody brought anything small into a bar around here. So I got a pint. Later, we tried the “restaurant”. They were hav...

the moon over imsallata 

Looks better, eh? And I've got a links table now. Dead smart.

Don’t get me started on supermarkets! But tonight I’d left it a bit late to get something for dinner, and the Tesco round the corner is, of course, open until yon time. And so I’m standing in a very slow moving checkout queue, when the dreaded Mr Shitey McWhitey, (aka a panic attack) says ‘hello’. I was overheating, got my hat a and scarf off, sweat’s pouring from me, legs going wobbly… I’m eyeing the door, feeling very claustrophobic. Horrible, horrible… But it passed, thank God. Why do supermarkets seem to feature in these things? Not just mine, loadsa folks. I was thinking I’d outmanoeuvred that fecker, McWhitey, but clearly he’s still in the building, if not the room. I’ve to make panic-attack related herbs a priority next spring. It’s good to have Tony Soprano as a role model for panic-attack suffering forty-something blokes. If a hard case like him gets them, we can all come out of the closet. Yes, I know he’s only a TV character, but all the same…

took this in a hurry 

This blogging’s fun, eh? Bit time consuming, though. That Luan has lost her comments bit, and I can’t work out how to add a list of links. I mention it now ‘cos she’s added me to her list of links, which is very kind, and I’d like to reciprocate. As for Simon Hoggart . That last paragraph’s a cracker. I was reading Little Red Boat this morning – that poor lassie clearly has a problem with mice, compounded by a cat-hating landlady. It got me thinking about my cockroach phobia being cured after living in Turkey and Libya. The flat we had in Bakirkoy, Istanbul, was wick with the scampering bastards. I’d have to swat them away from the work surface when I was cooking. One time, I opened the paperback I was reading, and one of them was lurking between the pages. Another time I unrolled the sleeve of the shirt I was wearing, and one of them ran out from the folds. Nasty, very. But it cured me of the phobia I’d had since living in an infested house as a small child. Wh...

This is Gilbert the gecko, who lived on my ceiling in Imsallata, Libya 

putting up xmas lights on Arran 

That was a bit of a jolt, about Simon Hoggart and Mrs Quinn . I’ve followed the News Quiz and Hoggart’s columns in the Grauniad for as long as I can remember. It’s as if an old mate was caught out in some surprising indiscretion. And your first thought is: daft sod. There are a load of Rosemary bushes along Auchenharvie Road. Planted by the council it looks like. So I took a nice big sprig and made a chicken and rosemary soup. Delish. I never thought it’d come to this: I’m becoming DIY man. Was out in Saltcoats this AM looking for tools. What a price they are! Hmm. Have a trip to Irvine tomorrow.

:-)

I found the BBC recipe site yesterday. Brilliant. No time to post, I'm too busy cooking!

I got into herbs years ago because my then girlfriend was interested in them and grew some in her garden. Neither of us knew much about them, mind. Anyhow, one day we’re having a dinner party and it was summer and I did a salad for one of the courses, and I picked a sprig of this and a few leaves of that, - in complete ignorance of the plants properties – and chopped them up and made a delicious salad dressing with them, mixed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. So then there are eight of us around the dinner table, and the eating starts and there are compliments all round on my herbal salad dressing… And then I started to get a feeling, which I can only liken to the early stages of sexual arousal: heart rate accelerating, butterflies in the tummy… I looked around the table at my friends’ faces and could tellthey were all feeling the same way. Nobody referred to it, the sensation faded, and the conversation returned to normal. Wish I’d made a note of the plants involve...

We’re redecorating. It’s a thought to get started, but once you do it’s good fun. Newly married, cleaning the nest out, all that sort of thing. We got the bus back to Saltcoats from B&Q, went into The Elms for a quick pint, and rang a taxi to get us home from there because we had all kinds of tins of paint. “You’ve picked a funny time of year to start painting”, said the taxi driver. Fiona later told me, her Ma used the self same phrase. Hmm. It’s as if the house becomes a place of worship at Christmas. Sod that. We’ve tried in the past to ignore Christmas, unsuccessfully. This year we’ve got a little fibre optic flashing tree in the window. Fiona remarked wisely that it’s a dark time of year, so why not cheer it up with gaudy lights? That persuaded me, as a zen paganist. So we’re going along with it. A bit. We won’t be painting on the big day itself, but we’re not going to watch bloody telly, either.

I thought this had been sabotaged by Them , but no...

...they keep blethering on about “binge drinking”. It’s the latest cry on the BBC. Presumably, (though, to be frank, I don’t read the blighters), in the tabloids too. What does it mean? Well, you can try this ; or this . Hmm. Immoderate and self indulgent feature somewhat. That’s a laughable combination of adjectives for you. Immoderate behaviour, occasionally, is the difference between being human and being a machine. Self indulgence, on the other hand, is the spirit of our age: consume, consume, consume… It’s a sick, sad, feckin’ enslavement.

Anybody who's read about the social history of these islands will know that the British have always drank a lot of alcohol. We still do. And at this time of year, the office party is a great venue for foolish boozy behaviour. What's wrong with that? it's bloody dark when you leave the house and get home. The pressure to spend spend spend is enormous. There's the prospect of several days stuck in the house with relatives, with only days and nights of bloody television to relieve the horror... So getting shit-faced with the people from work is a fair way of spending the time, maybe really getting to know them, and having a laugh, singing, dancing. But oh no - not in poker-up-the-arse Blair's Britain.

Writing this on the train from Newcastle to Glasgow: we’re to spend The Hols in Saltcoats. There’s a lot of gorse in flower. I’m beginning to become very fond of this journey: the Northumbrian coast is beautifully wild. Berwick’s unique. I like the way the architecture changes as soon as we cross the border. And the weather: the clouds descend and the rain starts just past Berwick: always. As if it’s saying “Welcome to Scotland! But it’s not all fun and hilarity up here, mind.’ Edinburgh’s wonderful from the train: a city built on sheer rock faces. There were some very glum looking trainspotters on the platform. Enough of the travelogue. One encounters some feckin tossers in these newsgroups, though, eh? OK, some of them, especially the Nazi trolls who write barmy things in upper case, are simply clinical cases. It’s the ones who are unnecessarily rude that give me the hump. NOT that I’m one for over-politeness or not speaking one’s mind, or suffering fools gladly. ...

...sitting up late at night with a bottle of vino, a credit card and broadband is a bloody stupid thing to do.

Garlic mustard is the people’s choice for that plant, IF the leaves smell of garlic. I’m not going to the allotment for a few days, so won’t be able to check that out. Leopard’s Bane has also been suggested, and ‘money plant’. And, yes, it does have a look of a strawberry plant about it, which was another suggestion. What happened was, whilst I was in Libya during the summer, The Old Man dug a trench to lay path edging, and the mystery plant appeared in the heap of earth thrown up from the trench, along with the comfrey, a few weeks later. The allotments are a century old or more, and we’re theorising that my predecessorswould have grown herbs, and that plant, and the comfrey, had lain buried and dormant for a long time, before getting a chance to re-emerge. I’ll keep it safe until next year anyhow, and see what flowers or fruit it puts out. Thanks to the several helpful virtual horticulturalists who’ve posted suggestions.

This is the path edging The Old Man and I did the other day. AND this is the first photo from the 'phone I've posted

I was blethering the other day about PFAF and comfrey, and realise now I'd mistakenlylooked up and linked Symphytum grandiflorum , which has a 1/5 rating, whereas my pal Comfrey is Symphytum officinale , of course, and it's 4/5. What a wally. Mind you, I blundered onto my own blunder when trying to look up the comfrey references on The Lancet's site. I couldn't find them, and the references given didn't mesh with the way the Lancet organises itself. But then, I'm new to all this...

I should know what this is, but... 

People used to sit around the fire: an armchair either side of it, more chairs or a sofa facing it. And then television came along, and by an apparent universal consensus it went into the corner, on the same wall as the fire. For a generation or two almost all sitting rooms have felt skewed. So it’s got to go, if only for reasons of spatial harmony. We’ve been discussing it for a few weeks, and last night made the decision: bye-bye box. We need to give Telewest a month’s notice. We need to find homes for the two tellies we have. We need to get a refund on the License. And then we’ll be ready to go cold turkey from capitalism’s favourite drug.

During another lovely short sunny winter's day I creosoted the greenhouse, and contemplated comfrey. When I got home, I put all of my clothes into a hot wash forthwith, and had a bath. There's still an odour of creosote about the place. And as for comfrey leaf wine! Henriette at alt.folklore.herbs advised I look into livertoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids. So I have. It's been a lesson. One bit of advice, (that is, exactly the same text), comes up time and time again on Google – I traced this piece of wisdom to someone called Jackie Barr . Hmm. Then got onto this article , posted by Henriette, which indicates comfrey consumption is not wise. I tried to look up E Roder’s references on Google Scholar , with no success, but it’s early days yet for that search engine… After that, I had to have a glass of wine, (£3.29 from Netto), regarding which it can only be said that grapes have probably featured at some point in its production. Perhaps I should just make ...

Why does PFAF seem to have such a downer on my pal Comfrey? "Medicinal uses: None Known", forsooth!

The allotment's like a great vinyard: it's on a gentle slope, and faces due south. It's not in France, mind. Today was a wonder: a lovely winter's day in North East England. It was the first oppurtunity for spending much time there since I came home from Libya last month. The divisions I'd made in the comfrey last spring are in fine fettle, but I was really pleased about the plant's unexpected appearance in odd parts of the neglected beds. It's great to have a most useful plant as a 'weed'. But I'm a gardener, man! There are limits to the random, so I plan to divide and replant these unexpected travellers into the alloted comfrey bed. There's masses of healthy looking foliage, and I wonder, could I make an astonishing wine from the leaves? Hmm.

Called in to Murray's Club, (don't even think of a link), which is generally good for a laugh; some fella emerged from behind the bar with a load of prawns, proper prawns, boiled, in their shells - delicious: sucking the juice out of the legs like an ancestor who lived by the sea. Goes well with Guinness. And tonight I've been eating berries from a sea buckthorn tree. Yum. An odour of Christmas Pudding. And really good for you. AND I'm saving the seeds to stratify them for three months, and then to sow them, and then to grow a hedge. Not bad for an evening munch, eh? There are times when a post industrial age offers a bit of delight.

that's us 

Our adapted comic motif for the wedding and the wee honeymoon was the Dennis Waterman character from Little Britain saying “Organise the wedding, pay for the wedding…” We’re not the most organised of couples, and have a history of being hard-up, so it was remarkable that all went well. We had 14 guests. Family and close friends. The dinner at the Bay Hotel was wonderful. People got a little bit drunk, and there was a perfect combination of awkwardness and conviviality. Really, I find myself hesitating to say, it was perfect. Oh except the Registrar provided a silly cushion for the rings, a polyester piece of upholstered foolishness, and one of the rings fell off it. AND nerves had made my ring finger swell to three times its proper size, so it was difficult to get the ring on. It was an almost Perfect Day, and thanks to Lou Reed for providing the music. And then a short honeymoon on Arran. Most of which, as Ian Dury once wrote , was private – and also very rude. ...

And this is our dumpy goddess, on the mantlepiece. 

That's the back of Fiona in the museum - hair wants a wash, she's going to kill me. 

I was having a shufty at little red boat this morning. (Hope you've slept off the jet-lag, by the way). And there was a picture of a dumpy goddess. I had a week's leave from Libya in August, and met up with Fiona in Malta. We stayed in The British Hotel , Valletta. We had a great time, although after 10 weeks of enforced sobriety, knowing that i was about to have another 10, Cisk beer featured a little too frequently. One day, quite sober, we went to the archaelogy museum - Malta, we learned, was a hell of a place in prehistory. Dozens [hundreds? I wasn't totally sober] of these statues have been found. Massive, mostly. No-one knows why they have no heads. My idea is, they'd give them a temporary head to celebrate a matriarch, and replace it once she was dead or deposed. You can't get away from them in Valletta's gift shops. More nonsense next week. I'm getting married in the morning!

Shopping’s not my thing, really. Apart from charity shops, of course – because there’s an element of chance, the fun of the chase: I’m trying to collect the full set of The Music of Time sequence, and all of the Arden Shakespeares, and I might get lucky any time I go into a charity shop. You never know. And there’s the whole rationale of charity shops: redistributing stuff, and hopefully doing a bit of good. But dealing with consumer capitalism face to face… Well, that’s a wholly other game of cluedo. Best to avoid it where possible. And if it’s inescapable, regard it as a commando raid: gather intelligence, go into the shop, complete the transaction, get out again… You see, it’s a commercial transaction, not a form of worship. Fiona, whilst not exactly a slave to consumerism – far from it, in fact, - likes to take a bit more time. Ah well. We got the cake from Marks and Sparks, two tiers, complete with little pillars. The fun started when I tried to buy a shoehorn – ...

My brain hurts, trying to work out how to upload a picture. I'll try again tomorrow.

I wasn't nervous about the wedding, really, until I got the idea to start this blog, and then thought, well, what should I write, oh yes we're getting married on friday... Gulp. Hilarious. We've agreed we'll be relieved to be on that ferry to Arran. It's not nerves about being married; it's the formalities. Tomorrow we're going to Kilmarnock to buy the cake. When you're tongue tied, of course, you can't speak. Well, this is my first go at blogging and I've developed the keyboard equivalent - frozen fingered. More