Train-ing Day.......

Today I find I’ve got the time for writing a blog as I’ve been down to Liverpool for a training course on writing and reviewing fire risk assessments. This means I’ve a few hours to kill on the train and for once I’ve brought the laptop with me so I’m sitting at a table as I whizz backwards through the countryside in the gloom of a Scottish summer at 70 or 80 miles an hour, typing away and listening to some great music pouring out of my headphones.  I’m not sure but from some of the glances that have come my way I may have been singing along. It’s not a pretty thought, so if you’re reading this and have just spent three hours beside a nutter singing out loud on the train from Preston to Edinburgh then I sincerely apologise

It’s not like me to be organised but for once, after just 53 years of practicing, I have my act well and truly in order, at least in one tiny way. I’ve made use of some odd bits of time here and there to organise scheduling of ‘The Sunday Post’ poem blogs right through to Christmas and have several more sitting ready to schedule to start off 2013. It felt very odd to be sitting here in July posting a blog for Dec 23^rd even if the weather is more reminiscent of early winter with the last few weeks of record rainfall.

The poems are the only bit of the blog I’ve consistently planned in advance and usually I manage to keep a week or so ahead, but for once I found myself with a list of poems in mind and some time to both get them transferred into blogger and to organise them into a preferred chronology of sorts for scheduling. Not that the order makes any sense because of structure or anything like that. I like to be organised with the poems so that there is always a regular posting to cover the event of work interfering with blogging or, as is sometimes/often the case, I find inspiration has deserted me. As far as ‘normal’ posting is concerned I tend to just bash away with whatever is in the brain cell at the time. That seems to work for me for the most part. The only exceptions to this are the Scots history tales as they tend to need a bit more in the way of research and structure is more important to make sense. These have been missing of late because they tend to take a while to research and organise and I find myself writing and rewriting to make things clearer or to flow better.

Time for blogging has been sparse recently and has coincided with one of those spells where inspiration has been posted AWOL too. I’m not a naturally ‘creative’ kind of writer so imaginary tales or situations aren’t really my thing even though I do like to read a lot of fiction. In the past I often posted tales of interaction with Jess our cat, which proved popular, but work has separated Jess and I to a fair degree and she now spends much more time with The Lovely G so I am bottom of the list of preferred partners. Being bottom of a list of two isn’t too bad I suppose in the big scheme of things. I suppose there are tales to be told of working with Autism Spectrum disorders but I have hesitated on this so far. Beyond the obvious protection of privacy and dignity I’m not sure if that’s a topic I want as part of what’s been to date simply a personal blog. Actually, having just written and read that off the screen, I’m pretty sure I won’t be writing about that. The potential pitfalls may be just too great.

Despite the bad weather, the summer {?} is marching on and the annual cycle repeats itself as Edinburgh braces itself for The Festival. Venues are beginning to put out hoardings and billboards are jumping up all over promoting everything from circus acts to ladyboys or the huge influx of comedy shows.  For me this is the best time of the year to live within easy reach of Edinburgh. I love the city at festival time and, while normally I would grump for Scotland about queues or rude tourists or shop assistants or creaking public transport or a myriad of other things, I will happily choose to spend days among the crowds, put up with being jostled while queuing for anything from tickets to drinks to a place at a public convenience and happily point lost souls in the direction of castles, toilets, pubs, clubs or shows and revel in making conversation for a while with people I would never normally talk to or may never meet again.

My personal highlight to The Festival is the Edinburgh Book Festival, the world’s largest book festival and destination for literally hundreds of authors of all genres to come and meet the public. British authors are a huge part of the book festival and I enjoy going to see a few regulars every year: Ian Banks, Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre. These Scottish authors are constants at the festival and are some of the hottest tickets for us parochial Scots. Luckily as a ‘Friend of the Book Festival’ I’m able to get tickets in advance of public release which guarantees me two tickets at any 10 events I want to see. These three are always the non-negotiable first on the list as they are some of the finest raconteurs and ad-hoc responders to unexpected questioning from the audience. Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre have particularly Scottish voices compared to Ian Banks but he is probably the best of them all in terms of what he is willing to give to the audience. One of those people you would love to spend an evening in a bar with – although he could probably drink me under the table. We share a love of single malt whiskies and his book 'Raw Spirit' - about touring the distilleries of Scotland on assignment to find ‘ the perfect dram’- is one of my favourites as it’s a highly personal tale of the jaunts and japes that often took place while enduring the hangovers that attention to detail in an assignment like that seems to have demanded and covers not only his love and knowledge of whisky but of his love of Scotland and its 'great wee roads', for cars and motoring, family and friends and all in his unique style of inquiry into those crazy trains of thought that sometimes come through in his writing.

This year the festival has potential to be extra fun as I get to go exploring with my new telephoto lens which promises to be ideal for some of the candid people shots that I love to take. Since getting my newest addition to my camera kit I’ve not really had the chance to get out and about and find out exactly what my 150 – 500mm telephoto lens can really do. Weather and work have conspired against it.

Oops - time's marched on  - and I've been goofing off doing other stuff as well as writing a bit now and then - and the train is coming into Edinburgh. Time to pack up and get on my way home.

See you later.

listening to:

Where the Bodies are Buried.

Hullo ma wee blog,


Sorry to have been ignoring you over the last week but in my sad life where very little happens it's been a hectic few days. From a holiday weekend that saw us go from a concert to a jaunt to the remotest west highlands, to a couple of full days of childrens hearings and all the preparation needed for that and a night in Edinburgh at an event with my sister-in-law, I feel my hands have been quite full. Add to that the insurance company taking away the carcass of my old laptop to confirm it can't be repaired before parting with any of their cash forcing the lovely G and I to have an extended period of sharing computer access and before you know it several days have slipped by without me posting a single solitary thing.

Wednesday night saw me in Edinburgh with sister-in-law K  to attend the launch of Christopher Brookmyres latest novel 'Where The Bodies Are Buried'.  Christopher - or Chris as his publishers are now marketing him - is one of my favourite Scots authors, a scathing, irreverent and hilarious satirist who's tongue-in-cheek-boot-firmly-applied-to-the-establishments-posterior style has often had me creased with laughter, often in places where I should know better like waiting rooms or on aeroplanes. The event, held on the eve of his latest books publication, marks his first foray away from his previous satirical genre into what is described as a more serious mainline crime thriller style, took place in Edinburgh's historic old town, just off The Grassmarket, in a candle-lit and dungeon-like small venue beneath one of the areas oldest buildings.  A glass of plonk kicked off an hour of readings and chat with the man followed by a question and answer session about his writing, life, the universe and everything. From the couple of readings he did it seemed to me that he  has created some credible, grounded characters who are still capable of raising a smile while working within the dark, more realistic backdrop of Glasgow's underworld he has created.

A first for me, I stayed around at the end to stand in line and buy a pre-release copy for the man to sign while we chatted for a moment. I'm looking forward to getting to grips with it soon. I might even let you know how it goes.........

See you later.

Listening to

 

Edinburgh Book Festival 2010- Christopher Brookmyre

Hullo blog,

Last night my brother-in-law Leonard, AKA Leen,  stepped into his ill girlfriends shoes {nice heels by the way, Leen}  to come with me to The Book Festival event with Christopher Brookmyre, another of my all time favourite Scots authors and raconteurs. It's been a great festival so far and tonight held firm promise of this continuing as Chris has never failed to impress on any of the dozen times I've heard him speak at this kind of event in the past. Chris is a very different proposition compared to authors like Ian Banks or Ian Rankin being a scathing satirist with very firm anti-authoritarian/establishment and anti organised religion views. His books are breathtakingly sharp, bloody and irreverent in the extreme. They've been labelled  'Tartan Noir',  are certainly not for the faint hearted or easily offended, yet are both excruciatingly funny and uncomfortably insightful when looking into the abyss of those corrupted by power, greed or even the modern facade of  newspaper feted 'celebrity'. A Brookmyre book is strewn with  bodies, gore and expletives in a way that is often visceral, certainly creative and often indulgent yet at the same time can be weirdly restrained and considered, even occasionally innocent. A skewering, literal or figurative, from this mans pen leaves no-one in any doubt that there has been indeed a skewering of humongous, even biblical, proportions. His books are laugh-out-loud bundles of absurdity, yet are carefully, skilfully crafted, populated with character traits familiar from anyone's life and jammed full of twists and turns in a clever plot-driven pastiche of reality that's just close enough to the real thing to make you sure that much of what's going on between the pages could probably happen out here right now without too much help from anyone else given just a few changes in circumstances.

If murder, mayhem and witty one liners are your thing and you've not bumped into Christopher Brookmyre's work before, then consider giving him a shot at the title.......

The night started off with a few stories from Chris about writing, being an author and public speaking, all in his typical robust , tongue in cheek 'call a spade an effing shovel' style, which oddly detracts not a jot from his wit, intellect or vocabulary.  His latest work is Pandaemonium, which he then went on to give us a reading from. It's a bit of a departure from his previous works {this is his 13th book} in the crime genre, with its theme of debunking religion, God and the Devil.

 It's a book in which vengeful demons meet grief stricken, horny, angst ridden Scots teenagers on retreat in a remote location and huge quantities of blood get shed in the process - or is it the guise - of dispatching characters and giving demons a good kicking. I mean let's be honest,  in any fight between vengeful demons and your average teenager, demons are punching well above their weight!  But, under all the usual gleeful gore and cheerfully strewn viscera lies Brookmyre's optimistically beating big heart and cheekily irreverent brain cell pounding away with its apparently genetic determination to give the bleeding heart lefties a good poke while the right equally gets the usual swift and deservedly accurate kick in the pants.

On describing it as a Gothic horror novel at pre-publishing event, he was challenged about what made it 'Gothic'. His response was  "Because it's got Goths in". You have to love a guy like that.

With his trademark typically vivid plotting, detailed characterisations and vigorous but considered debate over the nature of, in this case, heaven and hell, all coupled with ample profanity, sex, and copious amounts of cheerful slaughter, teenagers will probably devour Pandaemonium in the same way hordes of us did with Stephen King when we were weans too.

Chris also gave us a world exclusive peek into his next offering, which is still work in progress, via a short reading from "Where The Bodies Are Buried".

I could tell you what it's about, but I'd have to........ well, I'm sure you catch my drift.

A fairly lively Q+A session brought the evenings proceedings to its natural end and a horde of eager groupies followed Chris to the book signing tent as Leen and I headed to the bar in the nearby Spiegeltent for a beer and a chat about the evenings event, books, authors, life, the universe and everything, before I dropped him at Waverley station for his train back across to Fife.

I bet he was glad to get those heels off when he got home................

It was everything I'd hoped for and now I'm looking forward to Ian Rankin on Thursday.

For more on Chris, his wiki page is here, website here and an interview with him here.

See you later.

Listening to Semisonic, 'Secret Smile'

Cheese - and Whine.

Hullo ma wee blog,

It's a bit daft really. I've got loads to do but done none of it today. I've spent the day mainly in the garden. Sure, I've justified it to myself by saying that I should make the most of the weather while its here and I have done some weeding and minor odds and sods around the garden but in reality most of the day has just been me goofing off, enjoying the sun and the fact that the grass - never a lawn - is looking good simply because its the shortest it's been for weeks, which hides a multitude of sins. In my delusional mode I call it 'organic' or 'natural' or even 'wildlife', but I'm fooling myself as its really none of those, even if it is teeming with well fed birds thanks to an intensive feeding program. I enjoy a garden but I'm not a gardener. So it's been me at the patio table, book and sunglasses to hand, the odd glass of dry white wine to help wash down some crusty bread, nicely juicy pears and a piece of lovely soft and slightly salty goats cheese barely drizzled with honey. My idea of a wee taste of the Languedoc in Scotland.

Bliss.

I've also caught up on a few blogs while the back of the house has been in shade this morning as I don't do squinting very well. I've read a bit as the sun has come round the house, forcing me to lay aside the laptop while I catch up on stuff I've been meaning to read but strangely for someone unemployed, who should have plenty of spare time on my hands, have not found time for.

While I've been doing that thoughts have been niggling away at me like unruly children, particularly about reading and books. A few bloggers I read have touched on the subject of bookish things over the internet lately, talking about the impact of the web on reading habits, the effect of on-line bookshops selling at knock down prices and the impact on 'real' bookshops and libraries. I've added the odd comment here or there, interested or curious, questioning or approving, all the time letting layers of content slowly build up a curmudgeonly niggling concern that, as with many other things, the world is changing and something that is important to me might be changing faster than I'm comfortable with and not in a direction I would choose.

It's particularly true of the technology around books, or more accurately reading, for what I see ahead is the potential disfigurement of reading as we know it. I wonder in twenty or thirty years if we will have books in any meaningful sense or will they be the domain of academia, dwindling numbers of bookshops, curiosity shops, reference libraries  and museums or the musty collections of crusty old men like me?  Will the availability of cheap books online actually reduce choice and the number of titles as these places promote the blockbuster and ignore the merely sublime. Will readers have lost contact with the reality of a book in the hand if books are simply story downloads to an i-pad reader or some other piece of technology which retail chains and publishing houses use as the opportunity to stop printing to reduce costs and maximise profits? How will we find those unexpected books if we cannot browse, can't pick them up and read the cover as we weigh the value of story and the weight of the authors effort if the book exists only online? With the increasing trend amongst kids towards talking books on i-pods for convenience, how will we create those characters to live in our minds and in our hearts if all we have is an actors interpretation being read to us? Will 'readers' question if the interpretation could be different or if the story is crippled by heavy handed abridging? Will books of the future simply be screenplays? Will we simply accept that Dracula or David Balfour or Jane Eyre have American voices attempting foreign accents?

Not that I can do anything about it of course. I can only be the curmudgeonly archetypal grumpy old man and note the change and comment.

When I was a child I loved libraries. Dad was a great reader and supporter of our local library and I too was bitten by the reading bug. As a teenager I was hit by asthma which meant I was often laid up. When that happened I read constantly, a stream of library books was supplied by Dad, not always to order but he would often pick up a wee gem for me. Like him, I became an avid and prodigious, if not altogether selective consumer of the written word. But I also became enthralled by books themselves; the hard-backed leather bound edition, the hard-backed paper sleeved novel, the cheapest paperback. I loved them all. I learned to love the feel of a book, the weight of it's mystery as it journeyed home with me in a bag strapped to my bike, or just hung from the handlebars, knees nudging the book as I pedalled; the smell of the pages as you cracked it open for the first time, old and musty perhaps if it had lain on the shelf for a long time or if it was elderly in itself; other scents, held by the pages, of the last reader, an old man who's fingers held the smell of pipe or cigarette tobacco or oil from machinery in their pores, a young woman who's delicate scent would perfume the pages for a short time. These things all spoke to me and evoked a feeling for the history of a book, almost as a living thing. I learned to love the heady smell that always seemed to be in a library. I loved the almost reverent hush of the place. The need to be quiet for once not an impossible task.

Over the years as I got older and more selective in subject matter, I began to covet books {shades of 'My Precious' ringing in my head now} that were special to me. I loved history books, books on art, religions, architecture. I loved the books of Stevenson and Scott, Ryder Haggard, Michener and so many others. I wanted to have space at home for more than an overstuffed bookcase. I wanted to have a library of my own. I succeeded when we bought this house.

 I've long enjoyed trawls of antiquarian bookshops and revelled in the atmosphere of ancient books, something which has become increasingly rarer as these places have gradually disappeared to be replaced with coffee shops, tanning studios and tattoo parlours. I've watched engrossed as an old bookseller, offered an old book, put it to his face and listened carefully as he softly rrrrrp'd the pages past his nose, caressed the pages lovingly and spoke in hushed tones about the quality of the paper, the way it had been made, the fact that although the paper was French the printing was English, the pages hand cut and rough edged. He waxed lyrical about the binding and the cover, it's absolute authenticity,the skill of the maker and about the healthy smell of its history and the lack of knocks and scrapes, folds and tears that showed it had been cared for through generations. Like being guided through a cathedral by a stone mason, he was a master of a craft that sadly seemed to be out of it's time.

I'm not exclusively interested in old books though. I've cheered myself with walks round the humongous racks of large chain bookstores and enjoyed the personal touch of informed, enthusiastic and well read staff in independent bookstores. I've gone looking for particular books and come out with treasures unexpectedly unearthed in my search through the shelves. I've collected the works of Rankine, Brookmyre and Banks and enjoyed Hiasson, Coelho and Cornwall.

I've often enjoyed a book at bedtime. Does it feel the same being read on an I-Pad? I've often dropped a book from the bedside table or from the corner of a chair. I've dropped one getting up from my seat on a plane or a train. The books have survived them all. I wonder an I-Pad would.?

Oh, and I've never had a book run out of battery power although a few have run out of steam.....

I now have a room I use as a library in my house. I spend a lot of time there enjoying the atmosphere and relaxing with a well read book or attracted by the brightness of a cover to something that suits my mood. Could I have the same fun scrolling through the list of titles on my reader?

I really hope I never find out.

see you later. I'm browsing the Edinburgh Book festival brochure wondering if I can afford to attend any more events this year.

Listening to;

Family, festivals and finding a job.

Hullo there ma wee blog.

Not posted for a while as the lovely G and I have been busy with the usual mundane daily rituals of work - her not me - and home - definitely me - and the festival.

Edinburgh Festival is in full swing and the whole city is stuffed with tourists - see previous entry - and of course I am partaking of the opportunity to get a wee bit o' culture myself in between job hunting and stuff. I love Edinburgh at this time of year. Its absolutely at its best, even with all the upheaval of the new tram works which have left half the city roads closed off and dug up, making driving and parking even more impossible than normal. I always feel that during the festival there is an excitement in town I find hard to resist.

Being a bit of a bookworm I love the Book Festival - Edinburgh Festival is actually 10 different festivals running at the same time { so I found out from the TV anyway } Edinburgh International Festival, The Fringe, The comedy Festival and The Book festival to name but a few.

In the Book Festival lots of authors come to give readings, be interviewed and have question and answer sessions with the audience and its become a tradition for me to go and see as many of my favourites as I can { or afford }. I usually get a couple of tickets for each author and persuade a friend or member of the family to come along with me. Everyone seems to enjoy it and its a nice way to spend some one to one time with friends or family at a different kind of experience. Usually it takes in dinner and drinks either pre or post event and as each event lasts an hour there is usually time for a drink or coffee after and a chance to talk about the show and life in general.

So far I have seen Ian Banks with my brother in law, Ian Rankin with my brother and Gerald Scarfe with the lovely G. Still to come are Christopher Brookmyre with my sister in Law, Gryff Rhys Jones with the lovely G, and Michel Blanc with my sister in law. Ian Rankin, Ian Banks and Christopher Brookmyre are old favourites and never fail to entertain, real highlights in my festival each year. Gerald Scarfe was also riveting, really entertaining, scathing, acerbic and witty in his description - or dissection - of politics and politicians.

On Sunday my cousin Elspeth and her husband Dave arrived for a short stay till Tuesday, and had time to visit the town and take in the sights. Elspeth is a probation officer, the daughter of Dads twin brother Bill, and this was the first time we had spent any real time together as adults as that side of the family live in Leicestershire. It was really Mum and Dad that visited most often. Gordon or I visited only for infrequent short stays and had seen Elspeth and her family only for a couple of hours at a time within the wider family circle. It was good to see her and to get to know her as an adult, and to find out that she is the kind of person I can get on with.

As Dad died recently we spent a lot of time talking about family connections and history and reaffirmed many of the shared memories of our childhood back in rural Ayrshire before they moved south. She called it reshaping our relationship, I teased her that I was not one of her clients and we had a good laugh. They left saying they felt chilled and refreshed and promised to come again. I hope they do.

Next weekend our Dutch friends arrive for a short break from their farm near Eindhoven.Its been a couple of years since we saw each other and are looking forward to them coming again, even though this time their two daughters cant come with them.

On the job front I have applied for a couple of positions, one with the Parole Board for Scotland { long shot I know } and with the NHS as a controlled drugs inspector.

I am determined to go for jobs I really want to do and fortunately our redundancy cover gives me the opportunity to do this. These kind of jobs are few and far between and I desperately hope something comes along soon. I am just not cut out for not working. I feel my self confidence very low some days.

ah well better go.

see you soon.

listening to Talk Talk by Talk Talk..........