My wife and I were talking about grammar, as you do. I mentioned that I always put a comma before a but; as there would be a pause there in speech.
"But implies a pause so you don't need a comma", she replied.
I wonder which other rules I'm breaking? I am a bladder-headed cock.
I saw it on the net—we we're getting a new build. So, I am the last.
The building will live on, in a few years it won't echo with kids. It will become just another building—a church that became a cinema, that became a bingo hall, that got torn down to build a something that was much more horrid than an empty space.
It, the building, is somewhat important, in a National sense; the architect is revered. It won't be raped like more-proletarian builds will be. It will will retain its outside look. What's the point of that? It will be gutted.
It will never again be what it was built for. It'll become a hotel, or luxury flats, or a car park, or a whatever. It will become a some-thing that has lost its purpose. A shell for people to inhabit like hermit crabs inhabit the shells of their dead crustacean mates.
Someone else will care for it, will know it and love it. But they'll love it for something that it never was meant to be. They won't love it like me.
Let me explain why I'm annoyed...
I think that it's important that I have nothing to say.
Today everyone demands a hearing, so everybody shouts. And nobody can be heard. So I am going to tell you a tale about a thing. A thing that involves people, a school.
I don't know much of the story yet, my bias will become plain and better humans should deal with this, but there will be no other takers, So I'm going to tell you this tale.
It won't be a history.
Sitting hunched under the scaffolding, smoking a cigarette, listening to the swifts shriek, the seagulls scream and watching the clouds roil across the sky, I decided that I needed to write a novel. And that these would have to be the first words.
To be continued...
It's the first week of the school holidays here in Edinburgh—it's time for us jannies to get down to all the big/wee jobs that can't be done in term-time; Danny wanted to plaster a ceiling as an appetizer.
This involved us in lugging out the scaffold that lurks in a cupboard at the bottom of the school. This scaffold is a mass of aluminium Lego™ : frames, ladders, poles and platforms.
I'd almost forgotten that it was there. For most jobs we work off ladders, of various kinds, so I never use it. The jobs which it is good for are the jobs that I dislike and get others to do for me. But the thought of Danny trying to plaster a ceiling whilst wobbling along a canted baton caused me to remember that we had it.
What we didn't have was the manual. That never stops boys.
Once we'd managed to get, what looked like, the requisite number of pieces into the wanted-place we started to assemble the thing. It was a no-goer. No matter which way way we tried to build it, either the platforms fitted and we couldn't cross-brace it, or we could cross-brace but the platforms were too long. We were scoobied. We'll not quite.
"We're only a wee way off, lets raise a couple o' the wheels", Danny suggested as we considered things from a distance.
"Then everything will be slanted."
"Aye, but ah'll be able to work aff it."
I had my doubts but I didn't have any suggestions of my own, so that's what we did. I'd felt safe in the assumption that no normal non-edjit would feel comfortable working on the horror that we were going to have built.
"Ah dunno, it looks awfy shoogly", I said when we'd finished. The thing looked like we'd strung ropes between the Twin-Towers of Pisa. Nothing was horizontal, or vertical.
"Nonsense, look…", Danny pounced forwards and gave the scaffold a shake with a tattooed paw, it wobbled alarmingly. Before I could object any further he'd monkey-scrambled to the top of the scaffold, and was shaking his hips.
The scaffold wasn't falling down, but it was moving in time to whatever head-music Danny was gyrating to, "Danny, that's not safe."
"Well I winnae be doing this when I'm working, ah'll be fine", he made a pair of big eyes and rolled his head at me. "Besides it's only one-and-a-half-lifts, it winnae kill me if ah fall."
"I might. At least put in a back-stop rail so that you don't end yersen stepping back to admire yer work." He was perched on the edge of a half-platform.
The back-stop wasn't to be. What we managed was a stop at one end and a trip hazard at the other. Still Danny wasn't to be dissuaded. I said much, but he wore me down, I gave up, after all it wasn't me who was going to be injured.
"Right! OK! But when we take this fucked-jigsaw-of-shite back to the bowels, we're going to learn how to build the thing properly. I'm not having this fiasco again." I threw my arms up.
"If ye must, if ye must", he said in a distracted fashion, whilst poking a plaster-saw into the ceiling above his head.
That scaffold is the state of my maths. Danny didn't kill himself, perhaps I won't.
I did something that I never wanted to do. Badly.
I did it so badly that the link won't stick.
I should not talk about maths.
My dad and his best mate and my mum and her best mate married each other. The best mates emigrated to the US of A when us kidlings were still -lings. Because of this flit there's an odd dynamic when we get together—time machine.
For us kids: we've spent many holidays together, in our heads we have snap-shots of our growing-up process. We didn't see each other often, but when we did, we spent much more non-fragmented time, than the norm, with one another. They were girls, we were boys. Which might have mattered.
For the 'dults: They pick up where they last left off. They behave as if nothing has happened in the mean time. They talk about a shared past, they drink more, they have the kind of fun with one another which we, as offspring, think that parents don't have.
When I wended my way to Anderson central this afternoon to meet the group I was a wee bit wary. I shouldn't have been.
Everyone was white-haired and much wee'r than they once were, there was a bit of wobble-of-hand about the filling of the wine glasses, but the minds were still sharp. And there was Paula.
Paula and I had much fun poking our parents, we're good at that. Paula and I remember too much.
My parents, and her's were showing all the signs of intoxication. Both of us believe that as responsible progeny, we say nothing in this regard.
We had our photo taken together. If our parents die we won't see each other again, maybe. We looked over
Our parents were doing awful thing to steak, in a kinda half-assed drunken fashion. Which was beautiful, for they must have fun.
I said goodbye in the same half-assesd fashion that I alway do. I've lost somone that I wanted to be my sister.
Today, as I was on holiday, my wife and I went for a walk along the canal looking for wild flowers. Apart from the fraught business of having to dodge the cyclists it was lovely. In Edinburgh you're never too far from some country-in-the-city.
There's a good mix of wild flowers along the canal, with a few garden escapees. We were interested in the plants that were attracting bees. For the last couple of years my wife has been a wee bit obsessed about luring bees into our garden. She's doing well so far—the garden is positively hoaching with them.
There were a couple of stand-out plants, bee-wise; a honeysuckle that we tentitively identified as L. Tatarica and the Hawthorn. They were covered in bumblers, there were even some honey bees.
When we got back home we pottered around the garden for a while, watching the bees at work. The phlox and the foxgloves were getting most of the custom, but the kale, that had self-seeded, and the Californian poppies were getting visitors too.
Apparently we have a problem—plants for autumn. So, when we went in, [thanks to Jan] we perused the online version of Howes' flowers for bees book. I thought that we might be all right, we have a lot of Michaelmas Daisies. My wife disagrees and is sorting seed as I type. She'll be right.
From a couple of years of watching bees I see my wife's point: you need to provide variation. Different bees do different things, at different times, and the bee book opened my mind as to the maybe-why.
Today I saw a carder working a lupin, then a hortorum working a foxglove. Different bees, different strokes.
We need more bee flowers. The amount? Many.
I have boots that lace up either half-way or to the top. I've just realized the draw-back of the half-way option.
I was coming back from the shop, laden with goods, when the laces of each boot decided to get together. It wasn't thirty seconds, but it felt like it was as I was going through the falling process. I had enough time for the sickening realization that I was going to be hurting soon to sink in.
"Jings!"
I lay on the ground looking at the unbroken cider bottle and the battered cheese that I still clutched in my paws. Trying to judge just how bad this was.
[I taught myself to say jings instead of f%^& many years ago, when I started working in a school.]
"What's happened?" My wife rushed out the the door, I'd made something of a clunk as I fell it seemed.
After she'd ascertained that I wasn't too damaged; a bleeding hand, two bleeding knees, a well-damaged ego [wee boys who had been playing footie in the playground were sniggering] the recriminations started.
"For twenty years now I have warned and warned. The irony is that this time you actually had them tied. Tied in bows that wouldn't be amiss on a four year-old's party dress..."
I like to make my wife happy.
Over the last couple of weeks I've noticed that my work browser and my home browser are talking to each other. If I instal an add-on at work, my home browser has it, bookmarks and stored passwords: ditto.
I've changed my default browser to chrome and I have multiple google accounts, one of which is nearly always open. Which, I suppose, explains the how. Or does it?
There's a really big firewall between my work's WAN and my home computer. You can't poke anything through it, in either direction, on any other ports that 80 and 25. I've tried. So something HTTP/HTTPS is carrying my signature. I think that it involves cookies but, I can't see the how.
I've looked at the cookies that google deposits [there are quite a few], I don't see any that connect. So what's happening? I'll admit that I'm scobbied.
I don't like it, this is out-of-the-box behaviour that I can't seem to turn off. There's a similar functionality with a FF sync add-on, but you have to opt in and there are choices.
This doesn't impact on me much—I'm careful with what I do on a computer, I know that everything gets logged and that I may have to explain me sometime. What I had't realized was that something that I do at home may show up at my work.
Warning folks. There is much more of this to come.
Next week I have a holiday, ya-hay.
For most people a weeks holiday isn't a biggy; for me it's an fraught exercise of juggling; a tick-tock of non-causality. Thursday I didn't expect to get the next week off, but I saw the chance. So I have a week off.
When I have any time off I like to mark the occasion by making a meal that I don't normally make. Tonight I decided upon sausages.
Now I'm a vegetarian Ceoliac, so I'm going to raise some hackles here. People who eat meat seem to feel that they have the copyright upon sausages. They have issues about non-carnivores eating them. And now I'm going to exclude wheat too!
Still here is my recipe.
So I'm off to enjoy. I may be some time...
Danny and I were sitting in the office, the business manager was walking past the window, clutching his bottom for some reason. Whatever the reason, it was the last place in the world that he should have been doing this.
"Holding them up are we Bruce?" Danny shouted to him. Bruce came over to the counter.
"You pair are having a gir-affe, there's nothing wrong with my arse."
"You did ask your wife then?" I smiled pleasantly at him.
Whump! The look on his face told me all that I needed to know. He shook a fist at me.
"Right, I'll challenge you pair to a run round the school, we'll see who wins then." This was a wee bit infantile.
"Yeh but you've got an advantage there..."
"What advantage?"
"You aren't carrying the weight of a normal pair of buttocks." Danny made a whipping motion with his arm, "kkk-tsssh".
"I have buns of steel!"
Without missing a beat Danny came back with, "that's not what the head says". Pretty sharp I thought. Bruce laughed, he could see that we were clearly winning here.
"You're a pair of bastards, remember that I am your boss. I'll get you sometime." He smiled and stalked off heron-fashion.
We'd prepared the next bit in advance, we sang our ditty...
"Woke up this morning and my bottom was gone,
Ooooh, oooh canny find my cheek-cheeks
Where's my bottom gone?
Where's my bottom gone?
Faaar down ma leeegs"
[Sung to the tune of chirpy-chirpy-cheep-cheep]
Today we rehearsed the dance to accompany it. I've arranged with the media studies department to video it so that we can put it on YouTube.
I was walking along the corridor behind my business-manager this morning. I noticed that he was wearing a pair of simon-cowell-esque trousers, this required me to say something.
"It is true what they say then".
"What's true?" He swivelled to face me.
"That your buttocks slide down your legs as you age".
"Rubbish! What do you mean?"
"Yours are on the move south."
"Crap!"
I hadn't meant anything by it really, but I was well gratified by his response; he walked on, contorting his body in a failed attempt to get a good look at his own arse. Hit a nerve there then. Not a good idea to expose that type of weakness.
Later Danny and I passed him, "ah, the local fascists" he cheerfully greeted us. [We wear black t-shirts, black combats, serious work-boots and hi-viz bomber jackets.]
"See what I mean?" I asked Danny as we were a few yards further on.
"I'd already noticed", Danny replied. Again we were treated to the dog chasing own tail/man looking at own bottom behaviour from the retreating BM.
"He'll be asking his wife about that tonight." Danny laughed, later, as we were having a fag at the back gate.
"Now all we need to do is find a teacher who he thinks we can't put up to it, to make the observation. And when we do I want you to note that he'll be drinking a lot less of that designer coffee he's so fond of." I pointed a finger.
"Eh?!"
"It's going to cost him a fortune to get a tailor to lengthen all those suit jackets."
I was a wee bit knackered this weekend and not up for any maths work, but I felt that I had to do something. So I decided to have another look at the wizard book [Structure and Interpretation of Computer languages].
I've dipped into this before, a couple of years ago [pre-degree], I didn't get very far then. Now I know why—I wasn't ready for it.
I didn't have the maths, a good handle on recursion, a knowledge of data structures or a grasp of abstraction. Amongst other lacks.
However hard I might have worked on it I wouldn't have been able to take much from it. And I wouldn't have worked very hard at it.
That's something else that I noticed, I work at things in a different fashion today and I'm no longer put-off because I don't grok things immediately. When the time comes when I do want to understand this book I'll have the discipline and work-routine to do it.
I didn't work hard at it yesterday, but I knew that I knew how to and I now know that I will someday.
I did a fast skim of a couple of sections to get a look at the thought-space. If I'd intended to work on it, then I'd have gone back, made notes, done the exercises, created my own exercises.
This book isn't beyond me anymore. I was slightly surprised by that, should I be? I suppose not.
Since I started my degree I've noticed that I'm mentally sharper, a lot less ready to rush to judgement, "is that really true?", more prone to think about concrete ways to support what I think.
I'm also more likely to leave things to the last moment, over-think simple stuff, have profound episodes of despair and I've become an expert at displacement activities. [For example this blog ]
Some students come the the OU with all the needed skills already in place. Most of us don't. And because we came for knowledge we're probably unaware that in our search for it we are developing our powers to acquire that knowledge.
We should also be aware that there is a social downside.
The other day I had to re-organize a room with a teacher. I explained my faces/borders conjecture of desk arrangement and suggested a layout. I was right [well, it worked], she was delighted with the result but there was something in her eyes. I will never be invited to her house for tea. She thinks I'm a nutter.
Swings and roundabouts.
I'm a ceoliac and a vegetarian, which means that junk food is denied me, why? I'm a market am I not, make me fat you bastards.
I often have to get up four in the morning, I often don't fancy a bowl of rice or the making of porridge at that time in the am. And I resent paying about five times the normal price for a gluten-free version of oats which, as a Scot, should be my birth-right cereal. I gave in and bought some gluten-free cornflakes.
Most gluten-free food is shite, it's almost like what it pretends to be, but not quite. In a way that makes it almost completely un-edible; the first bite seems ok, the second makes you boak. We have a valley of disgust problem.
I realized early-doors after my diagnosis that I could thole none of it. I have a repeat prescription for pizza, well the bases anyway. This annoyed my wife enormously, until she tasted the things.
The cornflakes weren't too bad in the texture sense [which is where it usually goes wrong] what I missed was a normal mix of dangerous/bad-for-you chemicals that normal humans take for granted in their food. Just because I'm a mutant doesn't mean that I can't appreciate e-numbers.
I remember this problem from when I went vegetarian—I call it sausage-angst: the unreasonable annoyance of carnivores when faced with the fact that vegetarians might like the odd meat-free sausage.
Why do the food-nazis who are apparently hell-bent on making the rest of humanity bariatric [the word that doctors now use for obese] deny me my opportunity?
Swine.
I'll go with this my pictures lark...
A couple of concept sketches for my, uncompleted, graphic novel city of ghosts.
My limited edition Lowry print. [It's me asking my Mum for money.]
One of my Mum's works.
My Robin Spark
My wife and I are watching a documentary about how big business made us fat, [quote] "...one and three-quarter million chicken wings are eaten every day in the USA."
"What happened to the other wing?" I asked.
"What?" My precious asked, I should have known that I was on dangerous ground.
"Wings generally come in twos, one and three-quarter million is an odd number. Have they genetically diddled with the chickens?" There I should have stopped.
"If they bred chickens that only had one wing it works, but that's not the way that they do things is it? We want wings ergo the more the better. One and three-quarter million is deffo divisible by five, that would be my number of wings."
"The thing might not fly, or it might fly in an odd way, mashing itself into walls...", I was told to stop talking at this point.
Her face was a picture of a strange pain, "will you shut the fuck up! And, please make sense, any number that ends with a zero is divisible by two."
I was searching through that drawer today—you know the one.
The one where the manual for the washing machine that you no longer have lives, the one into which you shove all the stuff that you know that you'll never need but are a wee bit too chicken to throw out. The one that you search only when you are in a desperate strait.
I found a pokémon card: Blastoise. That was a big card not to know that I owned. I definitely didn't open it in a pack [I'd remember that], so I must have swapped it with some kid, I hope that I didn't cheat hem [him/her].
The Blastoise was not in a good condition, I felt like crying.
...Oh, didn't I tell you? Pokémon cards saved my life.
Today I spent doing the final bits of a bad TMA, and trying to ensure that somone would not be sacked.
What do you think that you are good at? Almost certainly you aren't good at that. I'm crap at almost everything, except for the one thing that I really suck at: dealing with people.
Which I had to do today. A fellow alcoholic [binge-drinker] went off the rails. I spent today on the phone talking to people; liars.
I saw what happened. The fix is going to be hard, and may not be achieveivable. We are in the grind of a mill that we will never understand.
So st00she
All week I've been fretful.
At work we have a screen where power-points of a vapid-inspirational-informative run. Normally I can ignore them. This week they have been doing my head in—I've been treated to screen after screen of such bad typography/design that it would have been fairer to bind me tightly, scratch chalk down a board at me and have rats eat my face.
I broached the subject with my line-manager [a friend]. He was non-plussed.
"Can't you see that it is wrong?", I asked. At which point another piece of excrescence morphed onto the screen. It featured figures that resembled no living humans.
[We had something that was essentially crap in portrait, delivered as landscape at the wrong aspect-ratio].
He, my line-manager, mentioned that another friend of ours does indeed look like this. So-fat, too-short.
"Yes but we all agree that he's a freak!"
"Why are you so excited?", he asked.
I asked myself that. The answer wasn't what I expected.
I'm not angry that people don't understand, I angry because people feel that those who do understand shouldn't be rewarded.
Suppose you go to a party and meet a plumber; it takes a bit of affront to suggest to her that she should fix some dripping-issue in your house for you, for diddly.
If I tell people that I can make web sites they will ask me to do it for free, and will become positively upset when I bring up the subject of recompense.
I spent many-many hours designing my nonsense to ensure that all that matters is the words that I write. That involved a lot of learning. To others my learning has no use.
Everyone sees design as a soft subject that we all can do. People who say this are talking utter crap. I do courses that are, supposedly, hard, design is the most difficult thing that I've ever done.
We all think that we can be Piccaso, after we've seen his works.
I seem to have a cold: I have a racking cough, a sore frame and I feel awful. Tragic timing, about fifty yards down the road from me people are falling by the wayside.
People are eyeing me oddly, until I explain the way that legionella works. Once they know that they can't catch it from me the couldn't give a damn.
It would be ironic if I've contracted the beast—the boys who are now doing the testing and I have shared many a conversation about the piss-poor processes that are in place. The testing is done, we see the issues, but there's never any cash to rectify the problem.
Whatever petrie-dish in-the-sky has been spewing the blight I'll bet that their records are impeccable. In every sense other than it was safe.
It's all very well to make a measurement, the point is to act on them.
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