Summer in Scotland

 I've been off work for the past week on holiday and I'm glad of it.  Temperatures have been in the high twenties and certainly warmer than Tenerife is in January.  We are lucky to have a garden and be able to cool down outside.  The nights are too warm at times and it highlights that we are lucky to have proper winters too.

The heat actually makes Scotland smell different.  It smells like a foreign country.  In this time of the virus and lockdowns and travel bans this is enough to make a holiday at home bearable.

As always I want more time off work.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

 I read Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell about 16 years ago and I loved it at the time. Piranesi was published last year and I've just had a chance to listen to the audiobook.  It's fairly short and well read by Chiwetel Ejiofo.

Piranesi is a magical and mysterious book that reminded me of the Narnia tales of CS Lewis. It's a story about a massive house, deserted and partially flooded, filled with strange things and inhabited by the narrator and another.

The story flows and was succinct and well constructed.  I totally recommend it.

we often forget how lucky we are

 on a Friday night I'm often knackered after a week at work.  A week at my well paid, comfortable job.  after putting the baby down to sleep I'm often sitting and, as always, I feel a bit brain dead.  sometimes I listen to music.

This evening I was listening to some jesus lizard music and remembering the great times when I saw them play live.  Then I realised that I was once lucky enough to see scratch acid play.  And then I remembered seeing the elephant 6 orchestra play enlightenment by sun ra. twice. and that was really fucking special.

and then i remember how fortunate I am.  how lucky I am.  I have a great wee family and a nice house and a good job and i've had amazing experiences over the years and nothing is perfect but it's important sometimes to just remember how good things actually are.

I hope all of you out there get to feel this good some times.

Mogwai number 1 album shocker

 It's very odd when someone you know ends up having the best selling album in the UK.  I've known members of mogwai for nearly 30 years and it's just amazing to see them do so well.  Hard work pays off!

WANDAVISION

 I spent a lot of my childhood reading Marvel superhero comics.  I think the first one I read was the UK weekly Secret Wars comic although I also read Spiderman and Zoids.  Prior to that I read the Beano and Battle Action Force, Star Wars Weekly and Transformers Weekly.  I loved it all and it was all mind rotting garbage but in a good way.  Comic books and punk rock made me who I am today.

I was always a bit of an obsessive kid, always wanting to read more and know more and understand more. I'm still a bit like that which is good and bad.  I was into Marvel in a big way, I read the official handbook of the marvel universe cover to cover and I learned all about the crazy, colourful minor characters of the Marvel Universe including all of the B listers and the C listers, like the Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

Now the Vision and the Scarlet Witch had a couple of limited series published in America in the early '80s and the stories in those comics were very off the wall.  Some of the weirdest comics out there with a mind bending storyline.  Definitely not mainstream and probably the product of some serious drugs.  Bad hippy drugs.

And it seems that Disney have made that mad shit into a TV series.

And I think to myself what a wonderful world.....

Black Country, New Road - the stage school Slint?

 Referring to a band as the stage school Slint is pretty cruel.  It's also unfair because their first album, 'For the first time' is actually pretty good.  Listening to it there are hints of Slint and Nick Cave and probably the Tindersticks all of which are positives in my mind.  

Musically they sound like they would be fun live although I don't think we will be seeing any live music for a while now.  This is probably more of an issue for me as the 43 year old father of a one year old.  I think my gig-going days are on hold for a while anyway.

The music has nice instrumental sections and some fairly funny lyrics.  Not much distorted guitar but some good dynamics.  Worth a listen.

Spiral season 8

 I've been watching Spiral for a long time now.  I first wrote about it on here in 2013 although I think I've been watching it a bit longer than that now.  It's hard to watch subtitled stiff with a young child but certainly worth it.

Series 8 is the final series and it is  edge of the seat viewing.  I was fairly certain that key members of the case would be bumped off at any time and when I made it to the last episode last night I was left satisfied. Spiral is a slow burner and, as is common with European drama, they do bad things to the cast and play on your emotions.  Paris is made to seem miserable.

Very enjoyable.  Watch it before the Tory party ban it for good!

COVID nutters

 The reality of the pandemic is clearly hard for some to accept.  It was always one of those existential fears that I had, having read lots of science fiction and studied biology and then medicine at university.  I'd read a lot about pandemics in the past.  I knew they were bad and that we were due one.  I knew it would probably happen.  It's just a bit of a shitter that it actually happened.

COVID has happened.  It's almost everywhere and it kills tons of people.  Accept it and deal with it.

Some people can't or won't accept it.  Some reach for a comfortable conspiracy theory to protect them from the brutal truth that humanity is sometimes insignificant in the face of nature and a wee virus could wipe us all out.  COVID-19 isn't going to eliminate the human race but it's still nasty.  We need to do what we can to reduce and avoid infections.  Vaccines, washing our hands, social distancing, wearing masks - all small personal sacrifices to reduce infection rates and reduce deaths.  Some people can't so this.  Idiots like Ian Brown of the Stone Roses and various quack doctors post mad shit on the internet and people believe them and that has consequences.

The UK government haven't helped.  Initial standard Eton arrogance quickly followed by bewildered blind  panic bolstered by exceptionalism from Dominic Cummings and standard avarice has muddied the water creating a fertile breeding ground for the conspiracy theory nutters.  We need a government of adults and the UK does not have this.  

We will be living with COVID forever.  We will probably need yearly COVID vaccines for some time and normality will take some time to return.

The big lesson is don't eat random wild animals.

Dystopian reality

 Over the years I've read a lot of dystopian science fiction, I've watched the movies and I've read the comics.  I never dreamt that I would be living the reality in 2021.  This morning I was out in the freezing cold queuing to get my first shot of the COVID vaccine, wearing a face mask.  I got on buses that were near empty and saw crazy people hanging around central station.

It's fucked.  On top of this, Donald fucking Trump continues to be the president of the united states of america, at least for the next couple of weeks and he basically incited an attempted coup that involved the storming of the capitol building in Washington D.C. by a bunch of freaks including fucking Ariel Pink.  In the UK we have an evil Tory government with Boris Johnston as out prime minister and cunts like Jacob Rees Mogg causing as much badshit as they can.

10,000 people in the UK have died with COVID-19 since Christmas leading to a grand total of 80,000 deaths related to a new disease in under a year.  Shit is majorly fucked up.

I miss my dad and some of my friends who are dead but in a way I'm glad they don't have to live through this shit.  I'm ok, I have a comfortable middle class existence but Scotland right now is fifty shades of bleak thanks to idiots voting for things like Brexit and the Tory party.

I hope the vaccine works at least a bit.  Not sure if anything will fix the damage to the UK after Brexit and COVID.  Hoping for Scottish independence but suspect that is unlikely.