Golf Tango Foxtrot

My evening's entertainment is watching the concluding part of the Swedish cop thriller in the Arne Dahl written Bad Blood.  A bit gory but very enthralling. The disparate personalities of the team members are well explored in the scripting and the acting is excellent. There is a hint of self-deprecating humour and in it all a conscious artfulness. The first part of Bad Blood contained many hysterical moments relating to the team members getting their end away in various situations both tragic and comic. I just wish we could come up with a comparable series here in Scotland.  It will be interesting to see how drama and literature catches up with the reorganisation of the Scottish Police Force. How would Ian Rankin's Rebus have dealt with a national force? What saddened me most in the whole public discourse (one could not call it a debate) was that no-one seemed to be raising the civil liberties implications.  I couldn't care less how much money is saved.   ...

The wedding I played last night was dry.  No alcohol.  Lots of sober people who clearly had a connection with the Bride and Groom enjoying themselves immensely. This actually made our job as musicians much easier.  I didn't have to talk a bunch of obstreperous and inebriated punters through the complexities of even the simplest dances.  Result for sure. There were a number of communal hymn singing intervals in the event and they were great.  Wonderful singing and clearly great social bonds between the people there. The life of a jobbing musician throws up all sorts of interesting moments like this.  There is a down side of course.  Like the "will never work with again" list.  This is the list of people who have consistently overstepped the bounds of acceptability.  As a result, I will never work with them again.  Unless of course, they reform? To be fair I say it has to be consistent bad behaviour.  A one-off fuck up is not...

T oday I am on a day off the day job. That's good. We should all be thinking about working less. We all work far too hard and have no time to be doing any creative stuff. The sun is shining outside and I have already been for a walk on St Cyrus Beach. I've just had to turn down a fiddle playing job for tonight on the grounds that I already have one.  A bit short notice for sure but what the hell. It has reminded me to text Charlie (tonight's Band leader) to get the details for the job I actually have. Hopefully it will be a straightforward wedding job. Weddings are good for bands usually. One does get the odd "Bridezilla" who is difficult to please but by and large weddings are pleasant experiences to play. Particularly if there is a Disco as well. That way if the band is not what they're looking for we can take an early bath and hand over to the disco. I have a few plans for today to take forward. Chase up a Fiddle Bow in for re-hairing. Do a washi...

I am making my Butter Bean and Chorizo stew. Loosely based on a Greek dish which I first enjoyed at a wonderful Epirot greasy spoon cafe in Ioannina called HbH (pronounced Evie) this is a wonderfully satisfying concoction of olive oil, butter beans, tomato,  chorizo and oregano.  super with bread and butter.  The Greeks apparently eat more bread than anyone else in Europe.  And damned good bread it is  as I remember. My first visit to Greece was in 2003 nearly ten years before my second visit. The first visit was a few days in Athens followed by a week in Ioannina in Epirus near the border with Albania. Beautiful weather all round.  Till the last couple of days when it snowed.  Back to Athens we went in the bus with a snowstorm at our heels.  Two feet of snow in Athens.  The snow lay glistening on the orange trees.  Wonderful drinking in Plaka though in a little bar with a distillery out the back. The tea by the way has cooked. ...

In the previous blog post I never mentioned why I left this country in the early 1980's and went to live in the Netherlands. Two reasons really.  I couldn't bear to live in a State that had effectively murdered ten Irish Republican hungerstrikers.  As if that wasn't bad enough it was clear that there was no chance of  a job for trouble-making dossers like me in the Thatcher times. The Netherlands was good to me though.  I recall the first Dutch joke I ever got.  "De Amerikanen hebben Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope en Johhny Cash, de Britsen hebben Margaret Thatcher, geen hoop en geen kas."  A literal translation is "The Americans have Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope and Johnny Cash.  The Brits have Margaret Thatcher, no hope and no cash." Quite literally I was never a day out of work.  I worked on the docks.  I worked as a firewatcher in a shipyard standing over welders with a fire extinguisher in case anything went up in flames.  I ended my worki...

When I moved to the Netherlands in the early 1980's I had a vague notion of “doing” Europe, but Amsterdam was the farthest I could get on two weeks broo money.. I got the overnight bus from Montrose to London, dossed about London during the day and took another overnight bus to Amsterdam. Arriving in Amsterdam at 8 in the morning I went up to the Vreemdelingen Dienst (Aliens Police) and had my passport stamped with a 3 months residence permit.  In the then early days of the EU we had a right to work, but not live in other EU countries.  So at least I didn't need a work permit. I went to an Uitzendburo (Employment Agency) and made up an address for their records.   This was by now about 11am.  I'd been on the road for about 36 hours by this time.  My first shift was working down the docks at Ijmuiden (on the North Sea coast), starting at 2.00pm that afternoon. I think I managed to doze a wee bit in the van thoughtfully provided by the buro. ...

I amused some of my younger acquaintances the other day when I revealed that I learned to write on a slate.  That's right, a slate with a worn wooden surround which had been used by generations of children before me at the little country school at Craigo. The school where I began my education.  The worn wood polished by the hands of others. Craigo was a village built around a jute mill.  There was no shop, no bus, no church, no pub.  We had to walk a distance to all these amenities. Like every child of the village I had to walk a mile to school. The mill was notorious for using poor quality jute which had been smouldering in the holds all the way from Bengal to the port of Dundee only to burst into flames when the hatches were opened.  A permanent fire brigade presence at Dundee docks reflected the inflammable nature of jute.  At Craigo the raw jute which was often soaking from the efforts of the fire brigade was dried in the bleachfields and then sp...

And so to Friday.  Awake early and catching up with news.  It seems there are developments in the Boston Marathon bombing case.   A firefight in the Watertown area of Boston has led to the death of one suspect and the apprehension of another.  An incident at Massachussets Institute of Technology has led to the death of a police officer. I am also following the live arrest of the "Donostia 8".  Eight Basque youths have been convicted by a Madrid court of "terrorist" affiliations, basically of membership of the organisation Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland & Liberty", often known by the acronym ETA). Even the name "Donostia" is a loaded political term.  It is what Basques call the town known in Spain (and by many foreigners) as "San Sebastian".The court sentenced them to six years for what the youths claim is simply pro-Basque-Independence political activity. As I write they are struggling with local police in Donostia. ...

I have been collecting a whole heap of "sortae" autobiographical stories but the nature of memory being what it is I am sure there is much in the way of false or inaccurate or "misrecalled" memories there. I guess that means that I should not call it autobiography. Calling something "autobiography" commits one to the verifiable truth (or does it?) as I see it. On the other hand I believe all our lives are works of art in progress, the stories of which we are free to embellish and change and improve and justify ourselves. "Why spoil a good story by sticking to the truth" is a true saying and one I most associate with my friend Alec Green (the Doyen of Scottish Tin Whistle players). The ornamenting of our stories is like the ornamenting in a traditional tune. Individual to each player. Alec Green grew up as the son of a Miller. In an accident with the mill when a young child he lost the tips of several fingers. This made Alec's musical ...

I wish we would all stop this coy shit about drugs. I'm sick to death of this pretence that in our youth we didn't smoke dope, were never stoned out of our minds...unless we were SO addled that we genuinely don't remember... I worked in mental health services for much of my adult life. I used to be a Registered Mental Nurse and aso worked in the volutary sector and with Social Work Mental Health services. I saw a growing cohort of young (mostly) men (mostly) with "Drug-induced Psychosis". These guys are “difficult to engage” in the jargon...they aften become floridly ill very quickly in the context of smoking large amounts of Cannabis, there is often police involvement and generally they are seen as difficult to deal with. So what the fuck are they smoking? Kids nowadays don't seem to have the odd joint now and again..(like WE did..?) .they seem to smoke large quantities of very strong product. There doesn't seem to be much protest aga...

One of the striking features of late capitalism is its inability to meet any challenge except with savagery.  The former socialist states transformed themselves almost overnight and by and large bloodlessly into (more or less) liberal democracies. One cannot comprehend the reverse transformation without mass killing. Let’s take a brief look back in history, less than a blink in time… I recall watching the TV news during the 1980's Miners strike in “Britain”.  One evening I watched with disbelief a report of a protest by striking miners in Poland. Busloads of miners had driven up from the coal mining regions of Silesia to make their demands re pay and conditions to the central government in Warsaw.  Fascinated, I watched as the Polish miners sat down in the street and blocked the traffic in central Warsaw.  I waited with anticipation, sure that the police would come in with batons swinging and break a few heads.  No such thing happen...

Tom Hunte r and others tell us we are failing to produce enough new enterprises. Our people are too lazy or stupid or too mollycoddled by a Nanny State to start their own businesses. Yet many of those who castigate the rest of us for being unenterprising are the very ones who will risk nothing.  The modern entrepreneurial class are sad reflections of their Victorian forebears who built the capitalist system. They demand protection from risk and public subsidy before undertaking any "enterprise".  What do I mean?  Let's look at some examples from Aberdeen.  Allegedly the wealthiest city in Scotland and certainly the most unequal. Where Victorian capitalism built a huge public transport railway system, First Group offers the people of Aberdeen what is probably the most expensive public transport in Europe. These poster boys of modern capitalism can't even do that without demanding and getting massive  public subsidy . The taxpayers of Aberdeen fill the pock...

When you next visit your local Chinese Buffet all you can eat extravaganza (it's a guilty pleasure of mine) spare a thought for the dear departed Margaret Thatcher.  When you pull the lever to serve yourself from the Ice Cream machine, remember she made it possible. It coils onto your plate for all the world like a turd made of Ice Cream. Fortunately tasteless, (one doesn't want to eat more shit than is absolutely necessary) this is air and sugar and dairy substitute.  Tart it up with some "chocolate" sauce and you're well on the way towards Type II Diabetes. Of all the legacies of the late Prime Minister the ice cream turd machine is the most overlooked. Rather than serve her country during the war against fascism (as even the then Princess Elizabeth did) Maggie took a chemistry degree at Oxford. Before she met Dennis the wealthy husband who bankrolled her political ambitions she actually had to work for a living.  Margaret was employed by Walls t...