The weather has changed. After a very dry few weeks of sunshine, today was chilly and damp. It was raining this morning. After all the sun the garden looks lush and heavily green.
Light Research
I’ve managed a little writing today, though not as much as I’d like. In part I deliberately took things easy (or even easier) than usual after a solid sleep last night. I also started reading through the magazines shown in the picture to the right by way of research. There is an English focus to the magazines and I’m setting my current writing in the Scottish Borders, but I’m mostly looking for ways to impart a sense of weirdness to the story that’s emerging.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, I’d very much like to visit the area I’m writing about but that obviously isn’t possible just now. Given the pace I write at, I might be able to get down to the Borders in time for when I revise the first draft, whenever that might be.
I wasn’t about to go for a long walk tonight, that would be silly, so I did a shorter, 1.5 mile circuit of the local streets. I was back in time for the 8 o’clock applause which, this week, featured contributions from train horns a mile or so away. A cycle and/or a longer walk awaits tomorrow, I think.
Apologies, a bit of a dull entry today 🙁
***
Music tonight by His Bobness. After a lean few years marked by one or two duff albums, Blood On The Tracks in 1975 was a major return to form. And it kicks off with this beauty, of which I never tire:
I’ve been really tired today. I think it is all the walking in the evenings catching up with me. It isn’t so much the distance–not that long ago I’d run it daily at lunchtime, sometimes twice–as the cumulative effect on my relative unfitness. I feel not unlike I used to the day after climbing a Munro, something else I haven’t done for a long time. I had a decent nap this afternoon, but I think an early night is what’s called for. I went out briefly earlier to get a little fresh air, but that’s it for the day. It’s also colder than it has been for a while, and it’s raining.
Twitter for beginners
I took time earlier to look back on some of the stuff I’ve been writing here. There was more repetition than I thought (and, also, there was more repetition than I thought) but I found it interesting, given that I usually write these posts the end of the day without much editing. I don’t usually go back and change them either unless I see something obvious in the grammar or sentence structure.
One thing that did strike me is that I’ve been somewhat contrarian in some of my thoughts as compared with the reporting I see, and certainly compared to the frothing ferment that is Twitter, and might be considered more defensive than would be expected of the Prime Minister and First Minister, neither of whose parties attract my vote. I think it’s worth saying that isn’t because I’m a convert to their causes or because I don’t think errors have been made.
My general view is that there’s too much of this going on:
I think scepticism is essential and justified at all times, but I think cynicism is corrosive. Broadly, I see way too much cynicism online, which is quite a contrast with the humanity I see all around me. I know that, in the end, neither are accurate representations of the whole, but I prefer to amplify humanity over cynicism.
I read a couple of interesting things online earlier: a useful analysis in the New York Times of testing and where we’re at scientifically as opposed to politically; and a piece in The Atlantic on the general situation. It has an American focus, but is relevant here, too, I think. I find this stuff a useful corrective in many ways to the surface level discourse I see all around.
***
Music tonight from the Grateful Dead in 1974, the era of Jerry’s ‘Wolf’ guitar and Phil’s Alembic ‘Mission Control’ bass. Every Deadhead has favourite songs or song combinations, and when the Dave’s Picks archive releases drop through the door, the things I hope for are an exploratory Playing In The Band, which they once expanded into a truly magnificent near-47 minute jam in Seattle in 1974 that goes into 70’s Miles Davis territory, and Chinacat Sunflower/I Know You Rider. This is the latter from 1974 as featured in The Grateful Dead Movie and tells you everything about the band and their audience in that period. Note the number of women and children in the audience.
It is a measure of something that my achievement today consisted in finishing last week’s New Scientist Quick Crossword. Perhaps I should say that I find their quick crosswords more difficult than their cryptic ones since, with cryptic crosswords, you can work out the answer. With quick crosswords you just have to know or have a shrewd guess.
The Trigan Empire
The Trigan Empire was a long-running adventure strip in British comics when I was growing up. I didn’t get the magazines it was published in but friends did, and its mixture of science fiction and classical myth all whipped up in a froth of nonsense fascinated me when I saw it, and hangs around in my memory still.
I’ve been meaning to get hold of the collected editions for a while, but they were always more expensive than I could justify. However a new paperback series is planned, the first volume of which arrived here today. I’m taking it one story at a time and so far it’s been great fun, although I have to say that, for the most part, the heroic protagonists have a distinctly Arian demeanour and the beastly antagonists a disturbing tendency towards fiendish orientalism.
Eeeeeh!
The series is rightly celebrated for the art of Don Lawrence, who drew/painted direct with coloured inks rather than the then dominant American method of pencil drawings, inked and coloured. That gives his art a qualitatively different look that I don’t recall cropping up in mainstream American comics until (British) artist John Bolton came along, or perhaps Bernie Wrightson.
And then…
I have other examples of Lawrence’s art, notably Fireball XL5 stories in an old TV21 Annual and (I think) a Thunderbirds annual, and it continues to fascinate.
Volume 2 isn’t published until next year, I believe, so I have plenty of time to enjoy Volume 1.
***
After hitting my target on the exercise bike the other day, I haven’t been back on it. I ought to, but the sad truth is that riding a static bike is as dull as running on a treadmill. I daresay I’ll get back to it, but in the meantime I’ve taken to extending out my evening walks. Tonight’s walk was 4.25 miles and that seems about right for now given all the circumstances.
The recommendation now in Scotland is that we should wear facemasks in, for example, shops or on public transport. That’s fine, but there is a distinct absence of facemasks to be found easily.
***
At some point in the late nineteen seventies I was given a copy of a double album of Al Stewart’s early work. I still have it. This was all recorded before his breakthrough album Past, Present and Future and the mega-hit Year of the Cat. One of the early songs that caught my ear immediately and still gets a run out from time to time is tonight’s music selection. From 1970, Electric Los Angeles Sunset:
For the first time in the present circumstances I fell to daydreaming about holiday destinations. I’m not sure why: possibly just the Italian wine I opened at teatime.
The three destinations that I particularly had in mind were the northwest coast of Sutherland, by far my favourite part of the UK, northern Portugal, where we’ve been only once but is always calling me back, and Puglia, Italy, where I’ve never been, but I’ve drunk plenty of their wine.
South of Durness
The first time we went up to Sutherland, we stayed in a fixed holiday caravan at Lairg. I remember the first time we took the road that goes out past Loch Shin and curves through the hills to Loch Stack and Laxford Bridge. A right hand turn at Laxford Bridge takes you north through wild beauty to Durness and Cape Wrath. A big loop back to Lairg may, or may not, take in the unmaintained road past the foot of Ben Hope, past Dun Dornaigil broch to Altnaharra, then south past the Crask Inn to Lairg.
We’ve been back many times since, although less so since the advent of the North Coast 500.
Porto across the River Douro
We were last in Portugal for my birthday in October 2018. We’d previously been to Lisbon, but this time we flew Easyjet to Lisbon then took a train north to Porto. Porto is, or was at the time, heavily dependent on tourism to pay for the renovation of its infrastructure. That didn ‘t detract from its beauty or the wild Atlantic coast just a tram ride away.
And it has great food and wine. One day, we took a local train out to Guimarães, which was just lovely. I decided then that if the chance ever came up I’d like to go back and explore the region more thoroughly. Northern Portugal was one of the few places I daydreamed about at the height of the Brexit bullshit when I was asked where I’d go to live in Europe if I had the money and opportunity. Alas, I have neither.
Puglia I know only by wine and reputation, but Italy has never let me down before, and I’d like to go even though it is becoming a major budget airline destination (or was until the virus). But wine, food, and Mediterranean weather are more than enough reason, don’t you think?
***
I maintained my new policy of not spending excess time with the press on the subject of the virus, but I did read this article in the New Yorker that I found absorbing.
Music tonight seemed appropriate for sitting in the lockdown sunshine, daydreaming of being of somewhere else; the late, great Leon Redbone:
I intended to keep out of the sun today, and the weather cooperated by not being quite as sunny and intense as it has been for the past week. Instead, I took myself up to the desk in the shed and tried to write some more fiction. And I did. It isn’t very good, but it keeps things going.
It’s a funny thing; I’ve got a couple of fragments of parts of the story that sooner or later I’ll stich together as the bigger narrative takes shape. Both revolve around the same protagonist, but one is in the 1st person, the other in the 3rd person. Oops. It’ll probably end up first person once I get the protagonist’s voice properly in my head, but it isn’t there yet. I’ve written about this character before, but seen through the eyes and ears of someone else, and the internal and external voices aren’t the same. As an example, someone else will hear your accent and dialect, but your inner voice won’t really hear them at all.
I sat out for a while late on to get the last of the sun. It was a wee bit chillier than the last few evenings, but pleasant enough. I also had a decent walk; I didn’t use an app to track it accurately, but it was about 4 miles. I’ve been putting phone snaps from walks and stuff on Instagram by the way–tap the instagram icon up to the top right of this screen and you should see them.
I was stuck for music tonight until I skimmed the headlines and noticed that the eyes of the world are on North Korea. Problem solved.
Recent Comments