These are just fleeting thoughts from the heartland of the UK's colonial dustbin somewhere beyond the wall of sleep. Odd bits of music and so-called worldly wisdom may creep in from time to time. Don't expect too much and you won't feel let down. As ever AI and old age are to blame. I'll just leave it there ...
This demonization was no accident, but rather a deliberate twisting of pagan ideals as Christianity spread its influence throughout Europe. After the Council of Nicea issued the Nicene Creed and the Roman Catholic Church was established in 325 C.E., Christian theologians (beginning with Eusebius) transformed Pan from a benign nature god to Satan, the great Adversary."
Filtched from here -
The search for Pan continues ...
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For the record only: My collection of B&Q buckets amounts to four in the traditional orange and one in the rather sexy and fetching black finish. None of these buckets are featured here 🠉. This particular bucket only paid us a brief but useful visit the other day. As you can see it's comfortable when it comes to working at height.
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P.S. I've been in a few cults over the years. A rite of passage thing that just sort of happens to people and of course some are much worse than others. I'm not recommending cult membership as a worthwhile life choice either but as it happens I've belonged to this one 🢃 twice - but they are not the same. So the image below means something different to me than it might to others ... I just might be able to take advantage of that one day. I think I'm on to something.
A Snowman coffee to bring you good cheer. Photo LB.
At night we camped where the grass bent high and the cliffs kept a low watch. Locals prodded us through the tent fabric. No easy sleep under canvas. The snack packets crackled in the dark. The vinegar stayed with us, sharp as memory, and the salt stayed too, in the skin and on the breath. We were poor but never lacking.
The path asked only that we continue and so we did, then the tide arrived in the wrong place. In the morning the bags were lighter once again, but wetter. The sea was still there, this time in another place, punching faces, blue and true. We ate the last of the crisps and laughed once, briefly looking up. The taste was strong and the day was long/hot and that was just how it had to be. I fell into a thorn bush and that was very unpleasant. So I decided I still had to write all this stuff down for our own future reference. Right now I'd kill for a shower."
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It's never easy to know where you are with eggs (hen's eggs I mean, forget the other kinds). Sometimes perfect; in a Denny's in Key West, over easy with pancakes, syrup and bacon on a warm Gulf of Mexico morning. Then in that WWII Brad Pitt film with the tank, Fury, the scene with the fried egg, set in that particularly disturbed house, ugh! It haunts me still. Eggs can tip from brilliance to disgusting in the blink of an eye.
Eggs. Like some alien thing. You have to be in the right mood. The mind has to be settled correctly. Keep it clean. Avoid things that may distract or push a negative image or feeling. You're walking on eggshells. A crazy image in itself. Develop a physically and psychologically sound system of defence to optimize your egg preparations and consumption. Learn how to be wrong. Then fix it. Too many tough recipes. Stay simple.
Fried eggs are never easy. The very hot oil, crinkle theory is all good and well but it can go so badly wrong so quickly. A rubbery textured white streaked with sizzled orange bubbles is a bad thing. Boiled and poached have their own problems but we seldom speak of them. Never trust anyone who says, "He/she is such a poor cook, they couldn't even boil an egg." Don't believe it's all that simple. Not if you ever want to see and experience eggs done properly. Idiots can't do eggs. They* also serve them on cold plates. Scrambled egg on a cold plate is a cruel form of torture but remember the microwave can be your friend - for scrambled egg and the late, great plate warming ritual.
*I have a mental hit list of offending eateries, some nearby, some not so.
Back to our personal egg mountain. A seasonal problem. That's what we're telling you. We're getting somewhere. On top of it but not literally. Every different "egg" day presents a new but familiar challenge. We rise, we fall, we rise again.
Never forget the holy trinity. Shell, white and yolk. Three things that are somehow one. Or is that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? I just don't know for sure. It's all out there if you care to look.
It’s a fake kind of winter. Only a paper sun. Low in the sky. Blinds you when driving. The snow is within touching distance for us, if you’re prepared to go 60 miles. I’m happy to avoid that. We’re on the coast. But it’s still killer chiller. All this warming just makes us cold. The sharp kind of cold that pings your ear’s insides and rises up through the tiles or tarmac into bones and nerve ends and into your core. In a non specific way. The older you get the thinner the skin, so you feel less protected, like wearing cling film in a freezer.
Old age: The chilled blade of the traitor’s knife has your name on the hilt. We've fallen into that trap already.
I have trouble spelling. I can’t concentrate. I’m waiting till it’s a sane time to light up the logs and then count them down. Hoping for a clean burn. One good, big hot meal. Might include alcohol. Pots of soup can last us three days. Add pepper. Books, TV streams and guitar noodling. Looking out of windows. Charge up the devices.
Nobody ever says, "I really think that I should check my phone a little more."
Winter is full of ritual - or is that just life? How dark is the dark? Check the air and wind direction. Does the sea water look choppy? Trees are moving. OK to let the cats out? Good time to let them in? Boil a kettle. Is the Co-op open yet? Empty the drier. Why are those people waiting out there? The buses seem to be running. Bin's out. Bed time soon.
First thing: Clean out the wood stove. Wipe the carbon and creosote away. Remove excess ash from the pan bottom. Collect logs from outside. Add some kindling on the way. Order more logs in about a week or so. Put tomorrow’s logs under cover to make sure they’re dry. Construct the cold, dry fire. Maybe chop sticks later. Once in a while it lights up spontaneously - warm embers and my careless ways of working to blame.
Every year a different fire building method emerges. One horizonal log across the back. Two vertical at the sides. Kindling in the middle, a mix of thick and thin. The logs can’t be too big to begin with. Add a log into the red hot the middle after about fifteen minutes. Never change the method, repeat and repeat till summer wipes the memory clean. Next year’s method then has to be decided. Experience is learned but I seem to forget. Fire is it’s own master. Still a just paper sun up there.
2026 was the year that I decided to do something.
The great festival of extravagance, indulgence and general confusion has passed. Both meaningful and meaningless it's the perfect expression of how lost we've all become. There's no way back either. So let's bury it in the past, not that it was particularly bad this year, just a reasonable dose of all the normal Christmasy stuff everybody in our wee world gets on with.
With a positive mental attitude the mindful hard labour and removal of Christmas tat and tinsel isn't so bad. Our tracks and footprints are silently erased by the incoming tide as we journey on, the pale winter sunlight almost warming those worn and weary hearts.
We breathed in a lot.
Sang a Joan Baez organising song.
Stopped and considered things.
Got high on a step ladder.
Exchanged observations.
Untangled the various cables - slowly.
Breathed out even more.
Rejoiced that we'd less stuff to put away than last year.
Unshackled the "real" tree and returned it to the "real" garden in the "real" cold. Just about everything was real it seemed.
Spread brandy butter on various baked goods.
I also ate the slightly overage blue cheese.
Used the dustpan rather than a noisy hoover.
I wore plimsolls.
Maintained the silence of our souls.
Once the boxes were full of all the cables and gnomes, paper and golden stars, baubles and switchgear, they were duly sent off into oblivion until about the 13th of December 2026. Perhaps I'll join them there.
Is it strange to say only *my generation had the Beatles? Not the younger ones. Not the older ones either. Just that narrow strip of time I happened to stand on. At the time it did not feel strange at all. It felt ordinary. There was nothing unusual about them. They were simply there. As if they always had been.
I was eight when the songs arrived and something in me noticed. Awareness came quietly then. You did not know what you did not know. How the rest of the world was waking up at the same time. The records were already spinning. The television already showed them. Newspapers, magazines, cinemas - all carried the same faces. It seemed fixed. Wasn’t that how the world worked?
Later they called it a Boomer thing. At eight, words like that had no weight. I knew about the big War, even if it had already ended. I knew rockets were chasing the moon. I knew cowboys, Elvis, and the long cold pause between nations. I knew the Light Programme, Children’s Hour, and Doctor Who, when the TV signal held. The Beatles slid into that knowledge without friction. Black and white faces. Scratchy records. Radios humming and glowing in the corners of rooms. They were not separate from life. They were part of it's texture. Like Bible stories or sherbet fountains. They were everywhere without trying to be.
The adults disapproved, or it felt that way. They said the songs meant nothing. They laughed at the words. They said the hair was long and wrong. They said Liverpool had never produced anything good. That was what they said. It did not matter. Everyone else leaned forward. We tested loyalties with pain and laughter, Beatles or Stones and we pretended it was a choice. The Beatles were better, everyone knew. The Stones were dangerous. Their danger complicated things. The adults said it would pass. They were wrong, though some of them understood. The ground was moving. You could feel it if you stood still long enough. But the establishment never believes in a movement until it has already fallen and is a piece of history.
The end, it turns out, is always closer than the beginning. The gods became men. Flesh and failure. They had warned us in the songs, but belief is easier than listening hard. Understanding asks something of you, and most people prefer not to pay.
By the time I'd turned sixteen it was finished. On the skids. The fractures came. Then the departures. Then the scandals. New names in music followed, eager and loud. They could play. They could write. They could perform. But they were not walking into open ground. They followed footprints already pressed into the earth. That walk could not be easily repeated. What came after was a pale imitation, sometimes beautiful, often competent, never the same. An original moment does not forgive repetition. It can only be viewed through glass, thinned and dulled. The world began to spin faster, and our heroes proved not to be bulletproof.
Now machines revive what once lived free. Still photos move again. Voices return without breath. It is something you may accept, but not something you can savour if you were ever there. It is hollow in the way belief becomes hollowed out when it asks nothing back. We watched the progression and sensed where it led. Souls sold cheaply, performing their tributes while everything around flattens into a cartoon form. History repeats, yes, but never faithfully. Time does not always improve what it touches. Small corruptions accumulate into monsters. The Devil stays down in the details. He prefers it there.
You try to tell your version anyway. You have to. It might matter, though few will believe it. Then people age, die and vanish, and the story returns again, edited, softened, looped endlessly for easier consumption. A version of memory becomes content. Context disappears.
The planet does not need more amusement. It needs care. It needs stewards. It needs people willing to serve rather than extract. Once there was a moment when that almost surfaced. Then errant machines closed over it and it was snuffed out. Corporations and governments learned faster ways to take without giving. We arrive at the future we earn. It did not have to be this way.
* I never, ever bought any Beatles records when I was young. No LPs, books or posters either. Nothing, I don't know why. Later on I bought a few CDs and books. There are still some Beatles albums I've never listened to all the way through.
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Sometimes I get my head into knots over imagined desert island options i.e. If you could only take one band or artist's music with you to the island, which one would you choose?
Perhaps: Mozart, Bowie, Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, CSNY ... ?
Once the internal pub argument is over, I think ... it's the Beatles.
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I may have perpetual anxiety.
I don't know for sure.
It's just running in the background.
A quiet little programme.
But I'll be looking over my shoulder.
Keeps the adrenalin high and the heart pumping.
It's maybe for the best.
Or,
More likely.
Do we all have a dose of it?
Fight v flight.
Something up ahead.
Just running on and away.
However close to empty.
Unseen threats.
Panic in the air.
We are all animals after all.
Wild animals.
Well, some wilder than others.
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As an alternative to my pathetic moaning here's some "happy wee cute cat" gift tags that arrived on Christmas morning attached to gifts, strangely enough.
