midnight motorway noises

here they are

2008-08-12T22:58:00.003+01:00

Here, there's outside and up west.

The earth rolls, folds and unfurls as inside thunder rumbles low until it happens that hand clap dramatic and just round the next bend. The boy's in up past his knees and I'm giggling like the good old days. The air is silent soft smelling of seaweed and she. Ardnamurchan is the most westerly point in mainland Britain and out here I might be standing on an outstretched index finger resting where the world curves.

Here, there's friendly faces and flashed at steps.

Holiday snaps clap once and again as they sit, chin and knees, persevering with lunch. Please pay for photographs of performers. Big Al Catraz, the tiny escapologist and the burlesque opera reading the glossies all sit tense, sit tight. They two are waiting. Each joking for the other. They wait and wait until when the wind whips up and they're off again to whoops, whistles and ready applause. It's her birthday and her yellow tights make Edinburgh's old grey bricks smirk in spite of themselves.

Here, there's inside, Southside.

The new place in the new city. Empty shelves keep asking if there'll ever be more. Be patient, please! Promise. Promise. And an empty studio which is forcing me to write.

Here and there's me, all over the place. Dust settling, just.

The answer, my friend...

2008-08-06T22:38:00.004+01:00

This seems to be the topic of the day, I didn't really see what all the fuss was about until I read the article in AdBusters and it made me seethe a little. I had actually been thinking about counterculture and, more precisely, about what our generation's is. This rambling is edited from an email to LMF.

I found myself wondering about the people I know and feeling optimistically certain that these people would have been involved in, if not at the centre of any countercultural activity that was happening fifty years ago. So, I pondered, why not now? If even we can't find anything to dig our nails into before we slip skull-shatteringly down the rock face then what is to be done? I think it's fine to talk about theatre or art and trying to make a difference in your own small way but really, what's our movement? Definitely not the hipsters.

Any decent counterculture needs a unifying force to radicalise mass movements - from flowers in your hair to force and brutality stemming indignance and unrest. With these hipsters that unifier is their fashion - the aesthetics of their "movement". So what counteracts this failed counter culture? What mass unifying force do we have? And if we can't find one, who can?

Whoever described "hipsterdom" as counterculture anyway? Since when has it ever been classed with the great counterculture movements? What about this generation's goths, technogeeks and anti-folk nerds? Or the climate-change warriors, the immigrant millions or the anti-war masses? What happened to them? Surely they would do more for counterculture than the hipsters in the article? Surely, then, it is just the media - and AdBusters - who are reinforcing this lie: that a fashion trend among wealthy city socialites somehow has something to do with politics or rebellion.

Is hipsterdom "the first 'counterculture' to be born under the advertising industry's microscope" as the article suggests? Or, if we take it as it is - a rapidly spreading fashion trend among vapid club kids for dressing expensively tatty - surely, it's just another trend initiated and proliferated by advertisers and media?

The hipsters are a nonentity. The sooner we all accept that the better. It's nothing more than eighties Madonna-wannabes, Cobain-cool grunge chic and global hypercolour t-shirts. It's a fad not a movement, it's just that we are so desperate for protest and for our unifying force that we've pinned ideals to a trend that doesn't exist.

But what is it?!

you just have to embrace it

2008-06-16T22:19:00.002+01:00

A video documentary about Mimes who aren't mimes... And don't you forget it.

country vs. city

2008-05-01T16:39:00.003+01:00

This is my debut in a tractor - narrated by Roy, judged (somewhat optimistically perhaps) by Rowan.

And this is demolition in Glasgow.

looks like rain

2008-04-25T02:20:00.006+01:00

Forty shades of grey - plumped, fluffed then rolled like craps across the blue-eye sky.

Softly stepping in amongst them wide-eyed, always surprised and sure to get lost in the layers, I remember home.

My gaze goes up high and through them: meandering and wondering, pondering my wanderings.

Cumulus curves. Clouds cuddle like no other.

quite undone

2008-04-09T07:27:00.002+01:00

So, during twelve balmy sun-soaked cocktails, I told the truth. NO! One truth untold lies and vanquishes rodents...really. All of the men swooned over all of the men. Gay! Also while I was quite serene, I tricked many of my former liaisons into covering these streets with rodents. Scrappy beasts, they were scampering about and people ran fast - terrified that one might introduce itself awkwardly and uninvited impose unnecessary amounts of napkins upon the filth-loving hermaphrodites.

because i just realised i could upload videos

2008-03-28T21:09:00.004Z

These are jumping crumbs.

And these are marching mimes.

And I'm sure there will be more to come!

ole!

2008-03-10T02:31:00.008Z

I saw this Manhattan matador pushing pigeons round the platform at Smith and Ninth.

Herding the birds with a pad of A4 as we waited for the F train. On his boots was scribbled SANCHEZ but he was a far cry from those tightly sequined and silked Andaluces I remember from years ago. He shoved and shifted the birds about, teasing them towards the tracks and smiling up like a boy when they obliged terrified...

One of these days, one of these trains, one of those pigeons is going to charge and gore him nasty.

if i squint i think i can make you out

2008-03-08T01:09:00.006Z

So. Suffocated by San Francisco's story cut short I sprinted east for mouthfuls of fresh air in this smog saturated city.

I craved a cigarette, grainy down the pipe walls of my throat and the way these cities make you feel like an eyelash caught on somebody's cheek... An unasked wish waiting to be carried off by this blustering breeze.

And so. Through the smog I glimpse that fog and the way it embraces those hills - white grey and green with asphalt. I'll be back, i'll be back, illbebackyes and they will be embracing still.

because i am sporadic, at best

2008-02-26T21:41:00.002Z

Read these people. These are the ones colouring between the thick black lines of my San Francisco adventure with fluorescent markers that smell like watermelon or orange sherbet.

This one
And this one
And this one, too

i blame lily jamie nash t...

2008-02-22T18:21:00.005Z

My mouth feels full of too many teeth tearing through tongue and ripping my gums. No sooner sprouted they begin to wobble and I spit them out bloody.

I sit sheepish as the others collect my irregularities, string them together and put them on like daisy chain crowns.

I remain, sitting on my hands,
wiv
foughts
and
words
what
sit
uncomfy
in
me
mouf and fumble among the teeth to find my r, my l and my o.

in glasgow

2008-01-17T23:36:00.000Z

You waited, and eventually I came back: teary-eyed but wiser and emboldened from the other, ready to share my life with you again. I wondered if I'd be left wanting after such an exhilarating affair, I wondered if we'd jigsaw together like before. You never asked about it, so it wasn't mentioned and I was so glad.

That first evening you shook the bedsheets out fresh; casting the ripples of fabric out then inviting them flat and we slept soundly, sung lullaby by the hushes of traffic outside and dreaming vividly of sliding the Clyde like a flume and holding my nose as I splashed into the Atlantic.

"You and I, old friend", I whisper close the next morning before I turn away.

taking liberties

2007-12-16T17:27:00.000Z

It is very easy, with all the anti-American (or, more precisely, anti-Bush) rhetoric among friends, on the television and in the newspapers in this country, to believe ourselves right again. Or not as wrong.

I am so often guilty of feeling better-than, and therefore good enough. We become so sidetracked by the ritual mockery of our Atlantic neighbour - stereotyping her citizens and chastising that person's mindboggling apathy and unerring stupidity - that we neglect the self-deprecation that we're supposed to be so good at and get tangled up in betterness rather than betterment.

I watched Taking Liberties on YouTube but I'm sure it could be obtained through more approved channels. It doesn't present much that you wouldn't know already, but it's refreshing and alarming to see it packaged without the obligatory butamerica'sstillworse wrapping.

december

2007-12-02T23:52:00.000Z

In the permanence of absence I forgot how unsettling the other could be.

I wind the film back, watching the negative frames disappear until nothing's left but that single image - by the water, late autumn.

I want them back. Desperately I grapple with the coil of stills - nails and teeth hack frantically at the casing but the pictures are blistered and burnt from the heat of that single image and the only copies are held so far away in the distance that I wonder if they even still exist.

Fuck it. I drop the film to the ground and stamp down hard and close my eyes tight as the plastic cracks beneath me.

rights and wrongs

2007-11-16T22:13:00.001Z

october 2006?

2007-08-31T15:04:00.000+01:00

Sifting through twenty four years of nonsense is not my ideal way of spending a sunny, blustery friday afternoon. But needs must, and as I packed my suitcase ready for another adventure (if a somewhat more familiar one than from that which from which that I've just returned...) I found a note I must have scribbled to myself late one night last year. Funny that it should resurface now, the day before I wander back down that street I call home so regularly and so happily...

Walking home, the orange-lit taxis flash past me but I'm not bothered.

The Maggie smells like three-day old chip fat, the way your grill pan smells when nobody's washed it for weeks. It's still early though, so no one's there.

I'm on the railings side and a guy in a red t-shirt with a half-full pint glass in his hand is being sick through the bars... Either that or he's spitting mouthfuls of tennents - either way he's had enough, clearly.

A familiar face passes across the road. He doesn't see me, or maybe he does but some old story weighs his head back down and his eyes toward the pavement. I walk on, trying not to wonder.

Further still's the queue. They're ready for a large one, ready for their night. Awake and on mobiles - we're in the queue come up.

I'm unintentionally in step with the music in my ears, but don't correct it, as if I could.

A girl in cut-off trousers zig-zags across the bridge unaware of the traffic, gabbing intently to two friends, I catch only - well. I think that's... that's admirable - before they're out of earshot leaving me to my imaginings.

Twenty-four hour shop, rizlas and munchie food about now. The biggest dog I've ever seen. I look up out of the corner of my eye and smirk as I pass. Encouraging shouts from his boozed up owner follow me - don't do that smirk and then just walk by - I do though and I'm nearly home.

I round the corner and it disappears again. Great Western Road for another night. My empty purse my saviour.

sunday afternoon

2007-06-12T08:06:00.000+01:00

In the Revolution Cafe, a five piece band is playing klezmer as our table wobbles and I sip my coffee and write.

The wind is causing chaos among the pages of the Chronicle. My friend here folds and flips it, folds and flips it, in an attempt to minimise the obstacle. She clambers through it, pushing it against the pesky breeze, catching the corners before they get the chance to escape and pull their page away and off down 22nd Street.

On the dark red walls are paintings and menu boards and outside people stand looking in at the band, nodding occaisionally to the thumb of the bass drum. My friend takes advantage of a respite in the wind to fold and flip the Chronicle one more time before our hummous and pitta arrive.

on your marks, get set....

2007-05-22T23:22:00.000+01:00

I'm leaving for San Francisco tomorrow where I'm sure the motorway noises will sound awful different... Maybe they'll ask me to have a nice day, or say "pants" where I usually wouldn't. They'll whizz past me I think, a slowly gathering gale that will whip me up soon enough so that I'm among them, battering along above the city, looking with baffled amazement at the folk below.

Marvellous new noises, but none quite so fine as home.

you and i, old friend.

2007-04-11T00:08:00.000+01:00

Something jars between us. I wake up in the afternoons now with the tail-ends of American dreams fogging up my sleepy head.

I told you all my secrets; whispering them, giggling, as you listened quietly. Those secrets evolved, pushing against you, forcing you to adapt until neither me nor my bag of stories slotted into the space you'd cleared for us all those years ago. Finally, inevitably, I quit - bundling up my stories and heading for elsewhere.

"Wait" I say, more as a description of days to come than as a request. Behind me, you fold your arms as I wander off.

2.

2007-01-29T22:12:00.000Z

We two;
he and I.

There is some other word;
exhaustive.
Something other than those unmentionable words;
redder in colour,
that wouldn't leave that saccharine taste on my lips.

We knew it late.
Reluctantly recognised
it peeking out from behind midnight talk,
between words as they wandered
the short distance between your mouth and mine;
or following us out of the cinema
all the way home.

We greeted it once; fleeting
and shrugged as it skipped away
to find two others more deserving.

Still it remembers
me and him.

see some films...

2006-10-11T00:02:00.000+01:00

document4

above is a link to the international human rights documentary film festival which is happening this weekend in glasgow, hopefully you can make it along, hopefully i will see you there...

the rain and i...

2006-10-07T23:08:00.000+01:00

welcome to the glasgow winter.
get settled, find a sofa, ask for tea.
you might be here a while...

the downpour arrived
quietly pushing open the glass doors, smiling at me
and settling comfortably in the sky above like it'd never been gone.

i smiled back, of course.
so wonderful to see, after all this time,
making me feel like i'm seventeen again,
fresh from the summer, new to the city.

"old friend, how've you been?"

"i've made up my mind" says the rain.
"i'm back for good."
the rain missed the city and enjoys the occaisional drink on ashton lane,
i can sympathise...

days later, two girls with one umbrella smile knowingly at me as i pass,
"did you hear? the rain is back for good."
i nod and smile back.
the city feels correct again.

(the rain gives me a wink as i keep walking)

a man in a porkpie hat on a bike flies past, the back wheel spattering behind him,
he's wearing tesco bags on either of his shoes - the rain's preferred type of footwear.
"don't panic! the rain is back! the rain is back! don't panic!"
i laugh as he zips by.

(the rain pats my back as i keep walking)

a father is explaining the news to his daughter,
walking back from glasgow academy.
"it went away, and people were different,
but i promised it would be back some day didn't i, darling?
and i would never break a promise to you."
he briefly drops the small rucksack he was holding over her head to his side
and the rain ruffles her hair and hops off her nose as she looks up to meet his wide eyes.

(the rain and i are friends)

as i walk, i remember the rain.
enduring or...
persistent or...
continual or...
maybe chronic..?

as i round the corner onto byres road, the rain is all over everywhere just as promised on that first day. i try hard to be accomodating, but the rain sneaks into my shoes, ties my laces together and i trip and fall flat on my face, biting thourgh my bottom lip and fracturing my kneecap. the rain lingers, giggling.

welcome to the glasgow winter.

saturday

2006-06-17T23:25:00.000+01:00

Sauchiehall Street late on a Saturday night
is all glare.

It's a writhing, squawking, full of folk street.
Make you weak street.
It spooks that familiar feeling of mine,
that hot-headed feeling that carves lines in my forehead
as I squint in confusion at my sudden, unexpected isolation.

I keep my head down and my mouth shut,
I dodge looks and weave through broken shards of conversation.

I say nothing, my eyes focused
firmly on the pavement passing beneath me and
off up Sauchiehall Street and into town until next week.

dig deep

2006-04-13T17:34:00.000+01:00

The ladies are on the run again.

Among them is my sister, Kirsty. She is running the 10k for Cancer Research UK. She also works for them and believes, like me, that the sposorship money she raises will help fund research into stopping cancer once and for all.

Below, is the link to her fundraising page. It is totally secure and if you can give a small amount then she and the charity will be very grateful.

Click here to sponsor Kirsty "fasterthanaspeedingbullet" Roche!

total university failure? it was worth it!!

2006-04-09T23:35:00.000+01:00

We went to see "The Wolves in the Walls" last night. It was great, there are plenty of much better reviews of it elsewhere which I'm sure you can google. In the play is Lucy, and Lucy's only friend is little pig puppet. I think pig puppet was the hero of the show. Anyway, that's who pig puppet is, in case you wondered...

gilly says:i wonder if you will ever be able to get your own pig puppet
gilly says:that would be cool
suzie says:yeah id get one.
suzie says:i got an ed the duck for crisssakes
gilly says:ME TOO
gilly says:mine was michael jackson ed. with one spangly glove
suzie says:ew
suzie says:mine was just a plain one
gilly says:yeah. in context its a bit sick
gilly says:with hindsight
suzie says:eeeew
suzie says:eeeewey
gilly says:i had an ed the duck video too
suzie says:video? what dit do?
gilly says:it was him travelling around the world
gilly says:frank bruno was in it
gilly says:it was surreal
suzie says:weird
gilly says:i might spend the afternoon superimposing your head onto ed the ducks body
suzie says:good idea.
suzie says:really.
suzie says:do it
gilly says:k i doing it now

urban gentrification scheme

2006-04-03T23:48:00.000+01:00

Last night, on our way to the cinema, Chris and I encountered a beautiful fountain.

It was an enormous jet of water, spurting up out of a hole in the pavement to ten feet tall , then falling slowly and pitter pattering down on to the ground. It changes height like the equalizer line that goes up and down when you're listening to music. I imagine the song that's playing to be the French national anthem with lots of jazz flute.

I saw one of these fountains once before with Anneka and Fergus. Anneka came with welly boots and a little brolly. Fergus got a bit wet from playing in it and because he didn't have welly boots or a little brolly.

I was sitting at my computer today and I saw another one out the window, across the road. White water spraying up, glad to be out from the dark, dank under-glasgow world.

It is very exciting to see. The water looks so pleased to be free finally. It is a rare release of unrelenting, unexpected, completely unpredictable abandon.

I don't want to hazard a guess as to the scientific reason behind the increasing regularity of these urban springs. I'm sure all the man in the luminous yellow jacket has to do is turn a big iron red wheel clockwise somewhere nearby. It makes you wonder though. What if it happened in a football pitch during a game? Or in the pub? "Yeah, just a glass of water please barkeep..." What if it sprung up in the middle of your living room while you were watching a repeat of Changing Rooms? Could it be transformed with a couple of pebbles and some little froggy figurines into an attractive water feature? What if the whole city was on a giant water bed that some miscreant is going around puncturing with a knitting needle? At the moment I feel a bit like the ground is wobbling around underneath me but I never imagined...

Well, until Glasgow floats away into the distance, I'll let the noise of the new municipal fountain mingle with the midnight motorway noises. Until the man in the luminous yellow jacket comes. Until it happens again.

the corner

2006-03-26T00:35:00.000Z

The corner is grey and murky blue. It's broken into blocks by the orange of lamps, by talk and by the reds and whites of the head lights and brake lights of cars that pass us. I can smell cigarettes and lime.

He doesn't notice the traffic, or at least, doesn't seem to. He definitely doesn't seem to care. On the corner nothing happens, it's empty except for the passing cars.

The corner was new, introduced to the world, and to me, by chance... and tequila. And by the lights of people driving home.

Now we've forgotten all about it.

but not everyone's cup of tea

2006-03-22T00:08:00.000Z

Last weekend we went down to Ulverston in Cumbria to see the Longline Carnival Opera, the last ever show by Welfare State International. I billed it to myself as dissertation research and to the others as a chance to get out of the city and see a piece of theatrical history, a big show, a spectacular. As it happens, it was.

It was a celebration of stories found and told around Morcambe Bay, a product of three years collecting characters, making fables out of tales told, creating shapes and filling them in with the colours of the community. In a big top, in a field on an industrial estate, with drummers outside and ladies with tea, coffee and hot choclate for the interval, Longline was an invitation to the story-steeped spirits of Morcambe Bay to come and sing along with the children, parents, shop keepers, teachers, builders and artists who live there now.

The big top was smaller than I thought it was going to be and it was less exciting - though I have to clarify that I use this word loosly, like a Hollywood action flick is "exciting" or the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics - stylish, but showy - the kind of thing that leaves you thinking, "the money for that giant inflatable rabbit with pyrotechnics in its marshmallow shoes could have been spent in other ways, I'm sure..."

I'm glad they didn't (couldn't) throw money at it, it would have detracted from the sense that it was about sitting in the cold, listening avidly to experienced story tellers do what they do best. And while the big top was little and the spectacular was limited to the firework display at the end, the show was big, enormous. Grown by words, pictures, fish and chips and salty sea air.

The characters weren't complex at all. The voice of the rock kept singing "I am the voice of the rocccckk" and at times the stories were difficult to follow word for word. There wasn't an obvious beginning, middle and end in that order and there were a few times I wondered why the lady kept throwing sand everywhere or what the deal was with the big arrowhead hanging from the ceiling. But the story was supposed to fuel imaginations and, to me, it did that by creating simple but charming characters in a space full of patterns and sounds.

What I liked most about it, though, was that I didn't see them do anything that I couldn't do myself, eventually. Or perhaps, more appropriately, that we couldn't do ourselves... Sorry, if that sounds incredibly arrogant, I really was so impressed by it all; but it wasn't one of those big shows, the spectaculars that you wonder if you could ever have the time/talent/cash to do yourself.

I think that's the best thing about a good piece of community theatre. It should encourage you to find out more about your small place and to talk to at least five people along the way who you never would have otherwise. It should help you to stitch their stories together with yours and then to present that finished product to the same people who opened their doors to you in the first place.

With a bit of luck too, it'll stir up all the sleeping stories of the new people in the audience so they can go and do the same in their small place.

the road to guantanamo

2006-03-09T23:01:00.000Z

If you didn't get a chance to see it tonight on Channel Four, click here to download The Road to Guantanamo. It is incredibly powerful and very moving. I thought I was too busy in my little world to feel outrage anymore. I was wrong.

jackie!

2006-03-04T16:42:00.000Z

Following on from the comment left by "anonymous" on the last post, I would like to offer you this picture which I made instead of graduating.

I would also like to invite anyone else who wants a famous face to send me a picture. I will try my best, it's much cheaper and involves far less mess than that disgusting MTV show.

Jackie Bird is my best pal, no one believed me, but here is photographic proof. So there.

we like the mooooon...

2006-03-02T23:00:00.000Z

The moon followed me this evening. If anyone knows how the clever moon does this, please tell me.

I'm baffled.

When I left the flat it was over the river somewhere, when I turned the corner it was above the underground station. It followed me along Great Western Road grinning at me above chimeys and then sneaking into people's windows. Across Kelvinbridge it napped comfortably in a blanket blue sky. Walking down Bank Street it peered out through the trees... I found Suzie and I think it wanted to come for a glass of wine with us. I would have been happy if it had but it nipped off somewhere, maybe to see a film, maybe to dinner with Jupiter.

As this is a multimedia stlye post, I would advise clicking here to get musical accomaniment.

our children will thank us

2006-02-27T22:09:00.000Z

The family across the road from my mum and dad are having a giant wooden replica pirate ship built in their front garden. It has decking, a mast and a plastic steering wheel. And it's not finished yet. This is after having their attic turned into an enormous play room for the little ones. Little spoilt ones.

I would have loved a pirate ship in my garden. In fact, I had frighteningly regular pangs to go and play on it when I went home last - I could have made myself an eyepatch and hobbled around with the rest of the scurvey-ridden eight year old shipmates - But Surely it spoils any chance they have of developing a vivid imagination? An imagination that will be increasingly useful when shutting out the increasingly scary world? Those children are going to have to change their lecturers into clowns one day, going to have to read a phone bill as an invitation for tea at Buckingham Palace. There are no life size pirate ships in the real world sonny, you'll just have to make do with a carboard box, a pillow case and a loo roll telescope like me. And the rest of us...

Walking though the park on Saturday I saw a boy (probably about four years old, maybe five) pushing around a duck on a stick. A toy duck, just to clarify. It waddled its feet when he pushed it along the pavement. My sister had a plastic lawn mower like it with little plastic bits of grass that flew about inside when you mowed, like you were chopping up the carpet, or the lino, or the head of an unsuspecting parent. Much better, I think. Although, maybe I'm just jealous.

The parents of the boy in the park are obvioulsy unaware of the fact that they are dangerously desensitising their little one to the dangers of today's British duck... You never know, zat 'armless little duck might just have popped over the Channel.

Pirate ship it is then.

1:03:46

2006-02-22T23:30:00.000Z

The ladies are on the run again...

Annually, around Glasgow, around this time of year, around half of the city's ladies start running.

I noticed it last year because Kirsty was running too, this year she's running again but I noticed it before I knew about that.

They are everywhere, in purple t-shirts and red faces. They run down Great Western Road in the mornings, through Kelvingrove Park in the early evening, along Woodlands at night. I constantly feel like I should be running too...

Not because they look like they're enjoying themselves, like they're having a ball, with red faces and "hheee hoooo" breathing. They are A) shaping up, no more pints - just a gin and slim and a packet of lightly-salted-peanuts-for-me-please-bar-keep. B) probably making a bit of cash for their chosen charity. Which can't be bad. C) Making us mere perambulating pedestrians feel a mite sheepish about that chips and cheese we collectively got last night. That twelfth fag, that double decker, that extra hour of the Will and Grace marathon...

The sense of acheivement must be awesome, because (as hard as it was for me to believe before big sis did it last year) the Jogging Ladies were once just as slow and pastey faced as you or I. Mostly I.

Maybe one year I'll do it too, maybe the sense of scorn and shame will turn to resolution and eventual accomplishment. Until then though, I will shoot a smile at those brave ladies who run past me tomorrow, hheee hoooo, hopefully they will see me, although it obviously depends how fast they are going.

bird flu, chantelle houghton, danish cartoons, freddie starr ate my hamster.

2006-02-20T01:58:00.000Z

Blah my dissertation blah is my blah best friend blah blahhhh.

It is a small flicker in a big dark cave. In amongst the rubbish, the run of the mill degree-necessary work, it is a small (relatively small) smile in a room full of could-do-better frowns.

I liked looking at Els Joglars today. They inspire me and they make me look forward to being out of uni, working on the project that we keep promising ourselves, that one indulgant thing that could lead to a thousand indulgant things... That challenge. Els Joglars (and the others) have also become the thing that I keep talking about until people look at me like I've gone wrong. Everybody has one, mine is political theatre (or theatre in general), Barcelona (the best places to juggle at) and Gloria Estefan with or without the Miami Sound Machine.

The dissertation makes me feel like I'm doing a bit of learning before diving in, that any project I would commit to now would be awful because I hadn't done my reading.

Incidentally, if you're wondering about the title of this post, I thought that "my dissertation" would bore people to sleep. So I lulled you all into a false sense of wonder with things that the world seem to find really interesting.

pitchers

2006-02-07T23:31:00.000Z

I have a brand spanking new flickr account! You can find it by clicking on the badge at the side. The photos are a bit shoddy because I mostly take them with my phone, when people are looking at me like I'm a crazy (which they often do), when I'm drunk (which I often am...) or when I'm precariously balanced on a precipice or cliff face or edge of a vat of boiling jam with an angry mob of locals jeering and jabbing at me with pitchforks and burning torches (which I very rarely am, I just couldn't think of another excuse for the poor quality of my photos).

Enjoy!

the dream team

2006-02-07T02:11:00.000Z

I'll remember a number of things from the process of preparing for STaG Nights...

If you ask me, I'll tell you what they are, for hours and hours, because I love to talk about it. But tonight, my lovely STaG Nights team has just left. We drank the last of the champagne and toasted off our old friend. We probably wont be all in the same room again, celebrating the same thing again.

But that's good.

Tonight, I remember walking home in the Glasgow fog last week. I remember being in love with Glagsow again, laughing at how much my festival was a childish declaration of that love and thinking "if I can love you without being able to see you at all, then it must be real". I remember seeing the stripes of light from the orange street lamps, I remember looking for the stars so I could try and make up some sort of convoluted metaphor - but not finding them.

I remember feeling foggy, and finding the metaphor where I always find it. With my friends.

Even thought I know how boring it gets when bloggers write too personally or referring constantly to people they know with no funny anecdotes or sad tales to recount, I must just say, I appreciate them so much and I am glad we are friends.

Celebrating and striping the foggy Glagsow sky with their own shade of bright orange.

we hae meat and we can eat, sae let the lord be thankit...

2006-01-27T01:25:00.000Z

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne...

A Burn's supper (for those of you who don't know) is a chance for friends to meet, talk, drink and be merry. It's a celebration of the life of the greatest Scottish poet.

It can be a rowdy, raucus affair with shouting, singing and jumping around on furniture. It can involve the police, breaking up a five am ceilidh in the middle of the street. It can be all of those things, or none at all.

Tonight's Burn's supper was totally welcome. It was quite quiet - reflecting the mood of us friends; we, happy but busy, tired, always-on-the-go friends.

I haven't been in the same room as that many of my dearest and oldest friends in too long. It was warm and talk was easy. There weren't too many rules and, while I know that it is important to uphold the laws (Tam O'Shanter should be read, Auld Lang Syne should be said or sung etc etc...) Surely Rab would've been happier to know that he gave us something to come together over and celebrate; to take time out for, from out busy, mobile phone-dictated lives. To give us all a chance to be silly together again, to drink and to laugh.

Every year I am amazed by the power he still holds over good friends who want to smile together, who want a hug, a chat, some good food, some dubious wine and a wee dram.

To the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns!

woyzek

2006-01-24T23:37:00.000Z

I saw this stuck to a wall on Great Western Road tonight. I liked it because it was put up quite far from Grant Street. Poor Woyzec, wandreing solemnly around Glasgow wondering if he's still welcome. No Woyzec, you're not.

thankyou for listening

2006-01-22T00:27:00.000Z

The cars outside my window make it sound breezy, constantly. Wind doesn't sound like wind when it's constant but it's the best way to describe the noise without delving too deep into meaningless metaphors. It's a bit like when you hold a conch shell to your ear, only, it doesn't make me think of salty seawater spraying up into my face...

I can hear them go all the way down to Charing Cross because sometimes, one makes a slightly different noise. Maybe he's revving to get home quicker, it's late, it's been a long day. Or maybe she should have gone for that MOT last week afterall, cough, splutter. There's a siren which makes me wonder, it interrupts - brash and intrusive. And then it's gone again.

This is not a blog about motoring. It's about home. It feels like home. When I'm away, I can't sleep because I miss the Midnight Motorway Noises.