Where Do Seagulls Live?

Friday, 26th May, 2006 - Meanderings from thoughts of Wednesday morning.

Okay, I know I've asked about the Peacocks ... but this is a question concerning the whole of Britain. I've had the privilege to live in Penzance in my early teens and see and hear the hundreds of seagulls gliding across the sea. They sit on railings don't they ... and steal your chips?

Well, nearly everywhere I've lived there have been seagulls, except Hampshire for some reason ... probably too inland. :-)

So, the other day when I saw a rather sorry looking seagull muttering to itself (as they do when they're not laughing) on top of a chimney pot, I thought, where do you live Mr Seagull? Not that I know what sex it was ... see here's the problem, have you ever seen a seagull in a tree? I haven't. I now have this picture of these giant birds trying to perch in the top of a silver birch only to be catapulted hundreds of feet into the air as the tree bends down to the ground.

Have you ever seen a baby seagull? They all look the same size don't they, I've never heard anyone say,' ahhh, would you look at that cute baby seagull?' What do they look like when they're little?

So here comes me theory. They can't possibly nest like all the other birds, magpies and crows etc, they just pop up in the sky, 'pop' 'ow, look, there's another one!'

What do you think?

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Wednesday 24th May, 2006 - Cameo, Edinburgh

I had a rather spooky moment there when I opened up the dashboard - I could have sworn my photo blinked!

I love the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh, especially when you get into the big screen rooms. But we didn't - we were in the flight cabins! :-)

The Devil and Daniel Johnston has been on my want to see list for a few weeks now because I had watched the trailers. I didn't know who Daniel Johnston was, and the trailers looked intriguing and possibly harrowing.

This film is actually very beautifully captured. The small video clips put in of Daniel as a child mimicking his mother are funny and clever. One thing that struck me though throughout the documentary was that was Daniel really ill? His creativeness seemed to disturb his fundamentalist parents to the point that they sent him away to do something more 'real' and 'of substance' with his life, but music and art to me appeared to be what his very essence was/is, his practicality of home studio environment. His art is not over the top either, it is very pop art/comic book structured. There, as his mother says, is a lot of happiness (and suffering) in his cartoon animations. The characters all seem to have lighting up eyes and a smile on their faces. As does Daniel himself.

There is no doubt that he was/is ill, and I think a lot of the traumatic stuff has deliberately been left out and some is obviously still there, but his creativeness is undoubtable. What I am saying when above I ask was Daniel really ill is because the documentary makes you wonder about his sanity being okay, possibly because a lot of those people who were interviewed came across as very 'strange' while he is pictured as an almost shy looking, curly haired, butter wouldn't melt in mouth young teenager/man being harrassed by his rather moralising parents.

He seemed to become a phenomena where others wouldn't. Working in McDonald's, people phoning up just to speak to him. He had been given the most menial of tasks to do too. Kurt Cobain wearing a tee-shirt with cute looking beheaded frog type thing, gave him probably even more fame ... story being at this time he was in a mental institution and probably hadn't heard of Nirvana.

Spoiler here (Don't get me wrong he has done some very serious stuff such as beat a man with an iron pole, scare an eighty year old woman enough to jump out of her second floor window and nose dive an aeroplane throwing the keys out the window ...) End spoiler.

I was really touched by this documentary ... and left dumbstruck at one, the knowledge of not knowing who he was beforehand and yet he seemed so in touch with real emotions and a real art for portraying it in the words of a song ... He performed live with a guitar he hadn't learnt how to play properly and they say at one point he was winning top awards beating all the folk artists who did know how to play :-) There is so much humour and warmth in the way people interviewed describe him. And fear too. You see the picture of a large middle-aged? man with two frail elderly parents behind him, looking after their son, coping with his manic depression - they speak of him getting up at a different time of the day which allows them almost half the day to themselves and how they welcome that, and you can see in their eyes the true impact of these words.

He doesn't really sing in tune either so how come he is such an enigma ... people like Tom Waits have covered him - mind you Tom Waits is an art in himself with his concoctions of sound.

Anyway, if you get the chance to see this film/documentary do ... it will leave you feeling you've been given a little insight into something special. And I've no doubt after this release a lot more people will have heard of him and put him up there among the greats, this ordinary looking bloke with the rather amateurish playing skills and raw voice who can put it all together into something not to be forgotten.

I've just been searching around and found these two website links which you can follow if you wish - see what you think. ;-)

http://www.hihowareyou.com/

Which says it is the official Daniel Johnston website and

this one http://www.rejectedunknown.com/

which also claims to be the official Daniel Johnston fan site.


And here's a link to more about the film: http://www.sonyclassics.com/devilanddaniel/

Enjoy!

Who introduced the Peacocks to Dunfermline?

17th May, 2006 - (Wednesday)

Now I'm not talking about the shop! Yes, there is a Peacocks in Dunfermline which sells clothes but that's not the one.

I'm in the middle of revamping my website to a much prettier design, in code that will validate on every page. It has been fun doing this. At the moment I'm working on my business directory. I've been putting photos I've taken on each introductory page ie the A-Z part. As you know every picture tells a story and so, I've been seaching Google and laterly Yahoo, finding wee links to place hidden under the name tag for each photo.

So, I've got to the Peacock. He's a mighty fine bird, meandering in front of Dunfermline Palace ruins. I've been doing a lot of research and Andrew Carnegie, born into a poor weaver's family turned famous Philantropist - bought the Carnegie Park, previously Pittencrieff Estate and gave it to the people in Dunfermline. He did this because as a small boy he had not been permitted to play in the grounds where the peacocks and swans roamed. He then declared that one day every year, the children from the local primary schools (schools closed) would get to come down to the park and play organised games - our now Children's gala. These days the gala is held on a Saturday - I guess this allows all the family to join in, and people to travel from further afield to join the festivities.

Trouble is, it doesn't tell me when the peacocks arrived? I've become enthralled by the thrill of the chase and I just have to know now. As I romantically imagine them (royal birds) roaming the palace with the ladies in their courtly dresses ...

I was told Andrew Carnegie brought the grey squirrels to Scotland, so I'll have to check that one out too. We still have some reds - but further away at places like Rumbling Bridge.

If you find out/happen to know how the Peacocks got here, please let me know.

Very Bunny?

16th May - (Tuesday) in a local park and everywhere!

Anyone who knows me, knows I love rabbits, but curious things are happening around where I live. Yesterday walking to town with my little one (on a mission to find more secret ingredients for secret beer stew) we saw not one but 14 wild rabbits. Three groups of three, one group of four, and then one on its own. Of course we had smiles like Totoro as we looked out greedily for more.

But this morning on the way to school, in another location we saw 10 more! All together, bold as brass munching in the sunshine. Often they scurry away, but not these ones. They were still there when I came back again 20 minutes later - well when I say they were still there, what I meant was 8 of them were still there, but here's the thing ... they had grown! They were much bigger bunnies.

We also have a really mad roundabout here, where traffic is on the constant and fast. That roundabout is called bunny island. You often see all the little ones sitting nibbling the grass round about suppertime.

Is this the invasion of the bunnie snatchers? I think I shall make sure I carry a trusty carrot around with me for protection when I go back later.

Optician...

12th May, 2006 - 10.30am - ( Friday)

I went on to optician this morning as felt bad after a training session last night trying to make out the smartboard at a distance, and also the squinting I am doing at present with the computer.

I felt like I was a naughty girl when I finally saw the nice 'lady' optician, she was a little un-empathetic. She said you have to understand there is a limit as to what we can do for you, and I still said, yeah, but when I wore my glasses I felt like I could see better but not to my best and that's why I came in here in the first place, first test since 1998.

She seemed insistent and almost cross with me and said 'you have to understand, it is important you understand that you will not get as good a vision with contact lenses as you do with your glasses ... because the eyes work singularly with contact lens and together with glasses ...' ahhhhh no, I really didn't understand that, that's never really been explained to me, I'll never get as good a vision with lens as I could with glasses that definitely was not explained to me, I had retorted too, '...but I didn't ask for this treatment it was offered to me'.

She also explained that had I come to the opticians at age 30 and tried contact lens I wouldn't be having this problem now because my eyes would have adapted to the change. Apparently it's a big thing for the brain to change to lens, let alone two different prescriptions, so this is as good as it gets. I have to compromise on distance to get the reading and visa versa with lens. They do have Vari-focal lens but she said these are even harder to adapt to. Sigh. She told me I can't go around comparing my vision with my earlier glasses or with other people's vision. So naughty me, must learn I still have a long way to go before my eyes have either accepted or dismissed my new way of looking - mono vision! It's okay that I squint at the computer, that's my compromise ... and she also prescribed some drops to help stop protein build up and dryness in my eyes ... Perhaps the dryness is caused by me squinting? She said I need to train myself to blink everytime I click the mouse, that will help stop them drying out.

Before you start to worry ... don't, apparently this only starts to happen to you when you get in your forties... first sign of getting old I guess :-) first mid life crisis.

Oh, by the way, I've just discovered a deliberate mistake (she says) in my earlier blogs which has only just occurred to me to be so ... see if you can guess what it is? Or were you just being polite?

How many (almost) blondes does it take to open a tin of corned beef?

9th May, 2006 - (Tuesday) location - kitchen, subject:

So, here's the scenario, it was lunchtime, and we have discovered that processed tinned corned beef, (yum!) along with grated Cathedral Cheddar makes a lovely toastie sandwich.

I get the tin from the cupboard, witnessed by my lovely 18yr old daughter and I go to put the key the right way up and turn it. Hang on? Where's the key? Who's stolen it! Rotters. Grr.

My daughter maintains that I am 'very good at finding a way to fix things I know completely nothing about', hence the blonde reference ... so I am not the sort to be easily dettered.

Enter one key found in drawer with a loop hole, a nice Yale type - it won't fix round the sticky out bit, okay, try some tweezers ... yes, they almost get a grip, but uh-oh - they bend :-(

Right, ah! Yes, why didn't I think of that in the first place ... can opener!!! "but doesn't the tin have to be round?" ... looks out corner of eye at person who said that, pretends not to hear ... (really wish I'd videod this) I will not be beaten ... the can opener is succeeding, it's turning, it's cutting ... what? One side doesn't grip the can and skips over the surface. I'm starving ...

But have you noticed those cans are soft and bendy? After several minutes of squishing, I have defeated the can, and another day is won. Phew!

Location, Not Telling!

6th May, 2006 - (Friday)

Yes, I've had one of those weird dreams again! This time, although I had just won a really cool, expensive jewellery gold/diamond orb/bone like thing, someone said, "swap you for a imac laptop...", "done I cries" Oh was I so excited, I could see the shape in their hands and I so wanted a laptop. They hand it over and disappear. I can hear in the background the moans and sighs thinking I'm so silly I haven't even seen it, (and as it was like a quiz show I had the chance of doubling it and winning bigger and better prizes - to opt out now was to leave the contest) but I so want that laptop. I unzip the flightbag to find not one but two minature yellow plastic typewriters in the shape of 'Herbie' the flying car!!! Boy was I so outdone! I was demanding "not so fast" but they wouldn't listen (because they had disappeared hadn't they... Why is life so cruel? Then I woke up.

Hello, everybody! Yes the crazy woman is back for a wee while just to acknowledge my .net friends who may have been daft enough to click on the link. Thanks for popping by - and I'll sort the edit-me's soon. I don't want you finding out too much about me now do I?

It's a lovely day here today, full of sunshine ... as Friday's should be. Hope your day's got a smile in it too.

Recycling!

3rd May, 2006 - (Tuesday)

Okay we survived, and it was seriously tasty. But you didn't come here to read about the casserole did you now, you wanted to know all about the rubbish.

Well it's a rant. Our council put us on a project with a blue wheelie bin. We've had it while, and it was for paper and cardboard first of all, then it allowed you to put in plastic bags, and then... plastic bottles and recyclable plastics pet 1 and hdpe 2? And tins!

Well, this month the council has expanded the project to the whole area and guess what? We're back to putting just cardboard and paper in the blue bin!

Now they've got us hooked and deligently washing all our rubbish we've nowhere to turn to. So, we separate our bits and bobs, see there's so many recycle symbols on all that packaging... and we take it to the local tip. Hubby found a queue outside so he decided to come back later, with me. We have all our plastic bottles with us but the two small containers they have are stuffed full. The attendant when asked about the dilemma says, "just throw it in the household rubbish" ie don't bother recycling. We weren't about to do this but did have some stuff you can't recycle to put into the household waste skips. Beside them sit two huge containers, and I mean room size nearly, for get this, recycling your tyres ... and in the tyre buckets ... sit six, solitary tyres.

Why? Why do they do this too you?