gibberish

If you’re thoughts are turning to the garden and what to plant this year.

Will I have hanging baskets or containers, or will I just stick to cutting the grass?

Why not come along to the Gyle this Saturday or Sunday between 10 am and 4 pm, all activities free of charge.

Carole Baxter of Beechgrove Garden fame is headling up a Flower Power weekend with garden advice and plant clinics. However, more importantly, Suntrap Garden will be there showing you how to plant your hanging baskets and containers.

There will also be lots of activites for the kids with a stilt-walker, table decorations to be made and lots more.

I’ve been itching to write about this for months but have been worried about displaying political niaivety. However, even I cannot be accused of that in the face of Wendy Alexander’s kindergarten politics

It would seem that in attempting to raise a referendum bill she is simply not permitted to do so by Holyrood protocol because Smiley Alec Salmond beat her to it! Now that’s a silly wee mistake to make. Just like accepting £900 of unrecorded political support was.

But by taking a personal independence agenda into the public domain at total odds with the Labour party in Millbank she has managed to piss off Gordon Brown and most of the National Executive of the Labour Party, the Scottish Labour Party, John Prescott, The Lib Dems - who may or may not be Labour’s allies - and most amusingly of all, the Scottish Tory Leader, Annabel Goldie, who sees her behaviour as tantamount to destroying the Union.

Needless to say Alex Salmond must think he’s died and gone to heaven.

But what underpins this ‘car crash’ politics? I think it must be ego. She is well known for having zero people skills and has dodged and ducked her way through political minefields for a while and bottled a leadership contest with Jack McConnell.

She’s just not good enough. Intellectually brilliant perhaps: as the author of the Smart Successful Scotland strategy I have to say I admired the way in which this document seemed to lucidly capture the issues facing the nation. But her job is not an academic one, it’s a political one and politics appears to be the least of her talents.

A bit of a handicap as a party political leader.

You know what Wendy?

As Sir Alan should be urging Big Goggsy to say…

“You’re fired!”

I was delighted with some recent shots I got of the Rail Bridge with a foreground of oil rapeseed.

Until that is, my Mate Doug Cook stuck one in the back of the net.

This is great photograh by anyone’s standards.

made by tlkmngstyrslvs

Originally uploaded by boyshapedbox.

From a Blur song. Great.

made by sftekbear

Originally uploaded by boyshapedbox.

Kenneth Fowler pointed me in this direction via his blog. It’s a really funny set of Flickr ‘artworks’ on boyshapedbox’s Flickr sirte and turns well known songs, like this one, into graphs, Pie charts and the likes. Hugely clever and rather amusing. Well done Boyshapedbox. Check it out by clicking on the image. It’ll take you straight through to his Flickr site.

There are over 100 of them.

A wee tip from Alan.

The Stevie Wonder of birdland.

]

I think it is.  Unfortunately it’s the German version but the voiceover is short and very very sweet.  It says.

“What does the man who drives the snowplough drive to get to the snowplough?

]

He ran a great, really great, IPA AGM gig tonight.  I’ll tell you about it soon.

I am awash with excitability.  But I need to sleep.

I have musical delight to share with you (particularly Portishead and Tinariwen) and bookish brilliance (Jonathon Coe and Cormac Marthy) but I’m too tired.

Later.

I’m grateful to Pat Rodger for sending me this little peach.

From the Townsville Bulletin (on Australia’s Gold Coast)

George Phillips was going up to bed when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window.

George opened the back door to go to turn off the light but saw from the porch that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police and explained what was happening; the controller asked

‘Is someone in your house?’

‘No’ he replied.

The response was that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available.

George said, ‘Okay,’ hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again.

‘Hello’ he said ‘I just called you a minute ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now because I’ve just shot them.’ Then he hung up.

Within four minutes three police cars, an Armed Response Unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips’ residence and caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to George: ‘I thought you said that you’d shot them!’

To which George replied, ‘I thought you said there was nobody available!’

it’s not rocket science

Originally uploaded by mark gorman.

gotcha

Jeana was sent an email with this message in it today.

It makes one shudder does it not?

giraffe family

Originally uploaded by mark gorman.

There are two metal giraffe sculptures on Leith Walk (the beast in the foreground is the baby) but I spotted a wannabe in the background last night. Not quite the same poise and holding high of the head. Lacks substance too.

there’s a ghost in the machine

Originally uploaded by mark gorman.

I was watching an old Jools Holland show last night and saw this guy in the background. had to get a shot of him and photoshop it a bit…

Mark,  my mum  and I went off to watch Ria in her gymnastics competition at Perth last weekend.

Mark always enjoys it.

As you can see from last year’s photo here.

Raupe Schwalbenschwanz

Originally uploaded by andreasgraemiger.

this is awful good.

sunset in the alps

Originally uploaded by mark gorman.

Oh what fun. I took this photo yesterday and posted it on my Flickr site claiming it was a photo Ria had taken in the alps. If you click on it you can enjoy reading the comments of those who fell for it.

The alps?

Not on your nelly!

It’s my mother in law’s living room fire.

Baby eye’s.

Originally uploaded by macaz1977.

saw this on Flickr last nite. Really nice.

The moment we’ve all been waiting for. Mark in his speedos in the Forth. I cannot do it justice, Mark will tell you all about it when he stops celebrating the New Year and the Dook. But, for now here’s a photo to keep you going.

I have written before about this brain dead blog. Probably number one on wordpress, looking at the stats. It probably gets tens of thousands of visitors a day. Therefore I particularly liked this post because it is so, so wrong in so many ways. The only reason I saw it was because it seemed to be sending referalls to my blog today and I can’t work out why. Here’s the link.

It is hilarious and, I’m quite sure, not meant to be.

Oh, and to save you the bother of looking… Here’s what I’m talking about!

It’s a classic case of words meaning different things here and there.

Even without that it is inane.