Eyjafjallajokull......eh?

Arbroath cowers beneath the foreboding clouds of volcanic ash...... no, not really.

But you could have been forgiven for putting two and two together and getting five this afternoon.

There were certainly some curious cloud formations above me as I drove from Montrose down to Arbroath this afternoon

I saw in the news today that the Royal Navy has been dispatched to pick up stranded Brits abroad...... The Dunkirk Spirit eh?

This does however leave one wondering exactly what it is the Royal Navy gets up to when there are no Brits stranded on a beach somewhere.

It also makes one wonder whether the Navy would have been dispatched in such a gung ho manner to the resounding applause of David Cameron and his cronies if there wasn't a General Election in the offing......

Or am I just being cynical (as usual)

For more less cynical My World Tuesday posts click here

Many of Horror

How good is this?........

Many of Horror

You say "I love you, boy"

I know you lie

I trust you all the same

I don't know why

'Cos when my back is turned

My bruises shine

Our broken fairytale

So hard to hide

I still believe

It's you and me to the end of time

When we collide we come together

If we don't we'll always be apart

I'll take a bruise, I know you're worth it

When you hit me, hit me hard

Sitting in a wishing hall

Hoping it stays right

Feet cast in solid stone

I got Gilligan's eyes

I still believe

It's you and me to the end of time

When we collide we come together

If we don't we'll always be apart

I'll take a bruise, I know you're worth it

When you hit me, hit me hard

'Cos you said our love

Is letting us go, guess what

Our future is for

Many of horror

Our future's for

Many of horror

I still believe

It's you and me to the end of time

When we collide we come together

If we don't we'll always be apart

I'll take a bruise, I know you're worth it

When you hit me, hit me hard

Biffy Clyro 2010

Sunsets, Orang Utans and Kit Kats

Skyline over Forfar from my bedroom window this evening.

And seeing as you're here.......

Next time you think about buying anything made by Nestle......

From Greenpeace's website:

'Nestlé, maker of Kit Kat, uses palm oil from companies that are trashing Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orang-utans towards extinction.
We all deserve to have a break - but having one shouldn't involve taking a bite out of Indonesia's precious rainforests. We're asking Nestlé to give rainforests and orang-utans a break and stop buying palm oil from destroyed forests.'

Check out this vid, it lasts about 59 secs:

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Heart of Darkness

Aware that I run the risk of being labelled as a grumpy old Luddite, I nevertheless feel compelled to express my serious concern regarding light bulbs.

Wtf is going on?.......

What's this all about?

Now I'm as green as the next guy.... but I have my limits.

I went into the kitchen tonight and switched the lights on......ping!

Ok....into the cupboard for a replacement..... and this was all I could find. A poor excuse for a lighting source if ever I saw one. All the radiance of a single match.

My entire house is now populated by these monstrosities, skulking in the darkness with their sad attempts at illuminating the shadowy corners.

Taking into account my crap vision under normal circumstances, these really aren't helping matters.

I used to be able to read in my house......sadly a thing of the past after the hours of darkness now.

I'm seriously considering investing in one of those miners lamps you wear on your head..... and that's just for going to the loo. I've taken to peeing in the bath to make sure I don't miss!

......and they call this progress?... pah!

Arvo Part

I went you Tube searching for this piece of music... It's Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel, a piece of music which sends shivers down my spine.

Part wrote this piece in 1978. He was born in Estonia but moved to Austria and ultimately Germany. He was responsible for the style of music he called Tintinnabuli.

"Tintinnabuli is the mathematically exact connection from one line to another.....tintinnabuli is the rule where the melody and the accompaniment [accompanying voice]...is one. One plus one, it is one - it is not two. This is the secret of this technique." - from a conversation between Arvo Pärt and Antony Pitts recorded for BBC Radio 3 at the Royal Academy of Music in London on 29 March 2000, as printed in the liner notes of the Naxos Records release of Passio.

During the hunt I came across several pretty picture videos which were ok...... you know... just ok.

Now I'm no big fan of ballet or 'the dance'.... can't really make head nor tail of it, if I'm honest. But I liked this. If you have 5 minutes to spare, fill your brain with this... and let me know what you think.

Dunnottar Castle

Largely due to a lack of decent current pics and also as a special treat for someone I know who loves this place, I decided to post another series of pics of Dunnottar Castle. The top two were taken by me last June. The others I nicked from the web.

I've never seen the castle in snow.....I toyed with the idea a couple of times this year, but the snow was just too bloody deep! The path leading down to the Castle is bad enough in summer.

I liked this painting with rainbow by W.H. Paton (1828-1895). Do you think it was really there or was it artistic licence?.....

.... and this is simply gorgeous.

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Robin Fulton

Reaching Helmsdale


If it weren't for
this red tweed jacket
I bought in Brora
I might well wonder
if we'd ever gone
north of Inverness.

We shouldn't need proof
but do, it not being
normal to crowd in
so many slow years
to three or four hours
cuffed by a sea-wind

and buffeted by
non-highland music
from the Highland Games
up on Castle Park
(now called Cowper Park
– no-one can say why).

We'd come a long way
to look at gravestones:
we could read father
was 'devoted' while
mother was 'beloved'.
Weren't both 'beloved'?

Wandering I saw
Andrew Rutherford
had four doctorates
(honorary) chipped
on his stone. And Nan
MacLeod my once fierce

maths teacher, mother's
best friend and bête noire,
had an out-of-place
middle name: Percy.
Her mother Lizzie
sat by a peat fire

trapped and arthritic.
Unmoving the stones
turn their backs on us.
Blind they look through us.
This brash easterly
from the Moray Firth

is not going to stop:
the longer it comes
to blow in my mind
the harder it will
tug at my coat-sleeves
my hair my eyelids.

Robin Fulton 1937 -

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