Different country, same telly

29/06/2011

http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Juice

28/06/2011
Just enough juice in the tank to say good night. We'll talk tomorrow.

Behind the curtains

27/06/2011
When you're small the slightest breeze ruffling the curtains would have you hiding under the covers.

Any silhouette seen with sleepy, half shut eye lids would give an unwelcome boast to an already overactive imagination.

Wind the alarm clock forward a few decades and one views the breeze as welcome on a wam night.

The shapes seen through the curtain now result in you not thinking of monsters more the need for thicker curtains.

The early morning light potentially wakening you from your slumbers resulting in only one monster.

The "tired and still sleepy monster".

The garden path

26/06/2011

Out in the garden for a bit of time today although the sky was dreich, with rain threatening all day, enough was done to justify supper.

Some of the home grown vegetation has not prospered and despite promise hasn't really matured. Maybe we'll move it or perhaps its on it's way to the compost heap. Time will tell.

This though is an old faithful sitting as it does alongside the garden path leading to the front door. Up it faithfully comes every year, providing a stop for the bees and other winged beasties buzzing around the garden.

Blether's

25/06/2011
Scots is such a rich, descriptive language, perhaps as a common language of everyday use it's not quite as usual as it was as the drive to be "proper" was forced upon its speakers.
However my conversation is still peppered with Scots words much to the consternation of my colleagues who are from less Scottish climes.

Here is a wee selection for you to practice along with Rosetta Stone style?

http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Fankle,
Havers,
Glaikit,
Dour,
Scunnered,
Dreich,
Stramash,
Loon,
Soor,
Numpty,
Blether,
Weesht,
Braw,
Maukit,
Dug,
Messages,
Eejit,
Skelp,
Wee,
Minging,
Stoorie..........

I could go on its that rich, my language.

Let me off!

24/06/2011
Do you get the feeling sometimes that you just want the walkway to stop, your path to deviate from the straight and narrow, to choose your own path?

Push the button stop the week day routine it's the week end, jump off the travelator?

What are you going to do?

[vimeo 25584826 w=700 h=500]

Safe Landing

23/06/2011
Coming off the plane today the woman in front of me stumbled, her foot catching on the top step.

Being just out of arms length I could do nothing and inwardly I winced as my imagination raced ahead, thinking the worst as I envisioned this woman stumbling to her inevitable demise.

Fortunately before the crunching and spilling of blood her own safety mechanism kicked in and she regained control.

It was one of those moments that you wonder who or what ensures your safe landing?


[vimeo 25500774 w=400 h=706]

Glasgow Green

22/06/2011
Today I had an appointment with a colleague and we met at the cafe on Glasgow Green. I took a couple of videos of the area hope you enjoy.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/25473787 w=400&h=300]

Glasgow Green I from Fegrig on Vimeo.

and

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/25474785 w=400&h=300]

Glasgow Green II from Fegrig on Vimeo.

It's raining dogs... only.

21/06/2011
The joys of dogs and a Scottish summer

http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf

mobile, smobile

20/06/2011
Mobile posting problems so we're under the hood trying to fix this wee problem.....where's my sprocket ratchet plunger doopher spanner?

Green light

This was the image but the text has gone astray....

Hi Honey!

http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf

and some music about honey,

The Lone Diner

"Evening!!!"

The young man was perhaps too eager in his response and with reflection I should have taken this as a warning, in the way that flies should when enticed by a Venus Fly Trap.

"Evening, are you open?"

I tentatively asked studying the empty table after table all laid waiting for who knows who.

"Yes, yes please come in"

(Did I hear him clap?) Said the young supervisor (Jim) of the Marie Celeste dining room.

He showed me to the LB (lonely boy) table in the corner walking past the many waiting for the rush perhaps? His hospitality education was building momentum as marched through the void to the table.

He was rather tall and as he hovered I was reminded of a young Basil Fawlty but without the moustache, his voice quivered with excitement each time he spoke. How long had he been here without human contact? Had he been bad and sent to solitary?



Why did he put me at this table, all the way over here? Why not one of the identical LB tables we had passed? Visions of Johnny Depp playing Sweeney Todd make a fleeting cameo appearance in my mind.



Before my bottom had hit the seat he was in full flow. Drinks, menus (regular and specials), a paper (I had one), starter breads and olives.

My order was taken and I was updated regularly on it's arrival time like he was the guard informing the waiting passengers on the arrival of the special train.

God was he going to feed me! He was hovering, was that knife at the next table overly sharp?

The food arrived.

"Open the tunnel for the fishy train, Choo! Choo!, yum, yum"

The aroma brought me back to reality, just in time for Jim to ask if all was well.

My privacy wall made of paper was inept and I felt like the pig who made a house out of paper (straw) only to have Jim the waiter wolf blow it down.



"Everything to my satisfaction"

"Dessert?" I inwardly groaned not at the thought of putting more food in my stomach but could my system cope with a sugary pudding overburdened as it was with Jim's glucose syrup delivery? Could my pancreas produce enough insulin to cope?

I decided that my pudding would be a worthy sacrifice at the alter of freedom, I declined and paid the bill. On my way out I passed not one but two individuals on their way to Jim's embrace, but I said nothing.

On reflection I was faced with options did I choose the correct one? Should I have

1- Done nothing?

2- Warned them?

3- Gone back to watch others be "Jimmed" whilst I had coffee?

What would you have done?

http://fegrig.com/

hello
if you have landed here you should re point yourself in this direction please
http://fegrig.com/
see you there, the kettles on
Fegrig

On the move

Hello, removal vans are on their way, just getting tidied up.

Please bookmark me and pop back soon.

The kettle is on!

On the move

17/06/2011

Hello

some tinkering going on in here but just pop over to

http://fegrig.com

See you there

Fegrig

Hello hello

Podcast.m4a Listen on Posterous

I'm out and about

High rise

15/06/2011
I think some people take their living space for granted. They don't seem to appreciate what they have - a garden, own front door, a parking space, no neighbours above, below or beside, space to have extra room, space both in and out to escape.
Personally I wouldn't want to have to live in a high rise block of flats.
I appreciate what I have.

I'm out and about

Alone in London

14/06/2011
It seems that in London one is never far away from someone. The hustle and bustle of the human condition omnipresent.

This rush hour though I got on a tube train into a carriage that was empty as was the adjoining carriage. Not a human in sight.

So you can be alone in London after all it seems even if it is for only a few stops.

Where, how?

12/06/2011
Do you sit watching a movie or tv drama, one that has been filmed in your home city, town or village and think uh!

You know the thing I mean, the hero chases the baddie up one street runs around the corner and runs down another street. One that in the eye of the director and their cinematographer looks fab but to the cartographer looks suspicious as the streets are kilometres apart.

Or the hero sits in their office pondering the case or dilemma and you know that the location is actually a hotel.

Or they leave the scenic street moving through that interesting door in real life they would be walking into a private club or bank rather than the police station.

Of course I will watch and just accept the same continuity errors that bloggers around the world will sit and observe on their TVs and go euh!, eh!, hringbraut!, or whatever.

Sky cocktail?

Taken with picplz.

Nasal fatigue

13/06/2011

A few days ago I was tested, tested to within a hair of my nostrils!

The reason? We were on a niff expedition. An expedition to buy nice, smelly niffs. The sort of fumes that ladies wear.

We traipsed along the thoroughfare entering one niff emporium after another. Big department stores with counters and shelves heaving under the accumulated fumery and smaller specialist shops in all their white and minimalist finery. On entering each of these temples of olfactory wisdom you are approached by priestesses of the smell. These ladies are knowledgable beyond all limits of normal members of the order of the niff. Like their sisters of the lingerie order they ask by a few carefully developed questions and hey presto they produce not a bra in the right size but a range of highly stylised bottles to spray on their flock.

The spraying of the smelly is however a late stage in the engagement, the initial spray being on little strips of paper. By the end of each paper session I must have looked like a failure of a gambler with uncashed betting slips. For the poor amongst us it could also serve as a particularly pungent bunch of flowers substitute. So we wended our way along the smelly pilgrimage and wished that rather being humans the most ideal animal for niff testing would be an octopus. At each temple of niff (after the paper stage) the spray is proffered to a limb or part of one. After a few stages one runs out of arms. Or should that be memory recall?

I do wonder if there is a pro forma or even a software application that is required in order to recall that Stramash is on your left inner forearm, with Snog! infusing itself on your right antecubital fossa and Amour de Squishy heating up gently on your left ankle.

What follows next is the chick trying to fly manoeuvre as the sprayed flap their limbs to encourage the alcohol base to evaporate leaving behind the remnants of the oils of several zillion flowers, leaves, tea bags and whatever else is in there. At the end of the adventure we had a severe case of nasal fatigue and despite the cleansing inhaling of the scent of coffee beans we needed a rest, a change of clothes - they whiffed and a wash.

We now have ideas and next empowered and baptised we shall purchase the chosen one the anointed perfume of choice.

Breath deeply and inhale!

Sent from my iPad

First class

12/06/2011
Do you sit watching a movie or tv drama, one that has been filmed in your home city, town or village and think uh!

You know the thing I mean, the hero chases the baddie up one street runs around the corner and runs down another street. One that in the eye of the director and their cinematographer looks fab but to the cartographer looks suspicious as the streets are kilometres apart.

Or the hero sits in their office pondering the case or dilemma and you know that the location is actually a hotel.

Or they leave the scenic street moving through that interesting door in real life they would be walking into a private club or bank rather than the police station.

Of course I will watch and just accept the same continuity errors that bloggers around the world will sit and observe on their TVs and go euh!, eh!, hringbraut!, or whatever.

Stand tall, aye right!

11/06/2011

Evening, I lie here prostrate on the sofa, face florid from perhaps my first glass of proper wine for about 12 years.

Don't worry I haven't broken the pledge it's just that I don't usually drink wine.

Perhaps it's the mixture of a glass of wine and numerous anti-inflammatories.

Whatever it is I'm creaking here like a gnarly old tree, my lower back protesting about too much time standing around today. Unlike these chaps straight and tall, not minding how long they stand in the one place.

Perhaps tomorrow?

Sunset

10/06/2011
We're pretty fortunate around here in the pretty sunset competition. Despite the guffy weather of late, the kind that can't decide what it wants to do sun - rain - sun - rain and on it goes. So despite this we get some pretty stunning sunsets.

This evening is no exception with the sun in this having just dropped behind the horizon bathing the sky with it's orange glow. As I write the sky has morphed into it's red phase.

This though should give encouragement and perhaps some clarity over tomorrow's weather. It is a shepherds delight is it not, a red sky?

I'm out and about

Operator error

This as opposed to the sky should have been the image, ho hum!

What did you have for dinner?

09/06/2011
It's June therefore technically it's summertime and with this season upon us a food set of choice has to be salad.

Now I can gobble the posh salads with the rest of them. The mixing of veg with seeds, nuts and low fat yogurt has it's place but I prefer a common salad. One without a pretentious lettuce leaf in it's making.

So lots of lettuce with rather a peppery edge, baby plum tomatoes (particular sweet and juicy) , chopped peppers, grated carrot, all forming the base on which to place tonight's protein packed offerings of grilled salmon and halloumi cheese.

Some of the table occupants had boiled eggs with their essential buddy, salad cream. Olives made a guest appearance on some folks crockery. All of this greenery stuff if taste dictated had a sprinkling of dressing.

What did you have for dinner?

i

Beam me up!

> 08/06/2011
> Sitting below this thing it did cross my mind that it might be some heavily disguised alien spaceship ready to burst into life on receiving a signal from the home planet, eeek! > I've seen, read and listened to "War of the Worlds" I know! >

> > > > > I'm out and about

KD Lang was in the building

p1889.mov Watch on Posterous

07/06/2011
So there we where sitting in the dark waiting on a woman. A relationship that first started 20 years ago.

Back then I came across a CD in the 747 music store in Jeddah. The store was unique in that you could have the CD opened and play the whole thing if you wished before deciding to purchase or not. I did and have done so since. The CD was by a little known country singer KD Lang.

So sitting in the dark we watched as she danced around. Were amused as she picked up the leads that she left behind on her last visit. The one that connects to her audience, she slipped easily into the established and well earned rapport. A significant proportion of the gathering purring like cats having their chins tickled.

And she sang.

I've always thought she could sing the phone book and it would sound meaningful. We were given a myriad of Lang offering some old, some new and some borrowed. The Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah has never sounded better.

My paltry video snippet of a voice on stage compares not a bit to the KD show from last evening. If you search you tube or similar there are better representations of her art than mine.

I sat through the evenings entertainment in a state of chill it was good, real good.

They stalk the earth

Taken with picplz.

In the audience tonight

06/06/2011
We got the sitter in, for the dogs, put on the glad rags and tasted freedom for the evening. We had a night out as members of the audience for the KD Lang "gig" in Glasgow.......to be continued

Through the @EICC window

05/06/2011

The other evening we visited the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. We had a great evening, the company was especially welcome. From the window I spotted this shot.

Despite any economic downturn this part of the city is in a bit of a building boom with two large scale projects on the go.

Seeing this sight it made me think that at night the city grows appearing in the morning with a new piece there and another here.

It might be a fairy tale like the Tailor of Gloucester but it keeps the mind active.

I'm out and about

Pudding

04/06/2011
What's your favourite pudding?

Some fresh fruit perhaps when feeling healthy & virtuous.

Ice cream & chocolate sauce when feeling in the need of inward smiling.

Lemon torte when feeling sophisticated.

Apple crumble & custard when your inner stove needs fuel food.

Home made rice pudding the ultimate comfort food.

If I want to relive my childhood then it has to be gateau. Black Forest naturally!

I'm out and about

It's time...

03/06/2010
You know it's time to go to sleep when you wake up with the phone still in hand, open on twitter.

The light from the backlit screen piercing through your eyelids as if some visual alarm.

The phone pressed against your nose, at this rate a pressure sore on your proboscus in just a few hours as you seem unwilling to move.

After ascertaining that no slumber succumbed tweets were sent the message because clear to your fatigued brain.

I'm tired I need to sleep.

It's time...

03/06/2010
You know it's time to go to sleep when you wake up with the phone still in hand, open on twitter.

The light from the backlit screen piercing through your eyelids as if some visual alarm.

The phone pressed against your nose, at this rate a pressure sore on your proboscus in just a few hours as you seem unwilling to move.

After ascertaining that no slumber succumbed tweets were sent the message because clear to your fatigued brain.

I'm tired I need to sleep.

As far as the eye can see....

Taken with picplz.

Zoom!

02/06/2011

When you see something zooming across the sky what do you think?

After the initial oooo that's high! as I crane my neck. I then move onto wondering, what it is? How high it is? How fast it is travelling?

I might then just saunter on perhaps wondering where the dogs have gone during my sky gazing.

Sometimes though my imagination will start running along the path of who's up there? What's their name?
Where are they going?
What did they have for dinner? What colour would they really like their vapour trail to be, white is so common?

I'm out and about

Cloud Power?

Taken with picplz.

Amsterdam & Chutney

01/06/2011

What did you dream about last night?

Personally not much once I hit the pillow that was it, sleepy land.

On waking up getting ready for an early start I once again entered the other world that is the dream state of n.

"I had a dream about jam jars" I was informed.

"What kind of jam?" I asked.

"It was chutney and I don't know because it takes two months to mature" I was informed from someone who had not fully recovered her conscious state.

So a dream in real time then? I was then asked if I had flown home from Belfast via Amsterdam?

I think that was part of another dream but I'm not sure and if I had to declare my chutney filled jam jars at customs though.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Taken with picplz.