‮hjap‮

Spike Milligan's Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall at the Lyceum, early part of October.

Who's going?

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Jason Rust, Scottish Conservative Candidate for Edinburgh South West, has sent me a nice letter indicating that he looks forward to working with me in the future. Bear in mind that the elections haven't happened yet. Say what you like about the Tories, but they're not backward about coming forward.

The letter includes a nice headshot of Jason Rust MP. Tell me: have these two men ever been seen together?

Dear Tourists:

Welcome to Edinburgh. We hope you enjoy our fabulous cultural festival. Please feel free to monopolize our entire pavements for your personal convenience.

~

Dear Tesco:

I think it's really great that we have a nationwide network of washing-powder shops, offering such a wide range of virtually indistinguishable options. Have you considered diversifying into maybe selling some food?

~

Dear The City of Edinburgh Council:

I'm told you're on strike today. Thank you. Please continue.

~

Dear Nokia:

I don't appreciate getting ear-fucked by a Dalek who claims to be my girlfriend. I feel like I'm carrying on a torrid affair with Nicholas Briggs. Make phones that work, kthx.

~

Dear pajh's subconscious:

I'm advised that I was cackling maniacally in my sleep again. If you're going to give me awesome dreams, could you at least fix it so that I can remember them?

If her profile is to be believed, this woman is 25 years old.

I weep for the state of education in Penicuik.

There is something fundamentally wrong about moshing to hard rock while ironing a pale blue shirt for work, getting all of the little creases out and making oneself all nice and spick and smart for one's customers.

(Yes, I would have been less bothered had it been a black shirt.)

~

I love the way that, every year at about this time, all the long years of experience with leafleteer-dismissal come flooding back. And it gets earlier every year, too. Yesterday someone handed me a flyer, and without breaking stride, I looked at it for two paces then flicked it back over my shoulder at him. Judging by the outraged noise from behind me, I might have hit him. Or, possibly, he just really cares a great deal about giving people half-price entry to strip clubs.

I also love it when people care a great deal about their shitty jobs. It makes them so much easier to deflate.

~

Today, a guy stopped me in the street and told me I was on his website. I bit back the obvious retort (Really? I'm on my website, too), and took his business card. Turns out it's not a website, it's a Flickr photostream, but I am indeed on it.

I suppose this makes me a minor local celebrity now. Just like tef.

(WARNING: mosts of the following post will be composed of cheap digs at the Scotsman's abysmal science coverage. Since this is not exactly news to many of you, feel free to skip. Otherwise, feel free to immerse yourself in the deathless wit of my pin-sharp prose. 'Cos it's, like, pin-sharp.)

( Pin-sharp deathless prose follows )

Several members of my friends list may be interested in Five reasons not to visit the Edinburgh Festival. Specifically, many of you may be all too familiar with reason #5.

--
[0] Because I can. Also, because the Scotsman doesn't seem to have any qualms about doing the exact same thing to Guido's blog on the exact same page.

Yesterday, at 05.48UT, was the Vernal Equinox. Happy Vernal Equinox, everybody!

Today, it is snowing. At Easter.

I knew I was wearing the wrong hat when I went out this morning. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to take some painkillers and whimper for a bit.

A somewhat stressful day off work—would that it ever be otherwise—but there's an impossibly clear sky and, I noticed while performing my carer/PA duties for Jehane, the stars are spectacular tonight. If we'd had weather like this last week, the eclipse would have been incredible.

(I was watching The Sky At Night last night—BBC iPlayer, despite only half-working on Linux, along with a few other things, has forced me to reappraise my opinion of the lamentable state of current television—and, despite already having been spoilered for the outcome of their special Lunar Eclipse Edition, it was marvellous. Sir Patrick Moore, despite being 180 years old and sort of like a lovable cuddly version of Davros, said at the end that he'll see us all for the next eclipse in 2017, and I have no doubt that he will. He's a British institution now, like the Nelson monument or King Arthur, and thus immortal. Also, he plays the xylophone.)

Later, walking home across the Meadows with mp3 player on, I remembered this and looked up just as I moved out of the sphere of influence of a street lamp, and six thousand globes of light came out to play in all their pellucid glory, on cue, as the Allegro from Mozart's 40th came to its first breathtaking crescendo.

I nearly fell over.

Later, up on Bruntsfield Links, all the bloody street lights were out again, which gave me an uninterrupted view of the stars all the way along the path to Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

It's the little things that make it all worthwhile. I love winter.

Blimey! There's a nuclear scare going on just round the corner from me, and nobody told me!

I just took a walk around the block on my break, to find Incident Response vans and police tape everywhere. Of course I had to come back into work and google to find out what was going on.

We're on the front page of BBC News!

(How do you get radioactive packages in a language school? Bonjour la classe. Repétéz, s'il vous plait: les matériaux nucléaires sont dans le compartiment de ma tante.)

The most dangerous thing I saw, naturally, was the camera the Reuters photographer was wielding. Careful, sonny, you could have someone's eye out with that thing.

anjylle: Get ouuut! Get out of there! Get ou—

...forgive me. I so rarely get a chance to impersonate Kruge in regular conversation.

UPDATE: took the scenic route home from work. There are now significantly fewer incident vans and fewer, but still some, firemen standing around on the pavement doing not a lot. It looks like somebody worked out that there weren't actually bombs hidden in a cleaning cupboard. Almost a shame, really.

As promised: cloaks and why they're fantastic.

stormsearch and I picked these up when we were down in York last time. They're a fifteenth-century pattern[0] sold to medieval re-enactors. The wool is felted in the traditional manner, using fuller's earth, which makes them waterproof.

I can testify to their effectiveness by reminiscing about the last time we went to Club Noir. Note in that second picture that Jehane is wearing fishnet tights, hotpants, a corset and a fascinator, and bare shoulders. It had been bucketing down all day, filthy precipitation hurling itself from the skies like a cloudburst only twelve hours long, rain even by Edinburgh standards, and there was not a cab to be had in the entire city. So we walked to the Studios, half an hour each way, and Jehane has not died of pneumonia.

Also, making a grand entrance to the club would have been significantly more difficult in sou'westers and wellingtons.

Cloaks rock.

There is a trick to making them, the guy[1] on the stall in York said. Look at any medieval painting and the subject is likely to be yanking his collar down to prevent strangulation. Even the statue of the Emperor Constantine in York depicted him fiddling irritatedly with his fastening. These cloaks just sit nicely on the shoulders, to the extent that you don't even have to do up the button, and the fastening has never once tried to kill me.[2]

The lack of sleeves means that Jehane can wear one even on a bad wrist day.

They're warm and cosy and comfortable and, on those rare occasions when it's warm in Edinburgh, they're much better ventilated than a jacket. And I happen to look awesome in one.

And everyone else can mock as much as they like, but I'm wrapped in my blanket and I don't care.

Ours came from Sally Green, who take orders online.

(Furthermore: throughout the entirety of August, not once did I get accosted by flyerers, because they all thought I was in a show.)

On the subject of music, which I sort of was, there was a piper on the Royal Mile today. Student-type with a rucksack spread on the pavement in front of him to catch loose change. He wasn't playing bagpipes: I think it was a gaita, but it sounded like bagpipes.

I first noticed that something was up when I heard Beethoven, and just as I was formulating the thought that that was actually pretty cool, he managed somehow to segue into the theme from For A Few Dollars More.

God, I love this city.

Later on he managed to do Barber's Adagio for Strings on bagpipes. I was impressed.

I went up to talk to him when he took a break. He turned out to be Spanish, and there was a language barrier, so I contented myself with saying Ennio Morricone! and doing the finger-gun thing.

He managed to tell me that he wants to experiment, and I am totally in favour. We have a million bagpipers in town, and all of them only ever play Scotland The Bleedin' Brave or occasionally Amazing Grace if they want to be reckless. This was an incredibly refreshing performance from a remarkably talented musician, who was doing it for free in the middle of the street at rush hour.

Also on the subject of music: remind me never, ever to pass up the opportunity to see Amanda Palmer live ever again.

The weekend was fantastic.

( Now with pictures )

There was a fight this evening. I flung a man headlong through a window.

Because real life isn't like the movies, the window had a grating on it.

I hate being the hero. I'd much rather not have to be.

Last night: ( Club Noir )

In summary: neo-burlesque is a field with potential, but currently seems to be a bit too rooted in self-indulgent reflection on its own past. A bit like New Who, really.

On which note, it seems that I still have a major thing for girls in men's suits. I'm off to watch Ghost Light again.

I recommend a big party on the 27th June, with a bonfire and effigies.

Okay, I've changed my mind about Beltane.

It's not enough that I lose my entire circle of friends for months at a time. It's not enough that all I hear from anybody from about February onwards is Can't come—Beltane runthrough or Can't come—knackered. It's not enough that I seem to be the only person remaining in the city who pays to get onto the Hill. On those rare occasions when some of my otherwise-intelligent friends condescend to summon up the strength to say more than four words to me, it's always you should be a steward or you should be a torchie or you should strip naked and cover yourself in red paint just like everybody else.

Spiritual issues aside, I go to Beltane to watch tits, not act like a tit.

For everyone's information, I was stewarding last night. Since the disability provision up the Hill is woeful—by which I mean it ranges from the slim to the none—I spent the entire evening maintaining a sacrosanct exclusion zone around Jehane's shoulders.

If Jehane's shoulders get jostled, bits of bone start to flake off. I protected those shoulders for four hours against fire, flood, and an 8,000-strong army of drunken barging fuckheads. None of them had a shred of understanding of the concept of personal space, and none of them ever knew just how close they got to a knife in the eye.

The circle remained unsundered for the entire four hours, and if it had not been so then you would all have heard about it.

I have enough responsibilities of my own without taking on all of yours.

The Fire Festival last night was rather fun, and there seemed to be a distinct lack of drunken ned morons this year. Not as many boobies as previously, but one can't have everything.

A happy Beltane to all.

(If it's summer now, why is it getting colder?)

There is a new pestilence upon this earth, and I am determined to stamp it out.

The Party Bus has spawned. Its benighted offspring comes bedecked with advertisements for the viler forms of alcopop and—more damningly—has sprouted an open stage on the upper deck and a public address system. A public address system from which some cretinous lackwit continually bawls exhortations to everyone to descend to her level. Most damningly, most such exhortations are variations on Pet Peeve #114.

Also they use the word party as a verb.

As far as I can tell they're breaking about half a dozen laws, not to mention the moral law, lowering the tone of the entire city, and fucking up the tourist industry and property prices. And their market segmentation is shite enough that they're incapable of distinguishing between residential areas and bars.

They shall be destroyed.

There is some kind of rendering glitch in the sky program.

From Jehane's flat it's just above and slightly to the left of St Giles' High Kirk, a little north of directly east. It's a tiny smudge of reddish light, maybe a tenth of a degree across, may be made of up three or more distinct lights, but then again maybe not. Binoculars just make it more indistinct.

It's not Mars, which is too close to the Sun right now, as is Comet McNaught; and Venus is in the wrong direction. It's too high up to be a crane or connected in any way to the city skyline. And it has stayed in place for several hours, while the very stars have rotated around it.

I need some kind of cloth affixed to the end of a pole long enough to reach the celestial sphere. It's difficult to wipe off fingermarks on the sky itself.

Edit: Oh. It was a crane after all. Never mind, then.

And the Angel of the LORD came amongst them, saying unto them: Do not fear, for thou dost not really need hot water at this the coldest time of the year....

( Long )

I don't generally do Christmas (as some of you may have noticed) and I'm not a big fan of religion (as some of you might have noticed). That said, I'm feeling quite Christmassy right now, as if I want to do something nice for some orphans.

The problem is that I don't know any orphans. So I shall have to make some first.