Back soon!

It’s involved and time-consuming and frustrating and execrable and headacheable.   I’m in stage 3/4 of the process but now I’m stuck again.  If the site goes off that’ll be why.  Waily waily!  I’m hoping just dogged determination and a bit of teacup smashing will be all there is to it, but I fear I might need an IT meerkle, peeps! (like a miracle, but more freckled and Midwestern).

Wish me luck as the cabin door breaches on problemchildbride and I am sucked into the outer ether to float eerily forever, like one of these motes you get in your eye when you’re in your 30s, that never, ever go away. Nobody hears the plaintive cries of these motes either.

You know when life wallops you in the soft parts of your head and turns things upside down leaving little room in your bonce for anything else – and then here comes Thanksgiving and what now?  – it’s Christmas? – and crikey Mikey, I haven’t blogged for a whole spletiving* month?

Well that isn’t at all what happened to me.  What happened was that I ate a dodgy kumquat one day and fell into an hallucogenic stupor where I believed fully – and with some effing dismay – in an elaborate storyline with plot points including, but not limited to: arson, love, hate and winter heating allowance; roof slates, insanity and uneven bites.  Now, on this day of Festivus, I have woken up and realized it was all just a crazy dream.  Whether it happened or not is beside the point – I don’t have to believe in it.  In fact, I don’t. Believe it, I mean.  Instead I believe that:

1. Eating broccoli makes me strong and thoughtful

2. And that love is real.

And that’s it.  The rest I’m not sure about, but that’s OK.
There are questions though, many questions at this time of year.  Come, all ye faithful, I mean really, come on!  And when you’re on, Come off it!  Whether or not you believe in the Christmas story surely you must concede God can’t be wild about how we choose to spend it consuming and consuming and, “oh, go on then” consuming a bit more like demented flocks of reward-points-earning, store-credit-having, remortgage-lamenting, stomach-ulcer-developing, wild-eyed, murderously store-employee-trampling ovines?

Problemchild 1 took the baby Jesus out of his manger the other day and replaced him with a bit of ceramic Nessie who was coming from the East bearing gift vouchers for the new king.  Then she ran around warbling “Nessie in the manger, no crib for a bed…” for about half an hour longer than was strictly funny.  (She gets that from me) But the point was well taken.  We might as well have Nessie be part of the Christmas as much as anything else. Get Scottish tourism in on the cash-deer.  Why the bloody-nosed not? All our traditions are such strange amalgams of customs old and new:  Santa only wears red and white because some adman at Coca Colaearly last century wasn’t so keen on the blue and white;  How the virgin birth of the son of a jealous desert God ever came to be associated with an antlered ungulate from Northern climes with an angry nose infection, is a story more convoluted as the one that links cocoa beans from the tropics, bunnies and eggs with the hammering of a man to a cross far back in sand-swirly time in an rocky, unpromising land that people will fight savagely over for millennia. ….And breathe…

I’m not really that wild about it.  ‘Scuse my dramatic breathiness. I can’t even get worked up about the mass massive stupidity any more. We all know this stuff, we all think it every year and we all keep right on with the silly things we believe, emotional creatures that we are.  So do I. I love Christmas, I buy right into the tree and the lights and the ridiculous paper hats that add a tragicomic aspect to the Christmas Day family bust-up on Eastenders.  And I do think there are millions of deeply good people who embody the Christmas spirit – which is a bloody good idea after all – be nice to your neighbour. Still, it’s all a bit mad.  Why can’t we be gooder all the year long?  It’s hard, isn’t it?  Being good an’ that.

I’ve missed the bloggy life.  If I don’t get around to see y’all in the next few days, please don’t be taking it personal, like.  I visit people only as Lord Time allows, randomly, without rhyme nor a smidge of reason.  Except for fatmammycat and Pat.  They rhyme.

Also, here is a book you might like to buy. It’s called Homepages and I’m in it but you should buy it anyway.

Love to you this Christmas, blogchums; love and pie.

*My pletives aren’t ex; they are very current and uttered full-throatedly in the moment.

Cindy Woods is my friend.  She is a remarkable woman and a gifted artist.  Beloved Cindy is in hospice care, her battle with cancer lost.  Knowing her has been a revelation, a surprise, a delight and an education.  Her unwavering gaze at the difficult things of life and her incredible line-drawings and sketches have made an enormous impression on me.  She is a sweet, brave, amazing woman whose life is drawn out on her blog and on her Flickr site.  I cannot recommend a visit to her site enough.  She has touched me profoundly and I feel strongly that her’s is a talent and a spirit that needs to be broadcast far and wide.  If you follow these links you will see what I mean.

Annabel Sue was a terrible case
The worst Doctor Whom would e’er again face.
See, Annabel suffered from awful complaints
O Annabel’s agonies would sore try the saints!

“I’m sure that my ileum must be quite septic!
Can’t recall when I last felt so vile and dyspeptic,
My hear palpitates, every breath is a mercy
And that pain in my coccyx is getting quite piercy.”

“I’ve always been delicate, wispy and frail,”
Anna said heaving o’er like a great lacy whale.
“Now leave me a while, I must have my nap
Wake me round ten with sweet tea and a bap.*”

And often…

“Oh crivens my bones!  Oh Heav’ns, my gall-stones!
I’m fading away, Look! I’m just mere skin and bones!
Call out for the doctor! This pain, I can’t bear it!
(If you’re going past the kitchen i could stand a welsh rarebit…)”

Ann said to the doc. “I’m not one to complain
But I really do think you should cure my chillblains.
After all, I lie here, a martyr to pain!
A slave to my ailments! You can’t know the strain

Of lying here day after day after days
With nothing but telly and all-day buffets.
How I wish I could rise and labour and toil!
How I wish, but I can’t on account of my boil

It’s in rather a delicate place, as you know
The slightest wrong move and that sucker could blow!
Plus I have this strange, bald patch where hair will not grow
And only this morning I staved my big toe…”

Well…

Doctor Whom was just sterling, a real multitasker
But still Annabel suffered, was wretched – just ask her!
Every day brought more ailments, tv ad-break swooning,
(Annabel’s weight was by now fair ballooning)

The good doctor was tested, ne’er rested, befuddled
Sworn to cure…trying to grasp…with reagents she guddled.
She ordered Clear Soups and Tonics and Salves
And ointments to rub on Ann’s shins and her calves.

When that didn’t work she cried “Nil By Mouth!”
But Annabel soon sent that idea South.
On account of her “digestive difficulties”
Anna-belle self-prescribed only cakes, steaks and cheese.

Meanwhile…

The poor doctor read widely from tomes (e’en in leisure):
Annals on anal discomfort and pressure,
Case studies of bunions gone bad, lab reports
And causes for gastric distress, and strange warts.

She consulted with doctors all over the land
“So what can be done for vague pain in the hand?
While Annabel’s kin sold off lamps, rugs and chairs
To keep her in food and them out of arrears.

But…

Then came one day, (notable for more moaning)
Doctor Whom woke up fresh, her head clear, brain not groaning.
She suddenly saw what she had to achieve!
No stethoscope needed, no blood-pressure sleeve!

She strode past the family and up the back stair
She knocked once, went in, and to Ann did declare,
“Annabel Sue, the cause of your affliction’s
No physical problem, but Sickness Addiction!”

Anna cried “Oooh! I’ll get a pill for that then!
Do fill out the prescription at once, here’s a pen!”
“ANNABEL SUE, GET UP OUT OF THAT BED!”
Doctor Whom screamed quite calmly, face not the least red.

Annabel Annabel tried to arise
Shocked Annabel Annabel, stunned and surprised!
Doctor had ne’er before been quite so forceful
Sure sometimes resourceful, and sometimes remorseful

At not having got to the heart of the matter
About Anna’s so oddly becoming much fatter.
“You’ve bankrupt your kin, dashed near ruined their health
In caring for you they’ve lost most of their wealth!

Annabel I will not tell you once more
Get up!  Take a walk, try a stroll to the door!”
“No!” shrieked out Annabel, I WILL NOT DO IT!
You’re fired Dr. Whom! Oh boy, you done blew it!

Dr. Whom smiled and quietly gathered her things,
Downstairs listening, the folks packed their scarce belongings.
They all left together and shut the front door
As upstairs Anna did rage, scream and roar.

And…

Annabel Annabel, ne’er really ill
Annabel howls and is sitting there still.

THE END

The Shawbost Kid crossed the moor on a Shetland Pony with no name.

(What was a Shetland Pony doing on Lewis?  It swam, OK?  Stop asking questions.)

Barely conscious, bleeding and shirtless he kept one eye peeping open so that he would be sure to guide The
Shetland Pony With No Name into the part of town favoured by the Ladies Of The Night, who he hoped would still be up as Dawn touched the sleepy town, probing slowly, gradually into its most secret crevices.  Down by the already busy harbour, a hauling-crane reached up to its fullest height.

Men were chasing The Shawbost Kid, men with guns,  men in whose bellies burned the righteous fury of those sworn to uphold the Law in these wild and Western Isles. One of them had a white hat. Others of them didn’t. He needed a refuge, a place where someone would risk their lives to hide him, and if, in that refuge, he could have as many bosoms as possible pressed around his attractively wounded head, he was sure that that would help too.

The only trouble was, in order to get to that part of town, he had to go right through the part of town favoured by the Old Knitting Ladies Of The Mid-Morning.  These ancient women would sit and knit on their doorsteps from about a quarter past nine ’til when Neighbours came on the telly.  They would talk of purling and the old ways.  Sometimes they would sing in eerie voices and their quick hands were mere blurs on their flashing needles.

Although it was Dawn, The Shawbost Kid didn’t want to risk alerting any rogue knitters, knitting outwith the usual hours.  He knew they would take him in and look after him well, but he really, really wanted to seek his desperate refuge with the Ladies Of The Night instead.  So he rode up into an alley, leapt off The Shetland Pony With No Name and tied Tesco bags around her hooves with the rustic twine he always had to hand.  Together they padded back into the winding street.

Slumped, gashed and goosebumpy but still somewhat sexily, our bare-chested hero and his mysterious steed, rode their way through the Knitting District, the sharp clops of hoof on pavement muffled by the plasticy crackle of unhappily non-biodegradable shopping receptacles.

At last they reached the neat, well-kept houses on the street of the Ladies Of The Night.

“Please, still be up! Please please please!” thought the Shawbost Kid fervently.

He rode up that winding hill of transacted love in the sexiest, most heroic way any Shawbost man ever could, bleeding, broken, and clearly – to anyone with half a brain – in need of the tender ministrations of pretty ladies.

Nothing.

Damn!  The Tesco bags.

He leapt off and removed them behind a sudden convenient peat-stack.  He rode back on down the hill, this time the clippety clops of hooves ringing out sharply against the tarmacadam.

Nothing again.

Gritting his teeth, he turned the Shetland Pony With No Name and they plodded slowly back up the hill.  This time he moaned and whimpered as loudly as he could, peering out from beneath his hat-brim for any sign of movement.

Not a door opened, nor a curtain twitched. This was getting ridiculous.

The Shawbost Kid didn’t have time for this.  He needed water offered to his cracked lips and he needed it now, dammit! Also, he needed tender injunctions to eat delicious soup, the soft brush of perfumed bosom on his rough, grateful cheek, and the solicitious, revivifying massage of capable hands on his bits and pieces.

But most of all, he needed a jumper.  It was colder than a nun’s nipple out here and he’d always been chesty as a boy growing up.  Being chesty isn’t sexy for an outlaw on the open moors.  Look, at Seamus “Catarrh” MacLeod, the Holy Terror of Barvas.  He never got laid.  Besides, fugitives from justice couldn’t risk imperilling their safety by going into the villages to buy cough-drops.  And it wasn’t cool to ambush the shop-van on the way back to town either.  People’s grannies relied on that shop-van and he sure wasn’t the kind of asshole outlaw who approved of inconveniencing people’s grannies. Leave that to the Hearadhs.

Man and inscrutable mount turned and headed back down the hill for a final sweep-through.  If this didn’t work he was going to have to go back to the knitters and some of them had 3-hair warts and reminded him of his great-auntie Etta.  He shuddered.  But his pursuers would be here soon.  So, flopping around in his saddle, wailing and shrieking his agonies to the street, he gave this last performance his all.

“Hey, I’m not bad at this! ” thought The Shawbost Kid .”Maybe, if I gave up my wild rebellious ways, I could get a gig on the stage or screen!”  But he thought he remembered hearing that actors don’t get laid a lot, so he banished that thought quickly with a flea in its ear.

On and on he wailed, he even gnashed his teeth which isn’t as loud as it sounds and so he quit that in favour of some more wailing and carrying on.

And then… right at the bottom of the hill, a trim little yellow door with roses all around started to open.

“Pssst!  Quick, over here, I can’t risk being seen!” The whisper was low and urgent.

The Shawbost Kid needed no further encouragement.  Sliding brokenly, wincing and exhausted, he dismounted his unfathomable mare, who looked somehow as if she had seen this all before – in other towns, with other outlaws – and limped, foot dragging dramatically, over to the yellow door.

A hand pulled him inside and, too late, The Shawbost Kid realised his mistake.  For the hand that pulled him was not slender and soft, nor was it plump and warm.  This hand was broad and black hairs curled from it like his mammy’s wire-wool pot scrubber.  He should have known!  He should have guessed from the naughty garden gnomes that frolicked around the polished step!  With a last glance as he was dragged inside he could see now just how naughty these gnomes were being.  He should have noticed the alphabetically ordered pots of common kitchen herbs lined neatly up under the windows!  He should have spotted the tiny (but oh so there, oh so very there) little rainbow flag in the bottom corner of the window!

The Shawbost Kid swallowed hard as the full realization came upon him.  He had somehow managed to be rescued by the one and only Laddie Of The Night in all of Stornoway.

“Oh, wait! Wait!” he protested in the floral hall as the door shut behind him.

“Wait!, I’ve made a mistake.  Look, hey, I think you guys are great, right, and I fully support you and your right to have your marriages fully recognized under UK law, I mean my cousin’s a gay and I played with him my whole life…I mean I didn’t play with him that way, I mean not like that, wink wink… God and Christ, no! No winking…I mean…Look, I reeeeaaally appreciate you saving my life and all but the thing is I’m really feeling much better now and my pursuers probably won’t be along for a whiley yet. So you know, if I limp quickly I’ll probably be safe enough to make it to the holy sanctuary of the church around the corner.

Just then, a great clatter of hooves resounded from the street outside.  Through the top square of the charming 9-pane window, he saw a white hat.  Shit.

“God, It’s always the same with you straighters” said the Laddie, a towering, beautiful, oiled Adonis standing in the hall with nothing but a Nigella Lawson apron on and spatula in his hand.

“Why would you imagine for a minute that I’d be interested in seducing you?  I mean, look at the state of you, man!  You stink! Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I want to shag everything walking around with a willy in the Outer Hebrides, you know.  I have standards like everybody else.  I mean, I bet the reason you’re up here is that you didn’t want to be rescued by any lady older than 70 who has wiry three-hair warts, am I right?

The Shawbost Kid looked down at his wellies, and mumbled a sheepish “Yes”.  He should feel relieved right?  Yet, why was he wishing he had shaved that morning?  Why was he so strangely miffed that this man, who was frankly, feckin’ gorgeous (even Chuck Norris would have to admit that) didn’t think he was even a wee bit cute?

The clatter in the street stopped suddenly…footsteps outside the little yellow door.  Suddenly the door exploded inwards, splintering ahead of the foot that followed it.

The Laddie grabbed the Shawbost Kid to his burnished chest, shielding him by turning away from the door, and kissed him, kissed him like The Shawbost Kid had never been kissed before. Through the shattered door-frame, the embarrassed lawmen looked at the embracing pair – the huge Laddie hiding most of the Kid with his broad, muscular back – and they coughed a little.  And again. And then cleared their throats a little more loudly, chestiness being an attribute in their line of work.

“Um.  Excuse us, like. We’re just checking the neighbourhood for a desperate outlaw.  Sorry about the door and that.  Can’t be too careful you see. You wouldn’t have happened to see such a desperado this morning, sir…would you?

Laddie and The Kid continued in their passionate snog, seemingly oblivious to the awkward, shuffling defenders of justice peering in from the garden.

“Righty-ho! then,” said the man in the White Hat with excessive joviality. “I can see you’re busy – got to keep the wheels of commerce rolling, eh? Ahahahaha.  Nice to see a young man up and at work so early. Look, we’ll just leave our card here and, you know, if you should…Jesus!”

Our Saviour was brought into the conversation right then on account of The Shawbost Kid’s hand moving down from the lean, muscular waist to cup the taut buttocks of the Laddie Of The Night.

“Umpff, let’s go lads, there’s nothing more we can accomplish here.”

And, calling back something garbled about sending a receipt for the damage to the station, the hard-riding, weather-beaten lawmen of Lewis beat the speediest retreat from the little cottage since 1973 when Sidney Wetherbottom of Little Chipping, Yorkshire, pulled out of Janice Cuddieswick just as Thomas Cuddieswick strode through the bedroom door – widely regarded as the speediest retreat beat by anyone, ever, in the British Isles.

Releasing The Kid with an involuntary shudder, The Laddie said to him, “Well, that was close!  Go back there into the kitchen and I’ll make you some breakfast.  You can lie low for a day but then you’re out, dyahear? Gone.”

And turning at the end of the hall, the glowing, handsome Laddie Of The Night, looked back curiously at the dazed, slightly swaying Shawbost Kid and said, “You know that’s one hell of a grip you’ve got with your right hand there, cowboy.  My tush is going to be black and blue for a week!”

The Shawbost Kid looked at his hands.  They were shaking.  Frowning, confused, he touched his hand to his lips. Then he sat down and took off his wellie boots.

THE END.

HOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bloody hell, what a beautiful night in America!

Well, that was a pretty big week, as they go.  For me anyway.

That was the week I became a citizen.  I could practically feel my teeth straightening out and becoming dazzling as I took the oath.

The week I early voted, grinning like a buffoon at the bored clerk handing me my “I Voted!” sticker.

The week I went to Washington as a shiny, new-minted citizen and saw the Lincoln Memorial. And on a beautiful day, in the alcove off to the side, I read the words on the wall.   I leaned back against a huge marble pillar and felt the massive weight of history and people and ideas at my back.  My fingers ran along the grooves cut into the marble and it felt very, very cold.   I ground the back of my head into the chill and spent a little while with the old story and the cold dead giant at my back.

Noise was behind me, all kinds of people having their photos taken with Lincoln and talking in low reverent, cathedral voices. And it was the best way, a way I never imagined, to feel that behind the chilly pillar and the sculptor’s art and the reverence, the ideas were still warm and living and alive in the people who had come to look at him. I went back out into the main part of the monument and looked at collossal Lincoln gazing down the mall, beyond Washington’s imposing blaze; the steady gaze of history into the future, and it was calming.  I  thought that Lincoln’s wise, tired, grave eyes saw Barack Obama, were fixed on him, entrusting him to take back the big ideas and by leading through them, give them back to all of us.

This fanciful stuff might just come from being a new American,I don’t know.  It might be the feeling that we’re on the brink of great change and an historical election. It might be wishful thinking for another great leader and the tantalizing possibility that we might finally have one again.  But it wasn’t just me, there were many people there that day and they were all there to get up close to the beautiful ideas again. Or even if they’d just come to sightsee, like us, none of us could fail to be moved into pondering them. You could see it on their faces.  It is a very powerful monument. And on the brink of this historical election I really, truly think a lot of people are hungry to live the great ideas and be led by a man who will animate them again.

I did that day anyway.  No doubt, my customary news-fuelled, quotidian cynicism will curl and moulder the edges of that feeling soon enough but if it lasts through next Tuesday and we have a President Obama, then I think the optimism has a chance of continuing. And we will make the sacrifices we need to to get the country back on track. What’s more we will want to make them because that’s what great leaders inspire.

It was also the week I met some wonderful, wonderful people in DC but missed a lesbian transgendered wedding with my darling pal, Dev.

It was the week we went solar here at our house in Ojai.  Bit nervous about the expenditure but it seems to make long-term economic sense and will cut our leccy bills by 1/2 to 2/3. The energy savings will be equivalent to the energy two cars burn in a year – regular, movee aboutee cars, even, not just parked ones. Besides there’s a rather soopah government rebate towards almost half the cost down.  That’s jolly nice.

And it was the week I, Doofus-Woman, fell spectacularly on my arse down the hotel stairs in front of people who said Oooh! and Geez! as they watched. The autumn leaves have nothing on the rate my bum is turning colours.  My own personal fall colours. Boo.

But also, Boo!  Happy Halloween, chums!  I’m just getting back into the way of things and will be round catching up on y’all damn near directly.  Seeya out there!

If you were to hear The Song Of The Damned, not long after you’d probably find yourself in quite a bit of trouble, right?  It’s standard for woe to betide you when you hear unearthly wails and everybody knows it.

But what if you don’t find yourself in quite a bit of trouble?  What if you genuinely – without a doubt – sure as Cindy McCain is attracted to a bold palette for her Fall wardrobe – heard the Song Of The Damned…but nothing bad happened?  What if for weeks, years, decades passed and things actually went surprisingly well?  Would you live large, feeling you had cheated Fate and slipped by somehow, or would you live every hour in dread of what you know must surely come?

Well that’s exactly the dilemma of a friend of mine. His name’s not important but it’s Douglas.  Douglases were once much more important. For example, there was: Douglas MacArthur; Frederick Douglass; Douglas Adams; one Douglas even had a fir named after him, so important were Douglases in the olden days.  These days you’re hard pressed to find a Douglas more important than this one. That is why Douglas’s name is not important.

So, Douglas is minding his own business one lonely night, compiling a list of all the foods, in descending order, that he’d prefer the circa 1979 Margaret Thatcher to lick off his naked body,  when, all of a sudden, he hears the Song Of The Damned!  Just like that!  He says he can’t really describe it but you definitely know it when it hits you, kind of like love and the odor of a “Natural Choice“-fed labrador’s fart.  The best he could say was that it sounded a bit like Kate Bush’s voice carried on a storm-force, terrified-seagull-filled gale, if Kate Bush kept turning into a snarling beast every other minute.  With an upbeat Bluegrass tempo and occasional virtuoso triangle solos.  It seemed to be coming from the fridge.

Well, Douglas, he got a bit of a start, allright.  It’s not every day etc. etc.  But it’s been 17 years now since that night and poor Douglas is still haunted by what Fate might have in store for him. When will the demons come? he wonders.  How will I tell that they’re not the nice Jehovah’s Witness couple from round the road?  He cowers by hedges and trembles when he has to interact with other people.  He can’t look them in the eye for the pants-pooing fear of seeing no pupils there. He probably would have been like that anyway because he is, after all, the kind of man to compile a list, in descending order, of what foodstuffs he would like the circa 1979 Margaret Thatcher to lick off his naked body.  (Dream Topping narrowly beat Miracle Whip on account of its lower heat-transfer coefficient.) But I think it’s got worse since the whole Song Of The Damned business.

What would you do?  How would you live your life after hearing the Song Of the Damned?  The Terrible Tune? The Unholy Unharmony?  That most Diabolical of Dirgey Ditties?  What would you do?

The lovely Annie came to town this weekend.  For those who don’t know her she’s a gem of a blogger who has embarked upon a mighty Murkin Adventure.  Ojai wasn’t the mighty part of it obviously and there’s not a whole lot of adventure going down here, but Murkin we is, gin we had and it was good to see her intrepid, fabulously-booted self and her pal, polyglottal, all-knitting, all-sewing, all-round great guy, Wies.

Great big fat busy week ahead, but good fun busy, and the healthy kind of fat.

I’m going to my citizenship ceremony which is called “naturalization” here! Unnatural and suspicious no more!
Then I’m going to Washington to meet arty types! Bloggers who sketch, paint, photo-take and hunt gargoyles.
Then I’m going to meet up again with my lovely, lovely friend, Devin!

Then I’m coming home for a bit of a lie down.

And soon it will be November 4th.  And something great might happen that day.

In the beginning the gods spoke in yellow and black thunderbolts, the shape of exclamation marks. The utterances were guttural and absolute.  But even the gods can make a mistake. Sometimes, one of the rookie undergods would misjudge a thunderbolt and it would hit the earth too hard, bending and bouncing back like a question-mark.

This is what happened when a young, intern god, fresh out of god polytechnic and working on Mammals Of The Australian Subcontinent, accidentally created the duck-billed platypus.  “?” resounded the platypus into the earthly realm, and all who saw it wondered.

There were red-faces all around at Celestine College – the Harvard of god universities – when one of their graduates threw a thunderbolt so badly it bounced into the world of men, ricocheting off some hard-nosed pastors and contorted into a shape roughly resembling the word F*%k! They called this creation a “Sarah Palin” and, after a few strings were pulled, it was decided that they would pack her quietly off to Alaska and the matter would be forgotten.

Her creator,the blundering, cocky young god, Hubristrus, was given the job of designing what would become known collectively The Financial Instruments Of Wall Street.  (While the gods love to be known for operating in the decisive active voice, of course, all the really important decisions are carried out in the passive voice by some unnamed and therefore blameless agent: mistakes were made; Hubristrus was given a job; religion was invented. The Committee for More Transparent Godding has made no headway against the Passive Voice in its whole 7 trillion years of existence.) But Hubristrus had never really studied much at Celestine, and his thunderbolts, always thrown much too hard, were tortuously twisty, loop-holed and hideously convoluted. As we know.

Anyway, Hubristrus did very well and retired super-early to The Hallows which is a bit like the Hamptons but, you know, a lot more marvellous, obviously. Better roads. And of course there are colourful local angels, who’re like super quaint and authentic and everything but never smelly or offensive.

A few months ago, however, Hubristrus, was out strolling in his Hallowed garden, idly pulling the wings off fairies and just enjoying Eternity, when a Postangel named Pete flew by with a brown, official-looking envelope. Doffing his halo in charming Olde Heavene deference, the  fellow winked, “Looks loike ‘at could be roight impawrtant, yer Smashingness!” (He winked this in a West Country English accent.)  “Ah well, Oi cahn’t be lingering, gorra get bahck t’the missus, keep them roses in ‘er cheeks, loike, hohoho!” And with an earthy, rustic wink he headed back towards town.

Hubristrus, because of his name, dismissed the mildly annoying old angel from his mind almost immediately, and the envelope too because brown was not pleasing to him that day.  In fact, it was only Sunday morning just past that he remembered it, prompted by news of Pete and his wife being flung into Hell, for some heavenly infraction involving hot nectar, improper use of a cloud and the having of altogether too much fun for Heaven.

Hubristrus opened the letter and discovered he is being pressed back into service by order of the Big Guy Himself, his signature ,”Alf”, scorched right there into the official Gold House Paper.  Sarah Palin has somehow returned, the letter said. And Wall Street’s rampant greed and mismanagement has created a financial meltdown.

“Holy shit!” thought Hubristrus, genuinely surprised, an uncomfortable prickle of responsibility needling him for the first time ever.  It seems that many of the Gods had preferred the deregulated atmosphere of the US to Heaven’s own markets and now all of Paradise is worried about their 401ks.

I can’t tell you any more details but I can tell you “Heaven Today” is reporting that the solution to Iraq, disastrous climate change and the world-wide financial crisis, etc. require solutions so bendy and contorted that the gods just can’t come up with a thunderbolt in those shapes.  In a last ditch attempt they are throwing their biggest bungle-making fuck-ups at the problem in the hope that their disastrous – and therefore hopefully successful – attempt at a curative thunderbolt will result in so very twisty-assed an exclamation mark that it just might (cross-fingers!) perfectly align with the problem and neutralize it.

In case you’re wondering how I came to be privy to this other-worldy information, it is because of the generously oiled annual studio artists tour of Ojai I went to on saturday.  The following day, I was so close to death, the angels dropped off a copy of Heaven Today’s Sunday edition, thinking I was a done deal and it was only a matter of time before I’d be needing a reliable daily paper in the afterworld so might as well get in a bit of early marketing.

Pal Kim asked to know more about Colin from the Post Office.  I thought I couldn’t do any better but to let him speak for himself.

“Good morning, People Of The Internet.  I’m Colin from the Post Office.  That’s not my real name, of course. It’s just another of the many ways my parents have let me down my whole life. I should have been called Chill Riverrock.  I feel that, I do.  Like it’s my spiritual name or something, my name in the far different, far off world I should have been born into.  And I also feel that my spiritual nickname would very probably have been W for Wily.  Chill “W” Riverrock.  But do you think these fascist slave-masters at the Royal Mail will let me have a counter badge with Chill “W” Riverrock Is Pleased To Assist You!” on it?  Hell, they won’t even give me Colin “Chill” MacAuley.

But they’re fools. Fools who aren’t part Comanche* like me.  Fools who think just because you’re born with a name and everybody calls you that name, and you usually answer to it, at work anyway, that that just might not, in essence, be who you are. My essence is not the essence of a Colin.  I once went to an Essence Diviner at a fair.  She sniffed me all over and she told me, she said  “You are no Colin!”  She said I smelt “more like a Howard” but , despite being right about the Colin thing, you really can’t believe everything these people say, can you?

Say, do you know, this little parlay with you folks has helped me come to a decision!  As God is my witness, I will never answer to Colin again to anyone, except my granny because it would just take too long to explain it all to her.  So to hell with the Royal Mail!  I’m gonna live life on my own terms, and, dangit, those terms are wearin’ spurs.

Fool folks laugh at me.  It’s OK, I know they do. When I stride into the saloons at night to have me a few shots of sweet oblivion, wearing the rawhide that feels as natural next to my own skin as the silken panties beneath them, they snigger.  They don’t think I see them snigger but I do.  You’d be a great, fat, dirty shhep-fiddler though if you think Chill Dubya cares about sniggering like that though.   Nope I just pull my ten gallon a little lower on my brow and shoot arrows of steel-tipped hate at them from my stormy, troubled eyes that have known little to no love ouside my parents and my granny and a few aunties and uncles.  Chicks dig stormy eyes.

See, ignorant people always laugh at what they can’t understand but their scorn is like a horsefly round a tailless steer’s behind to me – a mere minor, and sometimes mildly erotic, irritation.  I don’t mind the laughter. In fact I laugh at their laughter.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”  I scream, while drawing my trusty, silver Colt, and they tend to scuttle off in terror with their hands protecting their bottoms,  to other bars for lesser men.

Oh yes, I can take the laughing and the sniggering, but what I cannot abide is the tittering – I bloody hate tittering -  and the smirking and the sticking to my back of bits of paper saying “Colin enjoys weekend botany”.

But what’s that? You’re surprised that a manly, rugged cowboy like Chill “W” Riverrock – a wanderer who’s seen the curlew weep, and heard the fabled hedgehog sing – who’s looked upon sights so raw and steaming and purplish-grey before which any other man would have sobbed and wet their breeks – a man who’s strangled a pretty big labrador dead with his bare hands just because she woofed at him funny, and who put a bullet between the eyes of a kitten that displeased him – do you think it’s amusing that such a craggy seeker of love and campfire wisdom with a side o’ beans should wear silky and occasionally lacy panties?  I hope not because that’s just the kind of narrow thinkin’ I’d expect from fool folks and Chill “W” Riverrock don’t tolerate no fool-folk narrow thinkin’, no way, no how.

See, Chill Dubya is a man of hard yesterdays and tough tomorrows, a paradox of callouses and sensitive parts and he doesn’t want these sensitive parts all scuffed up by rough rawhide seams.  Yessirree, Chill Riverrock has found silk and occasional lace panties to be deliciously cooling on his privates and, dawgone, he’s man enough to say it.

Well, my lunch-hour’s nearly over now but I’ve enjoyed this little chat we’ve had.  I’ll ask Sam if I can impose
on her blog again.  I’m sure she’ll say yes.  She  wants me, you know.  Sexually, I mean.  I try to tell her not to make a fool of herself when she comes in to buy stamps but she just won’t quit glaring flirtily at me and coquettishly threatening to call the police.

Anyway, biddin’ y’all a good day out on this dusty trail we call life.  And remember what Chill “W” Riverrock
always says:  “There ain’t no shame in bein’ 39 and still livin’ with your folks. No shame in that at all.”

*Part Comanche – my mum had a Comanche pen-pal during her school days.  She’s dead now from cultural grief and a freak canned-soup-pyramid accident, but my mum says they were like sisters for the whole of Primary 7.”

Look!  Go and see my wee brother’s fabulous photography page!  I say wee, he’s 6 foot tall, but he’ll always be a wee fry to me.  Anyway, I know some of yoos like the whole photog thing and these are terrific.  They are primarily of the Outer Hebrides and Perthshire.  He’s working in the North Sea now so I expect a lot more photos of stormscapes and watery expanses as far as the eye can see.

I’d like to see some Flung Object Art though, Weebro.  Found Object Art has had its day.  I’d like to see photos of things flung off the rig and bobbing in the vast unfriendly sea, off to Norway or other gobbledygook lands.

What’s that?  Littering?  What about the porpoises getting their snouts caught in the flung art?

Bugger the porpoises! I never met one of them who wasn’t a bring-back-hanging Tory.  They’re all about climbing the social ladder and who can be the most ostentatiously tasteful.  And I don’t like how they laugh. If porpoises had the opposable flippers to fling objects on land and then take interesting pictures of them, you can bet your bippy they’d do it in a New York minute without a thought for our snouts getting stuck.

These are fab photos though, chums.  The idea is to post your work and get hints from other photographers on how to improve.  Sort of collective experimentation and learning. It’s cool. Definitely worth a looksee.

I love the Digital Age.

UPDATE:

Acksherly, you know what?  Go here.  If you like, ‘an that. I like these black and white ones better, especially the sheepskins drying.  They’re a bit muddled up with people photos that will mean nothing to you but most of it is Wee Niaff’s photog. Ignore me being wee.  The Wee niaff is there himself and Mrs. Wee Niaff.  And my granny.  There’s a speed control at the side so you can zip right through the people stuff to get to the ’scapes.

UPDATE 2:

This is the most updated a post of mine has ever been. But look!  The lovely K8 the Gr8 has given me The Dog’s Bollix!  Cheers, m’darlin’!  I’ll try to remember to feed him.

Yippee kai-aye-yay get along little ewe-hoo
You must be at market by 8 o’ the clock
Though it hurts me to tell you
My friend I must sell you,
I’ve spent all the savings I keep in my sock.

That’s what the sexy crofter of Brue sings early in the morn, (it’s like a regular morning but with more curious fawns and delightful butterflies) as he walks down the lane to his  other field. The village girls line up in their smart office-wear to catch the early bus to Stornoway.  Each is beautiful in her own special way; each has her own special memory of the Sexy Crofter; each has had her own special dose of antibiotics. They watch him go by.

What is it about him?  He’s no good, they all know it.  In fact he’s a lyin’, cheatin’ son of a so’n’so and he doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise.  In fact, he goes out of his way to tell you he’s a wrong ‘un.  He has no
money and any he gets goes on beer and sheep-dip. But he is tall, and he is dark and he is deeply, deeply sexy.

He does sexy things, like saving people from certain peril and there’s nothing sexier than saving people from certain peril.  He’s done that 3 and a half times this month already. First, he ran into a burning dry-cleaners and rescued the shop’s beloved goldfish.  Fluffy was half-boiled when he found her but he CPRed her back to life with a pipette that was thrust into his hands by a passing lab technician, horrified by the carnage in front of him but too allergic to fish to leap in himself, even to save a life.

Then, using just his bare hands and the fortune the gods give to straight-toothed heroes, he lifted a lorry that had accidentally parked on old Mr. MacWhirter .

Next, he rescued an adorable little girl from the jaws of a tiger-shark.  Tiger-sharks are not normally found in the cold waters of the North Atlantic but this one was part of a shark TV-crew on the way to the Arctic to film the effects of global warming on the polar ice-cap and had come into the bay at Dalbeag to warm up. Wrestling and writhing, thrashing and throttling went the sexy crofter across the shallows with the shark, trying to tug the child from the hideous toothy terror, and finally most of her came free.  This was not the half rescue of the 3 and a half though.  The adorable child was counted as a whole save because the loss her leg to the knee didn’t make her any less adorable.  If anything, more, according to Creepy Norman in the Post Office.

The real half-save was really just an error of hearing in the pub when the story of the 4th rescue was told.  After a while, people in that particular pub get so that not only their vision but their hearing goes blurry.  Anyway, as we now know, what happened was this:

Murdo ‘Leccy, the notorious adulterer of Sand Street, was canoodling deep in the ferns by the town hall one night with Janet from MacLean’s when his wife’s sister, Maureen, walked by, pausing to flick a cigarette end into the fountain.  Seeing the ferntops twitching rythmically, she was moved to investigate because she hasn’t a lot else going on in her life.

“Oh, Murdo Leccy!”  breathed Janet, all goosebumps and exclamation marks.  “Where did you learn how to do that?”

But Janet had gasped too loud.  Out in the lamplit street, Maureen’s eyes narrowed.

“Murdo! Is that you in there, you filthy, harlot-hopping, little weasel-todger? I know it is!” She began to cackle a nasty cackle.

“You’re up to to your miserable gonads in trouble now, ‘Nad-Face!  I’m calling my sister! There’s no way you can talk yourself out of this one!  Who’s in there with you?  Is that “Gives You The Extra Yard” Janet from the
fabric counter at MacLean’s? ”

Murdo froze solid, apart from one part of him which shrank away like a terrified mouse into a skirting board.  Thinking fast, he did what he always did in a fix.  He speed-dialed his cousin, who, as it happens, is our hero, that impossibly sexy crofter of Brue.

“Ferns!” he hissed into his Nokia. “Maureen!”

The sexy crofter, round the corner in the Fisherman’s Rest, took the call, put his new pint back down on the
counter carefully and walked out the door. Reaching the corner, right behind the tall ferns, his stunning blue eyes took in the scene immediately and in one fluid motion he’d dropped on his belly like a snake you’d just love to…pet.

Unseen by the shrieking, triumphant Maureen, the sexy crofter writhed his way into the ferny undergrowth with the kind of loose-hipped agility that would make a nun weep.

He reached the disheveled lovers just as a Honda Civic screeched to a halt on the street beside them.  The door opened and a little mountain of beer cans and scorched styrofoam cup ashtrays avalanched tinkily, ominously, onto the pavement.  He could see the pink nylon slippers of a woman coming out of the car.  Closer came the pink nylon slippers, closer, into the ferns now, which were being thrashed aside with a… holy shit! With a cleaver! And a pretty, flipping capable looking arm attached to it!

“I’ve caught you this time for sure,” snarled the raspy voice of a saw-throated woman . “Let’s see what your
lawyer has to say about this, eh?”

The ferns parted and a bulging-eyed gargoyle thrust its head through to glare down in darkness at the couple in flagrante…

“Pardon me, ma’am” said the sexy crofter.  “Oh hi, Beryl, it’s yourself! Look, I don’t mean to be rude but you’ve sort of stumbled into an occupied fern-patch, here.  If you go over by the quay, there’s a good clump there, ‘fyou like.  Bloody council, eh!  Never get around to the weed-whacking.  Now, if you wouldn’t mind just closing the foliage up there, Beryl, there’s a bit of a draught when they’re open, see.  There, that’s great, much obliged to you.  Bye now!  Say hi to Murdo for me!”

Beryl retreated to the pavement sputtering, and gurgling like dodgy plumbing with air in the tubes.  She looked at Maureen.  Maureen looked at her furious sister and began to open her mouth…

“I…”

But that was all she got out before Beryl’s pre-brick-filled handbag made the sort of sound against her skull
that a butcher’s bag of minced beef, eggs and parsley makes when it’s dropped from a third-storey window.  And sustaining the kind of injury that had become known in the hospital’s A&E, down the years as a BSM: a Beryl’s Special Meatloaf.

Meanwhile the dog, Murdo, smudged green and reeking of Elizabeth Taylor’s “White Diamonds” slipped into a still-warm seat at the bar in the Rest, picked up his devastatingly sexy cousin’s pint, and drank with all the gusto of a man who had just escaped certain Beryl.

Peril and Beryl are practically the same things and both often result in a grisly death so this piece of selfless,
and therefore sexy, saving of a life was counted as a half, a half being deducted for being related to his stupid-ass cousin whom everybody else would have like to see castrated. Strangely, no-one ever wished a castration upon the Sexy Crofter of Brue.

So he had that: selfless acts of death-defying courage, for sure he had that.  But there was something else,
thought the ladies at the bus-stop, each to her secretest self, half of them hoping he’d look up and seek out their eyes as he walked past, half of them praying he wouldn’t.  All of them half-hating, half-loving him.  All of them wondering what he was thinking.

And here’s what the sexy Cowboy of Brue was really thinking as he strolled down the lane, his hands in his
pockets, the morning sun on his back, and here and there gorgeous butterflies settling Disneyesquilly on curious fawns’ noses, contributing to the aura of magic that surrounded him at all times; here’s what he was really thinking:

“Christ, I’ve really got an itch in me balls! It’s like there’s a ball-weevil in there with a little feather duster! How the hell am I going to scratch it with all these gorgeous women over there at the bus-stop?  God and me guts are giving me jip, an’ all.  Shouldn’t have had that paneer aloo gobi last night with my beans.  Man, I’m just going to have to wait til the bus has gone and then I’ll let one rip and really have a good root down in my breeks.”

He walked on, humming to distract him from the tortuous itch and the ballooning pressure.

Yippee kai-aye-yay get along little ewe-hoo
You must be at market by 8 o’ the clock
Though it hurts me to tell you
My friend I must sell you,
I’ve spent all the savings I keep in my sock.

Across the street, the women sighed their private sighs.  And then the bus came.

Woohoo!  Look at the blog!  This is the absolute schmancy-assiest she’s ever been!  She looks like she could get a job she’s not qualified for, in a language she can’t speak.  She looks like she could kick Wordpress default template’s bottom wearing nothing but a pair of fabulous boots, scarlet lipstick and a French Resistance lady’s trenchcoat.  Why, I declare,  she is surely, I say she is surely is the finest-lookin’ blog written by a Hebridean housewife anywhere in the Ojai area!

Depending on what your monitor setting’s like, she might look jaundiced and yellow about the writing area.  She’s like that on the Problem Husband’s monitor.  But on mine she’s rosy of intext-link with a non-cancerous Levantine tan. I’m smitten with her anyway so tough filet mignons if y’all don’t like her looks.

Clever-Bloke Tom is responsible for all the techie stuff.  He is a great bloke, friendly, patient and knowledgable and I highly recommend him to anyone wanting technical help.  He changed the blog’s host for me – something that ended up needing some hand-coding, the very thing I was afraid of.  Then he very ably changed the look of the thing.  If I ever need anything complicated done again, I’m going right to Tom.

The header up there was one of several designed for me by the inimitable Wally Torta/Sparky Donatello of Crackskullbob(pants), a pal and an artist of astonishing talent, humour and imagination.  His blog is terrific and well worth visiting.  You’ll have fun there.  He put up with my hemming and hee-hawing over which design to choose in 7004 emails on the subject.

He won’t want me telling you this but every Tuesday Wally goes to a room and gazes at naked people.  Yes. He does. On Wednesdays, he paints in the nude in the comfort of his own home and Thursday is his plein-air nude day, weather-permitting.  Friday and Saturday he’s mostly in jail for Thursday’s indecent exposure rap but usually he’s out by Sunday, when he practices his faith of Ultra-Orthodox Episcopalian Gardening – a fiscally conservative sect which believes in trickle-down piety and the transubstantiation of steamed broccoli with just a hint of butter into the body and blood of Ronald Reagan, Walt’s Lord and Personal Saviour.  He believes in the transformative powers of saying “fuck” and the transcontinental doctrine of adding “‘em all!” His cat is called Bernice and as far as I know he hasn’t killed anyone despite having those eyebrows…

I’d also like to thank God, obviously.

But most important to the changing of this blog has been my dear little cat, Trouble, (affectionately known as Wubs; angrily known as Oiyoulittleasshole; Show name – Pride of The Torpid Sasquatch III; American Indian Name – Dances With Shoelaces; Kabbalah Name – Esther; Porn Name – Nipples Galore; Pirate Name Disemboweling Dorothea the Holy Terror of the Western Sofa; Preferred name: Bob).  Trouble refrained almost entirely from walking, sleeping and vomiting on my keyboard during the move and for that I am forever in her tummy-rubbing debt.

Change is a comin’ ladies and gentlemen.  See ya soon!

In the meantime, farewell, best ofs, and mind-how-you-gos to Twenty Major.  The end of an era.