This Standard Scottish Life

…. a foot ?

Barely awake foot

Naked, yet washed foot

Clothed foot. The Foot of Champions

Breakfast foot. Yum.

Foot with boot ….

Foot tae work

When I was 13 I was obsessed with James Herbert books, netball, kissing boys, dungarees and …. eh … Rush. Tonite while footering around on Demonoid I thought I’d download an evaluation copy of Rush’s timeless classic 2112 (I found the LP in my brother’s room along with Quark, Strangeness and Charm and Mother Focus).

Hmmm …..having listened to 2112 tonight I kinda get why I loved it so much. It’s tuneful. It’s rock. They play their instruments well. They used lots of technology. But it’s quite …. well … very, very … it’s infact ….. monsterous Cheese! And another thing …. listening to Rush lead me to waste my time reading Ayn Rand’s Anthem and to hide in my bedroom practicing furiously on my guitar till I could play the opening to The Trees flawlessly with neither flair nor passion.

Fortunately I was soon to rescued from Rush by punk (TY Siouxsee and Joe) and teenage fumblings.

….. we have assumed control

….. We Have Assumed Control

… WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL

Where’s that Nelly Furtado song that I like ?

… my blog administration stuff and noticed lots of exciting posts that needed moderating. I seem to have many avid readers from the underground including:

• NFL cheerleaders Thank you girls
• Sinful comics Tsk, tsk you naughty things
• Vitamin shoppe Ah yea olde worlde vitamin shoppe, for those of us who don’t eat our 5 veg/fruit
• Penis Hilton [sniggering in a silly childish way]
• Clonazepam. Thanks but no thanks, my memory is disturbed enuf as it is.

So thanks guys and girls for stopping by TSSL. Oh….. ooops …. was that the mass spam delete button I pressed? Now f**k off and don’t come back.

… poor TSSL neglected as usual while its owner is off obsessing about other things. This past month I have mostly been:

• reading absolutely everything about and by Truman Capote. He’s my new favourite author, he is so terribly funny and nasty. And he was short. And had a fetching line in hats. And documented, and no doubt enhanced everything anyone ever said to him, for example, one day when he was chatting to Marilyn Monroe and she called Queen Elizabeth the Second a cunt – which of course I thought was quite priceless. Hmmmm …. sorry about the c**t sweary word but we like to court controversy on TSSL and it also allows me to tag this post with sex which of course can only improve my Google rankings. And I did think it was funny and especially what she went on to say about Prince Philip & Errol Flynn.
• getting all sorts of nasty stains on my lovely new silk scarf. It is the coolest scarf in the world coz it’s of Maurice by Andy Warho (“it’s Warhol actually” – yes thanks for that Mr Bowie, f-off now). I should explain about the stains ….. or maybe I should leave it to your imagination. Yes, your imagination is probably better, I’ll just say one word on the stains though …. oil and not of the petroleum type. If you are brave enough to ask me about the stains I can assure you that the explanation is less exciting the image you have just conjured up in your head.
• going to Roma and stuffing ourselves on pasta and scooping Prosecco and eating cannoli. As I recall we also saw some old falling down walls and the Pope’s hoose (but it was closed I can only assume he was out shopping for Prada loafers).

• searching and finding my long lost brother Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni
• preparing a lovely (well I think it’s lovely) website for my TransAmerica cycle trip. No you’re not getting to see it yet. You know how sensitive artistes are about their works in progress

Hankering (n) – a strong or persistent desire or craving.  Possible etymology: Flemish
As in ….

• I have a terrible hankering for a a large glass of wine
• I have a terrible hankering for a great big bar of chocolate, a pie, some pork scratchings and a pint of ale
• I have a terrible hankering for a Doris Day film

Antonym: indifference, aversion

As in ….

• I am quite indifferent to lettuce, grated carrot,  shredded cabbage and five pieces of fruit.  But I do have a hankering for chips cooked in lard.
• I have developed an aversion to work.

And of course there is in urban phraseology hankering for a pankering which needs no explanation!

Fraught I am, fraught about FagPuss. Reason’s are twofold:

• on this new WordPress version of ThisStandardScottishLife I haven’t imported my previous blogger FagPuss entries and I fear my Google ranking for Fagpuss searches is in decline. How is this blog to remain so very, very unpopular without mention of FagPuss ?
• I haven’t seen FagPuss for ages. Today some other large, tarty puss was hanging around on the door step when I got home from work. Mieowing and looking up longing at me with its “Gimme a fish, it’s Friday” eyes. But where is FagPuss ? I hope he hasnae contracted the feline lung cancer.

For those of you who haven’t met FagPuss, here he is again.

…. but wait, before we discuss Where’s me bike ? let’s first wonder Where’s me tea ? (that’s tea as in dinner not tea as in tea). I am sitting here on the couch with a rumbling tum and crashing sugar levels and Where’s me tea ? Le Chef has buggered off to Lundun for some meeting and left me to fend for myself. I wonder if I can hold out til he comes home at 9pm otherwise I’ll have to bloody cook something and boy am I sick of f**king courgettes and marrows. Hmmmm …. a takeaway me thinks.

But anyway … back to Where’s me bike ? Moi et Le Chef went for a very jolly jolly to Amsterdam this weekend. Twas most fun and involved eating Indonesian food while watching Le Chef pick out the peanuts (he’d get that anaphalactic shock thingie if he ate one), drinking beer, eating Maoz falafel (it is the best, bestest falafel ever and they even have an outlet in Barca now), drinking beer, wolfing the most huge amount of Mexican food ever and drinking margaritas .. oh yes and some shopping too. And of course no decriminalized drugs were partaken of . And neither did we visit the red light district . (Great I managed to wangle a sex angle to the post so can appropriately categorize it thus – surely my Google rating must be increasing).

On the way to the station I noticed a multi-storey bicycle park. How the hell do you find your bike ? All Dutch bikes look the same. If you shout at a Dutch bike, will it reply back ?

Today I came to East Kilbride to stay a few days to supervise my mum who just got out of hospital. She’s got a brand new knee [wonders ... can you get brand new brains?].

Anyway, that’s not the point of this entry … the point is ….I have spent most of my life not looking back….

I try hard not to dwell on the past particularly my own … I do read the occasional history book to learn about old yins and old things (go on, ask me how old Queen Elizabeth the First was when she got her crown or who the last four emporers of Japan have been) but I haven’t yet written the History of Sandy and this blog isn’t it coz it’s not autobiographical but infact completely fanciful and fraudulent.

I absolutely and completely avoid going to places that I remember fondly as a child. When I was little I used to go and visit my granny and papa Hamilton in Lesmahagow and my granny Gordon in Kirn near Dunoon. I have absolutely refused to go to these places as I know it will destroy all the happy images in my head. I don’t think about these places a lot but I know if I visited the memories of swing parks, decaying cinemas, tomato houses, my papa’s Polo mints, my granny’s baking, bottles of red kola, Jim Crow and Mrs Aunty Nelly will be tainted forever. I like those memories just the way they are. Me as a wee girl with my grand parents.

And I don’t think about people I went to school with. But …. today …. I was on the slowest, most circuitous bus to East Kilbride in the world. It went past all my old childhood / teenage haunts and then chucked me off about a mile from where I needed to be. I was forced to walk through bits of the town that I haven’t been to in 25 years. Oh no … talk about nostalgia – how come I still knew the way home by that funny back way through the lockups ? How come I recognised every single house where friends and acquitances lived – “Oh look that’s where Colin lived – I really fancied him. He’s dead now“. How come I still remembered the church where I was touched by God for about 2 hours (fortunately I shook him off!) “God I smite you.  Be gone“. And how come I could remember every corner that I snogged the boys on. Yeuch … all that groping and poking and hormones. Yeuch, yeuch, yeuch. I really, really didn’t need to have those memories back. All evening I have been trying to shove those memories back into that grey hole of subconsciousness they came out of. Get back you sordid teenage recollections. Must go dig out my mum’s cooking sherry to try otherwise I’ll be having nightmares.

PS a. QE1 = 26 b. = meiji, taisho, hirohito, akihito

PPS As a result of this post I now have a sex category. Surely that’ll raise my Google rankings.

PPPS Can you get into trouble for smiting God ?