It's in here somewhere...

... a post about a lettuce that someone thought was a cabbage. I think it was quite a good one too (the post. The lettuce was a lettuce) but I'm buggered if I can find it now*. 13ish years worth of waffle and no search function... I'd put one in but a: I don't like search functions on websites and b: it would rob me on evenings like this re-reading assorted random posts. Which is after all what they're for. :)

It helps if I remember to write posts now and then mind you.

So at work (job2) today Clyn found her way here while I was blethering about what I'm doing with work (job1) and Adam said nice things about one of the posts he'd read and it all reminded me I wanted to get back in the habit of posting here (plus ça change - if there was a search function I could tell you how many posts start with ramblings about how long it's been since I posted). That and yoga. I wanted to get back in the habit there too... I'm managing intermittently. I expect this'll be the same.

Anyway.

First bit of news is that I'm in the slow-ish process of untangling my work life from this place. I'm moving it over to this place and refocussing my freelance business (aka "job1") a bit. The past five years I've muddled along alright as a jobbing designer, but the market for logos and websites is awfu' crowded and the blunt truth is I don't make nearly enough to live doing it (hence there being a job2). Over the festive break, with some incredibly insightful and helpful input from some of my many talented and wonderful friends and relations, a plan crystallised: a rebrand and a refocus, in no small part prompted by some of the rewarding work I'm doing for Alyn just now (more about that later but not in this post - 's under wraps). Mainly though it's about refining what I do into what I do that not any other designer could do. I'm excited about it.

More about that will appear in time over at inforock.it and in the spirit of reclaiming splateagle.com for personal stuff I shall now shut up about work.

There that's not work. I finally got past my block (induced by attempting to recreate a clear blue Japanese sky in my scruffy impressionistic daubings) and I'm pleased with the result. Next up is a bigger 3 canvas bit. That'll either be a leafy waterfall or one of the Sandwood Bay sunset photos I took a while back writ large - leaning toward the latter as I keep picturing the waterfall with sunlight and that gets me back to those tricksy blue skies... The finished one isn't staying on the floor - in fact it's up on the wall now - but there was proper daylight when I finished it and the snap I took just now came out muddy. Which it isn't, so you're getting good light and bad focus instead.

Oh and I sent my sister a photograph of a toothbrush at the weekend (well it wouldn't be my blog if I weren't ocasionally intentionally cryptic for my own future amusement).

*There is of course a perfectly excellent search function here on the editing end of the blog. The Lettuce happened in November 2011

Irrationally sad about celophane

For no good reason this makes me sad.

Not having four new unwatched Who DVDs - that makes me giddyhappy. Having to take the cellophane off them all at once (and not even when I'm watching them because I promised to wait and watch two of them with a friend who keeps being busy at the weekends [glares meaningfully at Keith]).

It's daft. I know it's daft, but there's something about saving my treats and enjoying them one at a time that I really enjoy. Yes, I am one of those dreadful people who carefully unpicks the wrapping paper instead of ripping into it. I enjoy the deferred gratification thing... hey there had to be at least one character trait that's adult right? ;)

So against my inclinations I just torn through four DVDs, unleashing their faint free-hydrocarbon new-DVD smell all in one orgiastic rush and for what? Well because the 5th (and the first I watched) had a manufacturing fault making it unwatchable. They're birthday presents and the duff one needs to go back. The broken one (and three of the others) are from my (sensible grown up) sister, who innocently suggested (a week ago) that if I was returning the broken one I should probably check the others are OK.

She was absolutely right. And yet somehow that's delayed the whole process for a week while I tried to avoid unwrapping them all...

Yes. I'm laughing at myself too.

On the bright side they all look fine, so 2Entertain's QC department only cocked up 1/5 of the time.

Phew!

So, roughly 14 years ago I had my (then) Mac laptop on my glass coffee table, tripped over the power cord and sent it crashing to the floor. It broke. Roughly 14 minutes ago I went to put my (now) Mac laptop on (the same) glass coffee table and wasn't looking properly...

Apart from my near coronary as I watched it fall, no harm done.

bathroom themed parcels

So today's a freelance day. Mid-morning I was interrupted at my desk to buzz the postie into the building. Often happens, and is fair enough since someone has to let him in. Then taking the opportunity to go to the toilet (after buzzing the door) turned out to be a mistake: At exactly the worst possible moment my doorbell (the one you have to be inside the building to use) went. argh. So I, um, hurry things along as much as is possible (thinking that whatever the parcel he has, is almost certainly now bound for the sorting office) and (after washing my hands) open the door to hear the sounds of someone about to leave the building. rats. Only (hurrah) postie hears me and (bless him) poddles back up the stairs. With parcels! For downstairs. I hide my disappointment and cheerfully take the parcels to pass on when they get home. I can't remember the last time one of the neighbours did this for me, but I suppose not everyone's in during the day right? Besides I've answered the door now and anyway it's good karma. Day caries on, designing gets done. A few minutes ago I finished up for the day and - spotting the parcels in the hall - I thought "rather than settle in for my evening knowing I'm likely to get disturbed, why not pop downstairs with those" (I know, right? Best neighbour ever. Modest too.) Downstairs don't have a doorbell, but the light's on and I can hear someone singing to himself so I knock. Nothing happens. I knock again. Still nothing, and I'm about to go back upstairs (now feeling a bit peeved) when the door opens and a sheepish, slightly soggy head peers round. Turns out downstairs was in the shower. :D Parcels handed over, and mildly embarrassed pleasantaries exchanged, I come back upstairs wondering if there's some kind of bathroom-ey theme going on with those parcels. I wonder what was in them.

:'(

Yesterday I cast my vote for hope. 

It drowned in all the fear. 

Feeling very loved

The eve of the eve of... victory?

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I'll be 37 in an hour and seven minutes (or thereabouts).

I'm tired.

It's been a long couple of years, and I'd love to say that my tiredness is due to tireless campaigning for a just cause since the referendum was announced. It hasn't been. I'm a fervent and committed Yes and have been since day one. I've even done some volunteering to try and get the right result the day after tomorrow. I'd be lying if I said I'd done masses though, or even enough. I guess I'm not really wired that way.

So yes this is a bit of a referendum post.

Sorry.

It's not my last ditch attempt to make up for lost time though, nor do I really expect to convince anyone at this late stage (or in this narrow, forgotten corner of the internet that is my own). Like pretty much every post here for the past eleven and a bit years this is for myself, put it into the world in case it provokes interest/discussion/laughter in the wider world, but if there's a purpose to these posts they're definitely for myself.

I'm not out to make the case for Scottish independence. For one thing it's getting late. For another, so many others have done that much better than I ever could.

This is for me. If it interests/puzzles/amuses you so much the better.

At some point in my dim forgotten past I fell in love. I was taken out of the world I knew for a time. Out of a world of frustrated protest: of miners' strikes and teachers's strikes... a world of loss: friends' parents being laid off (before I even really understood what jobs were), shops that shut and never opened again, mines that were demolished... a world where politics was a byword for being ignored, shunned, forgotten and - above all - trampled on.

My childhood was a very happy, sheltered, and relatively privileged one, don't get me wrong. It just happened in quite a sad, broken place. A place where my rapidly developing vocabulary never managed to make sense of words like patriotism or nationality. Where I genuinely struggled to comprehend how anyone could feel love for a country. Let alone for England*. It happened in Thatcher's South Yorkshire. I challenge anyone to be objective from that starting point, but is anyone ever objective?

As I said, at some point my parents brought me north of the border - I forget the first time - but I do remember that I fell in love.

Like any young love affair it was arguably an infatuation, at least at that stage. I certainly didn't see the whole picture holidaying in Sutherland for two weeks! But something about Scotland always felt different. Felt special. Each time I came back - whichever part of this country I came to - it all felt special in a way nowhere else ever has.

When I moved here to study for my degree, my instinctive (arguably infantile) infatuation matured into an understanding of Scotland as a place distinct from the rest of the country I thought that I knew. An understanding that "the UK" wasn't in fact one place at all. That and an understanding of why someone would die for a place. I began to understand the concept of national identity.

Hardly surprising then that I never left.

Hardly surprising then that almost two decades later, when someone asks where I'm from I confidently, honestly answer that I'm Scottish.

From the very first time I encountered this country I've felt there was something special and different about it. Over the past few years that feeling has driven me to learn more about my adopted home, and what makes it different. The more I've learned the more convinced I've become that this place could - and should - be so much more than it's able to be as part of the UK. That it could and should be a better home for the people who live here.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Birthdays for me have always been good things. Life has - on the whole - been kind to me, and each year I've lived to date has been better than the one before. Birthdays for me are a time of happy reflection and optimistic hope.

The day after tomorrow... the day after tomorrow I optimistically hope that this magical wondrous adoptive home of mine will see in itself what I see in it. Will for the first time in three hundred and seven years (or thereabouts) take control of where it's going and how it's going to get there.

That would be an amazing start to my year.

* A word I was shocked to learn later in life I had - as I believe most people south of the border do - unconsciously mistaken as synonymous with "the UK".