unticked boxes

It was a short-lived flash of productivity. At the moment, there are 11 unticked boxes on my snazzy to-do list software. The most overdate items are 7 days old and pertain to job and citizenship applications. Aside from a single home-baked loaf of bread (yesterday's effort), I can't say I've achieved a whole lot in the last week. In fact, the last thing ticked on my to-do list was something my flatmate did, as I was running late for work. So at the moment I'm pretending to do what I'm paid for and planning how to get all the stuff done that I don't get paid for, as well as some things that may lead to me getting paid a lot more. It's bitterly cold out and I've only had two coffees. I think and hope it may snow. The sky is still a pale grey; the days are getting longer, slowly but surely.

another batch of sunday musings

Town seems quiet, though not necessarily hungover. It's damp but not really raining, though you still have to mind the puddles. People are buying whisky for their Burns Suppers and wondering what goes best with haggis. If you're curious, it's Talisker 10yo. Though I feel Ardbeg Uigeadail would also fit the bill. Today is a day of writing - CV, tasting notes and possibly something more interesting. I'm also mulling spending too much money on a bottle of wine to taste with Daniel. I have that urge to drink something that fuels the fire of wine-geekery.

Thus far my to-do list thing seems to be going ok. I've done the things, mostly, on the day I was meant to - so far. This is a great improvement on my previous strategy, which included semi-conscious panic attacks in the moments before sleep and then blissfully forgetting it all by the time I woke up. So not a lot got done.

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So we've just sat in the shop today, tasted some wine, had some cheese, chatted to some customers, accidentally hit the panic button and brought the cops. I've got a pile of unopened notebooks sat next to me that will probably remain so. My RSS and Twitter feeds keep popping up with Leno/Conan shit that I couldn't care less about. The Beta Band's entire discography has been playing today and I've not gotten bored of it yet. Now it's dark and wet rather than grey and wet. Daniel's bouncing the tennis ball off the floor because it's his turn. I'll bounce it off the ceiling for a wee while.

Fighting the boredom of January Sundays seems to be a failed exercise. Instead I'm revelling in it, refilling my wine glass and slicing another small bite of cheese for a nibble, that sort of thing. I'll dodge the puddles on my way home tonight and hopefully tick another couple of to-do list items. It could be worse.

older and up (just a little)

I felt my head slowly filling with cotton wool. It seemed directly related to my third or fourth gin martini, though I couldn't be sure. I sipped my beer to see if that helped - sipping beer always helps. The cotton wool still filled my head, but I didn't mind so much. Faces laughed in the candlelight while some fucking cool tunes blasted from the speakers. The waitress was totally unaware of how beautiful she was. I would head back to the bar and watch, mesmerised at the cocktails crafted. I ordered a beer with every cocktail, so as I could have something to nurse while my next martini or Butter-Scotch was being assembled. I got back to the table and never the same seat twice.

Two years ago it would have been a later night. I wouldn't remember as much as I do and there certainly would have been dancing. There would have been an after party, and possibly more, and that fluffy, cozy cotton wool would have changed during the resulting unconsciousness into a railroad spike driven directly into the centre of my skull.

Instead I stumbled, cotton-headed and before last orders, towards Sober Pete's car and he drove us back to Fife.

I don't know if it's a case of being overall more mature and more responsible. I think it's more a case of being more mature and more responsible more often. Indulgent, juvenile partying is still an important part of my life, I just can't indulge as frequently as I used to do it. Jimmy Buffett tells us he's growing 'older but not up' while Indy asserts that 'it's not the years, it's the mileage.' I think I'm going to have to side with Indy on that one.

Today I ticked a box on my brand-new digital to-do list. I bought the software as it was one of the indie+relief packages and some friends had recommended it. I've never been a big fan of to-do lists. Imposed organisation has always rubbed me the wrong way. My mother's a big list person. That may be part of their anathema to me. But I bought it and I've started using it and for my one completed task, it's worked. The box ticked was for paying off a two-year-old speeding ticket, thus avoiding prison or some outrageous further fine or both. That I'd left the fine for two years suggests I may need that little extra organisation, anathema or not. We'll see how it works out with the other tasks. I've put some writing goals on there.

It's cold but there's no snow. That always seems to be a bit of a rip-off.

Finally, if you haven't yet, give some money to the relief efforts in Haiti. Buy some cool software from indie+relief or one of the more involved charities. My personal choice tends towards Medecins Sans Frontieres. Or swear at Luvians - all proceeds from the Swear Box are going to Haitian Relief.

thaw

So there have been a few days of busy life without a lot happening. I had a couple of hangovers - one quite spectacular, probably because it was so unexpected. It was also brought to my attention by the cat pouncing on my head at an hour unsuitable for consciousness. I flailed and swore and stole his toy and hid it under my pillow. Texts and missed calls started appearing on my phone and it occurred to me that, according to the rest of the world, the day was starting. It was cold and the smattering of snow from the day before hadn't melted. Two of the missed calls were about lunch.

So I entered the day. I drank coffee and pomegranate juice and showered and played with the cat. Broomie picked me up and we went to meet Afro-beard at the Jigger to have the largest burgers available in Fife. It was brisk and snowy and a small coal fire burned in the fireplace. The burgers arrived and looked for all the world like meteorites between toasted focaccia. The banter flowed, so much the couple at the booth behind ours started giggling at our chat. Burgers and beers imbibed, we slipped out onto the snow and the rest of the day.

There were snowball fights and snow angels last week. Layers of cotton and wool and scarves and gloves and that sort of stuff that's fun and tedious all at the same time. I staggered home from a party in the wee hours, down the Pends, its virgin snow glistening in the jaundiced streetlights.

Then the thaw came and it was just January again. Bitter and grey with a howling gale and mountains of debt, paperwork and unwritten pages kicking about. I'm watching lots of Simpsons episodes these days - familiarity and humour are most welcome this time of year. Usually I'll vacantly surf the net while keeping one eye on the TV.

Other times I'll play Tetris on my phone. That has become a great waste of spare time. Formerly, when faced with spare moments and only my phone for company, I would read a digital copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or tap out some thoughts on Simplenote. No more. Now, when that spare second or two appears, I launch Tetris and lose myself. Every day I tell myself, I plead with myself - DELETE IT. No good can come of it. My spacial and geometric awareness are on top form, of course, better than they've been since '94. The last time I was addicted to Tetris. So I shall probably delete it tomorrow, after my attempt to beat my current high score - a respectable 145,000-odd.

So tomorrow it's gone. Or the next day.

It's peculiar, worrying about what you're doing, rather than what you're not doing. I'm worrying about dropping shapes, zoning in front of the tube, balancing my caffeine intake with the odd dram in the late afternoon. It provides gentle preoccupation. It's easier to contemplate quitting something you know is superfluous than it is to resolve to do something you know is necessary. Especially when there are quite few somethings, and they're pretty fucking important.

resolutions

I walk to work now. When I was a sommelier, I drove. Now that I'm a wine merchant again (for the time-being), I walk. The only difference is maintaining the sanctity of an ironed shirt: impossible when walking, in Scotland, carrying said shirt. The wind simply won't allow it. I don't need an ironed shirt as a wine merchant. At least, not at this wine merchants. It's a nice walk. I pass the cathedral, the sea, and the oldest section of the town. It's stone, sea and sky. I breathe deep, listen close and gaze quite a bit, both to work and the voyage home. Nowadays there's snow or the remnants of it. I choose my route however the ice lays.

January could be busier in this trade. The world has a hangover. Scotland's is probably the worst. I've written about it before and will write it about it again. I love this time of year. The memories tumble and mix up. The years blend, like the vatting of a single malt. I'm the distillery; dreadful, yet apt, metaphor. But it's my fucking blog and my fucking business. I'm the distillery, the years are vatted and the result is me.

Today was quiet and I read. I read myself. Not the book, though it probably should have been, but me. My blog. The Belfry Chronicles. I perused my last year or so of the 'Chronicles as well, but mostly it was 2006. 2006 was an awful year. I had no job and the Red Sox didn't make the playoffs. I wrote it off as a terrible year. I had no book and no job.

But fuck me, I really knew how to blog. That's not the world's greatest skill, mind, but I had fucking banter. Casting all modesty aside, I was my favourite blogger of 2006 (aside, perhaps, from Lish). Granted, I don't really (and didn't really) read blogs, but if I had, I'd have read mine. And I wrote a LOT. And managed an unpublished novel in the meantime. How did I do that? Why did I do that?

Was it that good? No. To be fair, it wasn't universally loveable and it was galactically self-indulgent. But, and this is important, my friends read it. And chatted, and ranted/bitched about my Red Sox love or just said hi. I talked about my life. I chronicled my life. Nobody was sacred and banter truly abounded. I chatted about what I was feeling, even if it was only 'fuzzy'.

And 'fuzzy' I've been. I tried to raise this blog, in the meantime, to be a combination of a realtime and nonfiction version of my fictional/experimental blog. Sometimes it worked. In fact, a lot of the time it worked. I wrote a lot of stuff I'm hugely proud of. Proud of enough to end sentences with prepositions in their reference. Proud of enough to think some of it's the best I've ever written. But it's not my blog. It's a more grandiose exercise I meant to restrict to elsewhere. This... this is meant to be my chronicle. My diary online and my outpouring for all that I like to write but can't confine to fiction.

Which is a whole new story. As it should be. My fiction. I write fiction. This sort of wandering, meandering silliness that I tap out on my keyboard has no place there (except for the odd fun dialogue). It needs an outlet, which is what this is for; my whimsical chat.

I don't know why, but since I finished my first draft (more later), this became less of a chronicle and more of a narrative. Fuck personal narratives. I'm not dead yet and I don't plan to be anytime soon. It's all the fucking same anyway. I taste wine and fail to write. I watch DVDs and movies and fail to write. I taste wine, watch DVDs, take roles in student productions and fail to write.

I used to write so much.

So maybe it's because I lost some sort of sight. Maybe it's that, as a friend mentioned, I'd written so much I needed a break. Perhaps I just got bored of writing that way. Of saying what was going on in my life was important. Maybe I wasn't writing to the same person anymore. I chatted, bantered, discussed, argued, painted, snapped, brushed, hinted at what was going on and somehow that became wordplay. And I love wordplay. Maybe all that went away and nothing took the place of it.

I hadn't found some tome to scribble what I wasn't writing here - there was no confidant to bear the burden of my drivel. It just wasn't being said.

And I stumbled, slipped and possibly gripped the wrong sloppy metaphors on my way down the very large pile of unwritten stuff.

This is creaky, a little bit weepy. Look at the good old days, with pictures and everything. If you are really a lover of this blog, go back. Go back to here, and start the year of 2006. Scroll down to the bottom and start the year. Read it. It's not my best writing, but it's probably my best chronicling. It's where this blog is heading back towards. It's going back to the days of scratching my head and pondering hangovers, banter that approaches witty and a self-awareness of how silly it is to leave my person open to all and yet read by so few. So give me some chat back. Love, hate, revile or simply shrug - but share it.

I'm going to write something everyday. A lot of the time it will be here. Comments, love and words of utter disdain are welcomed. Regardless, my Belfry has returned.

idiosyncratic crystals

The sky spat a few flakes out this evening, as I wandered back to the flat. It wasn't even a flurry; just one or two drifting crystals, idiosyncratic in nature. Patches of ice and trampled snow on its way to ice littered the walk home, mostly on the paths less-travelled. The night seemed still and my wellies chafed a bit, even through my beloved wellie socks.

I took the steps down the hill, rather than the slope, mindful that it's one of those less-travelled paths. I took my headphones out to listen to the winter night a bit. What little snow still lies managed to muffle the world regardless.

It's strange, time, in the hush of winter. It whispers in the stillness of the cold, the bitterness of the wind. All seems to be sleeping. Time hasn't stopped, or even slowed. It's not dormant, nor is it hibernating.

It's just an illusion. Time tumbles on through this cold, still darkness.

And change is afoot.

some winter observations

I feel heavier in the mornings. It may be the cold. My eyes take longer to focus. My legs don't work properly. I massage my head and stumble towards the coffee machine. It's half caffeine and half ritual.

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The Tube around Christmas time was ridiculous. So crammed that you share a look, a smile, a laugh at the stranger a few folks down. More than five stops together almost counts as a friendship. An anonymous bond formed by the unspoken joke of it all: the futility of resistance.

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The snowflakes were huge. They fell on Trafalgar Square with a hushed thud. The yellow streetlights gave the winter a sepia filter. For a few brief and stolen moments, the city was blanketed: timeless and hushed. Then the shrieking, honking traffic shattered the Dickens of it all.

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The cold is creeping, settling between the bones and flesh. And still I love this season; my breath drifting idly as my feet avoid the ice. Cold that brings tears to the eyes. The layers of cotton and wool, tucked in. The glory of an open fire and the comfort of a dram.

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Scotland is, for the most part, covered in a white winter blanket. That is no bad thing.

no buyer

It's not really autumn anymore. There's too much bitterness in the wind, and my fingers go numb even when I wear my gloves. I noticed autumn. I noticed one day a sea of brittle leaves, blown and huddled at the foot of a mediaeval wall. They hadn't been there a few days before. I noticed the skeletal trees etched against the ashen cloak of low-looming cloud. Now I notice that the shadows never really shorten; they just disappear, joining the quickly drawn darkness. Smells of wood fire drift by and Starbucks have their red cups at the ready.

I made some wine and I sold some wine. I quit my job. I didn't write much. I read a little. I drank some whisky and some red wine and some beer and watched a month's worth of rain fall in a day. Crossroads appeared and I couldn't find the devil to sell my soul to.

And so I'm standing there, working out which road to take.

wine-making again...

Early nights to prepare for earlier mornings. We get to the winery before first light and leave, if we're lucky, just after the sun sets. The grapes are healthy. So, it would appear, are the wine-makers.

I will write more on this when I have the time.

In the meantime I leave you with this: today I saw softcore porn needlepoint. It left me giggling and full of questions. It was hanging in a restaurant. The restaurant also left me giggling and full of questions.

fringe diary iv

Edinburgh's quiet before 8 on a Tuesday. It's sunny but chilly and there's still a bit of morning grey filtering the world. I'm wearing yesterday's t-shirt and yesterday's boxers, which have served me as pyjamas. The rattier of my Sox hats sits on my head. My bleary eyes try to focus through my glasses. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King jam through my headphones. My flip-flops snap along the cobblestones and make my walk something like a zombie's. My hands warm themselves in the belly pocket of my hoodie. From time to time my eyes drift down to my feet, to the frayed edges of my jeans and I'm struck by the oddness of toes.

I didn't sleep much last night.

I'm sure I look the part. The part of the hungover - though I'm not - and the sleep deprived - guilty as charged. I look like I've not been home yet, though that's an illusion.

The streets are still. I pass one of the local pubs and blink at the size of the padlock on the front door. They'll be open again soon - festival hours and all that.

The Apple store isn't open but the supermarket is. I cross the street without danger. There are no cars. I expect tumbleweed, but there's none of that either. The odd shopper looks far more awake than I. They seem to be shopping as though it is normal to do so at this hour of the morning. I wander the aisles and my mind wanders to last night, our best performance yet. I think about dinner and fine wines.

I blink and see a giant packet of toilet roll. 16 for the price of 12. I grab it and head to the check out, pausing briefly by the magazine rack to find something else to by, oddly self-conscious of my singularity of purpose. All the magazines are shite. And so I head to the check out bearing only my bogroll. The exit confuses me and I try in vain to open a locked door, until the bemused security guard points me in the right direction.

Flip-flops snap again on the cobbles and I return to the sleeping flat, no more awake than when I left. Mission accomplished.