Looking west from Central Station railway bridge towards the Kingston Bridge and Science Centre.
View west from Kingston Bridge towards Finnieston crane, Science Centre and "The Squinty Bridge"
View back east from Bells bridge.
'The Dentist' is going to be a weekly thing. I need a bit of time to kick the ideas around in my head before I commit them to paper as it were.............
Cheers!
This made me grin like a fool. Everyone should have one you know.
New chums for Autumn include...
Anyway, not a lot else to say tonight. Part 2 of 'The Dentist' will probably be up tomorrow night.
Cheers!
Malcolm Severin stared morosely through the car windscreen at the group of men gathered about a hundred yards away, just outside the front door of his dental practice. He'd had a rough idea it might come to this. Of the four figures, he only knew one of them, Eddie Darling. Darling was an intense, stocky little man who could gut your soul with a single glance. Malcolm had met Eddie at a dinner party held by a local artist friend about a month earlier and after getting a little wasted he had foolishly agreed to head away from the wives and lady friends and play poker in a spare room with some of the chaps. A few good hands and a few lines of coke had raised his confidence to ludicrous levels. By about 1am, the softly spoken 'local businessman' in the casual pinstripe suit and white loafers had cleaned him out. Two hours later he was a good 3 grand in hock . As things wound down at around 4am, Darling announced that he would play Malcolm at one last game to let him clear his slate. The forfeit for Malcolm if he lost was that he had to provide Darling with free dental treatment. A quick visit to the bank on Monday morning would have seen to his debt, but the temptation was too much.
What were a few free fillings to a man of his standing?
The other three men were unfamiliar to Malcolm. Two of them were standard issue hardmen, all leather jackets and buzzcuts, built like tanks and exuding even at a distance, an aura of deep unpleasantness. Malcolm was reminded of the words from an old Jam song.............
They Smelled of pubs, and Wormwood Scrubs, and too many right wing meetings
They were obviously there to ensure that a certain up and coming young 'gob doctor' did as he was told. Malcolm had been told by his friends exactly who and what Mr Darling was. He was, despite having an eye for the odd obscure impressionist canvas, resolutely not a patron of the arts. Mr Darling's art was something altogether less appealing.
The fourth horseman of Malcolm Severin's personal apocalypse was an older man, very much smaller than his companions and dressed from head to toe in faded denim. He looked like an escaped Staus Quo roadie, the sort of old scrote you would find drinking Guinness and watching the footie scores in some backstreet pub on a saturday afternoon. Quite what his purpose was in the whole affair intrigued Malcolm. Was he there to bite his ankles? Maybe he'd bore him to death with detailed descriptions of the indian ink tattoos that undoubtedly covered his scrawny little frame. Maybe he was just an old harry ramp trying to cadge some loose change or sell a big issue................
Malcolm took one last, long draw of his cigarette and flicked it out of the open driver window. It bounced into a nearby puddle and fizzed out. The thought of putting the car into first and flooring the accelerator was overwhelming. He realised this was a non starter though. They'd hear and see him before he got near them. He also considered doing a runner but his conscience stopped him before he got anywhere near mentally boarding the next flight out of London. He had staff, he had a wife and family. They didn't deserve to pay in any way for his stupidity.
He opened the door with the heaviest of hearts and made his way up the street towards the welcoming committee. He had taken only a few paces away from the car when they turned as one towards him and watched him progress up the short incline to the surgery. He knew that they knew he had been sitting in the car for the last half hour shitting himself and wondering what to do. He was Eddie Darling's plaything now and he didn't have the stomach to do anything other than comply with their demands.
(Happy Birthday Billy!)
Hello!
Oh dear, it would seem I have the dribbling illiterate bastard cousin of writers block. Bloggers Block!!!
Everything seems to be happening to everyone else at the moment. As you all know, Clairwil has been recieving threats from anonymous goons. In all probability these are empty threats, but they're no less disturbing for it. So many creepy, unpleasant people out there. I wish they'd all go and find hobbies to keep themselves occupied.
Billy's second podcast is up. I haven't listened to it yet, but if his first was owt to go by it'll be worth bending an ear to.
As far as the 'Young Blogger Of The Year' poll is concerned it's Sandra at Over Here in the lead with 23% , Tampon Teabag in second with 12% and Oye Billy in third with 6%. The rest are all resting on between 2-4% of the vote.
Yawn! So very tired right now. I should be in my kip.
Ok, what's next? Well, apparently Patrick Moore is a Partick Thistle fan. Or at least he has elected to turn up on the ptfc.net message board to dispense his pearls of wisdom. Quite inspiring.
Oh, and final proof that the baby boomers still have us by the scrote. Lord almighty!, won't that hideous relic of a record just bloody sink beneath the waves forever? For those who didn't hit the link, it would seem Sargie Peppy is still the greatest record ever or something. Bollocks! If for some reason you are STILL listening to this cod- psychedelic crap and thinking to yourself "By jove, this is the greatest album ever made" then might I suggest it's one of only a dozen or so cd's that you actually own and by those limited paramaters, then yes, it's bound to sound pretty fucking brilliant next to Phil Fucking Collins and Pink Fucking Floyd. I shouldn't get so angry, it is radio 2 listeners that voted after all. I'm sure Astral Sodding Weeks and London Ruddy Calling are in there. A million others too tedious to mention too. I have the same problem when the critics vote for their "Bestest Ever Album Ever, Ever, Ever (until the next time we're asked)". Pet Sounds maybe, or Ok Computer. What about Nevermind................? No fucker would care but it invariably reaches the newsgroups and the tabloids and the 'Talking Head Pollshows' hosted by Graham Norton or Jimmy Carr and then the collective unconscious and then every bastard in the world will opine cluelessly about how 'Hey Jude' was written by Macca about John Lennon's son Julian and how he kept the nonsense lyrics about shoulders in cos like, Lennon thought they were really deep and should stay in there and blahblahblahblah. All recounted like the bastards were at the actual recording session.
I sit near one of these 2nd hand rock history bores at work. Forgive my bitterness.
Generic Sunset Shot The Ill Man has finally got his music up on Myspace. It's just one track at the moment, but I should have another up by tomorrow night. Abuse, compliments and offers of record contracts equally welcomed.
I would like at this point to say thanks to Gerry for his endless patience in walking me through the recording process, my brother for converting the windows media player files to mp3 and to Lee Paxton for pointing me in the right direction regarding the myspace music options. Cheers!
Anyway, the night out proposed by Clairwil and I still stands . Friday 1st September at Babbity Bowsters, 7pm. C'mon, theres a fair few Glasgow/Scottish bloggers i've always wanted to meet................With a bit of luck there should be a gaggle of bodies present, so if myself or Clairwil don't interest/amuse you (as if!!) there might be someone who will.
Cheers!
This post was brought to you with the aid of...............
Sibelius (Finlandia/Karelia Suite/Lemminkainen Suite)
Most pleasing it was too.
Slightly more robust posts to follow....................
Cheers!
Ok folks, a new date for your calenders. My friend Clairwil and I will be meeting in Babbity Bowsters (Blackfriars Street, just off The High Street) for a few drinks at about 7pm on the above date and you are all welcome to join us.
It will be an informal affair in the surprisingly spacious beer garden of Babbity's (to facilitate those who like a fag)
Make the most of what's left of the summer and join us for a few drinks.......
Clairwil and The Ill Man, never knowingly less than fairly amusing....................
Confirmations and excuses for not coming to be made in the comments box as usual. Ta!
Generic Dusk Shot
Bird On A Wire
Seagull On A Lamp Post
Good Evening!
Ok, in a decent mood tonight for no particular reason. Yes, even after hearing about a passenger rebellion on an aeroplane in which feelings ran high regarding a couple of 'dusky chaps' with beards 'speaking foreign'. The culprits were ejected and found to be...........completely fucking harmless!!! I shall refrain from letting you know what fate I wish had befallen the shitbags that orchestrated this little witch-hunt. Bunch of craven, fear riddled bedwetters. You can bet yer fucking arse that any suicide bomber worth his or her salt will have taken every precaution NOT to look or act anything like a devout Muslim. Or is that too difficult a concept for them to understand?
Cunts!
On an altogether more pleasant topic, I hear Katy Newton (and possibly few others) are having a little bit of trouble with that puzzle I posted up about a week ago. In all fairness to Katy, she's solved it, but like myself she wasn't 100% sure how or why.
It would be far too troublesome and confusing to actually post the full solution, so my tips are...............
1- It takes seventeen moves to complete the game (a move being one crossing of the river)
2- The policeman and criminal combination is the key. Use them in the first, middle and last moves of the game.
3- Yes, I am an arsehole.
Sweet Jesus what a horrible weekend! A weekend of obscene procrastination. Lethargy so debilitating, I couldn't even achieve my secondary aim today of making it as far as the supermarket on Byres road. I had intended to make a visit to a former workplace to see someone for the last time before they left, then maybe attend the open mic evening at Osmosis and get some much needed public practice in.
By the time I was ready to go out it was 8pm. Fuck!
Obviously it's not just me that suffers from this, but I think I have it down to a fine art. There are just too many distractions for me to be bothered actually doing anything productive with my spare time. To this end, I should probably sell my Playstation, throw out my porn, remove all the links in my blog sidebar and stop drinking.....................
Ah yes, the spartan life..................
A life in which i'd probably end up going on a mass killing spree on a Wednesday lunchtime (probably whilst queuing in Boots, possibly with a handful of sawn off Spicy Cajun Chicken Salad Wraps or something equally dangerous.)
Fat chance! If anyone has some self discipline tips they wish to pass on, please feel free to leave them in my comments box where they will be ignored completely.
Cheers!
This blog entry was soundtracked by..................Pet Sounds (stereo version) by The Beach Boys.
You know that thing where you drink your own weight in booze but still feel like you could drink a brewery dry................?
Yeah.........anyway, I think my judgement is getting a little impaired, so disregard some of my recent posts, for they were made under an alcoholic fog and what I look at the next day at work tends not to resemble what I thought I had conceived the night before.
Still fighting the good fight with the scum of this world.
It's called crossing the road.
Good job I heard the fuckers before I saw them or I might have been in trouble. Neds are easily audible from about half a mile away.
Anyway, I crossed the road and I still got verbally abused. I shudder to think what would have happened had I been wearing my walkman and not twigged them in advance...........
I hate having to dodge these shits. Life is far too long and tedious without having to contend with agressive, pissed-up baboons. How about we send them to terrorist training camps in Pakistan or somewhere, so they can learn a trade and make a valuable contribution to society.............
At least I can smile when I see the broken glass from the cars of arseholes who park on Belmont Street Bridge. I think cheapskate commuters will find that a park-and-ride ticket isn't so expensive after all.
Finnieston Crane
This blog will be a year old in about a months time. To be honest, it's gone a lot better than I had ever hoped it would. The little community I have discovered along the way has also been something of a bonus. To everyone who pops in every day to read my confused dribblings and who pass the odd comment (they mean the world to me), I say a GREAT BIG THANKYOU!!
To mark the first birthday of 'The Ill Man', I would like to nominate some of my favourite blogs and put them in a wee poll. The winner will be declared in roughly five weeks time.
The criteria for these blogs is that they need to have appeared within the last year or so. I have tried not to omit anyone.
They are...........
Oye Billy
Oblong Scone
Average Tosser
Bawbags
Over Here
Tampon Teabag
The poll, like the little fat shopkeeper in the fez from Mr Benn, should appear 'as if by magic' in my sidebar.
Vote like the wind my children!
Ok, this is the old 'wanking chariot'. Less said the better really. The posters are of little significance other than to cover up the thumbtacks embedded in the wall.
Guitar, broken chest of drawers and my good shirts hanging up (all three of them)
Like Billy, I have a bedside containing tumblers and a 'to be read' pile.
TV(rotten reception, only good for dvd use) and CD rack.
HiFi, 4-track, amp and vinyl collection.
CD collection proper. Also some books and stuff.
Ok, how many cd's can you correctly name from this photo? The winner gets a vinyl L.P. of their choice.
Hope I haven't repelled/disappointed too many of you. If I have, please don't take it personally.......
Yes, even Milngavie suffers from dumped shopping trolleys..........
War Memorial in Milngavie town centre
If anyone knows the proper name for these beasties i'd be gratefull. Their copious drooling aside, I wouldn't mind owning one.........
Friendliest moggy of the year award goes to this chap..................I'm annoyed I only got a few shots, he was more than happy to pose away for me and wasn't twitchy at all about being stroked. I was in a bit of a hurry at the time i'm afraid
