tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post160252681442836058..comments2024-03-29T05:24:12.453+00:00Comments on call me ishmael: A BLOKE CALLED HARRIScall me ishmaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-1840987927519004602013-11-14T23:35:33.363+00:002013-11-14T23:35:33.363+00:00I know what you mean, mr dtp, about anthropomorhis...I know what you mean, mr dtp, about anthropomorhising the wee beast but that is by definition what we do with pets. And it's fucking windy up here, he needs a big warm coat.<br /><br />I have a Harris Tweed jacket, myself; it is the most expesive garment I have ever owned and I love it.<br /><br />Ease yourself off the booze, mr dtp, and you'll find your own sublimity.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-61426297254972522392013-11-14T20:19:12.328+00:002013-11-14T20:19:12.328+00:00Am so sorry blogging when absolutely trolleyed - h...Am so sorry blogging when absolutely trolleyed - have reread stuff and the Usual Suspects thing after your gorgeous Sunday Supplement (!) was a bottle of gin induced. Well, a bottle of dar rum first but a good dam fist of gin and my Oirish Grandad Tommy's dictum from being a landlord (and getting twated eyebrow wise, mum coffin dodging and court case as victim came to light - not a fucking word!) was 'don't drink gin'. Wise words indeed.<br /><br /> Not being unchivalrous to take the piss out of dressing the poor pooch up in eponymous slave labour is beyond my humour but there was a Daschaund on stilts the other day which had me thinking of Esther Rantzen.<br /><br /> I've fostered kids man and size don't matter - on the contrary, smaller they are the more fucked they came from. I nearly threw a fridge at a 12 year old girl - marvellous stuff. Had a lad for 6 years later and just pushed each other into wheelie bins and hedges, women and doorways:young lads are comedy, young girls think they fight dirty.<br /><br /> I do not believe any conversation between you and a National Trust warden, if mildly vexed, would end as they expected! <br /><br /> Good luck with Mr Harris and good luck you and yours.<br /><br /> To Capitalists @ Work to retain my Question Time trophy - hmm...<br /><br /> Your writing is sublime, Sir<br /><br /> DtP<br /><br /> DtPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-33204307576027867392013-11-13T22:09:27.957+00:002013-11-13T22:09:27.957+00:00Thanks, mr tezza. I am sure, too, that mr jgm2 wil...Thanks, mr tezza. I am sure, too, that mr jgm2 will feel pleased to be vindicated in his climatology.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-65765702019367008162013-11-13T21:43:49.209+00:002013-11-13T21:43:49.209+00:00By the way, regarding the ancient culture stuff - ...By the way, regarding the ancient culture stuff - it has been put forward that when Skarra Brae was settled the climate was very much milder in those parts and the people only moved away when huge clouds of ash from a volcano (probably in the vicinity of Iceland) caused a succession of poor summers and failed Harvests.<br /><br />There are remarkable similarities between some of the key 'architectural' elements of Skarra Brae and those found in certain ancient Mediterranean sites.<br /><br />Furthermore, traces of Tartan textiles and bagpipes have been found in ancient Asian sites the noo!<br /><br />tezza Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-35210076955380001442013-11-13T21:02:21.339+00:002013-11-13T21:02:21.339+00:00Good news!
The old gentleman you met in Alnwick ...Good news!<br /><br />The old gentleman you met in Alnwick no doubt spoke with the most profound common sense Mr. Ishmael, but life can seem bleak enough at times if we allow it. Life is for the living and i'm sure you'll give wee Harris a great life up there,<br /><br />Best to you and yours<br /><br />tezzaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-30625237165462501182013-11-12T23:00:26.628+00:002013-11-12T23:00:26.628+00:00Lot of smoke over Sydney in the past 10 days. But ...Lot of smoke over Sydney in the past 10 days. But in NSW for the last 2 days record rainfall - most in 25 years in places. Its not rained for a while and the golf courses need it. Back to hot sun and blue skys today. I sound like a weather girl.Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-83127042867302828392013-11-12T11:34:17.169+00:002013-11-12T11:34:17.169+00:00It's more habit than choice, mr alphons. Some...It's more habit than choice, mr alphons. Some time ago a friend urged us to give a home to a Yorkie whose person had died from cancer. Whaaat? One of those yappy little bastards? He was bold and funny and charming; we've had them ever since. For years I fancied myself as Ishmael Walks With Three Dogs, now I walk with none. Change gotta come.<br /><br />Thanks, mr mike, hope you're coping with all that smoke, down there.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-38372917563568709892013-11-12T11:28:06.757+00:002013-11-12T11:28:06.757+00:00They've had fish, mr jgm2, in the many coastal...They've had fish, mr jgm2, in the many coastal settlements and oats and turnips, deer and other game inland and the lowlands and the Central belt are, in places, as fertile as the Vale of Evesham, there are vast tracts, though, which are as you say - I simply cannot understand why anyone lives in Caithness but they do, in Wick and Scrabster and in wee hamlets, girdled with shrivelled trees, providing a windbreak. Perthshire, on the other hand, really is the best part of England, lush and moist and beautiful; Inverness is a sparkling jewel and all along the Great Glen to the West Coast the valley is heartstoppingly beautiful. <br /><br /> The stones around me are older than the pyramids and maybe they stand here, still, because there has been little develeopment over five thousand years - what there is in the way of roads, for instance, is down to the Navy in both the wars; we weren't on the national grid until the 'sixties, this is, in the best possible sense, a primitive place; nothing is allowed to be built on the skyline, nothing, that is, apart from spluttering windmills but otherwise the landscape is little changed since the Ice Age. I have trees and shrubs and hedges and plants but this is very unusual; population-wise this Highlands and Islands area is much like Cornwall and North Wales used to be - the lunatic fringe, peopled by incoming quality of lifers, full of shit and conceit and I-Know-Bestism, desperate for a rusty LandRover and a couple of goats, Christ, they are fucking awful; the RSPCA should come up here and shut the fuckers down.<br /><br />I mentione din Down To The Sea In Ships that once the land was densely aforrested, travel possible only by coastal waterways, maybe it was the lack of treee up here which facilitated the stone circlings, that and the specialnesses of island life which his majesty caratacus mentions; the native, chilled Canucks do cross-fertilise, here and they had their own totemic structures, it's just that they were made of wood instead of stone.<br /><br />There is something in what you say about changing climate, about seasonal exhaustion; buildings from the Modern Age, or instance, are as drab, unembellished, feauture- and colourless as you could imagine, low, squat and thick - the weather of course necessitates this, as does the relative abdsence of timber, glass, paint and, well, everything really, struggling thus, to keep a heavy roof over their heads, how then did ancient islanders build these bloody things?<br /><br />It is part of the mystery, not only how they did it, but how they knew to do it. Five thousand years on, year after year, on certain days only, the Sun strikes through an opening and illuminates the quarters of the Dead. How, wiping their arses with heather, did they know that stuff? call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-23992554763623751782013-11-12T10:40:55.322+00:002013-11-12T10:40:55.322+00:00Good luck in your endeavours mr. ishmael.
As a Yor...Good luck in your endeavours mr. ishmael.<br />As a Yorkshire man I can only admire your choice.Alphonsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-62541171387268723022013-11-12T08:42:57.101+00:002013-11-12T08:42:57.101+00:00My wife went to school with a girl whose parents h...My wife went to school with a girl whose parents hail from Lewis. Her friend moved up there 25 years ago and has been there ever since. When we used to live in Fucking Scotland we'd go over a couple of times a year to visit. It's a whole nother world. There isn't so much of the nasty anti-Englishness that typifies the much of Fucking Scotland although they have, from their Old Sarum-sized electorate returned an SNP MP for several years so perhaps I'm simply not coming into contact with them. But to your point about standing stones and cairns and shit. Place is strewn with them.<br /><br />It kind of gives the lie to global warming. Fucking Scotland and Northern England and Wales and Western and Northern Ireland are largely bleak, desolate shitholes. Practically uninhabitable and uninhabited except for the lack of ambition and inertia of those who happen to be born there. Even 21st century man with all his fertilizers and machines can't get fuck all to grow there. Trees on Lewis look more like bonsai plants than the towering oaks of Sussex. Yet we're to believe that 2,000 and more years ago the land was able to support people with the spare time to build religious gathering places? Even today I'd, like most of the inhabitants, be content to stay indoors and drink myself to death.<br /><br />It simply <b>must</b> have had a more temperate climate 5,000 or so years ago. It simply is not credible that folk were living there engaged in agriculture if the weather was the same as it is these days let alone, we are told, 5 or 10C colder.<br /><br />You don't find intricate buildings and stone circles built by the sparse inhabitants of the tundras of Canada and Siberia because they don't have the fucking time or energy left after scratching a living from one day to the next. The UK <b>must</b> have been warmer and more temperate 5,000 years ago than it is today.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-89840728686874971602013-11-12T07:52:09.145+00:002013-11-12T07:52:09.145+00:00There's something about living on an island wh...There's something about living on an island which subtly alters ones psychological setup for the remainder of one's days. I had the great good fortune to live and work on Holy Island (the other one, off Arran) in the early 70s and my awareness of weather, tides and the night sky has never left me. Neither has the cheerful response of the shopkeepers in Lamlash when asked for an out-of-stock item - like bloody flour - "Och but we're waiting for the puffer ..."<br /><br />Well done with Harris too. I'm only in my 60s and the same thoughts have occurred to me. When my old chum finally decides to go off in what, I am certain, will be his final blaze of glory I will probably not share my humble lodgings with another.Caratacushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03676339602955090535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-7539170519170181142013-11-11T23:45:37.820+00:002013-11-11T23:45:37.820+00:00Well there's good news Mr I. My little pug &qu...Well there's good news Mr I. My little pug "Turtle" sends his best.Mikenoreply@blogger.com