Faith of our fathers!

Saturday 7:45 p.m.
                            I was in St Mary's Cathedral last night since the Domestic Bliss was performing in the chorus backing Capella Nova who were singing plain chant and stuff like that. Catholic music mainly from way back when. This is a perfect event for me. It wasn't busy and I could sit in the half lotus and close my eyes. No one in a church is going to bat an eye if you've got yours closed! I read once that listening to classical music can effect your brains waves a bit like meditation .. but it you can concentrate you mind and just let the sound go through you. Heavenly it was. The tears were streaming down my face a good bit of the time. I don't know why that is. There was a time when I didn't cry for about twenty years, but these days I weep when I hear the French National Anthem!! Dearie me! It was brilliant though.
                          The catholics have the best music. No doubt about it. I was once in Nice cathedral and there was an orchestra and hundreds of folk in the choir. They were doing classical stuff like bits of masses, stuff like Mozart's Requiem. The ridiculous thing was that the mass all these things were written for is no longer performed. The Tridentine Rite was abandoned for some Methodist crap just when I stopped going back about 1968 or 1969. I think the Nazi Papa is a secret fan though.

Another Bottie Afternoon!

Thursday 9:40 p.m.
                             I thought I'd check out the new batch of home brew last night, the one that blew the lid off the barrel. That might have been a hint! I wasn't expecting it to be that strong. Anyway, I stuck the last post on facebook and got two very complimentary messages about it before I took it down when I got to the machine this morning.
                             Very slow start to the day, as you might imagine. But I went to the Botanics this afternoon and sat under another tree for an hour and a half. I took the top two snaps there. Interesting patterns on the grass at Inverleith Park from the Moonwalk set up at the weekend, which I came across on the way to the allotment. I took the photie of the sweet peas on the way home after doing a bit of meditating and weeding. The Domestic Bliss is out singing and dancing this evening and I've been meditating in the lobby. I'll be back there soon.
                            Somebody bought a copy of the Demon Masters book from Kindle, the first one of that. Hurrah! Two of the other books have sold a couple and that's that. A publisher contacted me about the crime thriller, but I think it is the phonus balonus. Interesting that someone even noticed it.

The evil bourgeois and the new age.

Wednesday or Thursday 10:35 p.m.
                                                      We lived in a dugout hole in the ground and my name was Patrick. My several elder brothers were all called Patrick because there were no snakes around. Every other kind of pestilence had taken them down when they were babies, and they had gone to heaven without having to do any work, and I was the last Patrick. As a child, once I could sit up, they placed me in front of the fire and covered my nether regions with moss, but sometimes there was no moss and I just sat there. All around me the pigs and the dogs and the human beings squabbled and fought, and sometimes tried to kill each other. But they were always nice to me since all the other Patricks had died young, and everyone knows that only Protestants hate babies, and that's why they only have two of them, one real one, and another in case the first one dies.
                                                     Sometimes, when I was very young, I got smacked when I strayed towards the fire, but other than that I was left alone, and, in fact, I didn't have a name until I was about five when all the grown ups had decided that I might not die suddenly. Tentatively, I was called Patrick, like the other Patricks who had gone before.
                                                   When my auld maw got old, everyone was amazed because being old in those times meant that you lived till you were about thirty five, but when my auld maw got old, everyone was so amazed that they sat around and talked to her and asked her what it was like to be so old, and no one ever expected to be as old as she was. And she told us about the dragons that used to inhabit the land, and the elves, and the other fabulous beasts, and I could hear her telling this to the other bigger children when I sat there coming into understanding, in the ashes beside the fire.
                                               And when the auld maw could not look after herself properly, no one was surprised or bothered about this because, really, no one tried to look after themselves and no one could by themselves. There was just the wee ones sitting in the ashes by the fire, and the big ones fighting and squabbling and the old ones smoking their pipes by the fire near the wee ones, and hitting their fingers when they were going to get burned.
                                               What's all this about, Hotboy? I hate them, Jack, and I'm sorry that I do. They hate each other more than I could ever do! The evil bourgeois with their gardens and their walls and their different kinds of child and old people abuse, and all of that. I hate the compassionless, selfish basturns, every one. And I hope there is a hell waiting for them. I really do!

My kind of day!

Tuesday 6:00 p.m.
                            What a lovely day I had today! The first meditation lasted two hours. You have a wee break and then another meditation, and then you have to have lunch and a wee nap. This is a great way to start the day.
                             After the wee nap, I went up to the allotment and the weather was lovely and sunny. I sat outside and meditated and then I did a wee bit of weeding. Then I went across to the Botanics and sat meditating under a wonderful big chestnut tree.
                            If the flatheids can just hold it together, what a wonderful couple of years I'm going to have. Then I'll die happy!
                            You might think this sounds like a very boring day, but the less I do the more exciting it gets. The meditations are so dynamic, absorbing and interesting. I must have done a bit over four hours today. I do another couple of hours this evening .... and  ... Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!
                            The first three photies are of the allotment. The cabbages are coming along great. The last two are from where I was sitting in the Botanics. There was nothing much happening in the sky today since the weather was so good, but it looks as if it might get a bit interesting later on!
                           

Back to the nun!

Tuesday 1:20 a.m.
                           I did go up to the Samye Dzong tonight to sit for an hour with the nun and about ten other people. Today I've done hardly any meditating, about three hours, but I did spend all afternoon on the Cyclists book. I'm so pleased to have finished with that. I was swithering about whether to stick that up on Kindle due to the amount of over the top sex there is in it, but it is a true account of my time at the boxing and about my wonderful writings, though the perspective is a bit jaundiced. On the other hand, I did write it and the money I got for it did take me to India and Nepal, and I got the Buddha book out of that, so ...
                           I did a hundred prostrations when I got back from the meditations, and then ten of Mr Iyengar's jumpings, then six three minute rounds of shadow boxing the the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle. For a fat, drunken basturn I'm still quite fit.
                           All I'm waiting for is the kiddo to get another book cover to me and that'll be all the books up on Kindle. And I can put all that behind me. When the pension thing comes through, I'll go to the Samye and seek out the man.
                            The last of these photies wasn't taken today. It's a mistake. Anyway, it does show the "unexpected seascapes" Robert Louis Stevenson said were characteristic of Edinburgh. I didn't understand that remark when I first read it, but that's the view he would have had coming home from the uni. You can see the Forth.

Baldy!

Monday 12:15 p.m.
                             Brian Wilson kindly gave me a hair remover for my birthday, but after one shot of it, nobody would cut my hair. So I finally did it myself on Saturday evening. I'd been sprouting hair since the start of February, so that was a weight off my mind!
                             Also, I phoned the rest and be thankful works pension people this morning, and they haven't forgotten me. I'm on the list of old people still to do. Hurrah!!
                             One of the photies is of the Moonwalk pavilion in Inverleith Park. Well done to the thousands of folk who did the marathon walk for breast cancer.
                              Despite the distractions, I'm getting warmth in almost every vase breath. And I've promised myself that I'll start back at the Monday night meditations with the nun tonight.

David Benioff

Sunday 2:00 a.m.

                         Flicking the channels this evening as I polished off the last of the home brew. Troy was on. Brad Pitt is in it. I admire Brad Pitt because he had done his time when he needed to in the gym. Peter O' Toole was holding our end up for great acting. Christ, he must have been in his eighties when he was playing Priam. Anyway, at the end of this not so wonderful movie (maybe if you're an American fourteen year old ... ) I noticed that the screenplay was by David Benioff. 

                         He must have read the Illiad, which is more than I can remember doing. Once on a Greek island holiday I read The Odyssey, but ... Everybody should have read the Illiad. Or the Lliad. 

                         David Benioff wrote a brilliant book called The City of Thieves. About the siege of Leningrad in the Second World War. Really wonderful novel. It's about a David Balfour and Allan Breck kind of duo looking for some eggs. Much better than anything I could ever get near writing. Good thing about the jobbie I once had was getting kids to read stuff like that. 

                         Once I'm in this bar in Stockbridge with the Domestic Bliss and I gets the beers in and the barman looks oddly familiar. The second time I go up to the bar, I ask him if he's Mathew blah blah. The kid had long hair at school and played in a very good blues band, as I discovered later. He said: You were my school librarian. You got me to read Charles Bukowski. And so I did. Ham and Rye. A great book! Apart from all the crap ... maybe doing a wee bit of good here and there!