Pile them high

Somehow in the rush to build new housing around Queen Street/Humber Street area the squat little building on the corner of Blanket Row has acquired three storeys of  new places to call home. The whole of Blanket Row, for so long just waste ground,  is now a big building site with execrable or is that executive (I tend to confuse the two) apartments springing up for folk to work off their mortgages on (or for property companies to buy up wholesale and rent out) and as the sign says this is city living at its best.

Scott's Square was once somewhere down there, a speculative venture (aka a slum) packing in as many properties as the law and the Council would allow. Plus ça change as they say in the city of culture.

Don't muck about with the moon

I love my dear Redeemer,
My Creator, too, as well,
And, oh, that filthy Devil
Should stay below in Hell.
I cry to Mr. Eisenhower,
Please grant me this great boon:
Don't muck about, don't muck about,
Don't muck about with the moon.

                                                 Brendan Behan

They have been gassing on in the media about how it's fifty years ago today since the USA spent its pocket money on sending two chaps to step out on the moon. It has reminded me of how boring and pointless it all was, the seemingly endless speculation before it happened, the endless repeats of that tedious phrase ("One small step for an space-suited American ...") the grainy images of the US flag gently fluttering in the breeze ... and how we, mankind that is, were supposed to have taken a giant leap ... It was all bollocks really, serving no purpose, an expensive wheeze, a diversion from the war in Vietnam that was dragging on and on and killing thousands of people, a gigantic middle finger to the Soviets ... as Kennedy said  "We choose to go the moon not because it is easy but because those commie bastards might get there first ..." 

Here's the auld quare fellow himself; enjoy.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

Somebody loves me, I wonder who ...

Maybe it's you ...

Makin' Pumpkins

I'm new to pumpkins, a bit of a pumpkin virgin, as it were  ... it was Margot's idea to grow some this year, it'll be a fun, she said, a bit of a laugh ... anyway through the cold of May nothing grew then in June a few leaves then turn July and  whoosh they filled the little plastic green house ... then tendrils? nobody told me about tendrils, nor the hairy almost spiky stems. Then the flower buds which were numerous but just sat there until yesterday when they turned a weird yellow then this morning I go down to find these ridiculous beauties ... but I read these are male flowers and these big bad boys need a female flower in order that things can progress, the technical term is 'fruit set' although you may call it something else ...  I'm told that the female flowers will definitely be along later but they only open early morning and close in the afternoon (bit like some shops I know) ... and hand pollination may be needed if the insects can't manage an early morning rendezvous ... and there, as it were, will go my pumpkin virginity.