I Walk To Dundee (in preparation) for the No Surrender Walk ..er, wearing fashion shoes.

Since I'm planning to walk the coastal path in its entirety * I thought I'd go scope out Tentsmuir having never done that part of the walk. I also thought I would casually do some shopping when I got to Dundee. I started early after dropping Jakers at his nursery. I didn't buy any food, instead opting for a litre of ersatz red bull. I wasn't hungry at all thanks to all the sugar but I had a mahoosive headache by the time I reached Tayport. I've decided I need a proper hydration pack as I never have enough water on these trips. First of all I totally forgot that the walk starts out by the Old Course Hotel but to be fair they were setting up for the Open so I doubt anything but the cycle path was an option. After Guardbridge I found the CP was well sign-posted out to Leuchars and to the start of the Tentsmuir section. Once you leave all the Air Base weirdness the walk takes on a remote kind of beauty. Actually if you're not fond of foresty then this is the best bit of the walk! I didnae take many photos as this was a practice run & besides my camera battery was pretty dead. I did see a sign( by the path out of Leuchars) saying "Warning private land - danger of falling trees".I love those idiotic signs. I saw a red squirrel, deer, swans & baby swans (goslings?) and some sort of large bird of prey which startled me by flying out of a tree, and a submarine. More of that later.
Tentsmuir is lovely (er, I suppose) but it might be nicer to walk round by the beach and have a view and see all the pill boxes and anti-tank stuff. I just found it a bit dull walking along the road (through Tentsmuir) to the picnic bit, dodging cars and bikes. I noticed later that there's a cycle path that cuts right through to Lundin Bridge which would have saved an hour or so but I wanted to do the CP properly or at least see how long it would take. There are honestly bits that you would want to hitch a ride. They are that dull. Is that cheating? I have to admit that when I saw how far off Tayport looked from Tentsmuir Point, I could have wept. I nearly threw in the towel but the massive amounts of sugar and caffeine gave me some ill-judged determination.
into Dundee.It didn't take that long to get to Tayport and I found the path well sign-posted to the harbour and then out towards the road bridge. I found myself on another cycle path. Not sure if that's right or not. I saw a couple of nice lighthouses (or light-hice?) and wondered if I was maybe on the less scenic track. (You can take a lower path & rejoin the cycle path) I bought some expensive juice at the carpark, sat down for a bit and then psyched myself up for the walk over the road bridge. This was fine until half way over when I started to feel decidedly sore & a bit lame. I slowed right down for the last quarter and I had to limp out the door and down the stairs & into Dundee. I was 2 to 3 hours behind any imagined schedule and limping like a lame old lame-ass thing.
I took some photos by the bridge with my phone & having just looked at them I noticed a submarine-type-apparition in one of the pics. Weird man! The soviets were following me(?)
Anyway, I could only face walking as far as the junk shop up from the bus station. They had a lovely Burns bass in the window but the shop was shut sadly - they often are after 4pm. Some shopping trip!
I went to the pub next door & they had 'Golden Brown' playing and a bloke was talking about "wreck-the-hoose-juice" which cheered me up. I went to HMV and bought the REd Riding
Trilogy which I had been hankering after for a while. Oh, and I noticed that if you limp really badly - try it across busy roads - you get some quite curious and sympathetic sort of looks/comments...mostly from the opposite sex, which is good. Then I got the bus home.
Ok - so none of this bodes well for my planned charity walk which is 82 miles long but I could always get pushed round in a wheelbarrow by Vicster. She's built like an ox!

Vicster Quote - "You walked 18 miles, from St Andrews to Dundee, through a forest....in fashion shoes?"


* In memory of my friend Tommy - he had the "No Surrender" mentality

"Everybody likes.....The Eagles"

Ok so maybe I need to change the old '100 Day' blog title but it's a New Era for ole Beesly too. Maybe a good time to revive the blog. I just saw a football match. An important one. A memorial for my friend Tommy. It was good, I mean they lost badly but it was still good and they fought well. I could get back into this, I think, the old football mularkey. Maybe supporting your local team ain't such a bad idea. They're called The Cupar Eagles by the way. Terrible link but here goes - I'll be playing for the Howie Fife Experience at a gig (of sorts) in the Golf Tavern , Cupar tomorrow night. Can't remember the last time I played in Cupar....oh wait, I can, but that was in The Corn Exchange. I can't remember the last time I played in a pub. I'm excited. Been learning to sing and play bass at the same time - Just singing on its own is hard enough. Oh, & I get to play a bit of guitar here and there but just the simple stuff. I'm really really enjoying it. Maybe if you live in the area you might like to come along. It'll be fun. We play country/Americana/Misericana...all covers. We might play The Eagles. After all, everybody likes the Eagles... Don't they?

He's Back In The Bland!

Yeah yeah I know, I've been away for a while but I'm sure nobody dropped down dead (except Vic, almost) in my absence. There's been some excitement to report. We spent the night (last Sat) in A & E, Fundee. We went to see Paranormal Activity. We've been sledging. I saw my son do his Nativity play before going to Stirling. I went to Stirling (nr Tillicoulty, nr Sterling, nr Dollar etc). We played some Bluegrass. Oh, I had to get a working bass cab in Fundee with 15 mins to spare on the day of that gig too. SDO reunion went pretty well BTW.

First up, I just want to say that Paranormal Activity was deeply over-rated. Not pants but very over-hyped like the Blair Atholl Project. The scariest moment was when some sick usherette wifey (large, wearing black-out clothes) decided it was a good idea to poke her arm round a corner and tap a lady on the shoulder to tell her her feet shouldn't be up on the seats! Oddly enough the poor wifey screamed like my cousin Peter in 1995 when he saw the T.Rex appear in Jurassic Park, i.e - very loudly. I got a fright, actually. Ok, so maybe there was some tension in the room after all.

Saw my son in his Nativity play. He was the donkey. He looked really bored. Christianity, huh?

He'll probably be a pagan or a member of a Shinto cult by the time he's 14. I can't wait.

We went sledging too. That was fun until last night when we out in the dark full of mullered wine & I practically broke my back & found the sledge broken in two at the the bottom of the hill. All gigs are off again. I blame Vickers. Oh yeah, & last week Vicky fell over a drain before we set off hitching (at midnight from Dundee!) and smashed up her face & inhaled some gravel. We got to sleep in a waiting room for a few hrs while she waited to see some bored looking specialist. At least it got us out the cold while we waited for a train at 7am.

So, yeah, music ...yeah? The music is going just great, don't you worry about that. I've done loads of ..er, bluegrass bass practice and run around buying cabinets with money what ain't mine. It's all good. I probably won't be blogging any more til just after Xmas. Bet you can hardly wait.

P.S - Captain Geeko (KC's drummist in waiting) was telling me how easy the bass was, having only 4 strings and all that so I went out and got a 23 string bass to shut his fat stupid face up. Haha

The Wizard's Electronica Sleeve

Ok so this has been a tough first weekend. Hard to be creative when you can barely stand up or you keep being sick on/in your instrument(sorry). Did my bluegrass practice like a good little boy. Quite good fun & surprised myself by remembering some of the keys/chords/structure. It ain't rocket science though. The thing with bluegrass is (I once read) that you can play at any level - you can join in with a basic accompanyment or go off into solo noodling. I can't be arsed with that so less is more seems to work for me. Anyway back to the project - I've decided to work more with my 8-track recorder rather than my PC. I'll still use the PC for editing but I like the simplicity of the 8-track. I dug out another abandoned song from my computer & it basically needs to be started from afresh. It pains me but it's just too complicated & has been edited to death & sounds unnatural as hell. Dance music might work well done like that but acoustic stuff not so much. I need to ditch the umpteen vocal tracks & maybe get some proper performances down on the 8 track. Oh, & how do you replace drum sounds and still keep the groove of the original track? That's the next thing I need to work on. Maybe I should have paid more attention in electronica school.

Blurghhh - No blog today, (I mean even less gubbins to report than usual) cos unfortunately we got loaded in Fundee by mistake. I took over a busted bass amp to get fixed & Vicster did some shopping & we had a coffee in Borders as it crumbled to a sales dust around us (sad). We then went for a pint which weirdly turned into 4 or 5 as we kept missing trains. Then we got off the train and accidentally fell into The Golf Tavern & got more crunk & now I've got a mahoosive headache & no 100 blog/work done. I promise I'll do a couple of hours today/tomorrow...whatever. Is it gyro day?

Glitch Repair Man

Today I woke up and hundreds of marauding buddhist terrorists were attacking our house. They weren't really all that bad - fairly ill-disciplined & a bit sh*tey. I easily repelled them but not before they got in some well-aimed shots at my head using bags of talcum powder & MDMA.

(LOve bombs apparently) So anyway tonight I did a lot of listening. I listened to Vicster throttle some chords out of my electric guitar after forcing her to accept a lesson. She was a good pupil and afterwards showed me how I had contradicted my own teaching 14 times - a new record!

So yeah, I listened back to some tracks I've been working on & then the real work began which involved fixing a glitch on my song "Polyamory Blues". It turned out to be on the bass track...quelle surprise! It took literally minutes to fix. I felt smug - like a lazy genius. Here's some pictures of us :- (me repelling one of the Findhorn Fundamentalist Transcendentalist Mentalists & me, erm...rubbing out mistakes on my bass)#

# - It's conceptual, ok?

Exciting Day 3

Ok so today I got up and bungee-jumped off the Blackpool tower-sized monstrosity across the road. Ok, that was a lie - I was supposed to re-do those guitar recordings in the duvet studio but I got distracted by a french film. I did however practice some more & worked out a structure & scribbled it down on paper. Vicster# saw me do it. Ask her. As promised, here is a nice Athena print of a cute kid.

# - Vicky did loads, absolutely loads of guitar practice too, she sweared it.