SCENERY Today at lunchtime was another 40 minutes by the side of the river. A couple of lovers were sat upon the rock from which I had, yesterday, made some sketches of the stone and the water, attempting to calculate how the movement, liquidity and varying focal depths might be rendered using a black biro on cheap writing paper. I made more attempts today, from a different spot. A (most probably retired) gentleman manouvered past me towards, as it later turned out for him, the wrong way as I sketched from a timber platform suspended around the base of a classical folly called St. Bernard's Well: erected, " at the sole expense of Francis Garden, Esq. of Troupe, one of the senators of the College of Justice" in 1789. Of the manouvering, the cyclist remarked that the excercise, given the tight dimensional constraints, would be achievable with me remaining in the seated position 'because we have time'. Farther downstream, a young woman sat in the lotus position on a bench, singing to herself. The results of my sketching are, of course, that of an amateur of scant practice. However, I've found the process of looking and hearing in the riverine environment strangely related to, but like a soothingly differentiated form of the manipulation of all the setting-out computer aided design plotfiles and their associated cross-referenced files (three levels; two sheets per level; 3 reference files per sheet) to be dealt with before and after these lunchtimes. Complexity is a tormenting fascination. PICNICS Picnic. 'A fashionable entertainment' enthuses the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The word lies between 'Pickwickian' and 'Picoid', which means 'like woodpeckers'. How bucolic. However, the fashion these days is for the artificial landscape: concrete jungles and... that vista of polished timber known as the bowling alley. The latter is to be found, Edinburgh-wise, in Fountainbridge: http://www.bowluk.co.uk/CentreDetails.asp?Centre=Edinburgh%20Megabowl&Location=Edinburgh There's a link to a map there, too. The suggestion is as follows: I thought maybe whoever might like to, could go bowling there starting, say, at 2pm on the 15th September, 2001, beacause Mister 'Breams' Jeremy is coming to visit from far away, and he seems like a really nice sorta guy. 15th is a Saturday, btw, and, so, hopefully, many lovely people will chalk it onto their personal blackboards. Even if you're decidedly unlovely, you're still really, really welcome. It's not stopping yours truly, after all... but don't let that put you off :). Buses go there from the centre of town (it's within walking distance too, if you know where you're going). Unfortunately, the private jets will have to be left at the airport so... book that limo now. Had we done the picnic a few days ago, we'd have been able to celebrate Sean Connerysh' 71st birthday in his birthplace. Fountainbridge is exactly like all the glamorous settings from the Bond movies, given sufficient imagination. I suppose if you were to nick one of the local's DB5's, though, it would have the kind of manually operated ejector seat known as a shove out the door sideways rather than a rocket-propelled exit upwards. Q, unfortunately, is no longer around to advise upon the possibility of customisations. ... And, erm, if no one says they're going to come I suggest we gate crash Harry's flatwarming party in Glasgow instead. Please E-mail me with complaints, comments, alternative suggestions or whatever takes your fancy at present 'cause, to be honest, I'm a bit lost as to where to go from this initial suggestion:) MUSIC Miss Llew (guys are supposed to namecheck Llew like the girls are supposed to namecheck Chu) would probably be horrified if I attempted to purchase Hefner's 'Dead Media' from Amazon so, any other suggestions? I want this song that has 'Peppermint' in the title: here was me thinking Hefner did dirges and Peelie plays this terribly cute, slightly melancholy number of theirs, with analogue bleeps and squirts and a bit like, eek! Yazoo. Or Maybe not: I only heard it once, whilst doing something else, i.e. chatting on #sini. This week's CD recommendation: EMI presents the magic of RONNIE RONALDE [thanking 'Rich' Richard for remembering the name off the Peelie show, with assistance from an electromagnetic recording] he was a massive star of light entertainment and ... whistles... a lot. One imagines James Bond at 5am in the late forties on his Milk float in Fountainbridge (he used to be a milkman, did our Shonne). Whistling. Picoid stylee. LONG POST This does seem like a long post. I'm still not really sure if long posts are good, because they took ages to write; or bad, because they presume one will spend ages reading it. OTHER PEOPLE I recently read Dimitra and Dahling posts at breakfast, which were lovely. I wrote a post in response which I knew I wouldn't sent and I didn't, but your posts gave me cause to think, even if I can't remember exactly what, at the moment. Pinefox seems to be in a cabal involving real people like 'Mr. Moore' 'Trousers' and a guy living, vicariously, one might add, in the 'Saracen's Head'.. oh yes.. 'Mr. Miller' alongside the likes of Molly Bloom and literary fictions mingled, to disarming effect, with literary facts. Rob from the sea and another Llew post, something from Velocity; Mandee's Chandler... it's well, 1400 or so people... OTHER FICTIONAL PEOPLE Ms. Francine Euro-Mark was a collector of letters. Having spent the greatest part of her... If I go on any more you might think I'm meaning something, which wouldn't do at all:) Gordon +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+