Coraline

Took Simon and a friend to see Coraline 3D on Saturday; a great adaptation of a gothic book by Neil Gaiman. 3D technology is used intelligently to bring stop-motion style animation to life and sensibly avoiding cheap frights. The story unfolds slowly, building the expectation and shifting into Hitchcock-like suggestions that all is not as it seems.

Was it worth the hour and a half drive into Edinburgh with 35 minute traffic jam at Leith on a nearly empty tank ? Hmm.

You can't teach a chicken old jokes

We live on the edge of town, the magnificent southern uplands rolling away from just behind our house. Bonnington Road narrows from a broad avenue of fine Edwardian houses to a country lane winding deep into the Manor Valley. Skylarks overhead, rounded fields ploughed over centuries; cows, horses, sheep, occasional grand farmhouses, a ring of heather-patched hills and, of course, free-range chickens.

Simon and I have taken to cycling out here, taking the level road along Bonnington, puffing slightly up over the cattle grid mid-way, sometimes doing the full circle and mounting an assault on the Sware hill. A long near-vertical pushing a bike.

Yesterday we stopped, as usual, to view the free-range chicken farm where eggs can be bought from the honesty box at the end of the farm driveway. These chooks truly free range, radiating out from their giant shed across two fields, bobbing and scratching like so many clockwork toys. The artists and creatives amongst them can be seen in the farther fields, around the edges and less frequented rises and hollows. Around the corner, a ragged brigade had even escaped the fields, striding down the road, finding tasty morsels in the long grass. A troupe of wandering minstrels in their shreds and patches, they scattered noisily to the shelter of the verges as we cycled by.

Further on one was not so lucky; surprised by one of the infrequent cars it was food for crows, a bloody sight.

What a way to go though, for a chicken.

air traffic over 24 hours

Black Ice

I'm aiming to walk up the hill by our house every day. This morning the road up was thick with grit and salt ploughed into ruts by cars and farm machines, then frozen over in the sub-zero night. I picked my way up the hill, slipping a couple of times on the frictionless black ice and doing one of those Tintin flailings; a windmill of arms and legs that doesn't quite hit the ground nor spill a drop of tea. More photos of course and a dose of dazzling sunshine glancing off the white fields.

I didn't get the job, just a rejection letter. The certainty of it is a whole lot better than the waiting, though, and I'm over it already. Not sure what's next, but something will turn up. I was reading an article this morning about the 11:11 phenomenon, and while the actual numeral 11 thing doesn't work for me I get the principle of seemingly recurrent trivial events pointing to some underlying direction or 'prompting' or 'flow'. Not sure if there's my own personal Morpheus out there hinting obsurely at the matrix, but I enjoy the idea. It's a call to tune in to the subtleties, the ebb and flow.