Home Again!

Sunday 9:35 p.m.
To get to Kings Langley, near Watford, we had to ask for directions several times and everyone in Engerland seemed very nice. Try asking for directions in France and see how you get on. But I've never been sure about nice people. They're a bit two dimensional. It's a shame that soon we may break up the political union with these folk, but for some reason they have a propensity to vote Tory. Dearie me.

I don't like restaurants. I used to like restaurants, but that was when I had a few bob. Even then, I didn't like most restaurants. It's the servants. I hate servants, or any kind of servility. Inadequates such as the evil bourgeois like the servant angle because they can feel superior. I hate fawning and scraping. I hate all the manners in restaurants.

The restaurants in Yugoslavia before the shit hit the fan were great. Cooperatives. Plates full of meat and no servility.

If I was going to pick a restaurant, I'd pick a French restaurant. I think the froggies love food. The froggies know about food and care about it. What kind of moron would want to eat in a Mexican restaurant? What do the Mexicans know about food?

There is no more delicious food than home made bread toasted and buttered and covered in banana. There is nothing to equal it.

So we were in a Bangladeshi restaurant today. Toe curling embarrassments are what you get in restaurants run by folk from the sub continent. Anywhere that serves folk food that burns your mouth is ... anyway, nothing was too burny in this Bangladeshi restaurant; nothing that I had to eat anyway. Not that I wanted to eat it or even be there. Certainly not.

The Domestic Bliss ordered salmon something. What do the Bangladeshis know about salmon? Where are the salmon rivers in Bangladesh? She sent it back. Toe curling, cringeing ... I hate restaurants. I hate being in them. They are the haunts of the evil bourgeois and other disgusting people ... unless they're French of course. It was an award winning restaurant in a very old building with thick walls. Even the thick walls couldn't completely extinguish the sound of the screaming and shouting that took place in the kitchen after the salmon was sent back. I'd rather poke my eyes out than go to another Indian, or Bangladeshi ... no wonder they spit in the food. I'd spit in the fung food if I had to work in a bowing and scraping toadying hole like one of them.

Two of the photies are of English trees. One of a giant wasp sculpture in Watford and the other is of the spaceship of the Alien Creatures from Outer Space.

Friday Night!

Friday 9:30 p.m.
I've got a disease. I felt it coming on today whilst sitting at the foot of the auld maw's bed. A sneezing and spluttering disease. Sometimes I've had these diseases and mysteriously they have disappeared by the next day. I hope this is the case this time since I'm flying to Luton tomorrow at some ungodly hour to go see the kiddo. Seeing the kiddo will be fine. Everything else will be crap, especially if I have a proper cold and not whatever these other masquerading basturn mimic diseases are!

It is very rare for me not to meditate during the course of a whole day. I think the last time this happened was when I was in London to visit the kiddo. Being a flatheid all day is fung horrible. I have no sympathy right now for those who are flatheided all day every day because (at least for the ones who know me) it's their own blinking fault. But the flatheids, of course, don't know they're flatheids and they don't know what I'm missing. What I'm missing is a chance to progress. I hate that. It's a whole day wasted really out of my increasingly short life. This trip is for my birthday.

I got the running shoes with Popeye's money and the drawing was a birthday gift from the kiddo.

I thought the mobile phone was funged since the photies weren't arriving in the Yahoo mailbox, but the Yahoo thingy has been changed and they are now landing in the spam box. If it had been funged, I would have saved myself a tenner a month. Anyway, one of the photies has a statue on a column in it. Almost all of the folk who come to this bloggy know Edinburgh. Do you know that column? Where was the photie taken?

I'm starting to get fed up with the tree photies. Most of them are black and white although ... that's the colour of the world.

Since I stopped smoking joints last Monday, I've had a drink every night. Tonight I thought I shouldn't drink and today I cadged a fag off my Auntie Kathy so I could roll a joint with the tottie wee bit of cannybliss I had left from last Monday. But I went out and bought four bottles of weissbier anyway.

Just before that, I was having a great meditation. In fact, I felt crap before the meditation and wonderful during it, with heat and everything. Then, as soon as I stopped meditating, I felt crap again. And went out for some beer.

I am a disgrace, amn't I, Jack? Yes, you are, Hotboy. But somehow you have been blessed. But what did I get blessed with, Jack? And how did this blessing function? How should I know, Hotboy? But you have been blessed. You are the beloved. Fung knows why!

A little later. I sometimes really enjoy clicking on these black and white photies of trees and sky. I don't know why. I just really like looking at them. Another disease!

Sweet Thursday!

Thursday 11:10 a.m.
I wasn't ready to meditate this morning till 9 a.m. Then In Our Time came on Radio 4. Best of radio shows! Anyway, this week they were discussing Calvinism and since so many of my fellow countrymen have been irrevocable damaged by the heavy duty, Calvinist toilet training regimes, I thought I'd listen on. No mention of the bliss whatsoever. Just another example of the load of bull folk can come up with when they try to apply logic and intellect to concepts like God, which is basically beyond conceptualisation if it's anything at all. Christ should have stuck it into the Sermon on the Mount. And ye who think ye are smart will end up talking a lot of crap!

Anyway, the bliss started to come on as I sat there listening. You just have to sit still these days and something starts to happen. I noticed this beginning about seventeen years ago when I was in the usual boring menial jobbie and realised I could bring something on by gazing at the green dot on the computer monitor. Before then I'd always meditated with my eyes closed. The beginning of liberation, so it was!

Half eleven in the morning is one of my favourite times for meditating. Don't know why it's so good, but it usually is.

Today is all mine again! Tomorrow is for the auld maw and on Saturday I have to go to London to see the kiddo again. But today is mine. Hurrah!

2:50 p.m.
I must have put in more than four hours today so far. I haven't been out. It looks like a horrible wet day out there, but I'll have to go try to buy some running shoes. Bliss has been great and in bucketloads, but my concentration isn't fantastic today. Not much heat in the afternoon!

8:45 p.m.
I'm knackered so I'm giving up the bliss and taking to the piss. Bought a bottle of plonko collapso on the way back from buying the running shoes, which I got with Popeye's birthday present. I would have done better today, of course, if I hadn't drank four bottles of Erdinger last night. Oh, well. Probably managed over six hours sitting today. Could do better with less tiredness and better levels of concentration. Tomorrow on the train to the auld maw's will be great though. Everything does get better. It really does. Hurrah.

By the way, the Domestic Bliss says the Samye stuff with the grand fee is not as bad as it looks at first sight. The poor will be catered for as well.

My old man liked this story. The preacher was giving it laldy with the hellfire and brimstone ... And there will be a weeping and gnashing of teeth! Someone at the front speaks up. What if you don't have no teef? Teeth will be provided!

I'd really like to sit and watch a daft movie.

Heckling The Karmapa

Thursday 12:30 a.m.
The Samye Ling are asking for a thousand pounds to stay there over the time when the Karmapa is staying there this summer. I do not think St Francis Of Assisi would have asked you for a grand. If I only had a grand, I could be a millionaire.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christianity was always about the poor basturns!

Would I want to sit in a temple surrounded only by joes and josephines who were able to pay a grand for the privilege of being there? Kiss my Scottish democratic presbyterian arse before I would want to sit with such rich basturns as that! Since the nazi papa abolished Limbo, the evil bourgeois are all going to hell and serves them right.

If I was able to get in by the back door, I'd like to ask a few awkward questions.

1) Why are there two Karmapas? You'd think so called enlightened beings would be able to tell the difference, wouldn't you? I mean, the Sharmapa, who is supposed to recognise the karmapa, got the wrong one. Is that right?
2) Do you know the past, present and future from the word go, or do you have to mature into stuff like that through education, meditation, and whatnot?
3) Can you mark stones? The Karmapa is supposed to be able to mark stones and such with handprints, footprints, etc. Well, that's an easy test. If you can't do it, you're not the Karmapa. So what's the problem?

"Don't gie me any of yir... Don't gie me any of yir ... Don't gie me any of yir .... shite!" The wee man. Manky Music.

This morning I was so pleased. Last night I had quite a lot to drink since it was the first night with no tobacco or bob hope for a fortnight or so. But there was warmth in every vase breath. Much progress. Tomorrow is all mine. No flatheids. But I'm a wee bit wired tonight.

You don't need to believe in anything to do this juju. It's probably better if you don't believe in anything. In the Disbelieving Congregation of course we don't even believe in disbelieving.

What are we doing then, Hotboy? We're doing the bliss, Jack. And sometimes we're doing the heat and the bliss. And eventually we will be doing the emptiness, the heat and the bliss. But the mahasiddhas were anarchists, Jack! Fung anarchists!

Mare Trees and Scottish Bushfire!

Wednesday 6:45 p.m.

From Princes Street

Wednesday 6:35 p.m.

Deity Yoga

Monday 9:35 p.m.
I spent the usual Monday at the jobbie doing very little, but was so exhausted by this that I slept in for the nun again. An hour and a half zonked on the couch. Then I meditated up in the room for about an hour and a half. I'm mentioning this because it was wonderful. Progress, progress.

I haven't got any cash till Thursday and my credit card is now maxed out. What a fortunate creature I am! What I really need is for someone to take all the money off me when I get paid. Lead us not into temptation.

This heat thing isn't happening the way I was expecting. I thought you'd have to be able to visualise all the channels, etc., and then get the heat to rise up the central channel. This might be what you have to do eventually, but I don't think that's likely in my current environment. What seems to be happening at the moment is that the thing which seems to be opening up ... is this the central channel opening up? ... is getting more open and when that happens so does the heat, or warmth.

Of course, this is probably what would happen with any meditation. The deity yoga seems at the moment to be a kind of structure for this stuff to be going on in. Medieval European mystics sometimes got into bother with what was called Incendium Amoris, which is inner heat. I think the Tibetans have been doing stuff to make this safer.

We'll see. Do you find stuff like this interesting, Jack? The spam robots are riveted, Hotboy.

Deity Yoga is fabulous anyway. It really is even if you can't do it properly. Ecstasy at the generation stage. Can't wait!

The Thriller!

Monday.
I was so upset that the only person who had read the thriller/crime book I was working on before Christmas could only make snidey comments about it that I got someone else to read it. This boy has a proper job and reads about a hundred crime books and thrillers a year.

And he liked it. Liked the plotline and the bits with the dead woman hassling the hero. Pointed out three typos and thought I should take out two paragraphs his mother wouldn't like. He thought if I had to pad it out, I should do it with stuff about Edinburgh because that's the kind of thing that would help sell it to Scots abroad.

Of course, there are a million opinions about any book, but what you shouldn't do is just let any snidey basturn read your book for the first time because all they can see in it is moi, moi, moi!

Aside from all that malarkey, I weighed myself before and after the run yesterday. I lost three to four pounds weight. That's about three pints of sweat. Wait till the weather warms up!

Mastercard

Sunday 5:40 p.m.
Mastercard is the credit card I have. I owe the basturns £1300. I had a limit of £2,400. I have never been in any difficulties with these basturns; always paid some back in time, etc. So I'm down at the shop there and the card gets refused. What a surprise! I phoned the basturns up and it seems that they'd cut my limit from £2,400 to £1,300. They did this without informing me. No letter, no phonecall, no nothing. What a bunch of currants!

I told the boy I was a freelance broadcaster and journalist (which is what the accountant used to tell the Inland Revenue when I used to make money from writing) and the world would know.

I'm sure they were quaking in their boots when you told them that, Hotboy! Well, Jack, one should do what one can.

The old, toothless one and I did the run to Costorphine and up the Clermiston Road hill today. 1hr 37 mins. Beautiful day. Hardly noticed it on the way home, I was so funged!

Allotment time!

Saturday 8:15 p.m.
My wee brother Popeye sent me a cheque today for £60. What a surprise! He said it was for all the birthdays of mine he'd missed. I think I'll spend most of it on running shoes, which I would have bought if the offer to publish the BBBW had come with a cheque attached. If anyone else would like to send me a cheque for all the birthdays of mine they've missed, go ahead. Doesn't have to be a cheque. Could be jewels, or drugs, luncheon vouchers, airmiles, anything. Anything good.

Hotboy, it would make those folk feel more generous and less attached to their filthy lucre. Yes, it would, Jack. Spontaneous redistribution.

I went to the allotment today and dug up tatties. Then I ate some. I also set some fires and tried to sit in the hut after scorching the bush outside, but the hut filled up with smoke. Some of the ground seemed almost calcified, still holding fast so it's not properly thawed yet.

There was this boy on the Horizon programme this week who tried and tried to become a chess grandmaster, and failed. So he became a brain scientist to try to find out why this was.

So your brain on his laptop lights up with a distribution of blue dots. Depending on how many blue dots you've got where determines whether or not you can become a grandmaster. The joe can tell with kids who haven't played chess.

I thought this might provide succour for the mentally ill people who land on this blog, the folk who are so mentally ill that they don't realise they're mentally ill, the folk who don't meditate. Though they've generally never tried to meditate, it may be that it would be a waste of time for them anyway since they might well be the ones who are mentally handicapped as well as mentally ill.

Some cats got it and some cats aint.

Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am. What a fortunate creature I am!

I'm just going to sit down in front of the telly with the noise blockers on and continue with moi's investigations into the bliss!

Thursday's bliss!

Thursday 12:30 p.m.
Started meditating today at seven. I've done about just over three hours this morning. What a great day for surfing the oceans of bliss! And no mentally ill folk to bother with. None at all! Hurrah!

7:45 p.m.
Dozed off for two hours on the couch then went out to the library for the Domestic Bliss. The last time I went there I got my finger caught in the letter box and had to stop playing my guitar for weeks there. But I managed to get in and out this time unscathed. Bloody dangerous places libraries!

I've been smoking today. There is no excuse, but I thought I'd keep my crabbitness at bay for now.

Asceticism has a greek root about training for athletics. Well, if you were going to train for a marathon, you could drink and smoke as well, but it wouldn't help. I've got to get a grip on the purification this year. That means putting the Nicotine Dragon to the sword. I'm not bothered by beer when I've got joints, but they've both got to go, especially the tobacco. But everything. At least sometimes.

The meditation from 4:45 till 6:30 was just so good. Mega open, at least for me. Some time I hope there will be so much bliss that the pollutions will just get swamped by it. It was a bit like that. Peace and bliss. This is the first Thursday in weeks and weeks where I'm in alone during the evening after meditating for most of the day. Well, four or five hours today so far anyway. This is going to be an interesting evening!

10:10 p.m.
Very nice day indeed! This is what Thursdays should be like! Meditate as much as you can and have a whole day away from the mentally ill. That's the way to do it!

12:30 a.m.
I was going to go to bed, but sat up for another meditation. I'll go to bed soon. Might have put in about eight hours today. Haven't done much else though. Great last meditation!

Bus Stop Photies!

Wednesday 11:00 a.m.
When the Springtime will come
Oh, won't we have fun
We'll get out of jail
And we'll go on the bum.

Still at the jobbie. The photies were taken over the past couple of days whilst waiting for the bus on Princes Street.

5:00 p.m.
The old, toothless one and moi did the five hills run this afternoon in 36 minutes. Usually, we do it in 40 minutes. If we did it in 34 minutes, we could consider that running.

Unlike last week when the Unfortunate Ones were everywhere you looked, this week I have no appointments. Hurrah! Even more wonderful things are happening with the bliss. I may post about that later.

Mare Computery things!

Tuesday 10:45 p.m.
The boyfriend of the kiddo came round to work the computer for tickets, but had to fix it first. He had a laptop to help him. It seems the Belkin adapter, bobbly, beepy thing sometimes gets hot. The USB port apparatus isn't very good and this makes the waves in the Belkin thingy become discombobulated. At this point, it stops working for a while. Later on, it will start working again apparently.

This is a disgrace! A blight on the consumer! I want my money back!

While I was waiting for the boyfriend to sort the computery thing, I put on my noise blockers and, after smoking some soapbar, started to do the bliss. Far better than anything before was the bliss then. Last week, when he came here, I sat with the noise blockers on then did the trick with the headstand. Land on your bum, whack ... a few minutes of total bliss. This is family life! This is what it should become. God knows what this kiddo thinks he's fallen into.

Computery things!

Tuesday 3:40 p.m.
The computery thing in the living room stopped connecting to the internet. Then so did the one in the bedroom, so there might not be any postings from me over the next couple of days. We didn't do anything to the computery things. They just stopped working.

What a blight on the consumer these computery basturn things are! What else would you buy that doesn't work when you switch it on and you don't get your money back? What else requires you to become a teevee mechanic? I don't want to know how to fix computers. I really, really don't. I spent an hour last night trying to get these buggers reconnected.

It's just the start, Hotboy. I know, Jack. Fung them!

The Sustenance

Sunday 9:00 p.m.
The breakfast, lunch and dinner of champions! The only thing in the soup these days from the allotment is some onions, but such are their magic properties that the loaf can't help but levitate!

Newmains Trees

Sunday 8:45 p.m.
A computery person told me all about how emails happen. It seems they do not travel at the speed of light.

The road view is down the hill at Clermiston Road.

Clermiston Road

Friday 5:05 p.m.
The first time I ran up the hill on Clermiston Road down in Costorphine was around 1978. I stayed in Roseburn Terrace then with Jerry and that was after my second eviction in a series of three.

The five hills up to Queen Street are quite tasty and the back side of Arthur's Seat might give you pause for thought, but the prince of hills is the one that goes up Clermiston Road. I probably haven't run up that hill for twenty years, but I ran up it today. There and back took 1 hour 40 minutes. Twenty years ago I could do that run in 1 hour 10 minutes, so it's probably nine miles.

The old, toothless one was not with me today. I think he might have been getting taken to see the nursing homes of the future. I don't think he remembers running up Clermiston Road though he and moi and the Big Jambo ran up it every Sunday for years in the 1980s.

I think there might a correlation between hair loss and memory loss. The old, toothless one has hardly a hair on his head, and any that survive are just the wee lonesome grey ones the old codgers have.Just looking at him, you know he can't have long to go.

Anyway, his marbles are definitely going, so I might be able to con him into leaving me his collection of pornographic DVDs when he snuffs it. I could get him to sign a will before challenging him to a race up yon hill. Then just stand there after GO and watch him run up it like a maniac before keeling over half way.

The progeny of the evil bourgeois are very competitive!

I think I'll smoke the first joint of the day and have a wee lie down!

Liberton Thursday

Just After Midnight:
The photies were taken whilst to-ing and fro-ing to Liberton Hospital. The best meditations were in the morning. Managed about five and a half hours all in, but I was out all afternoon really. I'll try to do more when I'm straight tomorrow. I'm giving up all bad things tomorrow except the drugs.

I really like taking pictures of trees for some reason. I wonder if this is another disease. Maybe it will go away when the leaves come out. Maybe it's just bared naked trees that I'm into. I know I've got a problem, Jack. I know I've got a problem.

Emails

Thursday 10:42 a.m.
Was getting profoundly into disbelief there. I think you have to disbelieve in the things you think you know, or have found out. Like, all the stuff about the bliss, for instance. It's better for flatheids not to believe in the bliss anyway since it gives them some justification for behaving like morons.

But, Hotboy, you have to believe in some things? What, Jack? Well, ones and zeros. They exist as number things. They seem pretty fixed and unchanging. This is true, Jack, but even ones and zeros mean different things at different times, and might even look different depending on the font you're using. I think ones and zeros might be described as ideas, and ideas are definitely not fixed and unchanging. We have ideas about ideas surely. Hmmm?

The following definitely can't be true, surely. So this boy told me that emails when you send them split up into different wee bits and these wee bits flash across the system at the speed of light and then gather up again somehow and become the email you're looking at. Can someone tell me that this is what's supposed to be happening?

If such things as this are going on, and the air is full of teevee and radio stations, disbelieving in rebirth doesn't make much sense. Of course, believing in rebirth doesn't make any sense either.

If you don't believe in rebirth and I'm getting the bliss and you're not, well, that doesn't say a lot for you, does it?


The bliss is going off the scale again! Unfortunately, there's nothing but UnfortunateOnes from here till Monday. But much inspired by watching a video of the Buddha boy, I caught the name of his guru. Chi Ni Nyi Chen Guru. This boy is not googleable.

Doing Something Right!

Tuesday 10:00 a.m.
Slept in for the nun again last night, and wakened to be festooned with cakes and ale. Happy birthday to me! A bit disappointed at not being able to meditate though.

So whatever after-effects the German beers might have been having this morning were completely overwhelmed by the bliss. Yoga nidra. I'm lying there and wondering why bother to sit up. There was so much bliss lying flat! And it's just a breath away, a breath away, a breath away!

At the start of my 60th year what can I say? What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Happy Birthday to Moi!

Monday 12:40 p.m.
It's my birthday today. I'm now fifty nine years old. It is also the birthday of this bloggy stuff. It is five years old, I think.

For the first couple of years I was looking for a literary agent. Then I found one. Hurrah! Rich, I tell you! Riches beyond your wildest dreams.

The literary agent was very good indeed. He took two of my books to the Frankfort and London book fairs, something I'd always looked forward to. But he didn't sell them. Boo! Boo! Boo!

My assumption was that if you had a literary agent, you would get books published, but I know better now. This was bugger all to do with the agent. All an agent can do is get your stuff in front of editors and he did that, and the editors told him to fung off! C'est la vie.

There was a bit of excitement recently when it looked as if a publisher wanted to publish one of my books, and he still wants to publish it, but not till next summer. So no contract just yet. No contract means no money. No money means the deal isn't worth the paper it's not written on. In fact, the major upshot from these events is that I had to let the agent go! This was not a business decision since the agent was great. Within a month, I'll have another agent, but this one is my friend and knows no one in the business, and nothing about being an agent of course. Changing agents like this was not a business decision, but it might work out anyway.

My life expectancy was fifty two, the age my old man died at. So far I've had seven years in the gravy!! And this coincides with me taking refuge and starting in on this vajrayana juju, which makes me one of the most fortunate of fortunate creatures. A large part of the rest of my life is going to be spent in various stages of bliss. Beat that!

You can stay in a single room in Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu for just under twelve dollars US a night. If I only had a grand, I could be a millionaire!

The photies were taken this morning at the bus stop. It's light before eight now. Hurrah!

Bliss Diary!

Sunday 6:10 p.m.
Bliss diary. I did three and a bit hours before running. Then I went to the hut for an hour. You don't feel cold till you're coming home. Your hands seem to warm up when you sit in the hut. They're on separate knees so it seems odd. I'll go to the lobby now, waiting for the Domestic Bliss to come home.

8:15 p.m.
Managed another extraordinary hour there! That's why Thursdays are invaluable. You do the wonderful spade work all day and then Caramba! More lovely warmth, more bliss! Even more bliss! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!