Colleen ie Cecile Schott last night in Glasgow

Continued with some basic wiring under the baseboard. This time it was the pair of cables that will carry power to the platform lighting.

The platform lights still in their boxes

The pair of cables winding their way among the lampposts on top of the baseboard.

There were lots of exposed soldered joints at various points on the cables. The advice is that one should cover these up with insulating tape before installing them under the baseboard because sod's law dictates that two joints would be bound to come into contact with each other thus causing a short circuit.

Exposed joints

Covered up with tape

Next, it was back to coal miner mode.

And using the so-called self-adhesive cable clips AUGMENTED WITH SUPERGLUE, the lighting

Clip

cables were installed under the baseboard.

The addition of superglue has transformed these clips into an indispensable device for wiring the layout.

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Currently listening to:

Mark Padmore singing Schubert's song cycle Winterreise on BBC Radio 3.

There seem to be two versions of Mark Padmore, with and without locks:

A fine performance. I really enjoy listening to different artists tackling Schubert's two song cycles: The Miller's Song and Winterreise.

In the pre-recital discussion, Mark Padmore talked about the differences between what seem to me two very similar cycles: similar in emotional situation that is.

He said that the Miller's Song is a much more vivid and personal account about unrequited love, whereas Winterreise is more abstract and about despair in general: the tone of the former is tragic whereas the latter is grave.

I like listening to such discussions.

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Last night's dinner:

Macaroni cheese sauce with courgettes and sliced tomatoes

Prior to going into oven

 .Cost per head: £1.25

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Colleen (Cecile Schott):

 

To the Recital Rooms at Glasgow City Halls, last night, for a performance by 3 artists.

 

Got the start time wrong so missed the first act. The second act was John Cavanagh's "Electroscope".

 

Electroscope from my phone

 

 

But the star of the evening was a French singer who goes under the name of Colleen - real name Cecile Schott.

 

She was actually more of a performer than a singer. She used ancient stringed instruments but ran them (along with her voice) through electronic looping machines and the like. I do not have the words to describe how FANTASTIC she was except to say that she was very rhythmic, melodic and original.

 

 

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Contingency vs Necessity

 

Having a bit of difficulty reconciling some views on this issue.

 

A few days ago, I came across this from the internet which seemed to accord with common sense.

 

"In philosophy, contingency is usually contrasted with necessity, and it usually refers to a kind of truth.
We call a truth necessary when it is impossible for it to be false.
We call a truth contingent when it DEPENDS ON SOMETHING ELSE for its truth."

But today I read this on p 4 of a commentary on Sartre's La Nausee by Rhiannon Goldthorpe.

"Contingency may provisionally be taken in the accepted sense: the contingent is without reason, without cause and without necessity."

Mmmmmmhhh!

 

 

HO scale figures - tourists on church steps

I really like these newly acquired plastic HO scale figures. They came pre-painted in a half-baked fashion, but that's in the spirit of my impressionistic approach to scenery and buildings.

To check out the effect, placed a few figures on the steps of my ceramic church.

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Currently listening to:

Alfred Schnittke's Penitential Psalms sung by the Danish National Radio Choir.

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Last night's dinner:

Lamb, aubergine and mushroom stew.

This was delicious. I put that down to my bunging in 7 or 8 mushrooms and a whole aubergine, peeled and chopped into approx. 2.5cm cubes. Out of laziness, I did not pre-fry either the mushrooms or the aubergine.

Cost per head: £4.75

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Still reading:

HO scale LED lighting strips

At some point, as well as placing café style tables and chairs underneath the black and white striped canopies below, I'll want there to be illumination.

 

At very reasonable prices one can get from the internet LED strip lights which can be attached to the underside of the canopies.

I'll look into this.

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Review:

Last night saw Alasdair Beatson (piano), Alexander Janiczek (violin) and Philip Higham (cello) performing Schubert's Piano Trio No 2 in E flat.

The performance was part of Glasgow's West End Festival and took place in Cottiers. Didn't like to take a photo during the performance - too close to the artists. But this was the stage before they came on.

I really enjoyed it - lasted just over the hour.

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Last night's dinner:

Afterwards went upstairs to the Cottiers restaurant which was very good.

Chicken liver pate

Cod atop vegetables.

Cost per head: £13.00

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Currently reading:

An excellent commentary on Sartre's La Nausee.

I'm determined to get to grips with Sartre's novel. Personally, it means a great deal to me.

HO scale figures

Received from China, via Belgium, 2 packs of painted HO scale figures - 100 in each pack and very cheap.

Look like extras in a disaster movie.

Actually, the arrival of these figures is important for the development of the layout. They are the only definitive method for checking that my buildings and street furniture are at least approximately set to HO scale.

Looks OK next to the car.

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Currently listening to:

Roy Harper's 1970 album: Flat, Baroque and Berserk

That film I saw yesterday has made me feel very nostalgic for the late 60s and early 70s. But my version of the 60s and 70s is not my wife's version and her version is not my brother-in-law's version and his version is not somebody else's version and so on.

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Last night's dinner:

An absolute triumph: fried kidneys, courgette, tomato sauce and rice.

Cost per head: a magnificent £2.05

ContingencyAndNecessityContingencyAndNecessityContingencyAndNecessityContingencyAndNecessityContingencyAndNecessityContingency

Contingency cf Necessity:

Not got very far with my analysis of this issue.

It was this passage from La Nausee which prompted me to look at the distinction.

"The essential thing is contingency. I mean that one cannot define existence as necessity. To exist is simply to be there; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce anything from them. I believe that there are people who have understood this. Only they tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a necessary causal being. But no necessary being can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, a probability which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, consequently, the perfect free gift. All is free, this park, this city and myself."

Here's something off the internet:

"In philosophy, contingency is usually contrasted with necessity, and it usually refers to a kind of truth.

We call a truth necessary when it is impossible for it to be false.

We call a truth contingent when it DEPENDS ON SOMETHING ELSE for its truth."

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So, is my existence necessary or contingent? Are these the only two possible kinds of truth statement? Does it make sense to ask the question in that form? And so what?

Minor aesthetic adjustment to collage

There was something irritating me about yesterday's rooftop collage.

So I adjusted it.

Can you spot the difference - I don't mean the little black lines along the edges?

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Currently listening to:

This afternoon, while waiting for a bus which never actually came, a car pulled up and blasting from its audio system was Missy Elliot's "Get ur freak on". What a great and timeless record that is.

I was on my way to see a French film at the cinema. It evoked brilliantly the late 1960s in Europe. (Had to resort to a taxi, but the driver was a very interesting chap.)

Great soundtrack eg

The film was very slow but did successfully raise the issue of whether one should sacrifice one's individual aims for taking political action . Made me think.

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Last night's dinner:

Sea trout carrots and potatoes

 Cost per head: £8.25

This gives a daily average this week of £5.39

And the averages chart over the last few months looks like this:

And an overall average cost per meal since my records began a few months ago of £5.85 per meal.


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Currently reading:

Iris Murdoch - requires a health warning.

Covered the flat roof with a collage of French newspaper titles.

The white ridges around the roof will have to be toned down and the chimneys added.

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Currently listening to:

A review on Radio 3 this morning of the last CD in Francois-Frederic Guy's series of recordings of the complete Beethoven sonatas.

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Last night's dinner:

Vegetable pakora

Chicken curry

At the Shenaz restaurant, Glasgow.

Cost per head: £12.50

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Given up reading:

Have reached p 248 out of 376 and simply cannot go on - this book is killing me.

Unbelievably interestingly, I have just read the introduction to the book by Valentine Cunningham. I desisted from reading this earlier in case it gave the story away in some sense.

"An Accidental Man, Iris Murdoch's fourteenth novel, is a candidate for being her most discomfited and most discomforting one     ..........   in which love is betrayed ignominiously, the morally lowest and most cynical flourish and unremittingly pessimistic visions of human goodness triumph.

"It is not uncommon in Iris Murdoch's fictions for the would-be good people and for goodness to flounder, for the godly to renege and to fall, for moral mayhem and evil to flourish, for moral crashes and smashes and disasters to abound and for some fearful accident to occur as the sign of humanity's proneness to moral bad luck. But the scale of such negativity in An Accidental Man is what makes its pessimisms seem so arrestingly awesome......"

Crikey, I can't even read the rest of the introduction!!!