Christening, Cluedo, tablets and Jobs

Yesterday, the family gathered in St. Josephs church in Stepps once more where my Cousin Sarah's third child was baptized. Sarah Jane and Brian looked on happily as baby Daniel was baptized with a little help from Yvie, Daniel's older sister, who held the small pot of oil up for the priest. Christopher, his older brother, was also asked but he preferred to sit behind with his Granpa.
Once more the priest of St. Josephs church started giving us his Star Wars talk about the light side and the dark side, just as he had done at Christopher's baptism, reminding us all how easy it is to slip into the dark side like Darth Vader.
“You mean Anakin Skywalker” I muttered under my breath, correcting the priest once more.
Back at the hotel afterwards Daniel jumped about happily in his parents arms, kicking his legs up and around as gathered relations took some photos of the happy, growing, family. We all enjoyed a soft drink whilst awaiting the tea and trying to get some food from the giant buffet of which only egg sandwiches were left by the time I got to the front of the queue. Uncle Tom after complaining about the visibility of my collar button also decided to retie my tie recommending a windsor knot.
On returning home Ka and myself found ourselves a little depressed for obvious reasons. Uncle Tom had advised going out for a run. The best cure for clearing the head. Usually I'd absolutely agree but Ka and myself were not in the jogging mood yesterday.
Instead we sat, like couch potatoes, bored, watching another dreadful bunch of 'Come Dine with Me' episodes, showcasing another bunch of dreadful people, making dreadful meals in each others' dreadful homes.
The kind of dinner parties that you wish turned into a murder mystery where the diners would get knocked off one by one, leaving only the show's one redeeming character, the commentator.
As a desperate effort to cheer the two of us up, I even suggested a game of Cluedo which was quickly and unequivocally refused by Ka. Besides, Colin and Jillian were not about and we seem to only play board games when they’re about these days.
I'd been playing Cluedo (or Clue, as it's known in America) last weekend in Ka's hairdressing salon. Bored waiting on Ka who sat perched on her usual chair, Alan, Ka's hairdresser and sole employee of the 'Nutters' female hairdressing salon, gave me his iPad to toy with. He uses it as a design tool now. A portable gallery of female haircuts for all his clients to mull over. Fortunately Ka was the last client to be finished so I had the waiting area to myself and didn't have the usual array of eyeballs looking me up and down as I awaited the wife.
With the iPad on my lap, Alan snapped an unexpected picture of my mug through the Photobooth app and planted it on the shoulders of a chubby dwarf in a vest and beret, smoking a cigar. He found it hilarious. Not sure why.
Alan then proceeded to show me his gallery of customers which he'd snapped and put on to a vast assortment of bodies, creating a hideous gallery of freaks and unfortunates, all with hair in varying states of disrepair. To be honest, most of them didn't need much modifying in an effort to be scary looking.
After Alan rushed off to get on with the final stages of Ka's hairstyling, I loaded up the Cluedo game and had my first shot on the iPad, failing to get used to the touchscreen control. I only had enough time for the introductory level of the game, deducting the murderer to be Ms. Scarlett with the razor blade in the study.
Cluedo's changed since I last played it, that's for sure.

Razor blades? What happened to the lead piping and the candlestick? In stead of Ms. Scarlett giving someone a quick bang over the head, she's now waiting in a darkened study, jumping out behind the victim and running a razor blade through his throat. Reverend Green, who, incidentally, now looks like Shaft, would be shocked and disgusted.
I've fancied an iPad for some time. The sleek design, the multi-touch display with it's sliding app icons, it's ease of use, zooming in and out from screen views, the onscreen keyboard. Fantastic stuff, but I just can't justify spending that amount of money when I have a perfectly good iMac at home and an iPod hooked to my ears.
The death of Steve Jobs during the week was a great shame. He has always been a bit of a hero in my book. Here was a guy with no degree, a college drop out, and he became not only one of the world’s richest men but one of it’s most influential.
Jobs revolutionised the computer and in doing so, the world, and our everyday lives. He transformed the computer into a stylised, sleak, platform which communicates, collects, informs, reminds, entertains and has the ability to almost organise and run a life on it's own. It was his ideas and creations that inspired the countless other remakes released by other computing manufacturers. Touch screen computers, or tablets (I love tablet... Mum made great tablet...) are now part of the mass market, something I just couldn’t possibly imagine when I was sitting shooting my Sinclair ZX Spectrum’s gun at the living room tv in the late eighties. Steve Jobs put our whole record collection on a slim, pocket sized, 8cm long slip of plastic for gawds sake!
I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that Jobs, and Apple, transformed the world. Okay, Jobs didn’t single handedly create this computer revolution but he was certainly a significant driving force. Jobs was a crazy, stubborn, idea fuelled inventor who appreciated the style as well as the substance. The machine’s Apple produced only a few years back are already considered classics – a testament to how the world seems to be on fast forward all of a sudden. Technology is speeding forwards at every moment, the rest of the world struggling to keep up, and Jobs had been at the forefront.
The question is, with Jobs now gone will apple remain at the forefront?
Will there be an iPad 3?
How much further can the tablet be developed?
And will Mum ever make any more?

Times like these

For a wee lassie that was only around on the planet for just over 26 hours, Lucy Reid certainly made an impression. A large crowd of family, friends, colleagues and aquaintances gathered in St. Leonards Chruch, East Kilbride for our wee Lucy's Funeral on Saturday morning.
John Donnelly, of the Heritage Funeral Services, picked Ka and myself up in his large limo which struggled, climbing out of our street, over the freshly fallen snow from the night before under the bright blue winters sky, and took us round the corner to the chapel at the top of the hill to meet Father Mac at the doors.
Not a moment has went past when Ka and myself have not shivered with sadness and disbelief at the situation we have found ourselves in. We'd spent an unbelievable week organising and preparing for our newborn daughter's funeral after her birth, a week early on the 29th before her due date.
We had the joy of an early birth for Baby Reid on the Wednesday night only to be replaced, not half an hour later, by the horror of having our baby whipped away from us and placed in an incubator as she struggled to breathe for herself. On the Thursday morning we were faced with the horrendous decision given to us by the specialists of the Neonatal ward in the Wishaw hospital. We could continue to keep Lucy alive on machines, in the hope of her surviving to some extent but never to have a life of her own to speak of, or to switch off the life support and say goodbye. We made the heart-rending decision and over the course of the Thursday evening, watched little Lucy slowly slip away until her final breathes in my arms at twenty to one on the Friday morning.
The image of that little baby, shivering her last, her breathes fading to a quietening whisper will be ingrained in my mind for the rest of my life. Her last shiver of breathe shook out from her body shaking my arms which cradled her small form. I knew exactly when my wee Baby passed away before the doctors even began inspecting her. Lucy passed approximately eight minutes before the doctors finally decided, with tears in their eyes, that she'd gone.
Afterwards, I pointed out to Ka, on more than one occasion, that I didn't need the doctors to tell me. Even though the death certificate says 00.50am, it's wrong. I felt Lucy slip away in my arms just after twenty minutes to one and I don't need no stethoscope to tell me otherwise. Lucy came into the world, going straight into her Mum's arms, and left in her Daddy's.
Needless to say the pain and grief was unbearable but Ka and myself managed to stay strong thanks to the gathered family around us. The two sets of Mums and Dads, the two brothers and the two sisters along with Steven and Jillian were almost at the hospital through the whole ordeal just as long as Ka and myself were. The families were our rock and without them I'm not sure Ka and I would have made it through at all.
On the Saturday morning we stepped from the limo, the undertaker giving Lucy over to me and together we followed Father Mac into the church. As I walked I couldn't bring myself to look up at the gathered crowd as I stared down at my little girl's pristine white coffin, clenched in my hands. I tried to make out that I was being respectful, head bowed as I walked up the aisle, or perhaps that I was concentrating on carrying the case, making sure of it not slipping under my trembling grip. In reality I dared not look up on fear of breaking down into tears as the sympathetic faces of everyone gathered watched us move through the church. As a result I had no idea the church had been so busy till after the mass.
Ka, the Mums and Dads and myself sat in the back of the Undertaker's Limo, Lucy's coffin perched on my lap as the gathered congregation poured out from the church behind us.
A terrible, horrible situation to find yourself in but one made slightly bearable by the people that had shown up on that snowy, Saturday morning to show their grief and give Ka, myself and the family their support, prayers and sympathies.
Family, friends, colleagues and aquaintances have all been fantastic in the past few weeks. Without their visits, cards, texts, words and support I'm not sure Ka and myself would have been so strong to face the challenging past weeks. It's in times like these you realise how fantastic your families are, what friends you can really count on and how generous of heart people can be.
Lucy Reid would have been a very lucky wee girl to have such a massive, loving family.

I wasn't looking forward to writing this blog.
Ever again in fact.
But surprisingly, it still helps.

"It's in Bellahouston Park, you pagan!"

Woke up this morning after a rough dream involving grand parents passing away in the wrong order, family members being eaten by swamp monsters and houses being demolished, all seeming, in that mad, crazy, dream-like way, so tangible and real. The swamp monster was particularly horrible as part of it's murderous routine was spewing acid over it's prey before taking off large chunks from the head by pummeling it's catch with it's tremendous tentacles. A rather disturbing vision to have in your head as you wake from your slumber.
My liking for science fiction can sometimes have odd effects on my dreams...
At the moment I'm reading Adam Roberts' 'Salt'. A science fiction novel telling the story of a large human colony setting up camp on a new world which, due to it's white, arid landscape, and near uninhabitable and hostile atmosphere is christened, you guessed it, 'Salt'.
The various factions of the colony settle at different points throughout the land, each with their own philosophies, beliefs and religions. Of course, once each clan settles it all breaks into a bloody war. The two larger, main colonies, the Senaarians and the Als, are the main protagonists in the book's events which are told from the viewpoint of each of these clans' leaders . The Senaarians live with their militaristic, ordered dictatorship and the Als, with their unordered, unruly, free-living ways. Both eventually break from their strained toleration of each other and give in to battle and death.
Through it Roberts paints a pretty pessimistic vision. The basic bones of the tale being, of course, human nature. Roberts is basically saying that no matter how long the human race survives, in the end we'll always end up fighting internally with the inevitability of fear and hostility, the results of a lack of understanding and tolerance in differing cultures and beliefs.
Talking of beliefs, the Pope's in town today with his Popemobile.
After waking from my swamp monster filled dream this morning and getting ready for work, I text my Mum and told her to enjoy herself at Glasgow Green today.
Mum text back, rather abruptly, "It's in Bellahouston Park, you pagan!".
Police are swarming the city centre, motorways have been closed off and a large black stage has been erected in Bellahouston Park for Mass, taking place this afternoon led by the Pontiff himself.
Ka and myself were in the Gallowgate area of Glasgow on Saturday morning with Dougie and Grace, heading for the Pram Centre to investigate some baby mobiles for our own coming visitor. On our way we passed the Barrowlands and the Bairds bar where loud, angry anthems were belting out, echoing through the street. Stalls had been set up, framed with Celtic scarves, selling T-shirts, adorned with Benedict's mug. Slogans not unlike 'Glasgow Celtic welcomes the Pope' and such like plastered over the 'quality' prints. Unfortunately I was walking down the street with my dark blue sweater on and was certain I was getting more than a few hostile looks from the grumpy old Glaswegian men milling around the stalls. One passed me by who, I swear, was almost ready to spit on me, the look on his face. Maybe he was just upset by the fact I wasn't buying a T-shirt.
Anyway, I'm sure there'll be a few T-shirts on today. It's an unbelievably sunny afternoon after the terrential rain of earlier in the week... almost as if there has been some kind of divine intervention throughout the skies of Scotland.
Great weather for his Holiness' £20 a ticket gig.
Surely the Pope could have put on a free mass for all his followers when they number so many and when his visits number so few? This is the richest global organisation in the world after all. With Susan Boyle and Michelle McManus singing on stage surely they should be paying us to attend?