Random Photos from my Phone

Back in December 2008, I reached a whopping one hundred posts here on BarryHutchison.com. To celebrate, I posted a selection of random photographs I had stored on my mobile phone. You can see that post here.

We’re not celebrating anything today (although, we will be celebrating something towards the end of next week…) but I thought I’d stick up a few more photos from my phone, so I can finally delete the bloody things off my memory card.

So, here they are. Some random snaps what I took. Enjoy.

Let’s start off with one that makes me look disturbing and mental. A couple of weeks back, just in time for my appearances at the Inverness and Edinburgh book festivals, this wig arrived. I’d ordered it online, with the intention of using it as part of a costume for Caddie, the main villain in my second Invisible Fiends book, Raggy Maggie. Obviously, I had to try it on first, though, and this is the result. I think it makes me look like Meatloaf, had Meatloaf pursued a life of frenzied violence and murder, as opposed to a career in music.

Let’s keep the terror flowing…

The label on this monstrosity declared it to be an “Early Moments Doll”, presumably referring to those early moment, shortly after birth, when all babies are sealed in air-tight plastic bags. It’s strange, for something so anatomically correct, the doll looks awfully like an alien. I think it’s the eyes that do it. Or the psychic messages it sends out when anyone touches it, urging them to kill. Either way, I hope it never escapes that bag.

It’s a brain floating in a big glass tube! I took this photo when the family and I visited Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh. It’s an interesting place. I also saw a giant block of ice, some animatronic monkeys, and an old woman eating a bogey. The cost of food in the cafe is ridiculous, though, to be fair, so I don’t blame her for bringing a packed lunch.

Look, it’s a neck brace. The kind of neck brace you might find in an ambulance or hospital. The kind of neck brace which makes it impossible to move your head, and keeps you completely immobile. The kind of neck brace which might just feature in Invisible Fiends book 4…

OK, this next one is going to take a bit of explaining.

To the untrained eye, that’s a picture of a hand clutching a kettle, while holding a tube of superglue between two fingers. That’s almost right, but let me fill you in on a bit of backstory first.

A few months ago, I had a problem with the windscreen washer of my car – not the wiper, the bit that scooshes water up over the windscreen. Upon examination, it turned out that a little sensor was coming away from the water bottle, and so, being dead handy with stuff like that (*cough*) I decided to repair it myself.

So, I emptied the water bottle, dried off the plastic rim around the sensor, then superglued the bugger back in place. Afterwards, I refilled the water bottle using water from the kettle, and checked all was working. It was. Hooray!

At this point, both the kettle and the tube of superglue were sitting on the ground. I was enjoying twirling my car keys around on the index finger of my right hand (I’m easily pleased, me), so I picked up the kettle using my left hand. Then, so as to continue my key twirling uninterrupted, I picked up the tube of superglue in an index finger and thumb pincer movement, and took them into the kitchen.

The problem arose when I tried to put them down and discovered I couldn’t open my fingers. It seems a layer of glue had oozed out of the tube and coated the outside, instantly bonding to my fingers upon contact. As a result I could not let go of the glue, and as a result of that, I couldn’t let go of the kettle.

I’d like to say Fiona and Kyle were caring and compassionate, and offered to help, but I’d be lying. They laughed. They laughed long and hard. Then, when they’d finished laughing, they invited other people in to laugh. They took to the streets, spreading the word about my kettle-based glue emergency, and from every street the sound of laughter filled the air.

Meanwhile, I had my hand, the glue and the kettle submerged in hot water, and was going at my fingertips with a butter knife. For twenty minutes I poked and prodded, and I had just begun to accept that a rather embarassing trip to the hospital was on the cards, when I managed to slice off a layer of skin and pull my bleeding finger free. After that, it was a mere quarter of an hour before I got the thumb free, and just three or four days before I could type without crying.

Fiona and Kyle still laugh about it. I trust none of you will be so cruel.

That’s it for the phone photos for now. More soon.

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