Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

Auntie under siege
I trust the BBC's integrity above all other world media and government sources, to see it brought low by such abject apologies and double resignations is terrible. Greg Dyke's departure is unnecessary. Dynamic leaders aren't two a penny and to lose him at this watershed moment for the BBC is wasteful and, one cannot help but think, contrived. I am not totally convinced by Hutton, there is much that we still don't know. The honour of a Prime Minister should not be impugned lightly, but this is too great a sacrifice.

Email received tonight

Dust of Snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me

The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood

And saved some part
Of a day I rued.


Mrs. Magoo
I get my new glasses this week after an eye test at Boots, quite an upgrade on both my readers and drivers was needed. When I peer with new-minted vision at the house, I fear I will find that I qualify for this programme.

They found that I have the beginning of a cataract in my right eye. It will probably take years to develop, but it's not a nice thought. One more nail. Coincidentally I saw the latest TV report on the Bright Eyes trials, and am debating whether to try it. It will all be sold out by now anyway. I'll talk to my friendly pharmacist and see what he thinks.


I'd really prefer to be blank verse....

I am heroic couplets; most precise And fond of order. Planned and structured. Nice. I know, of course, just what I want; I know, As well, what I will do to make it so. This doesn't mean that I attempt to shun Excitement, entertainment, pleasure, fun; But they must keep their place, like all the rest; They might be good, but ordered life is best. What Poetry Form Are You?

Plenty to Bragg about
Just about anybody who's anybody in British arts was at The South Bank Show Awards - it's the only one of these affairs that I enjoy - presenters and recipients are polished, brief and usually interesting. The nominations are real evidence of our good creative health.
In the Savoy the camera darted too quickly about about the room, I wanted to see the mix - I bet someone has fun working out the table plans - "Let's put the Sugababes next to Michael Frayn and Matt Lucas." Ewan Mc Gregor was subdued in hornrims, Sophie Dahl looked bundled up in a hot wool jacket (sublime to ridiculous in her case). Eddie Izzard left off his falsies and wore dj over naked torso. Helen Mirren looked divine in low cut black as she took the big award - fantastic woman. The choice that pleased me most was Poliakoff's for 'The Lost Prince'.

No, Thursday is soup
A day of endlesss rain, which meant my plans for tidying up after tree-felling work had to be shelved again. Dennis came all day last Sunday with his chainsaw and we knocked out several half-dead conifers, some over-tall willows by the garage, and four weedy sycamores at the base of the wood. They had been obscuring the lovely old Scots pines whose lines are now visible. When they were all down, I clipped and stacked while he logged, and then we ferried the wood to his trailer. He got a good load to take home, and would take no other payment. Such a good pal. Now there are huge piles of small branches all over the garden, bits of bark everywhere and I am itching to get a bonfire started and have a lovely tidying up day.

Instead, after Theresa and Pauline left this morning, I made a big pot of leek and potato soup for lunch which we ate on trays by the fire watching Dirk Bogarde in 'Doctor at Large'. It was made in 1957 when I was 15; I thought he was the sexiest thing then (mostly the voice 'tis true), but, blow me, he wore a quiff and elbow patches on his jacket! The film bore up well enough though and had that wonderful line by the irascible surgeon Lancelot Spratt to the dozing Donald Sinden, "Mr. Anaesthetist, if the patient can stay awake during the operation, so can you!"

Frosty bits
- I have printed off these leaves, I want to try to paint them.

- Atmospheric shot of an icy Boston at night.

- Anecdote. Attending a dinner party one evening, the poet Robert Frost and fellow guests were invited onto a veranda to watch the sun set. "Oh, Mr. Frost," a young woman exclaimed, "isn't it a lovely sunset?" "Sorry," Frost replied. "I never discuss business after dinner."

A morning with an Indian prince
I started research on the history of a local estate with two hours in the archive at Thetford library. Pure pleasure to be among the books again, digging and taking serendipitous swerves into all sorts of sources. Twenty or so were noted ready to read up next week.

The library holds the Duleep Singh archive which is full of wondrous riches. The story of this family is romantic in the extreme; Prince Frederick Duleep Singh ('deeply interested in archaeology, became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and contributed articles to various periodicals on this subject.') had catalogued portraits in all the great Norfolk houses. The huge volume included a (useful) chapter on my estate at the time it was owned by the Amherst family. There are dozens of potential treasures yet to examine. I brought home an armful of local bibliographies to delve into. Like a pig in muck, I am.

Duh!
Pat pointed out that I have murdered my butterflies. "They are hibernating, you ninny. Put them somewhere cool where they can rest. What you have done is let them get active and starve." What a dumbo.

My Mum once said, "I don't know how someone intelligent as you could be so thick." I was trying to learn to tie knots at the time; she, of course, at 93 could remember every granny and sheepshank she learned as a girl guide. It infuriated her that, try as I might, I couldn't get the hang of them

I spent a year at evening class trying to master shorthand, but could not stop visualising the words - so 'philosophy' would evoke a 'p' symbol not an 'f'. If I got it down, I mostly failed to read it back anyway. Then there was the time I couldn't work out how to weigh my cat because he refused to stand on the bathroom scales. She was quite right.

Vivat
RIP Vanessa, I found her perched unmoving by the stone Buddha. I had got quite fond of her. Within five minutes of the discovery I saw yet another one flying in the bathroom. That makes the eighth to survive in the house. The butterfly is dead, long live the butterfly.

Erm, yeah, well, erm..
A really bad speaker featured on Sandy Toksvig's travel programme today, making a defensive case for visiting Brussels. Painfully hesitant, his only heartfelt suggestion was the Grande Place. Or, he said "You could visit Magritte's house, the artist you know, but both times I went there it was closed." Boy, just the PR Belgium needs. The poor guy did, however, prod me to look at some Magritte on the web and the mystical Paul Simon track that I had almost forgotten is now playing:

Rene and Georgette Magritte
With their dog after the war
Returned to their hotel suite
And they unlocked the door
Easily losing their evening clothes
They danced by the light of the moon
To the Penguins, the Moonglows
The Orioles, and The Five Satins
The deep forbidden music
They'd been longing for
Rene and Georgette Magritte
With their dog after the war
____________________________

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 91. What is your score? Get it here.

Enquiry
Who exactly is Michael Bichard?

I'll pass on the burger
A disturbing article from the NY Times. No lessons have been learned then.

The brown planet
The camera reveals that it's rather more "Crunchie Bar" than Mars.

On my knees
Anyone who has had but brief personal contact with me will be impressed by the absolute appropriateness of this. My birthday entry in the 'Oxford Companion to the Year" lists it as holy to Saint Zita, a perfectly sweet Italian serving maid who died in 1272. Apparently she is invoked by those who have lost their keys. I shall start a novena immediately, as two of my four sets are currently missing!

Ivy's supper
I just went down in the dark to shut up the chickens for the night and, coming back, shone the torch into the willow patch lighting up two eyes. Ivy the muntjac was sitting in the grass and didn't move as I came abreast of her. "Hello, Ivy, come for an apple, come on old girl, good girl." I walked on up the drive talking all the way. By the garage I looked back and she was following only four feet behind, I could hear her hooves on the tarmac. In the kitchen I cut her apple, she was waiting just outside. After crunching it up she walked into the wood and settled by the aviary for the night. Too tame, but trust from wild things brings great pleasure.


Riding for a fall
I watched an old western the other day in which a posse of horsemen rode down a terrible slope, the horses finally slid to the bottom in a cloud of sand. It was dramatic enough to make me look closely at the horses' behaviour through the rest of the movie. In westerns, battle scenes and costume dramas the animals are often just so much wallpaper, we hardly register them as individual creatures.

Next chance you get, look at their eyes, their mouths, the way they are ridden and see the trauma. American productions used to be notorious for using trip wires and cruel methods. Things have supposedly improved since those days, but when you start noticing you still see fear of fire, reactions to explosions, noise and the whip.

In a wider context, I have always hated the idea of the bit. There used to be a box of the things in my grandfather's tack room and I used to view them with disgust. Imagine a great lump of metal in your mouth and some heavy-handed person pulling it into you throat and teeth. An article by a caring Scottish horsewoman seems to indicate that bits could actually be dipensed with:
'In my humble opinion it would be better for all of us to question whether we actually NEED a bit at all...and for all the horse institutions to allow bitless and even barefooted horses all over the world to compete at any level the way they want to instead of restricting competitors to traditional turnout.'

Thumbs up, thumbs down
There was a lot of brain racking the other evening in the pub as each of the company contributed their four most irritating/most amusing celebrities.

My thumbs down:

John the Absent - buffoon with no apparent saving graces.
Gary the Grease - cholesterol is his middle name, maddeningly exact hand movements.
Jonathan the Smirk - unconvincingly humble, makes Archer look sincere.
Graham the Overexposed - my bete noire could make the Lord's Prayer sound dirty.

And up:

Stephen the Quickwitted- bright, bright man.
John the Polished - elegance of mind and speech.
Humphrey the Youthful - how to be mucky without being offensive.
Alan the Cuddly - sharp wit, boyish charm.

Location, location
My cousin came to dinner last week. He was in pleasantly wistful mood remembering how he and his twin brother caught the film fever that ran in their Dad's veins. Mark only dabbled on the edges, doing crowd and extra work, the other two made minor names for themselves in the business, in stunts and riding and directing commercials. He had funny tales about the longeurs of waiting about for action on sets, losing money at poker and locusting the location catering van. With his unusual, rather gaunt features, he was often pulled to the front of the crowd and made to emote, but it led nowhere and he abandoned it eventually for a nine to fiver.

I especially liked the incident on some epic movie with Omar Sharif, I forget the name. Mark and about a thousand others all done up in chain mail had to run up a hill and storm a castle. Those to die had been pre-selected and given spots, guns were firing from the battlements into the crowd. Amid bloody chaos Mark did his run and died, forming a pile of corpses with his mates. He heard the director yell "Cut. Everyone stand up, listen. When a cannon fires at you, you don't fall effin forward onto your faces, you effin well get knocked backwards onto your effin backsides. Do we have to spell every effin thing out?" They went back to their marks and died in reverse.

Vanessa atalanta and other wildlife about the place

- I have a resident bedroom butterfly called Vanessa that has been living with me for nearly a fortnight. During the day she rests on the curtain, appears to drink from the small line of moisture on the window pane and does the occasional flight to the lampshade. At night when the anglepoise lamp goes on by the bed she settles under its warmth on my pillow, gently raising and dropping her wings. I am terrified of crushing her in the night and blow her gently away before switching off.

- The heron flew over low this morning, settling by David's pond where it spent an hour totally immobile. The chap up the road is apoplectic about the inroads this devil has made on his koi carp in spite of the netting around his pond; apparently the bird tweaks out the large fish, can't swallow them and leaves them on the edge of the pond to die.

-We have lost two doves to the sparrowhawk, a cruel fate for a gentle bird. They are so vulnerable when they are feeding on the corn we put out, though we try to site it under branches to avoid a direct pounce. I haven't forgotten the screams of a blackbird taken a while ago.

-There was a strong smell of fox about near the house and the fat put out for the birds vanishes overnight. We are a bit jittery about the bantams, since the vixen will be looking for food for cubs pretty soon. They are in their enclosure, but we may have to wire 'em up a bit tighter.

-Our muntjac dynasty has produced a new fawn which is left in the bushes while the others feed. Ivy, the matriarch is so tame now that she stands outside the window to let us know she's there for food. The poor old gal has an enlarged knee joint from an old injury, this is her fifth season here.

Chemistry
Last year I took some estimates for double glazing (don't go, this isn't really about windows). Three blokes came to quote; one was sub-human, one presentable, but Tony walked through the door and I knew him as if he had been around for years. He did the business efficiently, his product looked fine, his quote was fair and after several coffees and general rapport on all manner of things, we shook hands on the deal. I chose him because I liked him instantly. Later, his crew did the job well, but left about a dozen details to finish another time - changing beading colour etc.

Eight months on, after dozens of calls they had still not returned. I threatened, secretaries calmed, made promises. Nothing happened. So, I waved my solicitor at them and lost my temper on the phone. Tony would ring they said. I waited, seething, to give him an earful. When I picked up the phone this morning and the apology came down the line, riding on a thread of laughter, irony and just sheer blarney, my anger died like hot coals under water. Indignation became rueful banter, the chemistry kicked in. Afterwards I laughed at myself for the response. Felled by charm. The boys are being sent on Thursday, I think they'll come this time. Perhaps I should have chosen Mr. Presentable and his equally nice windows, but, quite honestly, I'm glad I didn't.

2004
Promises, promises......

Adoptatext:: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever thing are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phillipians 4:8 (Paul)

Cover-up: adieu to grey hair. Because I'm worth it.

Finger removal: procrastination ceases forthwith. First - the tax return.

Grey matter: short monograph on paper by December.

Unslut: dress on rising. Wearing dressing gown until 11 am now becomes unthinkable.

Documentation: commence daily list. Weekly list. Birthday list. List of every damn thing.

Sylphectomy: lose a further 21 pounds. Eschew crisps. Cultivate the Transversus Abdominus. Walk far, often.

Survival: sleep occasionally. Abandon guilt.