Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

I finally had developed a roll of film taken back in June.  There are a few shots of the village and the garden which show it in shaggy early summer splendour.  One photo shows the giant hogweed which is noxious, but  so magnificent that I allow about ten plants to grow each year and carefully destroy all other seed heads.  My biggest plant this year was fourteen feet high - stupendous sight at the back of the orchard.

There is still plenty of colour in the beds (and there would be more if the hens wouldn't keep dust bathing among the geraniums).  This week I have trimmed back a huge laurel that grew three feet this season, had a vast bonfire of woody stuff from the endless pruning and started cutting back some of the goat willow around the hole which will be the new pond.  I spent about six hours tidying the Colonel's garden and cutting its huge conifer hedge; the beds are a lovely messy mass of poppies, daisies, hollyhocks, evening primrose and deep pink cotinus.

I provoked alarm chatter from a mother wren rounding up her four little brown smudges under the old firs. We have a lot of second broods, including a magnificent  baby green woodpecker;  ants are so plentiful this year that the family can be seen drilling between paving stones all day long. The wagtails have come back, and Ozzie the crow has had two young.  Strange that he nests here in isolation.

We are going to have a huge apple crop, but the summer fruit fall is on and I'm cursing already about having to pick them up before I can cut grass.  Grass, endlessly growing grass - it's the only thing about this garden now that makes me long for autumn.

I'm driving back to Hampshire tomorrow for Sarah's hen-night on Saturday.  It's  going to be a Greek affair and we have to wear appropriate costumes.  My sister has bought yards of soft material and made very basic long drapey robes - we are going as a couple of goddesses.  Yes, well ... no comments, please.

NYC Girls is a simply fab photo, the action caught at a moment of almost chorus-line perfection.  Sebi Boymond is a magic observer of people. 

I have printed it to complement a page in my Boston notebook, for it is reminiscent of a pair of elderly sisters whom I met slowly crossing a busy road there.  My two wore old Chanel and flowery hats that had seen better days.  They were eightyish, bent, with Brooklyn accents. "We're naht fram Bahstan, we been heah thirty yeahs. We hate Bahstan, theyah all snarbs heah."  We stayed on the street corner chatting for, maybe, fifteen minutes; they liked my accent, the Royal Family and English good manners.

As young women they had been fashion models, working in couture houses, neither married. They both now sported small white goatee beards that made strange contrast with their elaborately feminine old clothes. They were wonderful characters, it killed me that I had left my camera in the hotel, they would have posed like a dream.  But now I have an approximation.

'An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.'

There are lots of categories,  this year I think my absolute  favourite is the winner of "Fiction for the Erudite".

Today's  post over at Postcards to Myself  describes an amusing result of putting your foot in your mouth.  Remembering one  gaffe of mine makes me uncomfortable to this day - it was so public.  I was vaguely watching a robust assistant apply a metal date-stamp to a pile of books.  At a particularly strong swipe, it fell apart.  Springs and bits of metal flew everwhere, out onto the main library floor.  "Use another one ," I said, "And I'll go and pick up the pieces." 
 
Bending and peering under the furniture I retrieved quite a few bits, but realised that two main retainers were still missing.  Moving backwards, still concentrating, I felt my backside collide with with a pair of  legs.  A neatly tailored arm steadied me and I turned to make a polite apology to one of our favourite male readers.
 
"Oh, I am sorry, I didn't see you there.  Actually,  I'm looking for a screw."
 
"Really, my dear? Well, happy to oblige at any time," came the reply.

My  Japanese name is apparently Saruwatari Asuka.   Saruwatari is 'a monkey on a crossing bridge' and Asuka means 'fragrance of the bright day'.  I rather identify with those. Want to check out yours?   (Via Pure Land Mountain)

I am afraid of masks, not ugly horror ones, what upsets me is a smiling mask. That  false grimace sends me cold all over. 
 
It dates from a film sequence I saw years ago at the old Academy cinema in London.  I have tried to trace it (for therapeutic purposes) ever since.  The movie was French, in black and white, of the vintage and style of "Les Enfants du Paradis". 
 
The scene is a romantic ballroom where masked dancers are waltzing.  The camera picks up a  pretty girl in a domino mask smiling up at a young man with long hair.  He wears a smooth-featured mask with high cheekbones and a gentle smile.  Round and round they go in a giddy twirl, then their rhythm falters.  The man raises his hand to his head then falls heavily to the floor.  
 
The music stops and the girl kneels as men come to lift him up; they loosen his clothing and one grips the bottom of the mask - as it comes slowly away it removes a wig of dark hair.  The lined face of a very old man emerges; not ugly, but old, old.  The cheeks are wet with sweat and the eyes narrow in fear.  The camera pulls back to the girl who is rigid with the shock of the discovery.
 
And so was I.  I found that lie very frightening.  So much so that I walked out of the cinema to the great annoyance of my companion.  I dream about it sometimes.  I wonder if anyone can remember the film it came from? 

Bravo, poshmum!

 

Because I have an awful cold I've slacked-off on gardening and housework,  blowing your nose every ten seconds doesn't encourage industry.  So I have been reading most of the day and now can't focus my eyes properly. 
 
I returned to one of my top novels of all time and read it cover to cover - Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits.  Magical realism is the tag always used to define it and its eccentricities are indeed the fruit of a remarkable imagination.  Generations of an extraordinary South American family, the Truebas, stride and flitter through the troubled history of an unnamed country.  They arrive finally at the climax of a bloody political struggle, agonizingly informed by Allende's experience of Chile.
 
Those bare bones of plot transmit nothing of the wonderful forward rush  of the narrative, nor of the cast of  characters with their  cruelties and strengths, their green hair, strange sexual tastes, unbridled temper, sensual beauty and  will to survive.  I long to share many extracts, but this one will suffice. A  rejected sister, a wasted, complex woman with an unfulfilled life is found by her family:
 
'In the other room Ferula lay on the bed.  Festooned  like an Austrian queen, she wore a moth-eaten velvet dress and petticoats of yellow taffeta.  On her head, firmly jammed down around her ears, shone the incredible curly wig of an opera star.  No one was with her, no one had known she was dying, and they calculated that she must have been dead for many hours, because the mice were already beginning to nibble her feet.  She was magnificent in her queenly desolation, and on her face was an expression of sweetness and serenity she never had in her grievous life.' 

I don't want to add more yardage to the Butler post-mortem, I've listened to and read a couple of hours worth myself. I'll just pass on a comment that seems to me to be utterly central to the affair:

'Whichever way we turn in our dream democracy we meet Huttons and Butlers resplendent in garters, stars, ribands, collars and mantles.' (Media Lens)

Exactly, the establishment will never, ever sock itself in the jaw.

How very civilized to have a library cat, I only ever managed to maintain some wild ones in the car park. The Library Cat Map locates some international beauties. Clever creatures, they can insinuate themselves anywhere. My favourites in this group are extremely well integrated at their work-faces:

Lucetta Le Seour from Cornwall is a cat with impeccable literary taste.

Latvian Turiba works as a paper weight, while Emilia does modelling and promotion.

The lovely Red from Dumfries is an IT specialist, careless about where he puts his mouse.

At the wedding shop my beautiful niece, Sarah, went off into the dressing room to try on her gown. My sister and I stood waiting for her, watching another slender young girl in an exquisite dress with gold embroidery walk the long carpet to the mirror; she was Russian, a tiny, elegant princess with blonde hair swept upwards, dignified. She reappeared shortly dressed in a glittery affair with bustles and frou frou in which she managed still to look delicate and understated.

Then Sarah came towards us in a dress so amazing that it caused a sharp intake of breath all round the room. She looked wonderful. Miss Russia seemed a little pained and, sauntering off, peeped from her cubicle with an assessing eye. Within minutes a dress of the same style was whipped from the rail and taken in to her, but she finally chose the gold number.

After our fitting was over we waited at the desk while Sarah's dress was packed. Miss Russia, now wearing civvies and chewing gum, stood nearby. The princess had quite vanished - in her place was, well, a bit of a tart. The yellow hair was ragged and mussed, her bare stomach bitten by two diamante navel rings, cropped white leggings stretched tightly and high cork platform heels with plastic flowers and an ankle chain finished the effect.

It was a devastating contrast - from Guinevere to Good Time Gal in the winking of an eye. We reflected on the transforming power of clothes and wondered, too, how her groom would respond to that virginal transformation.

I'm going to Hampshire for the week-end where I'll get a first glimpse of Sarah's wedding dress; on Saturday night we are all going to see Music on Fire at Sandhurst. We'll picnic on the grass (along with 13,000 others) if it doesn't rain. I'm getting excited about the fireworks already.

My father, who died at 32, was a piper in the Irish Guards. Mum used to take me to see him on parade (and doing sentry duty at the Palace). I don't really remember many details, except that I was proud and used to tell the people beside me 'That's my dad'. As a kid I loved the pipes, the military bands, the uniforms, the marching. It never left me, that love of ceremony, so this sort of occasion is right up my street.

See you on Monday.

My gardening friends will like Earthly Pursuits, an intriguing mixture from across the pond of practical advice, cookery, full-texts of old gardening books and some good humorous writing; Patrick Vickery's Blethers are worth dipping into.

I bear the scars of a bad day. The branches of three old Skyrocket conifers, about eight feet tall, had splayed open under pressure of wind and nesting birds. Teetering high on a pair of steps I passed six loops of green wire round each one and bound them up. Ungrateful, they put long scratches on my arms and filled my shirt with sharp needles; then I fell off the ladder and stung my legs on nettles.

Weeding, I felt a sharp sting and smacked a horse fly on my wrist. I ran for the ammonia in the kitchen to stop the swelling and in my haste tangled my feet in the reel of garden wire that had spooled undone, I fell down again and got green mould on my clean jeans. Carrying the ladder back to the shed I tripped over a brick that someone (?) had left lying at the path edge and foolishly kicked it in temper. The ladder pinched my finger as I put it away.

I should have known that this wasn't the afternoon to have my hair colour done. I look like Lily Munster and I'm going away for the week-end too. It's too dark and the highlights don't show. Having been nearly blonde from the Cyprus sun it's a shocking contrast. G says it looks OK, but that's pure self-defence on his part. My sister and the neece will take the mickey unmercifully.

I'm going to bed before I look in the mirror again or do any more harm.

I suppose it's heresy in the face of the thousands of glowing words and front page photographs devoted to marking his demise, but I never saw what the fuss was about. As an actor I found him pretty middling.

He himself said 'Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are.' Essentially, every character he played was only who he was. He had a limited range of facial expressions, a famous mumble, little physical grace and an unerring tendency to pick bad parts.

Early on he looked good and had definite sexual magnetism. In 'On the Waterfront' and 'Streetcar' these assets, added to his close type match with the character, earned him a reputation as an exciting presence. I think that that was about the sum total of it.

He was the worst Mark Antony ever seen (poor Gielgud nearly went mad trying to help him to speak the lines which he wrote on his hand). His Method acting didn't work in high drama and a good (great) actor should have twigged and adjusted. His Fletcher Christian was a pastiche, his Napoleon was grisly. Godfather Don Corleone's credibility suffered from a mouthful of foam and the usual repetitive grimaces, though his presence was chilling.

For the rest, I admit to not having seen 'Last Tango', but his work in perhaps eight or so other movies I have seen made no lasting impresssion. He was a star, an early icon of the emerging youth culture; his frailties attracted publicity and made him an interesting figure. He was an OK actor who started brightly and petered out. But the greatest - never.

Reports of Gwyneth Paltrow's unusual choice of name for her baby prompted me go scrabbling through my old artwork folders for a forgotten bit of collage.

Each summer we ran ambitious programmes of kids' activities that were so popular we resorted to issuing tickets. These changed hands, I believe, for high sweetie prices on the local black market of bored children. There were days for printing, cooking, fashion drawing, stage make-up, magic and other arty/crafty things. I was good at enthusing children and had a whale of a time with groups ranging from toddlers to quite sophisticated young artists.

One whole day was spent making really classy story-books, cutting images from huge piles of magazines and newspapers. I remember one child created a pop-up book of lavatories cut from mail order catalogues, all exuding peculiar collage creatures. An exhibition of the final work attracted much praise from local artists and the press.

While busy supervising the day I somehow made a book of my own which was rather prescient of the Paltrow choice. It's very rough, crudely lettered, with dark spots of glue, but it has vigour. Here is a hastily scanned version of the Applebook. I think it's rather fun.

I wish that I liked flying better, if I did I'd buy myself a cheap New York return and go to see the Andy Goldsworthy exhibit at The Metropolitan. The site notes are a bit 'Pseud's Corner' but he's special to me. He contrives design within the natural world, uses landscape, has a surreal eye, plays pattern games, loves orderly colour and form. What I value most of all is his drive to make beautiful things that are ephemeral. I am attracted to brief rushes of aesthetic pleasure - fireworks for example, and Christo's activities - that are intensified by their known limits.

There is, of course, a photographic record that stands as a body of work. I had as a blessed gift the wonderful monograph of his current work and I take endless pleasure from his constructs of stones, leaves, ice, branches, wood and water.