Sunday, July 31, 2005
Times have changed in the cavalry
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Saturday, July 30, 2005
Writing very late at night is usually a bad idea. The prose gets purple, the catharsis of spilling frustrations too tempting. Often, reading it next day, the critical piece is merely bile and attempted heart-searching descends to sentimentality.
It is a lesson well-learned when writing at home for work; brilliant reports conceived at midnight are invariably thin stuff needing the blue pencil by daylight. So too love letters and their reverse, which should never be sealed until re-read after dawn
At least with pen and paper one can exercise full censorship on intemperate work and tear the thing up before anyone sees it. But be tempted to blog it and your piece of self-indulgence is out there for the world to see before you get a second take.
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Thursday, July 28, 2005
Involuntary ballet
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Wednesday, July 27, 2005
| Your IQ Is 115 |
 Your Logical Intelligence is Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Exceptional |
My maths is WHAT!?, I was a total numeric idiot. What a fluke, but I did use pencil and paper, and Googled the prime numbers.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Bits
The window-cleaner said that my new-trimmed juniper looked extremely rude. Then the boy came over and said, "Blimey, that's a bit much." All I have done is to make a tapering column on top of a rounded base. Apparently visiting maiden ladies will likely faint away at this phallic feature. Well, it wasn't intentional and I'm not changing it - I'll call it a conversation piece.
Worked myself to a standstill today, in fact I sat down involuntarily halfway across the back lawn after mowing, hedge-cutting, felling conifers, pulling stumps and carting away all the mess. I am full of push, but my joints let me down and though my energy's undiminished my stamina is not. A bath is called for with a bunch of lovely lavender floating in it. A massage would be nice, but I don't suppose I'll get one. Someone else's joints mostly preclude it nowadays.
I have offered to amuse two visiting Scottish teenagers for the day on Thursday; they are reportedly determined not to be amused. Everything's a drag. Norfolk is the pits. Old gits are the pits. Like, totally the pits. Daunting, but I regard it as a challenge. I'll run the little beggars off their feet.
The Suffolk Virtual Reference Library and Quick Reference pages are resources that I use all the time and each time that I do, I realise that I haven't actually been in a real reference library for yonks. Excellent online facilties, myriad gateways, opacs, full texts and search engines meet most of people's everyday needs. I think I retired just in time.
But then again, when I read some of the foxy librarian's experiences, I sometimes wish I hadn't.
Banksy, the culture jammer, has a website. Provocative stuff. Extraordinary that the British Museum kept his offering on show.
Stoker's Dracula's blogging. Interesting how it alters the perception of the story.
The colours and geometric background in this picture, troubador, are superb. There's a feast of high quality people-watching at the narrative.
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Monday, July 25, 2005
The Prelude
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As showers that water the earth
At last. After three weeks with no rain the garden was in pain, shrubs dropping leaves, grass browning. On Sunday morning at 11 a.m. I felt like one of those characters in movies who stand with arms raised as the monsoon arrives. Lovely sounds of pattering on the tin roof, the plink plonk of raindrops joining the stream and drumming on the massive gunnera leaves; and everywhere the wonderful smell of the baked earth softening and plants giving up scented sighs of relief.
I could sit down after dinner without slogging round with hose and cans to all the pots and new plantings. It was a lazy day anyway; a bowl of cornflakes taken walking round the wood, long hot bath, a little desultory ironing and then the papers. I dug out a film that I thought I had lost "My Brilliant Career", a seventies Aussie piece with Judy Davis and Sam Neill still almost adolescent. It was well made and very fair to Miles Franklin's autobiography. The baking backdrop of the Bush contrasted nicely with the relief falling outside.
In that steady misting, I suddenly thought I would put out all the houseplants for a drink and polish of their (slightly) dusty leaves, I forgot them and they are still clustered round the kitchen door, leaves bowed down, happy escapees.
In the evening I strayed on to the Prom on TV BBC4 - Elgar's Dream of Gerontius and sat enthralled; such ingredients - the Hallé, three magnificent choirs and soloists turning in exquisitely original interpretations. It is such a moving thing, Elgar can always reach that inner place where tears and pleasure lie mixed. He wrote on the score 'This is the best of me, this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.'
It's 6a.m. Monday morning and I can't sleep any more; outside it is dry and warm under a colourless sky; two huge skeins of geese have just flown over, there are white butterflies already on the buddleia bush, perhaps they slept there. I am going now (in pyjamas) to put on my boots and do my ten laps of the grassy piece. There the lovely silver grasses are lying higgledy-piggledy, beaten flat by rain - the lazy pheasants have lost their hiding place.
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Saturday, July 23, 2005
Windows. 7.
Ambrose Patterson: Self Portrait
I came across this wonderful interview with his wife, the Seattle artist (formerly librarian!) Viola Patterson. She married Ambrose, her art teacher, in the 1920's and had life of travel, painting and intimate connection with the art world for the next forty years.
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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Vashti Bunyan
I have just discovered an unusual voice (singing Swallow) over at Spoilt Victorian Child's Radio Weblog. It attracts me by its innocence and simplicity. Something there of Judy Collins whom I play a lot, but lighter, more naive. Three of Vashti's songs and her story are here. She made just one album in the 60's and then vanished to Scotland.
Her intriguing website mentions a new album in late 2005. I'm impatient for delivery from Amazon of the re-issued Just Another Diamond Day, of which she writes:
'Hearing somebody say - 'I like it, it sounds distinctive, it should come out again' was a shock. I listened to it again with different ears, trying to hear it as it might sound thirty years on to people who were not around when the album was made - when it was possible to live as we lived, to have those sixties dreams and to be able to make them real. Some of the songs may sound childlike, but that was the way we were. Life on the road had a glow. It was hard and wet and mud-filled a lot of the time, and I would not do it again by choice probably, but I am proud of what we did. We had no home and no money and so made it up as we went along.
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The cavalry are here
Every summer a great procession drives past here to a nearby army camp set in pretty countryside. In the huge boxes are the horses of the Household Cavalry arriving for their fortnight of annual rest and training exercises for cadets. For a couple of weeks before they come, carpenters work on long lines of temporary wooden stables, blacksmith's shop and tack rooms. Bales of hay pile under tarpaulins and low brushwood jumps are set out in the rolling fields beyond.
These most beautiful animals, marvellously matched in size and colour, ride out daily, kick their heels and roll, swim in the local river. All year they work in London among tourists and traffic and this is their respite.
Their riders are often beautiful animals too and are made most welcome by the local population. At the end of their stay they put on a charity show, a musical ride, races and horsemanship. A couple of thousand of us turn out to wander among the horses with bags of carrots, stroking muzzles. The children ride the drum horses and gawp admiringly at brass helmets and scarlet uniforms.It's a local event now, like the regular return of the swallows. I drive past as often as I can, always hoping to catch sight of beautiful creatures (with four legs).
( My photos are from the 1993 open day)
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The lads on the bridge
"Garn, jump."
"I will in a minute."
"You dursn't do it."
"Shut up, I do."
"Are you taking our picture, Miss?"
"Yes, if you jump."
Continued at Flickr
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Sunday, July 17, 2005
End of terrace
Norfolk Village. Everything here is right. Satellite dish, road patch, double-glazing, smart paint, small ownership of pavement.
Home.
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Saturday, July 16, 2005
HANDS - name the artist
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
We bought several of these and two stick-on cat figures back in the spring. We had already tried some of the RSPB recommended versions. They don't really work, so we now have paper doilies adorning all the windows. After several beautiful birds had broken their necks by flying smack into the glass something urgent had to be done. I am going to make some sort of soft glittery mobiles to hang outside the panes. I'll try fine thread with aluminium foil knotted in, anything hard will damage the windows. Has anyone got any other ideas?
As an aside, the pile of fallen blossom in the picture, taken back in May, caused us much fun. A young deer got a taste for it and feasted regularly as it piled up. It was a pretty sight to see her chewing steadily with a wet nose covered in pink petals
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Sunday, July 10, 2005
The perversity of chickens
All four of them spend ages picking the maize kernels out of the corn mix we provide. So, G thought, let's give them a treat and buy them a sack of maize kernels. No way, they ignore them and go on with their old menu, leaving the doves to mow up the expensive stuff.
We have just provided a special nest-box decked out in new straw, water bowl and grain adjacent. No takers, of course. In fact, Little Black Hen (above) must needs lay her egg in my peg basket.
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Good stuff
- These interactive graphics at sofake are the stuff of all those dreams about falling and flying. Brilliant. (Via the Neffe)
- Stephanie Klein on Anger. The comments are of equal interest.
- An in-depth article on sculptor Antony Gormley, whose work gives a whole new meaning to self-awareness.
- Stephanie Klein on Anger. The comments are of equal interest.
- An in-depth article on sculptor Antony Gormley, whose work gives a whole new meaning to self-awareness.
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REM
I caught Saturday night fever - at the REM concert in the Ipswich Football Ground - along with an estimated 30,000 others. My ex-boss, his wife and daughter are as fond of them as I am, so we went together and lost any polite reserve we might have had pretty fast. Stomping and arm waving with the best we were. Stipe was in fabulous voice, boiling with energy. Such a strange, gaunt figure in a tight suit and the enigmatic (nay, daft) blue mask he insists on wearing. He finished up half naked, almost catatonic. After a strong programme that satisfied with most of the big favourites, the audience would not let them go, they gave five encores (including Rockville). They may be fading a little now, but, on this evidence, their core support is firm as a rock. I made a few photographs, but I was really too involved to give them much attention.
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July 7
Every month for seven years I would board the Underground at Victoria and exit at Russell Square en route to a meeting of London Librarians. So, when news came through of the bomb, I could picture every grimy tile and granite step and imagine that stifling subterranean hell in vivid detail.
We can share nightmares in far-off places, imagine and ache with their pain and grief - 9/11 was the ultimate. But nothing compares to the outrage and fear that one feels at the rape of one's home territory, one's own folk.
As the thing unfolded - slowly, as though there was a permitted unwrapping of each layer of horror - more points of reference struck home. Streets we had always walked now strident with sirens, the dear red bus torn apart, Liverpool Street Station, gateway to Norfolk and the East, compromised and deserted.
Days after, there is the uncomfortable knowledge of terrible work continuing underground, men and women seeing and doing things that will haunt them forever. Wider circles of agony spreading outward to families, to friends of the lost ones. Destiny has picked its random victims again.
How may one forgive the unforgiveable?
We can share nightmares in far-off places, imagine and ache with their pain and grief - 9/11 was the ultimate. But nothing compares to the outrage and fear that one feels at the rape of one's home territory, one's own folk.
As the thing unfolded - slowly, as though there was a permitted unwrapping of each layer of horror - more points of reference struck home. Streets we had always walked now strident with sirens, the dear red bus torn apart, Liverpool Street Station, gateway to Norfolk and the East, compromised and deserted.
Days after, there is the uncomfortable knowledge of terrible work continuing underground, men and women seeing and doing things that will haunt them forever. Wider circles of agony spreading outward to families, to friends of the lost ones. Destiny has picked its random victims again.
How may one forgive the unforgiveable?
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Sunday, July 03, 2005
Digitalis purpurea
This is a wonderful year for foxgloves. As far as the eye can see from the stream back into the forest they stand in massed ranks of purple, pink and white. I have posted a couple of pictures on Flickr. Blogger is playing up again and hasn't allowed me to post images for three days.
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More definitions
As I know several readers enjoy this ISIHAC feature, I grabbed a pen and got some of them down this week:
philander - Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen
semolina - a system of signalling using puddings
delegate - a Jewish scandal
systematic - a robot nun
asbestos - Greek anti-social behaviour order
boomerang - show displeasure at a dessert
pistachio - an alcoholic's facial hair
aerobic - a chocolate biro
Baltimore - asking for seconds in an Indian restaurant
increment - bad Japanese weather
chinchilla - air-conditioning for beards
Honolulu - MBE for a Scottish singer
philander - Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen
semolina - a system of signalling using puddings
delegate - a Jewish scandal
systematic - a robot nun
asbestos - Greek anti-social behaviour order
boomerang - show displeasure at a dessert
pistachio - an alcoholic's facial hair
aerobic - a chocolate biro
Baltimore - asking for seconds in an Indian restaurant
increment - bad Japanese weather
chinchilla - air-conditioning for beards
Honolulu - MBE for a Scottish singer
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Saturday, July 02, 2005
Three links for a rainy Sunday
Ron Slattery's found photographs, Big Happy Funhouse - to which I shall shortly be linking. I note that he shares my fear of clowns. Please page through to the June 23 entry - a wonderful face, amazing topping.
Spencer Tunick's Installations. Naked humans, public places - Barcelona's was formidable, but London stripped quite well outside the Saatchi. Looked at en masse, we really do have a great resemblance to the pig. Seriously interesting stuff.
I celebrate the return of Sensitive Light after a too lengthy absence. The fashion shots are fabulous.
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Windows No 6
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Friday, July 01, 2005
Name five things you miss about childhood...
Going out to play. That whole thing about jumping on your bike which immediately turns into a rearing stallion; building a hermit cave under brambles; dressing-up and walking in high heels to the corner shop; making rancid scent out of chestnut blossoms, or going to lean on a gate to watch pigs pee.
Lightness of being. It seemed to have little to do with actual weight, more with being unaffected by gravity. No ballast had yet been attached by life. Days were filled with perpetual motion.
Mothering, when you were ill.
Camphorated oil, Bengers' Food in a warm bowl, Friar's Balsam, thin bread and butter, firm hands, cooling hands.
"All right, your temperature's up, you can stay home. Climb back in bed and I'll bring you a boiled egg."
Mum's face lit by the nightlight when I was really ill. Feeling safe. Safe within her presence.
Finding real excitement in small things. Baked beans at Lyon's Corner House; lemonade and crisps outside the village pub; the Roxy Cinema, fleapit of W.11.; Girl's Crystal arriving on Friday morning with the next bit of the serial; having a home perm; knowing that there was a birthday parcel with a book in it on top of the wardrobe; being trusted to fetch milk from the farm in a can.
Belonging to a large peer group.
Thirty school children all of the same age, but disparate backgrounds stay together for five years. Never again would there be such a concentrated social experience - Ant, Jo, Virginia and Jen at the back. My best friend Sue, me and Beatrice Italiana at the front. I can remember the very wrinkles of their gymslips.
This meme is on many blogs, but Sam's version, although she claims to miss nothing, is my favourite.
Lightness of being. It seemed to have little to do with actual weight, more with being unaffected by gravity. No ballast had yet been attached by life. Days were filled with perpetual motion.
Mothering, when you were ill. Camphorated oil, Bengers' Food in a warm bowl, Friar's Balsam, thin bread and butter, firm hands, cooling hands.
"All right, your temperature's up, you can stay home. Climb back in bed and I'll bring you a boiled egg."
Mum's face lit by the nightlight when I was really ill. Feeling safe. Safe within her presence.
Finding real excitement in small things. Baked beans at Lyon's Corner House; lemonade and crisps outside the village pub; the Roxy Cinema, fleapit of W.11.; Girl's Crystal arriving on Friday morning with the next bit of the serial; having a home perm; knowing that there was a birthday parcel with a book in it on top of the wardrobe; being trusted to fetch milk from the farm in a can.
Belonging to a large peer group.
Thirty school children all of the same age, but disparate backgrounds stay together for five years. Never again would there be such a concentrated social experience - Ant, Jo, Virginia and Jen at the back. My best friend Sue, me and Beatrice Italiana at the front. I can remember the very wrinkles of their gymslips. This meme is on many blogs, but Sam's version, although she claims to miss nothing, is my favourite.