tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35383932008-05-11T18:22:56.918ZAnnanoreply@blogger.comBlogger862125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-19536232715361865402008-05-11T13:51:00.025Z2008-05-11T18:22:56.947Z

I'll be up at 5.30 a.m. tomorrow to catch an early flight to Paris with my friend Sandra, we are staying until Friday evening. I found a 3 star hotel on the Rue des Ecoles, in Saint Germain, just across the Seine from Notre-Dame. It may not be luxury but, by gum, it's slap bang in the centre. I have an enormous list of things I want to see and S. has the same - but we may just cope with the heat

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-8280191232015256362008-05-09T12:32:00.010Z2008-05-09T13:38:18.463Z

I took this rather engaging photo of beach-hut folk at Mudeford, Dorset, it says something of English eccentricity. You might also have noticed a few photos on my Flickr site taken last week-end when we walked along the prom past the beach huts in Southwold. Attractive and desirable as both they and the resort are, this outlay on a bid for one of them seems a tad expensive. They do command

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-51483309743507939152008-05-05T01:02:00.025Z2008-05-05T09:38:21.624Z

Sometimes a voice stops you dead; from the first moment you hear it you are hooked. The cause might be timbre, phrasing, mannerism, sweetness or roughness; whatever the quality, it fits the template of your emotional taste. It becomes a voice immediately recognizable among a hundred others. My special ones have been ridiculously diverse; Schwarzkopf, Aznavour, Scott Walker, Tom McRae, Tracy

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-70322068975068335352008-05-02T08:39:00.007Z2008-05-03T02:12:51.860Z

It happens to me now, at start of spring, As April's birthday counts the seasons of my life, A new refraction makes my eye more keen, Intensifying greeness to a greener green. I touch the tissue leaves, moist from their buds, Hanging like filo or small scarves of silk. Their infancy is precious as their beauty's brief, I marvel at the lemon light of each new leaf. So spring

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-39816560814921769932008-04-26T10:34:00.002Z2008-04-26T10:38:48.177Z

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-17955993514613991572008-04-19T19:22:00.014Z2008-04-20T03:01:12.323Z

At the British Museum recently we saw a strikingly original exhibit cum artwork that has stuck in my mind. In the past I've worked on the collection of oral history, in all I've taped and transcribed over forty interviews. What comes from such a range of individual testimonies is a broader social history of great immediacy & authenticity. I am endlessly fascinated by personal histories and

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-27311024364186739822008-04-17T11:08:00.007Z2008-04-17T11:22:40.435Z

Paul-Albert Bartholomé, Artist/sculptor (1848-1928): Artist's Wife Reading. There is a pleasing window painting of her too

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-6232424813012602352008-04-16T23:23:00.024Z2008-04-20T03:30:19.955Z

I'm in the land of the living but not quite out of the woods, to mix a metaphor. Not to go into too much unwelcome detail, all symptoms point to a kidney stone at some point that either eluded the sieve or self-destructed. The Doc is not satisfied in view of some other problems, so I'm on my way to an ultrasound scan - possibly sometime before 2009? Always slightly worrying these waiting games; I

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-63017038104883399422008-04-09T15:55:00.010Z2008-04-09T20:15:50.251Z

I thought I knew what severe pain was until last Saturday when it became clear that there were whole new levels beyond. I'd been having a bit of a grumbling left side for a couple of days when suddenly a ball of sharp pointy knives started spinning in my lower abdomen. The spasm lasted for about 3 minutes then faded. "What on earth was that?" I, more or less, said, mopping my brow, relieved it

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-58323448468249036642008-03-30T06:04:00.004Z2008-03-30T06:12:13.937Z

Michael Sowa: A Summer Night's Melancholy

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-8205342883751981862008-03-25T19:51:00.007Z2008-03-30T06:14:27.873Z

He died today having been poorly for a while. We had him for seven years and he was a real character. Crazy to say that you loved a chicken very dearly, but we did. He was a good cockerel to his hens, gallant in offering food, a strict disciplinarian when they got bitchy and a real Don Juan - no egg went unfertilised. He liked to be picked up and fussed and he adored G who could do anything

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-80410814639794505582008-03-25T01:30:00.010Z2008-03-25T20:24:05.976Z

I gritted my teeth and watched The Passion of the Christ on Channel 4 tonight, I had chickened out of it at the cinema. As a producer/director Mel Gibson is given to taking liberties with historical record and in this film there is additionally a famous case to be made for accusing him of anti-semitism and sensationalism. Nevertheless the power of the piece is overwhelming. During the worst

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-48738637171653962812008-03-23T12:32:00.004Z2008-03-23T12:38:51.134Z

Happy Easter. We woke up to a white landscape this morning. It won't last.

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-42322477193312359172008-03-21T07:42:00.003Z2008-03-21T07:50:13.850Z

Ballade of Dead Actors Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? The plumes, the armours -- friend and foe? The

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-80423726125968831172008-03-15T23:14:00.055Z2008-03-17T11:41:50.943Z

In what is now one of the trendier areas of London, a large flat above an electrical shop at No. 292, Westbourne Grove was my early childhood home in the 1940's. Even back then, a stone's throw from Notting Hill Gate and close by the antiques and fruit & veg markets of Portobello Road, it had a lively and eccentric atmosphere. Streets were gap-toothed from the bombing, the old mews passages

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-17262414151665182122008-03-04T23:14:00.011Z2008-03-05T03:34:43.431Z

Picasso: Girl Reading at a Table. 1934. Impossible not to be in awe of the variety and tireless development of his work.

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-19738842296134073082008-03-03T08:12:00.011Z2008-03-25T06:35:31.023Z

MUSICOVERY - a most pleasing source of new musical ideas for every mood, it's an interactive web radio for your desktop. Worth registering. (via Purelandmountain) TWICKENHAM - because REM extended their UK tour I managed to get 2 tickets for this concert - standing - now to find someone to go with me... ADDICTIVE GEOGRAPHY will get you in a state. I can now complete the USA under half time -

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-80219333899862308992008-03-03T05:28:00.008Z2008-03-03T05:42:37.471Z

I believe my sister is collecting original ideas for a new bathroom. This amusing trompe l'oeil painted floor would make a great talking-point; it would ensure that absolutely no-one would be tempted to have a read on the loo, or, indeed, that there would be much of a queue to use her facilities at all.

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-27465411579947501062008-02-29T09:39:00.012Z2008-03-01T08:39:16.103Z

David Dimbleby, master of the significant pause, was on DID this week and came over with considerable charm. It was comforting to discover that he is another of the unfashionable band that dislikes hot weather and sun-soaked beaches, preferring shade with sudden darts of sunlight. He couldn't hack the heat of a tropical island and neither could I. This preference has always left me at odds with

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-84793744939772923032008-02-26T22:21:00.010Z2008-02-27T04:16:48.792Z

The Philip Glass score for the French documentary movie Animals in Love will be available on CD in the UK in March. The film promises equal measures of visual and aural pleasure. I presume that it will eventually go on release here. There's a music sampler at Amazon. Glass found it an enjoyable exercise - a film with no voices where the music must speak the narrative. It's a

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-48188397306409475412008-02-24T04:22:00.012Z2008-02-25T19:07:56.573Z

On my left wrist A bump arose, A squishy thing at first, It hardened to an ugly knot That wouldn't be dispersed. I saw the doc, She said "Aha," A ganglion, some lump! I know the way to deal with that, Just give it a good thump." "Well do it then," I said to her, "Just bang it, I won't look." I can't," she said, "get someone else To hit it with a book." Well, no-one would, Especially G Who

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-59094715293249074882008-02-22T13:04:00.012Z2008-02-24T02:33:10.803Z

Yesterday I bought some ritzy Arm and Hammer brand toothpaste. Brushing for the first time with its strange name in my mind I had this phoenetically driven vision of a rather wispy young 19th century Parisian in a cravat and stained velvet coat who answered to the name of Armand Hamer. It seems that he had acquired the skill of dentistry from an itinerant quack. Armand could pull teeth so

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-16280244880861545232008-02-21T04:08:00.019Z2008-02-22T12:55:36.755Z

Just outside my window are some big, woody lavenders, so old and spent that they that must be taken out this year. Opening the curtains this morning, I saw the quick movement there as a tiny wren dived into one of them - I had a good view as it spent five minutes moving from bush to bush - checking out potential building sites or finding something edible. My eye had time to register the neat

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-30032103774207353102008-02-20T02:11:00.016Z2008-02-21T13:47:16.912Z

'Bridgend was yesterday mourning yet another addition to the alarming number of suicides in the area, after a 16-year-old girl was found hanged in a wood five miles from the town. Jenna Parry is the 17th young person to take her own life since January 2007.' I cannot get these young people out of my mind - each new death reported, each life gone is more insistently symptomatic of a crisis. Such

Annanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3538393.post-47511428889958386632008-02-19T20:49:00.009Z2008-02-19T23:54:08.682Z

On their world tour REM are giving just one concert in England - to support the ICA. I tried to buy tickets 4 hours after booking opened and they were sold out. The question now is, do I love them enough to pay for the cheapest option available - tickets at £135 + commission for restricted view seats - to the sharp guys who got in there faster? No, I guess not, though I'm sorely tempted. If you

Annanoreply@blogger.com