Monday, February 17, 2014

notes on how to watch television from the other room ...























in mid-week, the loved one likes to catch up with the popular television drama, "call the midwife"

she watches it whilst curled up on the sofa with her laptop and just when i'm creeping off to bed in preparation for an early alarum

i find there is almost always an opportunity before i sleep to pretend to share her fascination by calling out, "is someone in labour ?" in an anxious sort of tone at the appropriate moment

i hope it doesn't annoy her

an unexpected almost-nearly-juxtaposition last week in lyme regis ... flags on the stern of a beached fishing boat beside the harbour, the sticker perhaps only a hundred yards away on marine parade






































http://antifalausitz.sytes.net/

Sunday, February 16, 2014

yayoi kusama









































































http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/yayoi-kusama/survey-selected-works/image/page/35/

http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/_31/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama

Saturday, February 15, 2014

roy hewish aged 85 rampaging in the welsh mountains


alvi and his new torch ( part ii )


the opening paragraph of james stephens' crock of gold ...













IN the centre of the pine wood called Coilla Doraca there lived not long ago two Philosophers. They were wiser than anything else in the world except the Salmon who lies in the pool of Glyn Cagny into which the nuts of knowledge fall from the hazel bush on its bank. He, of course, is the most profound of living creatures, but the two Philosophers are next to him in wisdom. Their faces looked as though they were made of parchment, there was ink under their nails, and every difficulty that was submitted to them, even by women, they were able to instantly resolve. The Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath asked them the three questions which nobody had ever been able to answer, and they were able to answer them. That was how they obtained the enmity of these two women which is more valuable than the friendship of angels. The Grey Woman and the Thin Woman were so incensed at being answered that they married the two Philosophers in order to be able to pinch them in bed, but the skins of the Philosophers were so thick that they did not know they were being pinched. They repaid the fury of the women with such tender affection that these vicious creatures almost expired of chagrin, and once, in a very ecstasy of exasperation, after having been kissed by their husbands, they uttered the fourteen hundred maledictions which comprised their wisdom, and these were learned by the Philosophers who thus became even wiser than before.

friends in high places ( part ii )


















Monday, February 10, 2014

i can still spot a mermaid at two hundred paces ... an optician's sign at lyme regis























... although it doesn't say so, most likely painted by linzi ...

http://www.mermaid-at-the-tudor.com/

http://www.linziwest.co.uk/illustrations.html

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Sunday, February 2, 2014

candlemas ... i still like the story of simeon, even if i amn't religious ... we used to sing a nice version of nunc dimittis in malmesbury abbey back in the 1950s ... by stanford, in C























http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlemas

this is the best version i can find on the internet ... closest to the way we sang it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6CEDIL0O7k

the painting is by giotto, in padua

Saturday, February 1, 2014