waiting for the night bus to brixton

Barely awake after a sleepless night with Sarah Waters' novel, The Night Watch, I sat in the darkness waiting for the four o’clock bus to leave the little terminus that is just across the road from The Green Man, the small pub at the edge of Putney Heath.

A big red bus from central London rumbled up Putney Hill and drew to a halt. The driver silenced the engine and put out all the lights and then, from the shadow of the bus, there appeared a large girl with shiny black hair, huge dark eyes, skin the colour of roasted almonds bursting voluptuously from an ambitiously tight white dress, and wearing what were probably the most uncomfortable shoes in the Universe.

She began to limp towards the bus shelter with an agonizing hesitancy and two seconds later there appeared just behind her, one by one, five more girls, all in little black dresses, and each encumbered with the same tortuous footwear.

They wobbled this way and that, they stopped and they started, they held on to one another, they yelped and they groaned; and then one by one, they sat down on the six plastic seats, gasping and sighing with relief as the pain in their feet faded, but then shrieking as the icy cold from the thick red plastic groped them.

Once they had whimpered a bit and got used to the shock, they noticed the condensation on the big glass panels and were soon twisting and turning and stretching to write their names. And guess what ?  Everyone was a Princess !

And then they began to sing … like angels !

not waving, nor drowning

around clapham junction, on the morning of the london marathon, the skies are filling with what john arlott used to call "ominous portent" ...

... just before that paradoxical moment when fresh falling rain smells of dust

if an electioneering politician should happen to venture up our stairs, i shall ask them to clarify their party's policy on legalising polygamous marriage in putney after the next election

foxy demonstrates ... the correct way to approach a dangerous looking blade of grass

new oak leaves on clapham common

if you loved photography ... you'd always be browsing through the site managed by "shorpy"

http://www.shorpy.com/node/7738?size=_original

my sympathies are entirely with the dragon

... having been influenced by stan freeberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBcASC9VqzY


thanx to linda for reminding me to do my patriotic duty

horsted keynes again

horsted keynes again again

horsted keynes again again again

a curious co-incidence in ashdown forest

monday night i copied this Richard Avedon photo from the informative Art Knowledge News website in to my voluminous scrapbook

tuesday morning, less than twelve hours later, i stopped to investigate a standing stone that is just visible from my route through ashdown forest since the last big clearance of brambles and bracken ...

and after leaving the truck at the nearest lay-by, this is what i found ...

which made me contemplate that curious feeling we get whenever we unexpectedly share an experience with people who were always distant and are no longer with us

whilst some sleep and dream cheese, others have to live cheese !

as a cheese delivery driver and a connoisseur of vivid dreaming i was pleased to come across this discussion in one of my favourite blogs

http://5fingerplatz.blogspot.com/2010/04/kase-essen-und-der-schlaf.html

http://www.hb-foods.co.uk/

selected quotes from the latest re-print of the new emotional blackmailers handbook

"everything i haven't done was for your own good"

"i've put my dirty socks in the laundry basket if you're interested"

blimey, charlie ... how sentimental can you get ?

click on the link and wallow ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjCk8kRFhC4&feature=fvw

they've all been invited to linda crabb's birthday BBQ

the curtain falls on the last scene of an old favourite

more stuff from penshurst

robert sidney's monument in penshurst church

"my flesh also shall rest in hope" ... psalm 16, verse 9 ... inside the south entrance to penshurst church yard

museums like the V&A teach us that in fashion what goes around will eventually come around ...

... and we are encouraged to believe its ok to accumulate lots of old things even if they lack utility ...

... but faced with antiquity, my instinct would still be a quick scrub with some vim ...

... and whilst i'm enthusiastic about the idea that each of these ivories might brush up nicely with a squeeze of pepsodent ...