at the cemetery ... diaghelev and stravinsky

you won't see many pigeons and seagulls in canaletto's paintings ... why ?

nor any drop to drink

a few choice knockers

my dear sweet funny aunt mavis, dowager duchess of pontllanfraith, 96 today !

a souvenir

3BT from Venice, and from Padua

At sunset, from the north wall of the Arsenale, there is a clear and unexpected view of pink and distant snowy mountains.

In the museum of antiquities in Padua, the skeletons of a cavalryman buried with his horse two thousand five hundred years ago, the man’s head fossilized now against what was once perhaps the cushion of the horses neck.

In Giotto’s Scrovegni chapel, also in Padua, a sunbeam slants across the panel depicting the Lamentation and catches their haloes.

… and three more

Just before nine in the morning, two minutes walk to the east of the Piazza San Marco, a well dressed young man’s handsome face suddenly takes on a childish smile and he hopscotches along the flagstones … perhaps the primary school we just passed in the last street is his old one.

Following only ten yards behind him, a much taller man sways like a dancer as he balances two heavy polystyrene cases of fish on his head, stabilised there in their onward trajectory with an inch-thick ring of cloth.

Later, I step through the double-glazed door on to our balcony in my best pyjamas.  It is mid afternoon.  On the opposite bank of the Fondamenta San Lorenzo, the young waitress standing in the doorway of the Trattoria al Greci glances up, her face a question mark.  I bend down in to the shadow behind the balustrade and then hold up for her to see the bottle of prosecco I’d left to cool there last night.  She smiles and confirms her understanding with a double thumbs-up.

we'll be away for a few days ... back next weekend

when i rule the universe ... songbirds will be expensively licensed, by imperial decree

why does she keep all this junk ? soon there'll be no room for my piles of old newspapers

i wonder if it's stuffed with large denomination banknotes she's forgotten to spend ?

my book of the month ... my backscratcher of the millenium

3BT from Friday the eleventh of March

Driving the truck with practised precision in brilliant spring sunshine so that it glides up and over that switchback road from Nutley towards Duddleswell across the southern fringe of Ashdown Forest whilst Radio 3 blasts out the Lone Ranger theme ( the trick of in-cab stereo is to shift the balance towards the left speaker ) … not quite the full Valkyrian Apocalypse Now experience but certainly elating … faster than the fastest horse, farther than the swiftest arrow !  Now where did I put my white hat and my black mask, and my silver six guns ?

Glancing up from a four in the morning slump with a most enchanting book at exactly the right moment and glimpsing the blurred façade of The Book Trust at Wandsworth slipping past the rainy windows of the night bus towards Peckham … foreground and background out of focus beyond the twin frames of my reading glasses.

http://www.booktrust.org.uk/Home

Admiring other’s minds.  For example, my boss, my guvnor.  He can’t spell and struggles to write a paragraph but he memorises dialogue and re-enacts film scenes … this afternoon he mimicked Eddie Murphy in Coming To America.  I tell him I’m re-visualizing his own scene in my next production … in which Satan brands two words across his forehead in eternally flaming capitals … TOP BASTARD !

mystery object

is it still ok to call him a winker ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/10/fred-goodwin-superinjunction-banking

don't miss your once in a lifetime opportunity to enter our spot the difference competition with mystery prizes

turned out nice again !

stuff at horsted keynes

this queen for a day business seems to be dragging on ...

i wonder if frank sinatra owned a camera ?

yes, it looks like spring because the blossom is all flossy and frivolous ... but no, it can't be spring because it was flippin freezin on clapham common this morning

i don't watch telly, but i do admire this challenging BBC series that asks interviewees to think fast about things that matter to them

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12653256

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8332871.stm

james turrell is one of the men that i admire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUTNx0ghXs0&feature=related

( i wish i could tell you the name of the photographer )

i've never been invited to a royal wedding ...

... perhaps they were too shy to ask !

a little bit of afternoon sunshine

go on ! peck her tail ...

... and see whether the old dog is a legitimate source of carrion yet

lost among the thickly wooded oxbows and levees of what his lordship is pleased to call his mind ...

Irrational Numbers.  For the last six years I have been getting up to go to work in the middle of the night.  Each time I leave the house, I stand inside the front door in the darkness, checking my pockets for six essential items.  Cash, Keys, Cards, Cameras, Glasses, Pens, Phones.  Each time, I leave the house feeling anxious that something has been forgotten, and I am compelled to search bag and pockets whilst I walk to the bus stop and wait.  Today I decided I really would have to write the list down as a checklist, and only then, for the first time in six years, did I realise there are SEVEN items on the list.  

which reminds me

... the coalman's outfit wasn't dissimilar to that of the roman infantryman

chocolate rabbits contemplating manchester united's faltering progress in europe