Saturday, March 24, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
3BT
As the truck roars by the edge of their field, two wild rabbits sit up from their breakfast, and their pricking ears are illuminated with the early sunlight.
In the smart new kitchen at Ockenden Manor, I make an early delivery which coincides with the moment when Murielle, their wonderful French baker and patissier and chocolatier, is handing out some little slices of a cake she’s made with walnuts and oranges. It is probably what the Gods eat when she’s at home in those southern mountains.
At the bottom of Horsted Keynes village, I approach the chicane-cum-crossroad with a caution born of experience. The hedges make it a blind junction and there are aged pedestrians in sight. As I slow to about 20mph for the left-hander, so a brand new Range-Rover coming from the opposite direction, and driven by a woman young enough to be my daughter, cuts across my path at about 50mph. I stand on the brake and the truck demonstrates the efficiency of its electronic traction control with a brief skid, the tyres squeal but there is no sign of a wobble. She shoots by with a look of terror on her face. In the mirror I am pleased to see nothing but a little cloud of blue smoke illuminated with the early sunlight.
and later ... three more illuminated and beautiful things
The first yellow butterfly of the year flitting past an oakwood.
A green woodpecker flying along side a dark bank of cypress trees.
A huge spherical bumblebee, with long black hairs and a bright orange bum, hovering besides a metallic purple car.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
a sordid and vexatious scene of domestic debauchery
I arrive home late after a long and arduous day at the end of a long and arduous working week.
I slump on the sofa for half an hour waiting for the brain’s energy system to regain some of its charge.
The Loved One slumps on the other sofa. Her arm is mending quite well, 65 days after her fall, but she still has a lot of pain.
I have been moving some very heavy objects up gradients and over resistant surfaces, and so I have a few aches and pains of my own.
Eventually I make some tea. Earl Grey for the Loved One. English Breakfast for myself.
We take a few deeply comforting sips on our respective sofas but then I go to the kitchen and return with a bottle of very good Spanish brandy and I pour in a generous quantity to top up my tea.
The Loved One looks at me knowingly and reminds me in a very level tone that as a matter of fact the bottle is hers … I had offered it to her as a gift when I returned from my last but one trip to Spain … skint.
In turn, not wishing to lose face entirely, I cheerfully suggest that she should look on this action as one which amounts to my doing her a favour. The bottle is currently too heavy for her injured arm and I am hastening the time when she will once again be able to help herself.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
howard hodgkin's collection of indian paintings on show at the ashmolean
i was never deeply interested in hodgkin's own work although the colours are often really really nice, but this collection of his is simply marvellous ...
http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/mughalindia/
http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/6980/9577
http://www.howard-hodgkin.com/gallery/
Friday, March 2, 2012
yesterday morning's sunny 3BT
The road winds through the ancient woods and forests, and I speed in and out of the billowing and pouring mists towards the dawn, and sometimes the road catches the colours of the sun and the sky, glistening and gleaming orange or pink or gold amongst the last shadows of the night.
The big old buzzard is the same colour as the leafless hedgerow and sits perfectly still there in broad daylight, never losing sight of the five glossy pheasants sunbathing on a grassy knoll.
The girl stands in a sunny spot at breakfast time, ten yards from the front door of a hotel in a village just beneath those misty woods. I imagine she might be from China, of maybe from Tibet. Tall, strong looking, round faced but expressionless or thoughtful. At a glance, her skin seems brown and perfect and there is a rosy tint beneath the tan. She wears an archaic blouse, heavy-looking soft cotton in royal blue, only the collar button undone, long puffy sleeves and tightly buttoned cuffs. Her skirt is a lighter blue, a simple A-line to the shins, above simple Chinese slippers. She stands with arms dangling, radiant and relaxed and self-contained in beautiful symmetry until she lifts her right hand, the palm towards me as the truck glides past, spreading her fingers into a comb, and slowly stretching her arm until a yard of dark silky straight hair stretches away from her at shoulder height and there is still some left to dangle gleaming from those outstretched fingers. And then I’ve gone.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
i crept around the blind side of the truck and shot from the hip to surprise these two camera-phobes at the smokery ... despite appearances, they are one of the highlights of my working week ... is it any wonder i need counselling ?
and while we stood blathering i saw two tree creepers exploring the precinct only about thirty feet from the cab ... i've borrowed a picture from the internet
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/t/treecreeper/index.aspx
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Me and my big mouth … in and out of my dreams
I visited an old friend whilst I was in Spain this week. She’s newly widowed after her husband’s very long illness. She has two small children. She writes TV scripts and novels for a living, successfully. Since his death, she's already completed a new novel and she's gleefully inventing a new soap opera.
She explained in so many words how witnessing death and coping with the subsequent legal and procedural and emotional complications had strengthened her and had given her a newly balanced set of principles and criteria for dealing with life’s common dilemmas and contingencies. To use two well-worn platitudes, she has emerged from the shadows greatly and impressively empowered. I mean it. Believe me !
She said, if I remember rightly, that she felt “ready to grasp the world”.
Next day, I sent a fatuous observation that I’m beginning to regret. I suggested that only megalomaniacs could “grasp the world”: and the rest of us might best hope to swim alongside, and to enjoy our short time with it.
Clearly, even as I wrote those words, there may have been some tiny splinter of uncertainty about this barely tenable point of view in the back of my mind. I say this with the benefit of hindsight.
I am a person who dreams vividly, and, amidst the lurid chaos, there are often memorably bright threads of narrative, and clear echoes of events and situations, both ancient and modern, which I feel compelled to reflect on.
During last night’s dream, I sat with a group of friends in the luxurious atrium of a vast hotel, gleefully rejoicing that because and although the world had just stopped spinning, we were lucky to find ourselves on its sunny side, if a little late in the afternoon.
Effing hubris is never far away from effing nemesis ! Even in my dreams.
In an instant, the grim thought occurred that although the world might stand still, the mighty oceans would maintain their angular momentum ... and then, all in the one brief moment, looking out of a picture window towards the blazing sunset, we saw a mountainous tsunami approaching.
“Uh oh !”, I said, “Here comes the Pacific Ocean !”
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
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