Saturday, November 7, 2009

waiting for the girls to play us a bit of corelli in the norfolk room


competition time



































a double first question, indicative of the author's distasteful curiosity about the enigmatic gender:


about the lady who wore this dress ... might she have swayed ? or wriggled ?


and a question of taste for the aesthete:


which of these teapots from the same small room in the V&A might she have chosen for brewing the first cup of the day ?

Sunday, November 1, 2009

a good friend retires tomorrow ...


... so i've borrowed two of robert crumb's immortal images for this "cheapskate's card"


Saturday, October 31, 2009

mens' talk ... instead of thinking about the dishes, he's thinking "lucky arsenal !"


1001 uses ... anti-tilt storage mechanism


1001 uses ... safe storage of little pointy scissorzez


3BT, well maybe 2not-quite-soBT at the V&A last night

A Dickensian/Gothick tableau in the darkened cafe ... an actor face-painted in red personifying Death, sits down at long straight table with an imposing retinue of sinister companions, some of the men with tall hats, the women plumed or tiara-d, each one strikingly elegant and sinister in black.

In the Japanese gallery, a treasure house of joyfully aspirational marvels and perfections, a row of very young people, too young to properly know the tragic passions and the deadly sins, sitting cross-legged in eager anticipation to watch an old black-and-white fillum of the visceral Japanese ghost tale, Onibaba.

The luminous and never ending life-stream of interesting bodies and faces and fashions and fancy-dress entering this great museum as if it were their second home.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

the child that books built








i felt myself drawn to the open door of a charity shop which usually fails to entice ... i spotted this book immediately and remembered the author's name being favourably reviewed elsewhere in recent years ... it is deeply engaging and occasionally challenging ... what's more ... the bbc have archived the author's reflections on the writing of it in five very short talks totalling about twenty minutes

Sunday, October 18, 2009