not quite everyone in california has broadband, already ...

sometimes it takes ages ( six or seven years ! ) for small visual memories to condense among my vapid reveries and then trickle down as proto-thoughts ... and then it takes another age to articulate them

i'd been looking at a favourite picture ( found on a NASA website ) of racetrack playa by night and was wondering exactly where it is

annoyingly, i discovered that we had once passed within a few miles

and once upon that time, on the high desert pass between the panamint valley and the owens valley, miles from anywhere, i had been startled to see a yellow school bus bumping along a dusty side road amongst the last straggly joshua trees

today i looked at google earth because i am always curious about the improbable places where people might choose to live, especially so far from the comforts of urban life ...

... and i found that dusty road again, and discovered it leads to Darwin, CA ... and thereabouts must dwell the designer of this jolly little website

http://www.darwincalif.com/

of parchments and palimpsests ...

i've already pointed out to the loved one that ... if ever there is a world shortage of writing paper, then the lily-white skin of women as fair and unblemished as her divine self will be at a premium for incurable scribblers like me

http://www.scientific-computing.com/features/feature.php?feature_id=125

they only sell soap powder now

not much going on at the spreadeagle in wandsworth

picture taken whilst i was trying to finish reading a couple more chapters of "my name is red" by orhan pamuk, a master story teller

i'd been reading it on the bus and thought i might be more comfortable in this sadly dilapidated pub

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/sep/15/highereducation.fiction

a poem by anne stevenson insinuated itself in to my conciousness during my sock shopping expedition

and then i found it on the internet when i got home

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/poems-on-the-underground/

i'm only here because i'll need some clean socks to wear in venice next weekend

at fletching church

remembering keith haring ... via art knowledge news

http://www.artknowledgenews.com/

some bits of stuff at the british museum

two pet theories vindicated during this evening's visit to the british museum ... A: that truckers make the best artist's models ...

and B: that morris dancing was invented by the chinese

the bus station at vauxhall ... on my way home from "choir practise"

saint martin in the fields choir practise

twas raining heavily and the church had accommodated about twenty homeless and exhausted people who'd come in to sleep between matins and the eucharist ... the choir didn't disturb them

http://www2.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/page/music/church/church.html

a brisk morning on the common

another generous gift from the british tax payer ... but hang on a moment, i am a british tax payer ... although i look more like a member of the BNP

if she really loved me ...

... then she'd have halted the train and made the driver wait whilst she ran back to that little town to buy me some fish and chips ... and she'd have brought me the salt and vinegar from the chip shop counter, too

der flugtest ... i love clever technology ... and there's something about the enthusiasm of clever technologists that makes me smile

many thanks to metafilter for this link

http://www.wimp.com/thehexacopter/

Montaigne's library ... from Sarah Bakewell's lovely new book

the loved one triumphs on valentine's day ! ... aren't i a lucky boy ?

of love and shadows

forever england ... battersea park station

this week's ration of excitement in whyteleafe ... its either wolves or wabbits ... the locals pays their money and then they takes their choice

the spoils of my toils ... my only public vice is second-hand books ... this week's acquisitions ... the illustrators Badmin and Tunnicliffe

glimpsed "from the corner of my eye" on the edge of crowborough

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

87 to 95 Curtain Road, London EC2

apropos de nuffinque

in ticehurst church ... they don't make 'em like this any more

long sign on a pub at warlingham

limpsfield church hides the tomb of mountstuart elphinstone

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mountstuart_Elphinstone

weeding the ponds ...

.. at the red barn, blindley heath

Mem.RTBPSoc.

rich tea biscuit preservation society

jenny uglow's lunar men ... if you are devouring "chemistry: a volatile history" and "how earth made us" via the BBC iPlayer, then you might also enjoy this book

if i pin this photo on the wall, will the loved one be motivated to finish ironing my shirts ?

adopted ... someone in eccles road had thrown him out with their christmas tree

winter housekeeping ... wringing the colour from some weak sunshine