your starter for one million points is this mystery object

it was a prototype or pattern for a casting

i found it thrown on a tip outside a junk shop in melksham about thirty years ago

there was a mechanical engineering company with a foundry in the town named spencer's that had recently closed

any suggestions as to the form and function of the finished component ?

shaddupayourface ... while i'm pre-occupied with plundering the treasure trove that is flores y palabras

http://floresypalabras.blogspot.com/

unabashedly sentimental ... Paco Ibáñez ... via flores y palabras

http://floresypalabras.blogspot.com/2010/04/tus-ojos-me-recuerdan.html

a delicious dance treat via the metafilter

http://www.jordanmatter.com/photography/dance-photography/dancers-among-us/gallery.php#Jordan_Matter_Dance_20.jpg

saint malcolm maclaren

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt6Co7EMNCU&feature=related

three more beautiful things

The young foxes have grown.  One rolls on its back on the grass beneath the trees and street lights in the early hours, circled warily by another.  A third arrives suddenly and runs through their invisible circle in a straight line.

In Eric Rohmer’s film, Ma Nuit Chez Maude, two people quite suddenly ensnared by the idea of love, talk urgently on a hillside, oblivious to the fantastic view behind them of snow falling on the city of Clermont.

Walking along a dry path in the wood at night, one hears a soft slow crescendo of summer rain approaching through the trees.

the shoe wouldn't fit

http://www.capitalscenery.co.uk/#/client-list/4537001709

living proof that any amount of chocolate won't make your hair curl

only connect

a periodic table of swearing is a fine idea, though this one, from scurrilous publishers modern toss, can only be viewed as prototypical as there aren't nearly enough rows and columns to suit every purpose

for instance ... the old  dog wanders, lags, deviates, hesitates, strays, and generally retards my progress whenever i hobble across clapham common but ... if i should sit down to read the paper or jot something in a notebook, or just to ease my aching feet ... then she's right there in my face with her complaining and her whimpering

the new heavy duty attack element for doggie discipline i should wish to introduce to this revised post-quantumnal age table would be the conversational heavy element number 999 ... "STFU !"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stfu

three beautiful things

RUNNERS. At weekends, one is always enchanted by fleeting glimpses through the trees of spring-heeled goddesses scampering around the common. Today come several hundred, half of them dressed in pink, on a fun run that seems too arduous for most in this sticky humidity.


http://www.raceforlife.org/choose-your-event/london--clapham-31-jul-10-1.aspx


A LITTLE BOY, maybe six or seven years old, gets on my bus and climbs on to a high seat. He is un-believably girlishly pretty, but undoubtedly boyish because he is absorbed in contemplation of his new boy’s toy, a Lego Clone Walkers Battle Pack, still in its unopened box. Throughout the fifteen minute journey he does not speak, but reads the box’s facets over and over whilst he hums the Star Wars theme, very loudly.


WOODPECKER. We awake to steady rain after a drought. Two squirrels dash hither and thither among the great dark boughs of a Cedar of Lebanon, fetching twigs vandalised from a neighbouring lime tree to fortify their dray. A woodpecker flies in at speed from one side and settles in classic profile, so to speak, before commencing her methodic ascent, regardles of squirrel chaos, tap-tapping as she goes.

i must remember to wash the windows this year

lucas ...it says here

austin of england

framfield church

the first three pages of a letter from the late sylvia forward ( my mum ) to sheila evans ( almost certainly the best friend anyone could wish for )

any historian with half a brain will remind you of the necessity, and the fun, of using primary sources

dappled

good job no one was listening ...

"darling, if i were rich, i'd have cardboard cut-outs of you in every room ... holding trays of drinks and chocolates"

apropos de nuffinque ( part 1001 ) ( votre chaumes en feu )

or should that be "votre toit" ?

noctilucent clouds photographed in sweden by p-m heden

leading on from an interesting little slide-show on the bbc weather pages

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10635796

the bookworm ( part 999 ) ... possibly my most treasured possession

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO7eSMPEd2k&feature=related

and yes !  i scored 999% in the on-line diabetes test !

http://www.diabetes.org.uk/Riskscore/

and a little something for book lovers from metafilter ...

http://www.papervision3d.org/demos/panorama/

putney ambulance station, west hill, wandsworth ... at the crack of dawn

oh, and that's Saint Thomas a Becket Roman Catholic Church, designed by Edward Goldie (1856-1921), an impressive Victorian Gothic Grade II Listed Building situated on Wandsworth's West Hill, where it has been "stood standing" since 1895

the archaeology of fun ( part 99 ) ... i've been snoozing and had missed the whole lipdub phenomenon ... even in remote herreruela the people are living proof that there's no such thing as a sleepy village in 21st century spain

WARNING: only allow yourself to click on this link if you sincerely believe in the potency of cheap music

i do !    i do !    i do !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rajHG-co4RQ

... later ... i'm just checking out the history of Lipdub on wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipdub ... which soon leads me on ...

to discover hundreds or thousands more lipdubs on YouTube ...

here are a bunch of French students ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCthDQ49_cU

and  some Catalan students ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeGDRSWB46w&feature=PlayList&p=FFBA25B77DD79C05&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=47

i haven't found many british ones yet, but ...
http://vimeo.com/channels/lipdub#348372 ...
nope, she's american

and we'd better not try to stop the Germans now ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY6tRFaQKt4

or the professionals ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I550asEfgz8

of course it all started years ago and i'm surely the very last person to catch on ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw5tLv9mpIw

etc etc

arthur is probably the oldest cat in lavender walk ... his pedigree is uncertain, he just walked in to his current house and stayed

hmmmm ! how our leaders blundered into iraq

from today's session of the chilcot inquiry

http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/47534/carne-ross-statement.pdf

waiting for a train

hurrah

watch this clip through to the slow-motion close up in about the twentieth second

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8808889.stm

despite the english referee's laissez-faire attitude to extreme violence, the best team prevailed and justice has been served

good old tolstoy ... never wide of the mark

rory stewart mp

I read Rory Stewart's account of his walk across Afghanistan a while back and went to look at his website this morning because he's  recently become the MP for Penrith and the Border.

He still writes from a uniquely individual viewpoint ...

... whether through statistics, or anecdotes, or narratives of the past, the real language to describe what I feel about Cumbria eludes me. Take my Sunday walk for example. I walked out of my front door and reached the top of Knipe Cragg at three in the afternoon. It was very hot. Three days earlier in London I had twenty-one appointments in a day, 35 people came to the constituency surgery, and the previous day I been at Glenridding to canoe with the Ullswater Community college, at Brampton cottage hospital fete and at Crosby Ravensworth where they were abseiling for the tower. But there was nothing in the diary for Sunday afternoon. So I continued on down to Little Strickland. Except for the retired Bishop of Newcastle exercising his neighbour’s dog, I saw no-one on the fells. Turning North, I stopped in Hackthorpe for supper in the Lowther Arms.

A regular told me that he was in the pub to give his wife two hours’ free to watch the soaps. I shared some chips with him; he seemed pleased that I would be walking back to Bampton after supper. He asked what I did and I told him: “No” he said “You’re not, you’re having me on. I follow politics, you’re not an MP” and, taking a final chip, retired to sing to himself in a corner. I walked back, past a great red bull, with a blood red sun falling behind Blencathra and saw beyond the telephone box at Knipe the white path stretching up to my cottage. Crossing my threshold again at ten minutes to midnight I could still see Cross Fell. It seemed hardly possible, on that longest day, that half a year had passed since I walked on the longest night, with all the East Fellside blazing in snow and moonlight, to Castle Carrock. How can I ever fit any of this into the language of a London office?


http://www.rorystewart.co.uk/

torolf sauermann ... it's easy when you know how

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


http://www.evolution-of-genius.de/

cognitive dissonance

is it me ?

or is there something slightly germanic about the design of this british war memorial at the site of croydon aerodrome ?

a little light reading on clapham common

street furnishings on lavender hill

the hippocrene gate in lavender walk

if only i could sing ...

a great school for singers ...

http://www.nationaloperastudio.org.uk/

all the world's a shallow grave

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/padre/hoy/podria/ser/hijo/elpepuesp/20100703elpepunac_7/Tes

... from today's el pais

from the occasional series "it's easy when you know how" ...

not glass, but wheel-cut rock crystal made in egypt in the eleventh century

a rarther untidy piece of sky above lavender walk

well spoken, bradley voytek on cognitive neuroscience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki24i6NPic0

found at

http://www.mindhacks.com/

so light on their feet they seemed to flow over the ground

details of the 1914-18 war memorial at forest row

peddunts korner ... shrek3

dreamworks artists certainly love their history ... not only is shrek standing in for the king, but when you look at the wall behind him, one of the court painters has already created a full-scale scene of his apotheosis in the french style ,,, but which painting have dreamworks used to create this brilliant pastiche ?

the wellcome collection is a great medical museum and gallery and never fails to stimulate

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2010/WTX058379.htm

the loved one had most probably already noted in her sensational diary that the tea at the wellcome collection comes in green mugs

quantify your luurve

a spanish friend, whenever his wife asks how much he loves her, wisely replies ...

"more than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow"

but in the modern age, where moderation is our watchword and every transaction should be audited, this is clearly the kind of loose talk that will allow her to falsely claim the ownership of ideas that are markedly above her station

in the interests of regulated and consistent growth, i would suggest the following formulation  ...

"two per cent more than yesterday, but roughly ninety eight point zero four per cent as much as tomorrow"

plain speaking is the stuff of modern concord

poossy cat lively up in summer evenins

just wait until i tell hello magazine that she's never cooked me a full english breakfast