Monday, September 12, 2011

aunt mavis, aged 96 and a half

















...reminding me of that Thomas Hardy poem, Heredity


I am the family face; 
Flesh perishes, I live on, 
Projecting trait and trace 
Through time to times anon, 
And leaping from place to place 
Over oblivion. 

The years-heired feature that can 
In curve and voice and eye 
Despise the human span 
Of durance -- that is I; 
The eternal thing in man, 
That heeds no call to die

Sunday, September 4, 2011

! cih


Travel broadens the mind, some say ...
























I once travelled all night on a train from Paris Austerlitz to Narbonne and then went to a bar just opposite the station to wait for some friends to collect me.

It was just before seven and still dark.  There were two other customers standing at the bar, taxi drivers so burly they made me seem fairy-like.

The barman was of a similar stature to his clients, but had chosen to wear a low cut blouse and a blonde wig which, with an application of copious amounts of theatrical make-up, seemed to signify that he wished he had been born as Brigitte Bardot’s identical twin.

Never again will I be astonished by the Triumph of Hope over Adversity.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

british national costume ... historical evidence, if it were needed, of the utility of red underwear


george collinson and lea velez, man and wife























george has been ill for a number of years

lea posted the following statement yesterday

George sigue en Puerta de Hierro. Tiene varios tumores en el cerebro. Recuerdo cuando montaba en la montaña rusa y el carro subía y subía aquella empinada cuesta que te dejaba el estómago encogido con la anticipación de la inevitable caída

semiotics ! don't talk to me about ...



i'm on the bus !







Monday, August 29, 2011

Friday, August 26, 2011

shameless


Three lads swaggered on to the homeward bus yesterday afternoon, making plenty of noise.  Whilst the two fifteen year-olds repeatedly shouted out their determination never to allow any white woman ( there were about ten white women on the bus ) to “S*** M* D***”, the sixteen year-old and loudest took out his phone and began an even louder conversation with “a friend”, the subject of which was a change in Metropolitan Police’s prosecuting procedures in Magistrates’ Courts.  

At first It was difficult to follow the conversation because everything was gabbled in a highly streamlined kind of playground talk, but it became possible to distil some meaning because everything was repeated at least four times, partly because he had trouble saying and conveying what he meant, and possibly because the other person was as daft as he and had a similar attention span. 

The gist of the twenty minute communication was that he had just been released by the police after 24 hours at the station helping them with their enquiries following a raid on his family home.  Some of their mutual friends and neighbours, who had been raided on the same day, had been remanded in custody.

What he had learned during the process was that the Met are determinedly changing their procedures with petty criminals and are recording every alleged offence as well as previous convictions, and are presenting the magistrates with more detailed lists of previous form, arrests, acquittals, taggings, etc, whenever new cases come up.  This means that his list of misdemeanours has suddenly grown much longer and he is in certain danger of being remanded in custody as and when he next gets himself in to trouble.

What he hadn’t learned … it seemed to me, by implication, because he never mentioned the possibility … is that this might be a very good time to change his life-style and stop being a bad boy.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

3BT 25th August 2011


At second glance, the bus load of passive or expressionless schoolgirls leaving Gatwick Airport at seven in the morning turns in to a bus load of jet-lagged Malaysian air hostesses.

After a morning of tropically heavy rainstorms, I pause on my round to stand in a kind of bower, the shady canopy of a small plum tree, and I select one perfect purple plum, whose tender sweetness closes my eyes involuntarily like a kiss and transports my whole being back in to childhood.

Seen from the homeward bus at Clapham Junction, two women, with identical straight blond hair held by elastic bands in short pony-tails, kiss.  One is only five feet tall and stretches upwards on tip toe, whilst the other is about six feet two and bends only very very slowly until their lips touch at last.

i've got the silver back ... now i just need the odour ... of the alpha male


The Reform Tavern at Thornton Heath























i went to what might reasonably have been described as a tory grammar school in a small country town ... the various Reform Acts were never mentioned






















http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/refact/refmod.htm

I don't suppose Peel or Wellington would have enjoyed the present landlord's karaoke nights

Friday, August 19, 2011