stuff ... at fortnum and mason

ref: tomorrow .... we know it is all nonsense .... it isn't her other birthday, it is a saint's day and she should use the opportunity to reflect on her errors, do penance, offer prayers, show remorse, etc etc ... but if its pink champagne, and if she's paying ...

ideal sunday afternoon study material ... dartmouth college's paradise lost linked with encyclopaedic notes ... to be read whilst simultaneously listening to radio five live's soccer coverage

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/index.shtml

gentlemen ! as valentine's day approaches, allow me to re-assure you all that she REALLY WILL be grateful ... because prunes really are far nicer than chocolates

damn ! side-tracked again, but hurrah for some current thinking by professor stringer and the palaeontology community about human origins

certainty is nicer, but intelligent uncertainty has more potential than ideas which no longer fit the facts and have to be discarded

http://edge.org/conversation/rethinking-out-of-africa

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/staff-directory/palaeontology/c-stringer/index.html

https://itg.beckman.illinois.edu/communications/iotw/2004-10-12/

3BT on a bright snowy morning

Glimpsed in the front seats of an approaching car, two people are wagging the forefingers of their left hands and are shaking their heads from side to side in perfect synchrony, as if in some kind of dance.  Each is laughing.  Each has bright eyes and perfect teeth.

I disturb a rabbit who has been concealed beneath a bramble patch when I approach the gate of a field still carpeted with snow.  He dashes away, white tail flashing and back feet sending up cloudy spurts of snow that glitter in the morning sunshine.

On the very top of a solitary sunlit tree, high above the snow filled valley of the River Uck, between Hadlow Down and Buxted, a single magpie and a huge old buzzard ( who is three times as large ) are sitting only four feet apart, silent in unruffled repose.

for years, garry trudeau's doonesbury cartoon strip has provided a flowing narrative of character development that verges on plausability as his views of modern american culture and politics develop ... this week we've seen a new character and today's strip made me laugh out loud

http://www.doonesbury.com/

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

turned out nice again ...

i haven't seen my brother greg since his last birthday, about a year ago ...

but oh !, these cards of richard bawden's lino prints are far too pretty to part with ...



... so he'll have to make do with michael sowa's leaping pig ... when i can re-discover his current address

... i guess i must have bought a dozen of these over the years, so he'll be joining a sub-group of distinguished recipients, all of whom are held in deepest affection

the lads seem to be having trouble with a simple analogy for wegener's theory

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

stop press: insomniac gets over-excited by snow, but not so excited he'd want to go out in it ...

they were arguing about where to go for breakfast

self-surveillance

do you think it might be as cold up there ?

a church mouse in easby

alfie, the yorkshire cat, is disappointed by grapes .... what's it all about, alfie ?

yorkshire ? what has yorkshire ever done for us ?

the ghosts of christmas ... present, past, and fuchsia ... the pantomime in the village hall at hunton-in-bedale

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78468515@N00/sets/72157629147374797/show/

sculpture by jaume plensa at the nicest "service area" on the M1, only one mile from junction 38 and only a mile from the poxy woolley edge service area where we refused to pay £3.29 for a small coffee

http://www.ysp.co.uk/

we are away to yorkshire for a few days ... perhaps we should take sandwiches

were he to have been re-incarnated, titian might possibly have enjoyed this little spectacle ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9RGnujlkI

do you think the internet is harming my eyesight ?

... once, in a hotel room in barcelona, we were channel hopping and found the addams family, mind-bogglingly dubbed in to italian but sub-titled in spanish ... subsequently the loved one found me a DVD set ... from here on gomez will be my role-model

an insomniac contemplating his lectern

de mort, en passant ...

as i shuffle wearily from the workplace towards the bus stop, i walk along a rough and narrow pavement beside a very busy arterial road to the crossroad and am slowly overtaken by three highly polished stretch-limos, daimler limousines, each stuffed with well-groomed people, all of them expensively dressed in black ... it must have been a very smart funeral ... the convoy halts at the lights, one, two, three ... and there beside me, in the back seat of the very last car, a young man and woman, immaculately dressed for mourning, are snogging passionately


i googled "death and the maiden" after writing this and discovered this  lovely image, which i have reproduced here without permission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Christensen

do you want it good or do you want it tuesday ? ... this is VERY good

http://www.benpentreath.com/shop/books/do-you-want-it-good-or-do-you-want-it-tuesday-by-ruth-artmonsky/prod_1608.html

nothing in the kitchen is nearly so stainless as my reputation, maybe

waiting for a train

near clapham common ...

... on the common ...

... not so common and nowhere near the common

concerning dogs and cats who have nothing better to do on a saturday morning

burgeoning

new truck, histrionic sunrise

before i took this picture, i had just been giggling with one of my favourite customers because one of our night workers must have had a spot of sleepy finger trouble and the chef's invoice was charging eight times the going rate for two kilos of cheddar slices

he and i speculated that the gods themselves must have milked a golden cow on the slopes of mount olympus

howard jacobson on reading dickens, with reference to the bbc's recent travesty of great expectations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/06/charles-dickens-bbc-howard-jacobson?INTCMP=SRCH

a small sample from the recent present to myself ...

i shouldn' t smirk ...

the loved one and i travelled back from the big hospital in a comfy taxi and i have been promoted to part-time butler/male-nurse for the time being

she requests the use of her laptop so that she can wirelessly watch her favourite hospital saga, "holby city", using the bbc i-player

half way through the episode, ( which i cannot watch, mostly for reasons of snobbery mixed with delusions of cultural grandeur ), i hear her voice rising in a kind of panic ...

 "no, no, no-o-o-oh !"

the television doctors are re-setting a dislocated shoulder, just like hers ... with realistically scrunchy sound effects

very thoughtful of the guardian to issue this leaflet today ... pity the hospital haven't considered the difficulty of finding a nail varnish to match that velcro