spain ... somewhere down there you will find angels making another batch of picos blue

http://www.cheesecellar.co.uk/assets/files/cc-speciality-cheese-10.pdf

http://www.queseriaspicosdeeuropa.com/valle-de-valdeon.html

a spanish caballero tucking in to some tasty english bacon

glass

oaks

pines

unless you have a mature professional interest in the finer points of the design and engineering of modern footwear, you should look away now !

one blissful moment in spain

a crystal sky

only distant sounds ... one barking dog, one crowing cockerel, some sweet singing from a few little birds, the distant roar of the river in a ravine

and a little green path that leads to silence

i'm going to spain for a few days ... back on wednesday

can you spot the imitation welsh grandad ? yup, that's him alright ... happiest man in the world !

fear not the mysteries of cognitive dissonance, I will sing unto you of the joy of cognitive innocence

then aged about three or four, I remember my first trip on the top of a double decker bus through the Wiltshire countryside … it seemed whilst each succeeding perspective flowed by that each of the little summer fields with their enormous ancient hedges was spinning around

not long after that , i stood on the back seat of a car for the first time and was still unable to grasp the idea of the world’s fixity and so my mind saw the road and the white line that divides it as a huge ribbon gushing out from beneath the back of the car

this morning a large white building on the horizon changed shape several times as I drove towards it until I belatedly recognized the steaming towers of a concrete factory

stuff ... chez micawber

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