... putney bronze

burwash rose ....

http://www.traditionalcheesedairy.co.uk/news.htm

clearly, it must be said, they're all bonkers down in kent ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seQDXPDa0J0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypi-sDKUQRo&feature=related

howard hodgkin's collection of indian paintings on show at the ashmolean

i was never deeply interested in hodgkin's own work although the colours are often really really nice, but this collection of his is simply marvellous ...

http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/mughalindia/

http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/6980/9577

http://www.howard-hodgkin.com/gallery/

souvenirs of the alhambra ... not !

yesterday morning's sunny 3BT

The road winds through the ancient woods and forests, and I speed in and out of the billowing and pouring mists towards the dawn, and sometimes the road catches the colours of the sun and the sky, glistening and gleaming orange or pink or gold amongst the last shadows of the night.

The big old buzzard is the same colour as the leafless hedgerow and sits perfectly still there in broad daylight, never losing sight of the five glossy pheasants sunbathing on a grassy knoll.

The girl stands in a sunny spot at breakfast time, ten yards from the front door of a hotel in a village just beneath those misty woods.  I imagine she might be from China, of maybe from Tibet.  Tall, strong looking, round faced but expressionless or thoughtful.  At a glance, her skin seems brown and perfect and there is a rosy tint beneath the tan.  She wears an archaic blouse, heavy-looking soft cotton in royal blue, only the collar button undone, long puffy sleeves and tightly buttoned cuffs.  Her skirt is a lighter blue, a simple A-line to the shins, above simple Chinese slippers.  She stands with arms dangling, radiant and relaxed and self-contained in beautiful symmetry until she lifts her right hand, the palm towards me as the truck glides past, spreading her fingers into a comb, and slowly stretching her arm until a yard of dark silky straight hair stretches away from her at shoulder height and there is still some left to dangle gleaming from those outstretched fingers.  And then I’ve gone.

the first bus past the workplace this afternoon runs across the chelsea bridge, so i take a walk along the embankment to the royal chelsea hospital ... a great place to write a letter on a sunny afternoon

http://www.chelsea-pensioners.co.uk/how-are-we-doing

i crept around the blind side of the truck and shot from the hip to surprise these two camera-phobes at the smokery ... despite appearances, they are one of the highlights of my working week ... is it any wonder i need counselling ?

and while we stood blathering i saw two tree creepers exploring the precinct only about thirty feet from the cab ... i've borrowed a picture from the internet

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/t/treecreeper/index.aspx

london underground .... gloucester road

london paddington

oxford

i laughed until i cried ...

Me and my big mouth … in and out of my dreams

I visited an old friend whilst I was in Spain this week.  She’s newly widowed after her husband’s very long illness.  She has two small children.  She writes TV scripts and novels for a living, successfully.  Since his death, she's already completed a new novel and she's gleefully inventing a new soap opera.

She explained in so many words how witnessing death and coping with the subsequent legal and procedural and emotional complications had strengthened her and had given her a newly balanced set of principles and criteria for dealing with life’s common dilemmas and contingencies.  To use two well-worn platitudes, she has emerged from the shadows greatly and impressively empowered.  I mean it.  Believe me !

She said, if I remember rightly, that she felt “ready to grasp the world”.

Next day, I sent a fatuous observation that I’m beginning to regret.  I suggested that only megalomaniacs could “grasp the world”: and the rest of us might best hope to swim alongside, and to enjoy our short time with it. 

Clearly, even as I wrote those words, there may have been some tiny splinter of uncertainty about this barely tenable point of view in the back of my mind.  I say this with the benefit of hindsight.

I am a person who dreams vividly, and, amidst the lurid chaos, there are often memorably bright threads of narrative, and clear echoes of events and situations, both ancient and modern, which I feel compelled to reflect on. 

During last night’s dream, I sat with a group of friends in the luxurious atrium of a vast hotel, gleefully rejoicing that because and although the world had just stopped spinning, we were lucky to find ourselves on its sunny side, if a little late in the afternoon. 

Effing hubris is never far away from effing nemesis !  Even in my dreams.

In an instant, the grim thought occurred that although the world might stand still, the mighty oceans would maintain their angular momentum ... and then, all in the one brief moment, looking out of a picture window towards the blazing sunset, we saw a mountainous tsunami approaching.

“Uh oh !”, I said, “Here comes the Pacific Ocean !”

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