basic philosophy for six-year olds ... discuss

'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.'

if the only tool in the box is a hammer, then all of your problems will begin to look like nails ...

on the way home after a nice easy eleven-and-a-half hour day !!!

apropos de nuffinque

long winter nights, long-winded rituals, and the earnest hoping there'll be enough stamps left over at the village post office tomorrow morning

polite society ... in a little back street antique shop

... although i wouldn't be surprised if she'd just told him a really filthy joke

oranges are not the only fruit

someone's going-away present ... the divill makes work for idle hands !

to wiltshire, where ellen generously gives us a rarther posh new fruit bowl ...

... complete with fruit ...

... and a battle-hardened new interloper ... "to keep those other naughty little cats in order"

wonderful

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/bronze/

http://zoolander52.tripod.com/id22.html

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1982.220.8

etc, etc.

in preparing my liver for the imminent excesses of christmas, i might just go for a simpler diet for a couple of weeks

A lovely cold day in Sussex.

Brrr !  A Turner sunrise, looking from the high part of Ashdown Forest as I drive from East Grinstead to Crowborough, seen through distant veils of falling snow.  Hills beyond hills, and their crowning woods, are silhouetted as if on fire and shrouded in smoke.

A spotted fawn and his mother nibble the icy grass on the snowy first tee of the golf course as I slowly descend the drive to the hotel at Ashdown Park.

A gaudy woodpecker swoops right past my windscreen, a flash of emerald green and yellow green, and settles less than five yards from the kerb on a sunlit bank of grass as my truck rolls slowly through a roundabout in, of all places, the busy North Terminal of Gatwick Airport.  For a moment I look down on his tightly folded wings and the great scarlet flash on his head and neck, and he looks back at me.

laydeez an jennermen ... let's big it up for ... schrodinger's old tom cat !!!

besides the thames at dusk

from an occasional series of gratuitous juxtapositions ... ( part 99 )

metafilter points me to good stuff every day ... today i like this ...

http://sveidt.deviantart.com/art/How-to-Live-with-Introverts-291305760

3BT

Slowly turning at a dangerous corner in Ashdown Forest, I look down from the cab of my truck on a jay that forages on the sunlit floor amongst dull copper coloured beech leaves, and for just a second or two I am able to enjoy the underlying pink tints in his iridescent plumage.

Three people are talking loudly to their mobile phones during the journey home on a red double-decker at dusk.  Two are speaking in languages that might be from tropical Africa, and one from somewhere in Asia, like China, and being seated close to one another, each feels they must raise their voice.

A visual anomaly appears on a busy corner at Clapham Junction.  A young woman is leaving a fancy dress shop wearing a lightweight reindeer costume made from a thin soft stretchy tactile sort of fabric with a little wagging tail sewn on the butt, and somehow that wiggly tail communicates more about body form and body language than any little black dress might do.

gentlemen prefer ...

mick, from sligo, probably the best irishman that ever lived, bids me farewell at the end of the week

we speak about painkillers ... in his opinion the best is and always will be beer

which reminds me, i tell him, that i have a bottle waiting in the fridge

i am too ashamed to admit it has lain there almost a month

he says' " i expect you can hear it talking to you ?"

the fridge is five miles away from our workplace

i cup a hand behind my ear for a moment

"no, mick ! she's singing to me !""

schrodinger's old tom cat stays for the party

schrodinger's old tom cat would be delighted to engage each and every one of you in a socratic enquiry in to the possibility of there ever being an appropriate occasion for gold and imperial purple

schrodinger's old tom cat gets lost in space

schrodinger's old tom cat wants me to put him on page one of my advent calendar ... almost a certainty !

apropos de nuffinque ...

lost in translation .... excuse his french !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x71PRL3IxYs

time breaks in to a gallop ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20454757

3BT, 25th November 2012

A little flock of starlings are “grazing” on the west end of Clapham Common, a minute or two on the grass alternating with a minute or two in one then another of the big trees.  Their gentle conversations are carried on in soft sweet whistlings.  The morning sun is very low, barely grazing the rooftops and as they fly away before wheeling back towards me, so their glossy backs catch the light and turn from steely grey to shining bronze.

I download a novella from Project Gutenberg, first published in 1888 by Henry James, called the Aspern Papers.  By “editing” every line whilst I transfer it from one page format to another, I am able to read it closely.  In the first paragraph, I learn that the setting is Venice, a favourite location.  How easily he evokes the charm of an old palace by the naming of parts.  And then he makes me smile at his protagonist’s gentle folly … on every page.

The soggy leaves are breaking down in to a brown porridge along the verges and hedgerows.  I had hoped for an opportunity to gather and preserve some dry leaves for a little memorial bonfire at the solstice.  I remember sitting in the cab of the truck during a morning break last week before the storms, and watching a fat wood pigeon who was pottering amongst such dry leaves at the kerbside until a curious squirrel had approached.  The wary bird took off vertically and the downdraught from his beating wings left a clear circle, about four feet in diameter, as the leaves were blown aside.

best headline of the week so far ... Mark Kennedy sues police for 'failing to stop him falling in love'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/25/spy-mark-kennedy-sues-police

my place in the scheme of things ...

a room with a view ... chapter 99 ... those are fireflies that were his eyes !

alvi

ellen just took this picture of alvi testing his new gnashers

but what's it gonna be like when i walk down to catch the 4am bus ?

when we used to drive cars for a living, my wonderful friend joe bialik asked what i thought was the best driving record ever ? ... maybelline, maybe !

ecoutez ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RAfxiyMKAk


MaybelleneMaybellene, why can't you be true
Oh Maybellene , why can't you be true
You've started back doin' the things you used to do 

As I was motivatin' over the hill
I saw Mabellene in a Coup de Ville
A Cadillac arollin' on the open road
Nothin' will outrun my V8 Ford
The Cadillac doin' about ninety-five
She's bumper to bumper, rollin' side by side
Maybellene 

The Cadillac pulled up ahead of the Ford
The Ford got hot and wouldn't do no more
It then got cloudy and started to rain
I tooted my horn for a passin' lane
The rainwater blowin' all under my hood
I know that I was doin' my motor good
Maybellene 

Solo guitar 

Maybellene 

The motor cooled down the heat went down
And that's when I heard that highway sound
The Cadillac asittin' like a ton of lead
A hundred and ten half a mile aheadv The Cadillac lookin' like it's sittin' still
And I caught Mabellene at the top of the hill
Maybellene 

Solo guitar 

a suitably patriotic colour choice for an incognito expedition to ponty market in search of a dozen welsh cakes ...

... you could drive the effing thing right up to the effing counter in the effing market just like effing macdonalds

coming to a charity shop near you in the impending agony of choice season ... you wish !

picture via the wonderful "pleasurephoto"

http://pleasurephoto.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/beauty-in-strength-new-york-1964-hiro-americanborn-china-born-1930hiro-nome-darte-di-yasuhiro-wakabayashi.jpg

the eternal optimist, indefatigable after a lifetime on the twail of the clapham common meta-wabbit

later ... i wonder if it's too late to call a cab and knock on the door of 221b Baker Street ?

of course, if it happened in aberystwyth, then ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Pryce

after my pocket was picked in jermyn street this afternoon ...

... i went in to the churchyard of saint james' in piccadilly and sat on a bench until i'd regained some of my composure.  On weekdays the flagstones are usually hidden by stalls selling books and trinkets.  Today I found this stone laying right at my feet. James Gillray !


















A favourite illustrator ...

... so just thinking of him lifted my spirits !

3BT

On a straight path across the Common, in pouring rain, a figure moves briskly from my left to the centre of my field of vision, then turns and walks quickly ahead of me and the old dog.  An athletic young woman, lean and shapely, with black hair, in a black sweater, black tights and black boots, carrying a black rucksack.  She moves with metronomic elegance.  The soles of the boots are a pinky sort of red, like a water melon, and she is walking beneath a brolly of the same colour.  Boots and brolly are diffusely reflected on the wet asphalt path. 

On the 87 bus which is trundling from Battersea Library towards The Aldwych, a lovely and vivacious British-Jamaican lady wearing a scarlet coat wedges herself against a rail near the front and preaches loudly to the packed and captive audience, her voice full of raucous energy and laughter, on the theme of being grateful to Jesus for Life, and then she sings All Things Bright And Beautiful … badly, but with amazing grace.

At the Wellcome Foundation there is a book-stand in the shop, displaying the short picture book for the exhibition, a rich yellow jacket, the colour of English mustard, lettered in black … Death, it says on the side of the stand, books and gifts to die for.  A small boy appears and stops there, wearing the same colours, yellow jeans, black T-shirt, and with the palest freckles and pale ginger hair. Life !

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/death-a-self-portrait.aspx

off to Fortnum's later to check out their stock of Plymouth Sloe Gin

the burning question is .. can this year's window dressers attain the standards of the last ?




















see the blog for last december 24th ...

http://thenewemotionalblackmailershandbook.blogspot.co.uk/2011_12_01_archive.html#1209936624159919784

bad advice just pours out of me and my big mouth

after baring his chest for the cardiologist, a friend just learned that he has an inherited heart defect

so now he is sleepless and panicky

i consoled him with the notion that he has already survived sixty years with it

but then i couldn't stop myself from blurting out

"perhaps you should be baring your chest down at the tattoo parlour ... capital letters instructing DO NOT RESUSCITATE !"