dance, dance, dance ...

preparing for christmas ...

as instructed ...

i've hoovered under the bed

can't see why all the fuss about a little bit of fluff

it isn't as if you could lose your wallet down there or a fifty pound note ...

look at the hand ...

is a strangling imminent ?

has the six-foot girl leprechaun mistaken the little angel for a turkey ?

pious colonials at mayfield ( i )

pious colonialists at mayfield ( ii )

a tale of two tattoos

At a farm in Surrey where good cheeses are oak-smoked, there is a workaholic gardener called Ian … deaf, arthritic, full of fun, and covered in tattoos which probably date back to the days of National Service in the British Army.

We tease one another.

Then one day he jabs me in the chest with a work-worn finger and demands “Some respect, with a capital R”.

I reply “Why don’t you have the whole word in capitals … and you can tattoo it across your arse ?”

Later, I tell this story to Doctor Litchfield, the psycho-topographer.

Her amusement seems disproportionate until she explains that she’s recently had her initial written as a capital letter on her body at a trendy tattoo parlour ... capital R for Rebecca.

I don't ask her where it has been written, but it is fun to speculate.

A few days later, despite the insult … Ian presents me with two very promising bottles of his home-made wine … and this jar of home-made piccalilli, which he calls chilli-lilli.

a friend ...

... and his forebears

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

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