after finishing work almost on time, i popped in to see this picture by Veronese before the BIG exhibition later this year ... it has been described by one critic as the gayest picture in the gallery

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/ng294-the-family-of-darius-before-alexander-paolo-veronese-episode-21-segment-3/*/showTranscript/1

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

a special excursion to trafalgar square ...

... in order to satisfy your curiosity

up early to finish a letter to alex, who i've adored since she was two !!!

alvi ...

... and noa

tomorrow i'll just pop over to assess and evaluate the virtues of my grandsons ...

lest we forget ...

kuniyoshi utagawa in winter

painter's dilemmas ....

sitting in "the studio", the british film institute's tiniest cinema in the south bank complex, and waiting to watch an old black and white fillum ... as the auditorium lights grow dim, so the empty screen is underlit with some lights that are more orange than an actual orange, you might reasonably call the colour ABSOLUTE ORANGE, and the rectangle throbs in a way that might have made mark rothko take his life a lot sooner

and then in a few seconds, just as the fillum is about to begin, but before the lights are dimmed, a few stragglers arrive late and occupy the front rows

statistically improbable as this may seem, three of the twelve have ginger hair, though shades and textures vary ... and so one is immediately confronted with a painter's conundrum ... can you really afford that much cadmium ?

to make matters worse, when we get home, the loved one sits in front of our black christmas tree with it's tiny purple lights, and she is wearing a purple top and purple nail varnish

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

it's easy when you know how ( part 999 ) ... although barenboim sometimes looks as if he still can't quite believe the written perfection of the sweetest parts of beethoven's fourth piano concerto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Baao02sIFm4

they've only gone and bought one of edith sitwell's old books .... can't wait to re-visit it's new owners, the wellcome collection..

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/dec/29/wellcome-library-medieval-medical-almanac

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/

i always wanted to take a picture of murielle valette, ockenden manor's fab baker AND patissier AND chocolatier ... in the end, she wrote a book and it is beautifully photographed by lisa devlin, and murielle's given me my very own copy for which i am joyously grateful

http://muriellevalette.com/

hey, nonny no ! only six monthe 'til summer !

germans taking the moral high ground whilst you're still lolling depravedly in your leopardskin onesies ...

http://panocam.skiline.cc/lauberhorn

morning in the kitchen

3BT

in the sunlit "bare ruined choir" of the sycamore tree outside the kitchen window at mid-day ...

1.  four fluffy squirrels chasing one another in the "heart" of the tree

2.  five velvety jackdaws having a quiet chat whilst they explore the topmost branches

3.  four resting parakeets, brilliant as jewels, quietly contemplating the prospect of their journey north to the thames

pratchett minus the jacket ...

job done !

out of the high deserts, the navajo times is one of my favourite newspapers ... it's weekly police blotter section is an horrifically mesmeric catalogue of human disasters

http://www.navajotimes.com/

http://www.navajotimes.com/news/2013/1213/122613blotter.php#.Urvf3fRdV8E

and the distribution network is a geography lesson in itself

http://www.navajotimes.com/contact/locations.php

light at the end of the tunnel ...

a little light reading while you're all watching the queen's speech ...

readers' kompetition ... guess which presents were packed by santa's favourite elf, and which by the fat elf with the prosecco befuddled fingers

i wasn't going to open this bottle, but then i learned that heidi, joe hyam's missus, had also died ...

lolita sevilla RIP

http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2013/12/16/actualidad/1387206129_336555.html

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHnDQf5d1JQ

despite every intention of getting up early, the loved one had to wake me, shake me from a complicated dream about being late ...

... much too complicated to explain such a dream here, multiple levels of visual metaphors, mistaken and transformed identities, metamorphoses, changing agendas not just hidden but well and almost truly buried, etc, etc ...

i rushed off to the flaming 14 bus at flipping quarter to seven instead of farting quarter to six ... and blinking well forgot the absolutely bloomin' necessary bleedin' tripod

so here are some sub-standard hand-held pics of fortnum and mason's windows, somewhat lacking in designer's wit or exuberance compared with previous years, i'm sorry to say

life on the ( oh my god, just look at the dust ! ) shelf ...

censorship and habeus corpus re-visited perennially ( part 99 )

http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/12/why-russell-brand-banned-gitmo

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/15/clive-stafford-smith-my-family-values-law

the white sheep of the family ...

touch screen calligraphy

on the bus, going home, a lady from the orient brushed her forefinger across the screen of her phone and a character of her native script appeared, in bright red on a white page, as if painted by a skilled calligrapher

she sent it, and it was replaced a few seconds later by the reply

it looked as if their way of communicating is a lot easier than typing

she might have been using this app ...

http://www.appszoom.com/android_applications/entertainment/shodoroid-japanese-calligraphy_csyjn.html

i got home and googled "ideograms and pictograms"

the surprise was that i knew next to nothing of heterograms and logograms, etc, etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterogram_(linguistics)

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

how many cognitive biases do you recognize ... in your self ?

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cognitive_biases

on reflection, there isn't a mirror that's big enough ...

A little less conversation ...

At Casa Yustas, a wonderful hat shop in Madrid's Plaza Mayor, the languorous young Spanish woman ...

... not unlike the young lolita sevilla ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpz5kbaeOLA

... who couldn’t find a cap that was large enough for me ... ( “Mas grande ! Mas Alto !” I begged her in badly broken Spanish) ... was joined behind the counter by her boss … a young Chinaman !

He said, “I’m sorry I don’t speak very much English ! Can you speak Chinese ?”

Placing the tip of my middle finger between my eyebrows and tapping gently, I said, “No, but I can think Chinese !”

a spaniard sleeps beneath his portrait

whenever i hear the word kultur, then i reach for my gun ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5ata4jDyk

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

posthumous thanks to graham carey, who lent the record to my mother in ?1964?