master of the saint bartholomew altarpiece ... one of my favourite painters ... compare and contrast, etc

3BT

The weather changes before first light.  After leaving Reading in a bitter frost, on passing through Swindon, I see from the early train that the roofs of the terraced houses and the streets are white with snow.  At the station itself, large flakes of snow whirl around the lamps and settle on the hunched shoulders of the boarding passengers.

In Wiltshire, arriving in the warmth of their cosy little house, i find my daughter and her two sons glowing with vitality and intelligence.

Back at home in time for tea, discovering I have won six pounds and ninety pence on the euromillions.

frederick sandys ... showing off a bit !

... i prefer the drawing, but the painting is jolly good fun !

steve bell dons a beret and essays yet another attempt at portraying the almighty

... hurrah !

and next day ...

.. and on the third day ...

relics in the V&A this morning ... puck and ted parsons

start the year as you mean to go on ... went to supermarket, forgot milk

here's wishing you all a smiley christmas ... and i do mean YOU !

Specimen A ...

... and Specimen B

is there an appropriate way for you to dress for the movies ? for instance, if you had to compare and contrast fillums about country matters ...

ray bolger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOiw0bHI4Cc

martha graham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmgaKGSxQVw

basement jaxx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrOKI0qZ4Dk

joie de vivre ( part 99 ) ... a country bus stop at brockham

3BT

A rarther ragged looking buzzard sits motionless at the centre of a village cricket pitch, facing the passing traffic on a busy road.

Yet another stranger reads the word cheese on the front of the truck and performs the appropriate facial expression.

I ring a doorbell and the girl who opens it has big bright laughing eyes and a fully freckled smile.

mobiles, made during a period of interminable solitude twenty years ago when catching the light was an innocent pastime

another sleep-deprived night chez micawber ...

apropos de nuffinque

... this is a second attempt at one i "facebooked" earlier this week

AN ODD CONVERGENCE

I have woken early, immediately known I cannot go back to sleep, and then knowingly gone to the station at Clapham Junction far too early to catch the first train on my journey west.

The coffee shop will not open in time, although nowadays I am not an addict.  So I mope and loiter, on the street and then in the street-level precinct, before proceeding along the deserted passage towards the platform, passing other staircases to other platforms as I go.

At the foot of the very first staircase, a tiny movement “in the corner of my eye” catches my attention.  It is a tiny grey mouse.  I can’t remember the last time I saw one, and so I stop to stare.

How very like a toy mouse.  In the shadows this grey fluffy ball of energy is only just visible, smaller than a table-tennis ball, whizzing to and fro in its state of perpetual hunger, whirring legs out of sight, the long tail held dead straight and horizontal, the eyes mere pinpricks of reflected lamplight.

Footsteps approach in the echoing passage and my reverie is broken.  I become self-conscious about my fascination and turn to leave.

And I find myself face to face with a very pretty bouncy strutting bright-eyed teenager, going home in party clothes.  On her nose she has painted a black spot, and beneath it she has sketched out with mascara some cat’s whiskers.

the boys ...Specimen A and Specimen B

3BT, no, four ! no, five !!!!!

In the wee small hours, a small bespectacled drunk with a rasping Balkan accent gets on to the night bus as i’m going in to work, and he refuses to show a pass or a ticket.  He stomps to the back seat of the bus and sits down with his arms folded.  When the driver stops the bus engine and asks him again, the drunk accuses him of being insulting and untrusting, and the air turns blue as he vainly attempts an appeal to the silent passengers for sympathy.  The driver opens the doors and very politely asks him to leave, but the drunk refuses with another flock of expletives.  Sighing, I get up and walk through the bus to have a word with the man.  I could probably pick him up and carry him out.  Instead, i sit quietly beside him, tell him the only rude person on the bus is himself, and then i remove his spectacles and get off the bus myself, and walk briskly away in the direction of travel.  He follows in something of a panic, whining that his glasses cost over £300.  With a smile, i stop and hand them back, and then skip back on to the bus.  As the driver shuts the doors, which always seems to take forever, the drunk rushes up and gets one foot on the threshold, but i place my hand in the middle of his chest and out he goes again !  And off we go.

( Earlier, at Clapham Junction, a cherubic young woman wearing tiny red devil's horns was practising some really elegant dance moves by the bus stop for ten minutes ... and she really could dance ! )

Later, at first light, Ashdown Forest turns pink.

Twelve hours later, as I slump grey-faced on the way home, the head of the slender lady sitting next to me on Vauxhall station is suddenly illuminated in a late afternoon sunbeam.  She has silken red hair and orange freckles. And how they do glow !  Halloween colours !  Hurrah !

The loved one struts in from a good day at the library and presents me with "Enemies At Home", the latest Lindsey Davis.

nature mort, 'nit

un stuff, deux stuffs, chez micawber

quiet laughter ? ... does hokusai play tricks on yer eyes ? ... or was i wrong to assume that in "reality" the two sawyers would be holding the ends of the same saw ?

i wuz oh so very wrong ... again !

http://lumberjocks.com/reviews/2094

http://dougukan.jp/contents-en/index.php?id=220

ashdown forest

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

most days of the week, often before seven, i cross the ashdown forest on my way from gatwick to crowborough

this week, because the loved one is away in japan, my sleep pattern has been chaotic

i sometimes wake up two hours earlier than my alarm time ... which is three

so this morning i was suddenly afflicted with sleepy body and mind and just had to stop the truck

i walked from the road across to friends' clump, only a few yards, to let the cool air and the scent of pine trees revive me

however there was no peace ... indeed, the noises of war reached me because i found myself discomfortingly close to a military firing range ... and they began firing off their rifles as if the taliban had just arrived

i thought it wise to walk away in case of stray bullets, but continued my journey in a revived condition

sometimes i forget which is which ...

van gogh ...how did he find the time to write so well ?

"What I think is so good about the moderns is that they don’t moralize like the old ones.

It seems coarse to many people, for instance, and they’re angered by it: vice and virtue are chemical products like sugar and vitriol"

http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let574/letter.html

was marcel proust jimi page's wicked uncle ?

and if you think you might ever bother to read it ... here's a link to the discussion from melvyn bragg's epic series of discussions of everything under the sun ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548wx

the red shoes ... a very nice bit of context

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bfm1f

ellen's lovely photo of noa, alvi, and skip

sunday mornings is when i like to waltz around in my head

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxG-kOTMgaA

from that series of poems that will lurk through the rest of your life, part 99

In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labour by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

retablo del amor ... the jury at the national art exhibition in madrid in 1910 didn't like this painting ... but when julio romero de torres showed it in barcelona the following year, their city museum was glad to buy it there and then

borrowed from ... http://www.museunacional.cat/sites/default/files/024157-CJT.JPG

awake before sunrise to start reading every word of my julio romero de torres catalogue, including the bibliography