passing one's local department store, one is immediately reminded of the late philip larkin ...

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7108

easy when you know how

there was a fabulous free concert in the national gallery on friday evening featuring violinist joo yeon sir, cellist jean samuel jaeger, and pianist maggie ho

http://www.rcm.ac.uk/?pg=5591

the problem for the next few weeks will be choosing whether to go to the national gallery or to the victoria and albert on friday evenings

http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/events/friday_evenings/index.html

brrr! its a "staying-in-and-reading-a-bloody-good-book" sort of a weekend

we went to the bfi to see agnes varda's "cleo, from 5 to 7" ... its a lovely film, tender & humane ... and its on for another week

waiting for the night bus to brixton

Barely awake after a sleepless night with Sarah Waters' novel, The Night Watch, I sat in the darkness waiting for the four o’clock bus to leave the little terminus that is just across the road from The Green Man, the small pub at the edge of Putney Heath.

A big red bus from central London rumbled up Putney Hill and drew to a halt. The driver silenced the engine and put out all the lights and then, from the shadow of the bus, there appeared a large girl with shiny black hair, huge dark eyes, skin the colour of roasted almonds bursting voluptuously from an ambitiously tight white dress, and wearing what were probably the most uncomfortable shoes in the Universe.

She began to limp towards the bus shelter with an agonizing hesitancy and two seconds later there appeared just behind her, one by one, five more girls, all in little black dresses, and each encumbered with the same tortuous footwear.

They wobbled this way and that, they stopped and they started, they held on to one another, they yelped and they groaned; and then one by one, they sat down on the six plastic seats, gasping and sighing with relief as the pain in their feet faded, but then shrieking as the icy cold from the thick red plastic groped them.

Once they had whimpered a bit and got used to the shock, they noticed the condensation on the big glass panels and were soon twisting and turning and stretching to write their names. And guess what ?  Everyone was a Princess !

And then they began to sing … like angels !

not waving, nor drowning

around clapham junction, on the morning of the london marathon, the skies are filling with what john arlott used to call "ominous portent" ...

... just before that paradoxical moment when fresh falling rain smells of dust

if an electioneering politician should happen to venture up our stairs, i shall ask them to clarify their party's policy on legalising polygamous marriage in putney after the next election

foxy demonstrates ... the correct way to approach a dangerous looking blade of grass

new oak leaves on clapham common

if you loved photography ... you'd always be browsing through the site managed by "shorpy"

http://www.shorpy.com/node/7738?size=_original

my sympathies are entirely with the dragon

... having been influenced by stan freeberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBcASC9VqzY


thanx to linda for reminding me to do my patriotic duty

horsted keynes again