in petworth park

tillington church tower

aaargh! more frigging needlework problems

i bought a hat

because i like the blue colour ...

because the real cotton is nice and soft ...

even though the brim was far too wide and silly ...

so then i set to with my little scissors and have only just discovered that the stitching on the brim is not concentric but spirals in or out depending which way you look at it

will this qualify me for free treatment as a fashion victim ?

an unwillingness to believe three impossible things before breakfast

surely not ...


... the back side of my work trousers was disfigured by a split of san andreas proportions


... and the top button at the front had suddenly popped off


... and, with not even the slightest hint of compassion from the loved one, i had to repair the damage myself !

on the beach at brighton and hove, ( twinned with sodom and gomorrah ) actually

the hare in the moon ... a japanese wall dish at leicester museum

occasional fashion tips ... remember, lads ... rules are made to be broken ... so its ok to wear braces with your pyjamas this season

the west side of leicester station

turkey cafe, granby street, leicester

looking from bury hill towards amberley mount ... hey ! is'nt that joe bialik's tree ?

barley and wheat on the sussex downs

prospero's books

i've just found a couple of extracts from peter greenaway's film, prospero's books, on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4iUDBP0Zw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j72jnYTePU8

i have difficulty in essaying a short description

at the core of the film is john gielgud delivering, or rather, exploring the text of shakespeare's tempest, the text so slowly and delicately phrased, with much joyful repetition, so that it gathers meaning with each newly heard utterance

the story is presented as if through a prism of the printed culture of the times ... in episodes that are presented as if coming off the pages of alchemical books in the enchanter king's library ... maybe it was greenaway's and gielgud's meditation on the lost riches of superstitious imaginings

it was certainly gielgud's last big statement on the beauty of words

to make thing even more enigmatic, and for me more enchanting, the whole performance progresses within a stately whirl of dance and music, much of it inexplicable, much of it exquisitely beautiful, everything being staged in what might pass for a polymath humanist's laudanum hallucination

i saw it several times in the early nineties but have never been able to acquire it on dvd, and i can't remember the last time there was an opportunity to see it in a cinema

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero%27s_Books

Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

marina ginesta at the hotel colon, barcelona, 1936

... serendipitously discovered just now via the spanish blogger gastropitecus-gloton ...

now read all about it ...

window-shopping in new bond street ... what can you buy for the woman who has everything ?

they might as well have given a man with toothache a poke in the eye

Having been, for nearly all of the last sixty years, pathologically impecunious, I've always felt uncomfortable in Oxford Street; one of the ugliest in London and thronged with shoppers who have no taste, so I avoid it at all costs.

Particularly dismal is the huge facade of Selfridges, a baleful temple, if ever there was, of commodity fetishism.

Then i learned that there is a clock above the main entrance designed by Gilbert Bayes, and so I went along with an open mind this afternoon after work, hoping to be pleased.

Not a bit of it. If anything, despite the masterly complexity of the accomplished craftsmanship, it seemed astonishingly drab in spirit ... somehow lacking Bayes' usual exuberance and/or tenderness ... two of the "must-have" qualities that i "demand" from artists.

Never mind ... i still like his stuff in the V& A, and on Shaftesbury Avenue.

POSTSCRIPT ... twenty minutes later, I found myself leaning across the railings to get a better view of an ancient ?Tang? camel, terracotta, partly glazed in yellows and ochres, proudly displayed in Eskenazi's window in Clifford Street. All my cares vanished.

kats' korner

brian legg and tristan forward trying not to laugh in weymouth about 1966-ish

busy

a sentiment with which we heartily concur

not even slightly peckish