stuff at the v and a

stuff at the royal academy

chez micawber ce soir

gadbrook common ... where had been stubble

the tumbrel diaries

worth a visit for THIS !!!

http://angustrumble.blogspot.com/2010/09/gran_8728.html

hurrah !

stuff in framfield church

the aliens have landed

panem et circenses

quite early one morning ...

yet another fabulous image from "shorpy"

http://www.shorpy.com

aesthete's korner ... i still can't make up my mind which to take to my desert island ... maybe this botticelli ...

but probably robert palmer's video

sandhurst church in kent

a short perambulation at betchworth church

a certain person enjoying a certain level of luxury

from an occasional series on body language ... "can you spare a cigarette ?"

ignorance is often more expensive than education ... i was fascinated by this large painting rescued from a ruined monastery at san pedro de arlanza near burgos and cleverly restored

http://art.mnac.cat/fitxatecnica.html;jsessionid=0f34369b92a1c918d6200caffe420f64deaa8eb20d894e8295f156e5369e3302?inventoryNumber=040142-000

and i was completely astonished when i found this picture taken by the rescuers before they started work

you can see where some plasterers had hacked into it before it was rendered over in the bad old days

here is another fragment, now kept in the cloisters section of the metropolitan museum in new york ...

à la recherche ... should we envy the rich ? ... marcantonio raimondi, giorgione or titian, manet, and posy simmonds offer us "un petit déjeuner for thought"

... and,  by the way,  if you screw up your eyes, you can just about see joe and heidi in the background !

ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to announce that your easyJet flight has now been re-scheduled for boarding at gate 999 in terminal Z

over the hills and a great way off ...

three more beautiful things ...

Having nipped in to the National Portrait Gallery to see the twin Hilliard portraits of Queen Elizabeth the First in a very temporary conjunction ( they are not quite beautiful in their “much travelled” condition ), I am walking down towards the Underground Station at Embankment , and am mooching about with the camera by Charing Cross Station looking for a juxtaposition of the newly cleaned Charing Cross itself with the recently cleaned steeple of Saint Martin In The Fields. I am just placing the camera back in its bag when a half-forgotten half-remembered sound makes me look up just in time to see one of the last of the war-time Spitfires dipping its wings in a solitary high-speed fly-past. Hurrah for The Few !!!


On the westbound District Line train, an unusually smart, slender and suntanned girl enters, and she sits fiddling distractedly with a switched-off Blackberry. I measure her beauty with a draughtsman’s eye … and her elegant hands are nearly an inch longer than her face.


Just before she leaves the train at Victoria, a tall young Jeremy Irons look-alike moves towards the same door, and he is whistling a one-dimensional extemporized theme from that oh-so-catchy Bach Toccata and Fugue.


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