harris the terrible pirate

a new variation on one of marcel duchamps little jokes in a garden between jermyn street and piccadilly

http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/893/subodh-gupta/view/

frivverless window dressing at fortnum and mason

the old town hall in swindon

i cannot properly imagine blindness

At first light when the world is still bruised by the night, I look out to see a yew tree dancing in the storm like a black flame.

A friend nearing retirement has worked as a postman for nearly fifty years.  He has cataracts and holds each letter close to his face, interposing a magnifying glass as he struggles to decipher addresses as if through a smoke screen.  He works more than twelve hours to complete his tasks on most days, even in the deepest frosts and heaviest downpours, and yet his managers seem oblivious of his plight and simply give him even more work in order to improve their own reputations for “efficiency”.

Yesterday I glimpsed a blind man using one of the modern sticks, a straight and slender white cane, five feet or more in length, tipped with a ball.  He was finding his way briskly along a busy pavement with a chaotic border of gardens and hedges, holding the cane in his left hand, and a with a young golden Labrador on his right hand straining ahead on its leash.

I mused with some anxiety on how I might survive were blindness to afflict me and thought I might need to go back to my ancient home town in the Cotswolds, where I would arrive already knowing most of its walls and footpaths from childhood.  But who would know me ?

the countless sods

I've never enjoyed digging in wet clay ... neither the gardens nor the graves.

It is written that the first British agriculturalists would have used antlers to break the ground ... and their backs, I'm sure.

Now I can only marvel at the plough that turns a whole field in a few mid-winter hours.

An aged friend, roughly built and spoken, and now long buried, told me how he was put to the plough, aged twelve, when all the men from his village had gone off to the Great War.

"I stuck to it all day", he said, and laughed mischievously, "though I only ploughed it to a finger's depth."

before supper, we cross putney heath road and enter the wood to light a fire so that i may contemplate some of whatever is elemental in humanity

damn ! why didn't i think of that ?

http://minimalexposition.blogspot.com/2011/01/hiroshi-sugimoto-lightning-fields-2009.html

bring me another bottle of that distilled joie de vivre ... edward bawden's homage to dicky doyle ... re-printed in the magnificent alexandra harris's romantic moderns

chanticleer chez micawber ce matin

lost in translation ...

In metropolitan London so many languages are being spoken that are unrecognizable for us country boys, but there is always fun to be had in the listening.  Occasionally a familiar word gives you a clue, and sometimes the way people dress helps a little, but sometimes not.

At four in the morning, at the opposite bus stop, four lovely girls are standing; long silken hair, picturesque limbs, very high heels on beautifully made shoes, and wonderfully well-tailored high-waisted overcoats.  Their musical voices, never stopping for breath in loud conversation, are unmistakeably Italian.

Then, two minutes into my bus-journey to work, two heavily built men come aboard, unshaven, wearing scruffy coats over scruffy jackets, misshapen woolly hats, badly worn boots.  Their loud gruff voices, never stopping for breath in loud conversation, are unmistakeably Italian.

Tired and losing concentration towards the end of a frantic day, I make a delivery to the wrong one of a pair of French restaurants about five miles apart in Sutton and Croydon.  The next day I return to what had been the wrong one and ask the chef ( old joke ) if the French have a word for “Deja-vu” ? 

“I wouldn’t fucking know”, growls the morose Danish all-in wrestler with a big Sabatier knife clenched in his massive fist, “I’m not fucking French !”

apropos de nuffinque en hiver

water spouts at ticehurst church

i've been reading antonia fraser's testament of her life with harold pinter, which is full of laughter even if it ends in tears

the man himself was always worth listening to ...

take, for instance, his viscerally lucid nobel prize winner's speech about language and truth, entitled "art, truth & politics"

http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=620

i really think mrs trefusis should wear some socks with those boots

http://mrstrefusis.blogspot.com/2010/12/scarlet-dress.html

about three-eighths through ...

i'm getting well into my reading binge

a couple of early finishes at work have helped

so do the double duvet and two plump pillows

nice tail

window shopping in elizabeth street whilst waiting for a bus to depart from victoria coach station

one of the best friends in the universe demonstrating the correct attitude

housemaid's knee ... one of a series of occasional rants brought on by the compulsory hoovering

two things actually, now that the recession is getting deeper and the prospect of affording domestic servants moves up the agenda for so many of us ...

first ... i'm trying not to feel or sound paranoid, but the thought crossed my mind that the loved one might just have moved some of that fluff jungle that was underneath the bed and piled it up behind the sofa as some kind of test, but she won't catch me out that easily

second ... if i maxed my credit card on an expensive vacuum cleaner then we might save water during the summer months by just hoovering the sheets