! cih

Travel broadens the mind, some say ...

I once travelled all night on a train from Paris Austerlitz to Narbonne and then went to a bar just opposite the station to wait for some friends to collect me.

It was just before seven and still dark.  There were two other customers standing at the bar, taxi drivers so burly they made me seem fairy-like.

The barman was of a similar stature to his clients, but had chosen to wear a low cut blouse and a blonde wig which, with an application of copious amounts of theatrical make-up, seemed to signify that he wished he had been born as Brigitte Bardot’s identical twin.

Never again will I be astonished by the Triumph of Hope over Adversity.

british national costume ... historical evidence, if it were needed, of the utility of red underwear

george collinson and lea velez, man and wife

george has been ill for a number of years

lea posted the following statement yesterday

George sigue en Puerta de Hierro. Tiene varios tumores en el cerebro. Recuerdo cuando montaba en la montaña rusa y el carro subía y subía aquella empinada cuesta que te dejaba el estómago encogido con la anticipación de la inevitable caída

semiotics ! don't talk to me about ...

i'm on the bus !

miracles of modern medicine ... a cat with ninety nine lives takes her new morphine pump for a walk in the grounds of her local hospice

a smug yellow cat tiptoes off the agenda ... until next time

close encounter

insomniac's experimental hand-held torchlight table-top photography ordeal at five on a sunday morning ... i'm only using a bunch of flowers 'cos the loved one refused to get out of bed and model, although i will, of course, have to credit her production role as chief flower wrangler

i've been failing to reach the bottom of this bottle for four years

i wonder if the lion's long mane isn't modelled on that of the rather intimidating lady who used to stand at the counter ... by golly, she had long nails, too !

maybe i'm just a sentimental old fool ....

but i still laugh out loud remembering the first time i saw this while i was waiting for the kettle at seven in the morning in phoenix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF5cBoAV5Ys&feature=relmfu

shameless

Three lads swaggered on to the homeward bus yesterday afternoon, making plenty of noise.  Whilst the two fifteen year-olds repeatedly shouted out their determination never to allow any white woman ( there were about ten white women on the bus ) to “S*** M* D***”, the sixteen year-old and loudest took out his phone and began an even louder conversation with “a friend”, the subject of which was a change in Metropolitan Police’s prosecuting procedures in Magistrates’ Courts.  

At first It was difficult to follow the conversation because everything was gabbled in a highly streamlined kind of playground talk, but it became possible to distil some meaning because everything was repeated at least four times, partly because he had trouble saying and conveying what he meant, and possibly because the other person was as daft as he and had a similar attention span. 

The gist of the twenty minute communication was that he had just been released by the police after 24 hours at the station helping them with their enquiries following a raid on his family home.  Some of their mutual friends and neighbours, who had been raided on the same day, had been remanded in custody.

What he had learned during the process was that the Met are determinedly changing their procedures with petty criminals and are recording every alleged offence as well as previous convictions, and are presenting the magistrates with more detailed lists of previous form, arrests, acquittals, taggings, etc, whenever new cases come up.  This means that his list of misdemeanours has suddenly grown much longer and he is in certain danger of being remanded in custody as and when he next gets himself in to trouble.

What he hadn’t learned … it seemed to me, by implication, because he never mentioned the possibility … is that this might be a very good time to change his life-style and stop being a bad boy.

3BT 25th August 2011

At second glance, the bus load of passive or expressionless schoolgirls leaving Gatwick Airport at seven in the morning turns in to a bus load of jet-lagged Malaysian air hostesses.

After a morning of tropically heavy rainstorms, I pause on my round to stand in a kind of bower, the shady canopy of a small plum tree, and I select one perfect purple plum, whose tender sweetness closes my eyes involuntarily like a kiss and transports my whole being back in to childhood.

Seen from the homeward bus at Clapham Junction, two women, with identical straight blond hair held by elastic bands in short pony-tails, kiss.  One is only five feet tall and stretches upwards on tip toe, whilst the other is about six feet two and bends only very very slowly until their lips touch at last.

i've got the silver back ... now i just need the odour ... of the alpha male

The Reform Tavern at Thornton Heath

i went to what might reasonably have been described as a tory grammar school in a small country town ... the various Reform Acts were never mentioned

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/refact/refmod.htm

I don't suppose Peel or Wellington would have enjoyed the present landlord's karaoke nights

it's been a terrible year for tomatoes on the allotment

number one millbank ... built for the church ( of england ) commissioners in 1906 ... sold in 2005

a couple of gilbert bayes's reliefs on the facade of the old london fire brigade headquarters near lambeth bridge