Saturday, April 14, 2012
3BT 14th April 2012
Two furiously
discordant throstles dispute an invisible territorial boundary in the middle of Clapham Common. For Heaven’s sake, lads,
it’s a COMMON !
Two goldfinches, their bonces allegedly tinged with the blood of Christ, chirrup sweetly together whilst they search for nest-building material, and remind me of this solemn kidnapped prince.
http://nicepaintings.org/works/84678
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Sforza_(il_Duchetto)
Dev, born in Bengal in 1932 and literate in Bengali, English, and Sanskrit, a keep-fit die-hard on the Common despite having to take eight prescribed medicines each with their own side-effects, and having five grown up children each with their own set of troubling grumbles, reels off the names of half a dozen of his other films without hesitating when I mention Satyajit Ray’s exquisite film Pather Panchali, and then, after a moment of solemn contemplation, he turns to look at me and whispers one word, gasping as if in reverence of the name and of the beauty it evokes ... "Apu !".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apu_Trilogy
Thursday, April 12, 2012
at school during the cold war, our understanding of history's fabric didn't include the continuous thread of humour ... here's professor peter hennessy ... a sweet voice of reason
a thirty seven minute talk with two grimly funny stories at the conclusion
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/CatchUpHistory.mp3
Monday, April 9, 2012
3BT on a dismally wet and windy Easter Monday
-Flight_into_Egypt+before+restoration.jpg)
In a free exhibition at the National Gallery, a newly restored early work by Titian, The Flight In To Egypt,
(http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/titians-first-masterpiece-the-flight-into-egypt ,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/apr/03/titian-first-masterpiece-national-gallery?INTCMP=SRCH ),
... it is a remarkable painting by a teenager beginning a long career in Venice and possibly already nostalgic for the lush meadows around his home town of Pieve di Cadore in the foothills of the Alps, about eighty miles north of Venice. The accompanying set of naturalistic etchings and drawings by Durer, who visited Venice for the second time just in time to have probably influenced Titian, are lovely, too.
Entering the
Ritblat Gallery, a treasure house in the British Library, the narrow doorway is
slightly constricted when a young Japanese woman stops in a pool of intense halogen
light to check her smart phone and as I pass her I am enveloped in an
intoxicating cloud of expensive perfume.
Passing the
philatelic section of the British Library I spot a Spanish man and his elderly
parents marvelling at the extraordinary collection of stamps and envelopes
collected after their Civil War, objects of pilgrimage even ? Earlier I’d been sitting near them in the café
when they laughed in disbelief at the awfulness of Peyton and Byrne’s coffee,
arguably The Worst Coffee in the Whole History of the Universe, and certainly
something that even the most desolate and forgotten and far flung village bar in Spain
would be deeply ashamed to serve.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
3BT, 5th April 2012 … no four ! ... no, five !
Just after
four in the morning, the bus to work is trundling through the darkness along
the edge of Clapham Common. On the
Common side of the road, in a brightly lit bus shelter, sits a fox.
In Horsham,
an oncoming vehicle catches my eye. It
is a very old VW Camper, a low-rider, meticulously restored and perfectly re-painted in
cream and white. The driver looks
interesting, a slender man, tweed suit, bow tie, old-fashioned bushy moustache
and, I think although it was only a glimpse, half-moon spectacles. From the cab of my little truck I stare down
into the pale interior which looks as if it has been re-organised and
re-furnished to look a bit like a stretch limo.
On a plush bench seat in the back, with acres of legroom, sits a
laughing bride between her two maids.
My least
favourite word in the lexicon of management-speak is “just”. Can you just … ? Today it is “Can you Just deliver a pallet
for Dubai to an air freighter’s warehouse, as close to twelve as possible ?" This will, of course be in the middle of one
of the year’s busiest working days, the last before the Easter holiday, and
will involve a diversion that will add an hour to an over-long day. Miraculously, after all kinds of delays and
hardships, smoothing out a few customers because of some typical office
blunders, and working flat out from four thirty onwards, I arrive at one minute
to twelve, am unloaded, and depart at one minute past.
Down a grimy
backstreet in chaotic Brixton, a tall girl with an upturned white face and long dark red
hair parted symmetrically, and totally the wrong shade of pale red lipstick on
a un-kiss-ably gloomy mouth, is walking with stately grace, arms straight and
holding a flower pot at zipper height, from which stands incongruously a single
perfect orchid on a very long stalk, its creamy white flower with an erotically
hot pink centre facing forward only six inches away from her lips, as if
embodying or symbolizing or pre-determining the imminence of that magically
transforming kiss.
A big Caribbean mum clambers on to the bus with three carrier bags in each hand. Four children follow, three girls and a tiny boy. The girls ( 7?, 9?, 11? ) are also carrying bags. They have identical spectacular showbiz hairstyles … upwardly mobile dark curls sculpted like flames and culminating in a gold tinted peak well off to the left. All four children have brand new violin cases slung across their backs.
A big Caribbean mum clambers on to the bus with three carrier bags in each hand. Four children follow, three girls and a tiny boy. The girls ( 7?, 9?, 11? ) are also carrying bags. They have identical spectacular showbiz hairstyles … upwardly mobile dark curls sculpted like flames and culminating in a gold tinted peak well off to the left. All four children have brand new violin cases slung across their backs.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
clearly, half the world have already seen this lovely animated fantasy about the life of books ... but that needn't stop me from endorsing it
Monday, April 2, 2012
today would have been george collinson's next birthday, and whilst i mourn him, i know that he would have preferred a smile ...
he was very fond of football, and of original thinking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5fGSBsfq8
and he was rarther keen on chess, too, although i can't remember if we ever discussed that game in the context of the life and work of marcel duchamp ... if you can call it all work !
but i digress and so ... to conclude, if there's a collinson-type of heaven, then it should be very easy for us to track him down when we arrive by the sound of his booming laughter
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
serendipitize for long enough and ye shall find ... renaud garcia-fons !
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