statement for the defence

Gentlemen of the Jury.  M’Lud.  My client, Miss Crabbe, the former Triumph International model, has instructed me to declare that she strenuously denies the charges of robbery with menaces, and she certainly never would set foot inside that rat-infested flea-bitten manager’s office at her local branch of the Caja de Extramadura. 

Despite her having lived virtually next door to it for the last twenty years, she suggests this was simply a case of mistaken identity because she is rarely drunk before mid-day and she only ever uses that kind of bad language, or wears fishnet stockings, during serious pub crawls on public holidays, unlike some other women she could mention.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that on the day in question she was auditioning for a job with a travelling circus that had camped on the edge the pueblo, and whose colourful poster showing a handsome weight-lifter had intrigued her artistic sensibilities. 

She is indeed a very sensitive and caring person at the best of times but is often tired out and made light-headed by all the scrubbing and starching and ironing that Spanish housewives of her moral stature and giving nature are forced to endure by their cruel and cold-hearted and incredibly narcissistic husbands.

In these days of political and economic and social turmoil, I’m sure all of you will understand that even a girl with an iron will and a heart of gold must sometimes need a little relief and even the most saintly are sometimes susceptible to flattery.

Thus it was that she boldly accepted the angry challenge of the ringmaster’s wife, ( after being found with him in the haystack behind that fully-bearded lady’s side show, when he should have been mucking out the elephants’ cage ), and so Miss Crabbe, or Lulu as she is affectionately known by the local shepherds and goatherds, fearlessly strode forth into the centre of the lion tamer’s cage where she performed her well known party trick ( famous throughout the milking parlours of La Vera and the pig farms of the Dehesa ) and juggled seven flaming tortillas with only two frying pans whilst wearing her old school uniform and smoking a cigar, as she often does when the family gather for recriminations.




( Addendum ... 
a foresworn affidavit from Senor Francisco Xavier Heironymus Bosh, Circus Master, states that he was only helping her find a lost jewel-encrusted Lalique safety pin which she needs to hold up her red flannel petticoats )

And it is there that my client asks me to rest her case, only pausing to add that the photographs which will inevitably prove her cast-iron alibi haven’t been developed yet but here are the frying pans, still scorched from the act.

one of you may know ... how far through you does the orange colour go on this baked bean diet ?

the americans are having a spot of weather

http://www.weather.gov/sat_loop.php?image=ir&hours=24

http://hint.fm/wind/

swotting up

grand national day

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

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

butterflies of the soul

http://thebeautifulbrain.com/2010/02/gallery-images-from-cajals-butterflies-of-the-soul/

3BT on a dismally wet and windy Easter Monday

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.

when i was about nine, the hobbes close gang were standing knee deep in the stony fish-full brook at backbridge when this flew over low and slow, complete with small phalanx of jet fighters, really, and now that i've just found this picture i realize how clear some memories can be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36

ladies ! if its sunday, it must be bath night !

i'm convinced that the loved one would make a jolly good maenad ... what a pity its raining

a painting i'd never seen before by the late tom la fontaine with my home town in the background

consumed inadvertently during the night whilst reading philip hensher's squalid "king of the badgers" ... almost as unpleasant as gore vidal, i feel older and wiser, but soiled !

she's probably re-calculating my value

yours sincerely, eagerly anticipating your grooming tips !

all those years ago, in pangbourne !

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

isn't that what we used to call a fun-fair ?

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.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adzywe9xeIU&feature=player_embedded

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Oscar-Winning-Animated-Short-Fantastic-Flying-Books-Mr-Morris-Lessmore-Now-Online-29686.html