yet another symptom of accelerated regression ...

just after i was changing up in to top gear i realized i was ...

a) sucking my thumb

b) wiggling my toes

one hundred and twenty four years ago ...

http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let596/letter.html

doctor william price ... i was led back to him via lucy's blog, "being of sound mind"

from the doorstep of 4 raymond terrace in treforest, a certain small boy could look across the coal black river taff to the green hills above pontypridd and wonder about the man named doctor price who had once lived behind or within those turreted houses, near the top as it seemed then, though not so very high up i realize now, and probably less conspicuous nowadays since the trees have grown

a digression ... i had learned to whistle very loudly and when there was a moment of quiet and not too much wind, it was possible to hear five echoes on my grandparents' doorstep ... but there were complaints of course

it had been explained to me that doctor price had been an advocate of cremation as an alternative to burial, but no one mentioned druidism to me, or chartism, or the rebecca riots

he was also the surgeon for the chain works lower down the hillside, which was still there during my childhood

i wish i'd known all this then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Price_(physician)

http://www.campaignseries.co.uk/homes/homes_for_sale/in/Pontypridd,%20Wales/from/100000/to/300000/low-to-high/All/with/0/bedrooms/list/1410296/

don't try this one at home ...

myself slumped motionless over the computer with headphones whilst following the soccer all afternoon

herself noisily engaging with eternal backlog of necessary domestic chores

now raise your voice, but don't turn your head, and repeat after me ...

"i know you're only making work noises so i'll think you're busy !"

grudging congratulations to real madrid ... but i have imposed an editorial ban on pictures of them

i wonder if my grandson will inherit my ears ?

and did those feet in ancient times ... ?

lots of decent human beings exercised their right to vote .... for this feller !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/apr/20/richard-benyons-inclosure-quarry

http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/about/who/ministers/benyon/

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