read all about it ! .... professor mary beard ... wise, lively, dry witted, sweet natured

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/apr/29/observer-profile-mary-beard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/21/professor-mary-beard-saturday-interview?INTCMP=SRCH

3BT

A lady who is very much in the bloom of health whatever her age, and as colourful as the central figure in  Renoir’s Harem, and as dynamic as  one of those giantesses who run ecstatically along the beach in Picasso’s backdrop for Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, stands in the sunlit atrium at our local shopping mall rolling her eyes heavenwards like a Mexican saint whilst absent-mindedly polishing her intelligent mobile phone on her chest, as if she were a sorceress and was expecting to conjure up some happy mischief from it in an imminent twitter from the gods.

The afternoon sunlight warms the soggy bluebells after the recent storms and deluges and they put out clouds of scent, so much perfume that several varieties of happy bumble bees can be seen at a glance, some with pollen sacs already brimming.

After an exhausting day, a generous colleague offers me a chilled fizzy drink in a can and I pop it in to my “man bag” before starting the homeward journey.  After a bus ride & a train ride & a supermarket trudge & and another bus ride, I pause on a comfy wooden bench to drink from it in the sun and I see across the street a ruddy face-drinker who has ventured outside the Green Man for a desperate drag on a cigarette, and so I congratulate myself rarther too smugly because my refreshment is clearly so much cheaper than his.

75 years ago ...

prosaic .... illustrating my want of imagination

for many years i was troubled by the following uncertainty ... whenever i heard tom jones singing delilah on the radio i was stuck with this notion ... that no woman from pontypridd would have a name as exotic as delilah, and therefore it seemed more probable that delilah would have been living in newport or cardiff

http://thesaurus.com/browse/prosaic

if you love maps ... integrated flight maps ... this week's eye-popping air chart of the USA

http://vfrmap.com/

an integrated chart overlaid on a high quality topographical map enables you to navigate US air space

you can flip to high level or low level

sometimes a bit clunky but hardly surprising as the data structure must be enormous

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/