to wiltshire, where ellen generously gives us a rarther posh new fruit bowl ...

... complete with fruit ...

... and a battle-hardened new interloper ... "to keep those other naughty little cats in order"

wonderful

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/bronze/

http://zoolander52.tripod.com/id22.html

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1982.220.8

etc, etc.

in preparing my liver for the imminent excesses of christmas, i might just go for a simpler diet for a couple of weeks

A lovely cold day in Sussex.

Brrr !  A Turner sunrise, looking from the high part of Ashdown Forest as I drive from East Grinstead to Crowborough, seen through distant veils of falling snow.  Hills beyond hills, and their crowning woods, are silhouetted as if on fire and shrouded in smoke.

A spotted fawn and his mother nibble the icy grass on the snowy first tee of the golf course as I slowly descend the drive to the hotel at Ashdown Park.

A gaudy woodpecker swoops right past my windscreen, a flash of emerald green and yellow green, and settles less than five yards from the kerb on a sunlit bank of grass as my truck rolls slowly through a roundabout in, of all places, the busy North Terminal of Gatwick Airport.  For a moment I look down on his tightly folded wings and the great scarlet flash on his head and neck, and he looks back at me.

laydeez an jennermen ... let's big it up for ... schrodinger's old tom cat !!!

besides the thames at dusk

from an occasional series of gratuitous juxtapositions ... ( part 99 )

metafilter points me to good stuff every day ... today i like this ...

http://sveidt.deviantart.com/art/How-to-Live-with-Introverts-291305760

3BT

Slowly turning at a dangerous corner in Ashdown Forest, I look down from the cab of my truck on a jay that forages on the sunlit floor amongst dull copper coloured beech leaves, and for just a second or two I am able to enjoy the underlying pink tints in his iridescent plumage.

Three people are talking loudly to their mobile phones during the journey home on a red double-decker at dusk.  Two are speaking in languages that might be from tropical Africa, and one from somewhere in Asia, like China, and being seated close to one another, each feels they must raise their voice.

A visual anomaly appears on a busy corner at Clapham Junction.  A young woman is leaving a fancy dress shop wearing a lightweight reindeer costume made from a thin soft stretchy tactile sort of fabric with a little wagging tail sewn on the butt, and somehow that wiggly tail communicates more about body form and body language than any little black dress might do.

gentlemen prefer ...

mick, from sligo, probably the best irishman that ever lived, bids me farewell at the end of the week

we speak about painkillers ... in his opinion the best is and always will be beer

which reminds me, i tell him, that i have a bottle waiting in the fridge

i am too ashamed to admit it has lain there almost a month

he says' " i expect you can hear it talking to you ?"

the fridge is five miles away from our workplace

i cup a hand behind my ear for a moment

"no, mick ! she's singing to me !""

schrodinger's old tom cat stays for the party

schrodinger's old tom cat would be delighted to engage each and every one of you in a socratic enquiry in to the possibility of there ever being an appropriate occasion for gold and imperial purple

schrodinger's old tom cat gets lost in space

schrodinger's old tom cat wants me to put him on page one of my advent calendar ... almost a certainty !

apropos de nuffinque ...

lost in translation .... excuse his french !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x71PRL3IxYs

time breaks in to a gallop ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20454757

3BT, 25th November 2012

A little flock of starlings are “grazing” on the west end of Clapham Common, a minute or two on the grass alternating with a minute or two in one then another of the big trees.  Their gentle conversations are carried on in soft sweet whistlings.  The morning sun is very low, barely grazing the rooftops and as they fly away before wheeling back towards me, so their glossy backs catch the light and turn from steely grey to shining bronze.

I download a novella from Project Gutenberg, first published in 1888 by Henry James, called the Aspern Papers.  By “editing” every line whilst I transfer it from one page format to another, I am able to read it closely.  In the first paragraph, I learn that the setting is Venice, a favourite location.  How easily he evokes the charm of an old palace by the naming of parts.  And then he makes me smile at his protagonist’s gentle folly … on every page.

The soggy leaves are breaking down in to a brown porridge along the verges and hedgerows.  I had hoped for an opportunity to gather and preserve some dry leaves for a little memorial bonfire at the solstice.  I remember sitting in the cab of the truck during a morning break last week before the storms, and watching a fat wood pigeon who was pottering amongst such dry leaves at the kerbside until a curious squirrel had approached.  The wary bird took off vertically and the downdraught from his beating wings left a clear circle, about four feet in diameter, as the leaves were blown aside.