the countryside in surrey is crowded with bored looking horses

working dialogue ...

Winston, a sweet natured gentleman from Jamaica who is still working his night shift when I’m starting my early, too early, morning shift … who I once glimpsed as a shadow dancing around his car and its sound system in the dark before going home from his fifty-something hour week of hard labour … tells me how he was cornered last Sunday evening by a giant colleague with a monologue that had a notoriously predictable course to run …

“you got the complete script then ?”,  I asked him, “chapter and verse ?” 

And Winston replies … “Yesss sir !  From Genesis to Revelations !” and he roars with laughter.

eros sleeping at the met ... with a helpful narrative

http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/enamored

touch synaesthesia ... it may be new to scientists, but not, i suspect, to some artists

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16298-first-cases-of-touchemotion-synaesthesia-discovered.html

some details from tom denny's windows in tewkesbury abbey

Installed in 2002, the windows mark the nine hundredth anniversary of the coming of the Benedictine monks to Tewkesbury in 1102. Their theme is the Benedictine motto ‘Laborare est Orare’ (to work is to pray).

http://www.tciwh.org.uk/church-activities/tom-denny.pdf

an amusing little almond cake, pleasingly moist with a covering of cashew flakes, created by the arch kitchen goddess sheila evans, at bancffosfelen on wednesday last

granary at aldbourne

http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-310540-granary-west-of-farmhouse-aldbourne-warr

tristan's belated technical & aesthetic catch-up ... LED illumination ... it really does make a difference to your appreciation of colour and texture in the paintings at the national gallery

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/press-and-media/press-releases/paintings-newly-illuminated-at-the-national-gallery

http://ledsmagazine.com/news/8/4/13

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/9115741/National-Gallery-saves-Titian-masterpiece-for-the-nation.html

although the hooks was rarther tricky

i don't have a television, or take much interest normally ...

... but this billboard made me smile ...

... and so does the sign behind it

every time the balloonist tried to land, the breeze took them too close to the hedges of the little fields

 

bogus man rising early to study his book of bronze

sweet genius ... via metafilter ...

http://vimeo.com/57395065

she's only gone and bought me ...

... another wonderful book !

some years after turner came to draw the ruins, we sometimes used to sing stanford's nunc dimittis in C at malmesbury abbey on sunday evenings ...

when i was invited to confirm my loyalty to the church, after five years as a chorister, aged about fourteen, i declined, and nowadays i really dislike the imperialist triumphalist lyrics more than ever, but i still think that stanford's amen we sang was very nice ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsnBDU0RTNM

of course, fifty years on times have changed ...

... i wish i could find out the name of this photographer, to whom much credit is due

... and i think el greco would certainly have liked the lighting and the colour scheme

when hedgehogs itch ...

poetry !!!

carol-ann duffy's poem ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/14/chaucers-valentine-poem-duffy?INTCMP=SRCH


and her podcast ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2013/feb/14/love-poems-carol-ann-duffy-podcast?INTCMP=SRCH