A little less conversation ...

At Casa Yustas, a wonderful hat shop in Madrid's Plaza Mayor, the languorous young Spanish woman ...

... not unlike the young lolita sevilla ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpz5kbaeOLA

... who couldn’t find a cap that was large enough for me ... ( “Mas grande ! Mas Alto !” I begged her in badly broken Spanish) ... was joined behind the counter by her boss … a young Chinaman !

He said, “I’m sorry I don’t speak very much English ! Can you speak Chinese ?”

Placing the tip of my middle finger between my eyebrows and tapping gently, I said, “No, but I can think Chinese !”

a spaniard sleeps beneath his portrait

whenever i hear the word kultur, then i reach for my gun ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5ata4jDyk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_of_Alabama

posthumous thanks to graham carey, who lent the record to my mother in ?1964?

lost in toledo ... again, as usual ... i found this huge print pasted on the wall of the archivo municipal de toledo near the plaza de san salvador ... and when i got home i went to the AFT website ...

and discovered that they had made a little fillum ....

http://www.afotoledo.com/?start=9

what i missed because of the air traffic control fiasco ... well, the describable part ... minus the booze and the food frenzy and the party hysteria

the spanish lady at the barajas airport check-in desk said "do you know your flight has been cancelled ?"

i pretended to be nonchalant instead of bilious

and then she said,

"another aircraft that should have departed an hour ago is still at the gate !"

all well and good ! however, landing at heathrow a little earlier than i had expected, there was nowhere for our plane to park

and eventually the two hundred and something passengers found ourselves in the bowels of the earth, waiting helplessly for a transit train that never arrived, even though the automatic announcer told us thirty times it would be along in just one minute,

so we walked what felt like a mile through an even deeper tunnel which has been started for such contingencies, but not completed ... it was effectively a mile-long building site with bare cement floors, machinery and equipment everywhere, and lifts at the far end that only worked intermittently

having already walked about ten miles around madrid in the morning, i was frazzled

and after two hours sleep, followed by yet another twelve hour working day, i still am !

domes ... in madrid and in the alcarria

and what are YOU doing on saturday night ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHXzuZ1AfJU

in jack's cafe at devizes, which has a bay window looking down on the market place, and a log fire ... we found two prints of paintings by david inshaw, signed by the artist, in real pencil ! ...

... though not these two ... three !

http://www.davidinshaw.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Inshaw

a nice bit of 150 year old signwriting ...

good wine needs no bush

aesculapius in devizes market place, above what was once a surgeon's front door

eat your heart out roy lichtenstein ...

sir antony van dyck's last self-portrait is up for grabs ...

here's one he painted earlier ...

he's gone !

http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/2013/nov/26/araucaria-guardian-crossword-setter-puzzles

verse is worse !

in a glass cabinet, at the BFI

Christopher Lee ...

... and Peter Cushing

3BT, 23rd November 2013

The River Thames at Putney Bridge is drenched in winter sunshine.  The crews of several rowing boats seem to move very slowly, whilst some just drift on the current, as if very badly hung-over.

Three big school girls are playing a game that seems to involve dancing manically with much tossing of heads and waving of arms, but without moving their feet … in the carriage of a moving train on the Piccadilly Line.

After a delightful second visit to the John Soane Museum, a lovely house full of marvellous objects and paintings, some gleaming in the low winter sun, I emerge in to their tiny shop, and morosely view it’s unlovable and unaffordable contents.  Just as I am about to leave, I am startled and uplifted by not just one, but two irresistible gifts that I feel compelled to purchase guiltily, there and then, for a very important someone. Only you and I know who !

i'll be on my way to madrid two weeks from today ... but what am i going to wear ?

http://www.sombrerosgorras.es/gorras.htm

pulchinello's wedding ... drawing by domenico, son of giovanni battista tiepolo