three beautiful things ... also

at dawn, a big airliner lands during heavy snow and hurtles unchecked along the runway at gatwick for some distance ... until the pilot turns on the reverse thrust and whips up an enveloping cocoon of whirling snow

despite a previous week or more of deep frost and then snow, finding bags of miraculously clean and flawless charlotte potatoes in the supermarket

at dusk, emerging with those potatoes onto a street along which the snow is blowing almost horizontally in an icy wind, but in which the ambience is "tropicalised" by that marvellously ecstatic smoke that comes from roasting coffee

just messin' around

stop press: local dog wins due diligence award after discovering secret lair of clapham common meta-wabbit

questions, questions, questions!

what can you call the band of colour in the sky that's half-way between the turquoise and the orange?

it seems sort of almost greeny sometimes but mostly its a silver-grey.

Hmmmph !

if God loved philosophers (s)he'd have put clearly written labels on every thing.

red

stuck on page seventeen ...

... what insomniacs do.

my lips are sealed

a fabulous new cheese under development at a top secret research establishment somewhere in the south of england

never ...

... eat anything that's bigger than your head

might be the shortest train journey in the south of england ...

... unless you include this one ...

balcombe viaduct from the west

a handful of beautiful things

in the space of twenty minutes ... a kestrel hovering in a sunbeam, an old-fashioned bi-plane making a high circle beneath some raggle-taggle clouds above some raggle-taggle oak woods, and then a red helicopter following the line of the hills between reigate and dorking, followed minutes later by a yellow one

letters from two dear friends laying side by side beneath our letterbox

the loved one steps in from a long day at work, delves in to her bag, then flourishes aloft a brand-new re-print of posy simmonds' subtle masterpiece, "tamara drewe", winner of the grand prix 2009 de la critique bande dessinee

mirada del mendigo

the boy done good ... again !

http://esmola.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/do-courel-o-bierzo/

a burning issue ... trumble's reputation tied to the stake

i really am enjoying angus trumble's new book, "the finger"

BUT

having rejoiced when discovering therein lay a chapter on gloves, my hopes of finally finding a cogent exegesis of david des granges' enigmatic 1636-ish group portrait of "the saltonstall family" were disappointed

http://thenewemotionalblackmailershandbook.blogspot.com/search?q=saltonstall

botheration !

now i'll have to beg admission to the national art library and do my own bleedin' research

THREE MORE BEAUTIFUL THINGS

Driving through the woods in the early fog which is rhythmically striped and punctuated by veering sunbeams as the road winds around the hills, and is frequently perfumed with different kinds of wood smoke from domestic stoves and from invisible bonfires smouldering in gardens and coppices.

As night falls, the loved one is filling the building with the sweet aroma of baking cookies whilst the Beach Boys Greatest Hits are playing.

Another twenty page letter to a wonderful friend is finally sealed up and addressed, ready to be posted after a whole week of hesitantly laboured paragraphs and too many lip-biting crossings out, and some unbelievably childish spelling corrections.

seven in the morning, chez micawber ... even now in a laboratory near you, teams of dedicated scientists are working on a twenty-first century cure for feminine snoring

has any one mentioned christmas yet ?

dear diary, went to work in the dark ... and came home in the dark ...

.... although you can never really call London dark

dashboard photographers club

pat and her highly trained guard dog at a cheese smokery somewhere in the south of england

i am too weak-willed to resist the temptation of offering you this gratuitous juxtaposition

... having just collected the book from battersea library and chuckled more than once on the journey home