Thursday, January 20, 2011

housemaid's knee ... one of a series of occasional rants brought on by the compulsory hoovering




















two things actually, now that the recession is getting deeper and the prospect of affording domestic servants moves up the agenda for so many of us ...

first ... i'm trying not to feel or sound paranoid, but the thought crossed my mind that the loved one might just have moved some of that fluff jungle that was underneath the bed and piled it up behind the sofa as some kind of test, but she won't catch me out that easily

second ... if i maxed my credit card on an expensive vacuum cleaner then we might save water during the summer months by just hoovering the sheets

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

A book takes the chill out of winter.




I’ve been reading Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa’s only published novel, The Leopard, written in Italian in the mid-1950s but only published in English in 1960, about three years after his death.  I’m enjoying it.  It isn’t difficult to read.  But I don’t really want to criticize it analytically, or discuss the text in more than a superficial way, because I’m only half-way through it, and because I’ve been overtaken and slightly surprised by another notion during my short time with this small book. 

I can remember that my mother read it as soon as it became available.  And she must have enjoyed it because it reappeared in the house once or twice.  The first time, she would have been anticipating its availability at the little public library in Malmesbury High Street after hearing it reviewed in the BBC Home Services programme, The Critics.  And I suppose she might have read about it in the Sunday Times as well.  Malmesbury’s tiny library was her lifeline and they supplied so many books that she couldn’t afford and which were her refuge; so many children and so little money having left her exhausted and uncertain about so much in life.  But she always seemed to have clear ideas about art and literature, and she accumulated a vast experience of reading.

As a child, I completely failed to understand or sympathize with her way of seeing and dealing with the world.  But whilst I’ve been reading this book, her dust has suddenly been re-assembled and her spirit re-kindled, before my very eyes so to speak.  Suddenly I discover the very sentences and images that must have amused and excited her and so, even whilst I am reading, sometimes it feels as if I were in the old living room where she rested between laundering marathons, and I can see her laughing from the corner of my mind’s eye.  What’s more, I can sometimes hear what might be her own “internal voice” reading the words to me whilst I stare at the pages, as if I were in her head and reading through her eyes.  This novelist’s powers of evocation are often startling and heart-warming, his dry wit creeps up on me.  But who might have guessed that fifty years later he would indirectly evoke her for me ?  Not I.

Friday, January 7, 2011

how others see things ... easy when you know how















Sub-confluent, interphase Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVECs) transfected with GFP-WT-MCAK (Mitotic Centromere Associated Kinesin) and grown in culture for 8 hours. 


Cells were fixed in PHEM buffer containing 4% paraformaldehyde, 0.05% gluteraldehyde, and 0.2% Triton X-100. Cells were then labeled with mouse anti-tubulin detected by goat anti-mouse Alexa 568 antibody. 


Cells were imaged on a spinning disk confocal microscope using a 60x 1.4 NA oil immersion objective lens on a Nikon Eclipse Ti equipped with Perfect Focus System and a Yokogawa CSU-X spinning disk confocal scan head equipped with a multi-bandpass dichromatic mirror (Semrock; Rochester, NY) and bandpass filters (Chroma; Rockingham, VT) in an electronic filterwheel for selection of GFP or Texas red emission. 


Excitation light provided by a custom-built laser combiner module (modification of LMM-3, Spectral Applied Research; Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada) containing 500mW solid state lasers (488 nm: Coherent; 561 nm: MPB Communications; Montreal, Quebec) that were shuttered with electronic shutters and attenuated and/or directed to a fiber-coupled output port with an AOTF (Neos Technologies, Melbourne, FL) and directed to the confocal scan-head via a single-mode optical fiber (Oz Optics, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). 


A Coolsnap HQ2 camera captured images with 200ms exposure @ 488nm and 400ms exposure @ 560nm.


http://cellimagelibrary.org/home

designing her personalized karmic index

the news on radio and television, good or bad, is almost always followed with a brief summary of movements in the main financial markets around the world

perhaps those not even moderately wealthy in spiritual and intellectual capital needs must measure our human condition in similar ways

therefore, in an altruistic surge of activity destined to improve the happiness of the entire human race, i am prototyping and developing the loved one's karmic index

of course, in the life of an almost perfect woman, karmic index movements are generally upwards, but uncharacteristic glitches may occur

for instance, when i returned to the master bedroom after an unplanned visit to the loo before falling asleep last night, i was deeply disappointed to find that she had carried on reading her terry pratchett and had not even thought of plumping my pillows

i shall be posting frequent re-assessments using a simple logarithmic scale with the daily to-do lists that i like to leave around the flat for her

it is for her own good

shiny stuff in the back streets off wandsworth road

















http://www.stonework.co.uk/

Thursday, January 6, 2011

joined up thinking ...























... nicely crafted connectors.

Monday, January 3, 2011

fluid mechanics ... the armitage shanks mystery


































at the national gallery there's an astonishing exhibition of paintings by "canaletto and his rivals"

and there's a smaller exhibition of some paintings by bridget riley

each shows the power of the human imagination synergized by the precision of the artist's perceptions and dexterity

then some of us can go to the gents where precision and dexterity seem to be unimaginably difficult for the males of the species among the museum-going public and the floors are rarther slippery

i still haven't received a penny !

delicious but expensive



http://www.wagamama.com/food/item/orange+beet+down+%7C+new+juice/3715

insomniac photography ( part 999 )
















Sunday, January 2, 2011

history ... out with the old ! ...

















although it took me a month to get to page 573,

i wish i could have read this wonderful book in 1984 when it was first published

and it is a mystery why the labour government never got around to honouring the lady

... even though there is no mention in the text of the saltonstall wives depicted on the cover

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

... and in with the new - ish !






















Saturday, January 1, 2011

at the font, the suggested names of "lucifer parmentier" were greeted with perplexity

intolerable cruelty

Floating upwards from a night of dreams into voluptuous consciousness, just before dawn certain localized sharp movements and non-verbal vocalizations alert me to the loved one’s wakefulness, and so I venture to speak.

“I dreamed I woke up on my day off and someone made me a cup of tea.”

She whose given middle name is Sardonique, replies.

“That was only a dream.”

Chinese winter sports ... a mystery wrapped in a puzzle wrapped inside an enigma ...















Clearly, he thinks he's hard, but look at those nancy-boy gloves, and he's only playing against a bunch of women.

clearly modelled by the young george clooney

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Sunday, December 26, 2010

all the world's a stage ...

a sunny sunday morning, and i'm refractorily olfactory and f-f-f-freezing !











Even on the coldest night, although they are blackened and are drooping up to their necks in deep frozen drifts of snow, you can still smell the lavender.

A shrunken old man, in freshly ironed clothes that are now two sizes larger than himself and wearing improbably shiny shoes, gets on to the bus … and he’s reeking of mothballs.

Hungry and returning from a freezing hour on the Common, walking through a wide empty space between some anonymous tenements, I am taunted by the smell of bacon being wantonly fried by invisible sociopathic housewives.

left out in the cold ... the car she forgot to buy me ...

Friday, December 24, 2010

any resemblance between me and father christmas is purely superficial ..

















brrr !

the last few weeks at work have been hectic and exhausting

and somehow, i failed to send a single christmas card

of course, each of you was top of my list ...

love and best wishes to you all xxx

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Sunday, December 19, 2010

sixty-one articles

folowing lucy's introduction to the topic, but without having studied the others' lists ...

http://box-elder.blogspot.com/2010/12/49-articles.html


1                  Let the people who matter know why they matter.
2                  Dare yourself to do things.
3                  Challenge yourself to understand things.
4                  Warm dry comfortable shoes and warm dry comfortable beds will make you happy.
5                  Violence and bombast are futile … I know !
6                  Don’t be a fashion victim.
7                  When in the slightest doubt, seriously consider getting advice or help.
8                  If anyone tries to intimidate you … ask them if that is really their intention.
9                  A spare pair of spectacles is often handy.
10                Clip those toenails regularly.
11                Stop and listen to that bird’s song. 
12                Education will never be as expensive as ignorance.
13                Experiments may fail, but your willingness to experiment is vital.
14                If you can’t write it, see if maybe you can sketch it.
15                You’ve only got one liver.
16                Articulate your ideas … you often won’t know what you think until you’ve said it out loud.
17                Music invokes virtues.
18                What is this life, if full of care we have no time to stand and stare ?
19                How many languages have you really listened to ?
20                Don’t be shy.
21                Seek to experience every kind of harmony.
22                Marvel at the human eye and brain.
23                Try to keep up with new ideas, even though you don’t have to agree with them.
24                George, don’t do that !
25                Get outside and smell that wood smoke.
26                Always kick off your shoes and wiggle your toes in the sand … that’s what they were made for.
27                Rest whenever your body or your mind tells you to.
28                Keep your sunny side up !  Up !
29                Join in sometimes, even if you really can’t dance.
30                Courtesy costs nothing.
31                Travel slowly where possible to explore and discover.
32                There’s often some method in their apparent madness.
33                A little polite scepticism will often be necessary.
34                May the best team win: because the game is more important than the players.
35                Can you articulate your values and your principles clearly and concisely for the benefit of people who won’t or can’t ?
36                It is never too soon to say sorry.
37                Know your weaknesses before others discover them.
38                Render unto Caesar …
39                Beware of slippery slopes, some are longer and steeper than you might suppose.
40                Even a little kindness will go a long way.
41                Beware of biting off more than you can chew.
42                Pilgrimage needn’t be religious.  It can be cultural or intellectual or spiritual or just plain hedonistic … the journey’s the thing.
43                Be slow to anger … count to ten, or some greater number if necessary.
44                Russell: Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
45                Russell: Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
46                Russell: Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
47                Russell: When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your spouse or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
48                Russell: Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
49                Russell: Do not use power to suppress the opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions may suppress you.
50                Russell: Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
51                Russell: Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
52                Russell: Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
53                Russell: Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
54                Never spontaneously argue with gravity, or with momentum.  When an irresistible force such as me meets an immovable object like you …
55                More haste will often result in less speed.
56                Go easy on the salt.
57                Your personal hygiene is never a private matter.
58                Help others to become themselves, for no one is complete.
59                Never be too proud to say “I don’t know !”
60                Wherever you go you will discover people who are more diligent, more caring, more talented than you can imagine.  Be prepared !
61                Let there be light !