Wednesday, March 30, 2011

genius ... sheila brings back to life the last summer's bounty




up near the ceiling in a friend's spare room ... a left-over from the days when i used to mess about with paints

the painter roy hewish giving fats waller his undivided attention

monday morning at the rialto fish markets


apropos de nuffinque in venice




stuff and nonsense in venice









nothing better to do ? i'd better just tiptoe by quietly

a notorious workaholic is compelled to relax



Blimey ! The Chiesa dei Gesuiti .. Santa Maria Assunta

the inside looks like blue and white china but is really blue-ish marble inlaid on white

brodsky's garden wall


at the cemetery ... diaghelev and stravinsky


you won't see many pigeons and seagulls in canaletto's paintings ... why ?


nor any drop to drink



























a few choice knockers






Friday, March 25, 2011

a souvenir

3BT from Venice, and from Padua

At sunset, from the north wall of the Arsenale, there is a clear and unexpected view of pink and distant snowy mountains.

In the museum of antiquities in Padua, the skeletons of a cavalryman buried with his horse two thousand five hundred years ago, the man’s head fossilized now against what was once perhaps the cushion of the horses neck.

In Giotto’s Scrovegni chapel, also in Padua, a sunbeam slants across the panel depicting the Lamentation and catches their haloes.

… and three more

Just before nine in the morning, two minutes walk to the east of the Piazza San Marco, a well dressed young man’s handsome face suddenly takes on a childish smile and he hopscotches along the flagstones … perhaps the primary school we just passed in the last street is his old one.

Following only ten yards behind him, a much taller man sways like a dancer as he balances two heavy polystyrene cases of fish on his head, stabilised there in their onward trajectory with an inch-thick ring of cloth.

Later, I step through the double-glazed door on to our balcony in my best pyjamas.  It is mid afternoon.  On the opposite bank of the Fondamenta San Lorenzo, the young waitress standing in the doorway of the Trattoria al Greci glances up, her face a question mark.  I bend down in to the shadow behind the balustrade and then hold up for her to see the bottle of prosecco I’d left to cool there last night.  She smiles and confirms her understanding with a double thumbs-up.