i crept around the blind side of the truck and shot from the hip to surprise these two camera-phobes at the smokery ... despite appearances, they are one of the highlights of my working week ... is it any wonder i need counselling ?

and while we stood blathering i saw two tree creepers exploring the precinct only about thirty feet from the cab ... i've borrowed a picture from the internet

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/t/treecreeper/index.aspx

london underground .... gloucester road

london paddington

oxford

i laughed until i cried ...

Me and my big mouth … in and out of my dreams

I visited an old friend whilst I was in Spain this week.  She’s newly widowed after her husband’s very long illness.  She has two small children.  She writes TV scripts and novels for a living, successfully.  Since his death, she's already completed a new novel and she's gleefully inventing a new soap opera.

She explained in so many words how witnessing death and coping with the subsequent legal and procedural and emotional complications had strengthened her and had given her a newly balanced set of principles and criteria for dealing with life’s common dilemmas and contingencies.  To use two well-worn platitudes, she has emerged from the shadows greatly and impressively empowered.  I mean it.  Believe me !

She said, if I remember rightly, that she felt “ready to grasp the world”.

Next day, I sent a fatuous observation that I’m beginning to regret.  I suggested that only megalomaniacs could “grasp the world”: and the rest of us might best hope to swim alongside, and to enjoy our short time with it. 

Clearly, even as I wrote those words, there may have been some tiny splinter of uncertainty about this barely tenable point of view in the back of my mind.  I say this with the benefit of hindsight.

I am a person who dreams vividly, and, amidst the lurid chaos, there are often memorably bright threads of narrative, and clear echoes of events and situations, both ancient and modern, which I feel compelled to reflect on. 

During last night’s dream, I sat with a group of friends in the luxurious atrium of a vast hotel, gleefully rejoicing that because and although the world had just stopped spinning, we were lucky to find ourselves on its sunny side, if a little late in the afternoon. 

Effing hubris is never far away from effing nemesis !  Even in my dreams.

In an instant, the grim thought occurred that although the world might stand still, the mighty oceans would maintain their angular momentum ... and then, all in the one brief moment, looking out of a picture window towards the blazing sunset, we saw a mountainous tsunami approaching.

“Uh oh !”, I said, “Here comes the Pacific Ocean !”

spain ... somewhere down there you will find angels making another batch of picos blue

http://www.cheesecellar.co.uk/assets/files/cc-speciality-cheese-10.pdf

http://www.queseriaspicosdeeuropa.com/valle-de-valdeon.html

a spanish caballero tucking in to some tasty english bacon

glass

oaks

pines

unless you have a mature professional interest in the finer points of the design and engineering of modern footwear, you should look away now !

one blissful moment in spain

a crystal sky

only distant sounds ... one barking dog, one crowing cockerel, some sweet singing from a few little birds, the distant roar of the river in a ravine

and a little green path that leads to silence

i'm going to spain for a few days ... back on wednesday

can you spot the imitation welsh grandad ? yup, that's him alright ... happiest man in the world !

fear not the mysteries of cognitive dissonance, I will sing unto you of the joy of cognitive innocence

then aged about three or four, I remember my first trip on the top of a double decker bus through the Wiltshire countryside … it seemed whilst each succeeding perspective flowed by that each of the little summer fields with their enormous ancient hedges was spinning around

not long after that , i stood on the back seat of a car for the first time and was still unable to grasp the idea of the world’s fixity and so my mind saw the road and the white line that divides it as a huge ribbon gushing out from beneath the back of the car

this morning a large white building on the horizon changed shape several times as I drove towards it until I belatedly recognized the steaming towers of a concrete factory

stuff ... chez micawber

stuff ... at fortnum and mason

ref: tomorrow .... we know it is all nonsense .... it isn't her other birthday, it is a saint's day and she should use the opportunity to reflect on her errors, do penance, offer prayers, show remorse, etc etc ... but if its pink champagne, and if she's paying ...

ideal sunday afternoon study material ... dartmouth college's paradise lost linked with encyclopaedic notes ... to be read whilst simultaneously listening to radio five live's soccer coverage

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/index.shtml