born under a bad sign ...

me, when i had a beard, ( i'd forgotten that beard ! ) and had borrowed pete clarke's seersucker jacket to photograph ann brown's wedding ... for which usage i almost certainly never thanked him properly

Art out of context … ( You couldn’t make it up ! )

On my way back in to South London this afternoon, I had to pop in to the warehouse of Brindisa, famous importers of marvellous Spanish foodstuffs, to fetch a big leg of Jamon.

There is a newly framed picture in their despatch and goods-in office

Not terribly appetizing ! … Goya’s painting of Saturn Devouring His Children.

http://www.museodelprado.es/goya-en-el-prado/obras/ficha/goya/saturno-devorando-a-un-hijo/?tx_gbgonline_pi1%5Bgocollectionids%5D=6&tx_gbgonline_pi1%5Bgosort%5D=d

shuddup and go back to sleep ! ( iv )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0xq51sxgM

shuddup and go back to sleep ( iii ) ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A7_ZbbKlj8&feature=youtu.be

a sunny sunday morning at the writing table ...

... contemplating an unusually badly neglected letter from the bottom of my satchel ...

... and finally starting it all over again

shuddup and go back to sleep ( ii )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-x42EWSI3Q

still clinging on in battersea ... made in new york ?

https://archive.org/stream/copperweathervan00jwfi#page/10/mode/thumb

weathervane catalogue via feuilleton

these girls'll never be ready for the opening night ... maybe i need a bigger megaphone ...

shuddup and go back to sleep ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1CXY5NHvms

jess-messin

cor blimey !!! ... babies seem to "remember" music they heard in the womb

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/30/babies-remember-melodies-womb-study

the second article is more usefully informative

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/babies_learn_songs_womb-123528

just found this picture in this morning's el pais ... luis bunuel, with his little dog, tristanita

... and elsewhere, whilst googling, i found this lovely picture of bunuel and lorca

A sometimes daft and improbable Friday

Homeward bound at dusk, the platforms at Vauxhall are crowded, the signs aren’t working, the African station announcer is hesitantly struggling with his syntax … and then everyone on the station looks incredulous because a completely clean and completely empty train draws in.

In mid-afternoon, as I slow down for a level crossing by Betchworth Station, a highly polished green steam locomotive thunders past, belching grey smoke and drawing eight antique brown and cream Pullman carriages.

On the three-thirty bus to work this morning, a jolly crowd of well-heeled but penniless Halloween clubbers get on and argue about the fare.  One athletic young man is dressed as a pumpkin … and he is ready and willing, he declares loudly in a public school accent, to fight any passenger that disapproves. “Relax !”, I tell him, “You look great !”

http://www.orient-express.com/web/uktr/british_pullman.jsp?c=ppc&p=uk&cr=uktr_br_bp&gclid=CM-5yanyxboCFRMctAodwxsAZQ

i wouldn't mind postponing christmas if the roads are gonna be this bad

it was fortunate father christmas wasn't hurrying ...

... and three is his lucky number !

ladeeyzangennermen ... for your exclusive entertainment ... we bring on the terpsichorean triceratops quintuplets ... lights ! cameras ! action !

3BT

Alvi greets me at his front door.  He holds up two small pine cones for me to see.  Laughing, I reach in to my bag and pull out … a pineapple !  You can see from his expression that his little brain is already engaging with problems of difference and similarity.

Walking through the dark rainy streets to the factory, above the roar of two cheese lorries backing on to their loading bays just before four in the morning, the night loader Winston Heavens’ radio is playing.  I hear, and then recognize in only two or three seconds, the opening bars of Talking Heads' Once In A Lifetime (Same As It ever Was); same as it ever was indeed, because that riff excites me now just as much as the first time I heard it in the Dug Out thirty something years ago.  I pause to stand there in the rain, briefly enraptured

School is out for some, and all along the Wandsworth Road, and down in Nine Elms it is a great sunny afternoon for tiny children of every race and colour to be out walking with their grandparents.