Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Sunday, January 13, 2008

cast iron at the V&A ... the worshipful company of salters























a relic of the salters' guild ... i think their motto translates as "salt flavours everything"

http://www.heraldicmedia.com/site/info/livery/livcomps/salters.html

after another visit to the v&a ... the re-write of pride and prejudice can wait no longer ...










































the original plot seems a little lacking in proper drama ... maybe i can re-introduce the menage a trois scene, deleted by austen's publishers in a moment of editorial pusillanimity, where lord nelson and lady hamilton, having been thrown out of beckford's fonthill on christmas eve, make their way north through blizzards to gargle brandy with mister d'arcy and his cousin mister rochester on new year's eve

a slow read




I’m slowly finding my way towards the end of a book of essays by Susan Sontag, which I bought more than two years ago. The title is “Where the Stress Falls” and I’m inclined to think it is a very poor title because her work has very little to do with what we call Stress, and much more to do with Emphasis. Each page offers a cornucopia of ideas, felicities, and fresh perspectives, yet somehow, whilst enjoying her sweet-natured conversational style, I never stuck with it for more than a few pages at a time. When we go out in to the world each day, I think we often look at what we encounter as if “through our friends’ eyes”. Why we don’t have the confidence of our own perceptions is hard to explain. Maybe we value the insights that others provide more than our own, as though they were lifeboats on a sea of confusion, more likely it is just our way of sustaining a dialogue with absent friends.

legal tender

= 0.99 US dollars at today's exchange rate,

or one old Bank Of England ten-bob note down Memory Lane



































Thursday, January 10, 2008

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

loose change



someone gave me this old coin in my change

i suppose it might signify a time when the germans were still hungry long after the war had ended

the late tom smallridge told me how british servicemen occupying germany had to guard coal-trains in the depths of a terrible winter

the locals would send their children to unbolt the wagons' sides if the trains stopped near their homes

knowing this might happen, the soldiers were given orders to shoot them on sight, but never did as far he knew ... tom said those who gave the orders "were typical of their class"

Sunday, January 06, 2008

stuff from assyria


stuff from egypt


stuff from greece


stuff from rome


if all else fails, read the instructions ...


























i've had the little camera for nearly three years and i'm just starting to understand the macro function ... i lacked the patience to read the manual ... so it hadn't occured to me that you could place this same tiny lens so close to your subject

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Sunday, December 30, 2007

editorial skullduggery in the TLS






















For those half-educated truck drivers who enjoy a good read but whose delicate sensibilities are sometimes easily offended ... there is an extremely readable and illuminating essay by A. S. Byatt in the Times Literary Supplement dated November 30, 2007

The header to the article on page 16 reads, "Novel thoughts ... A way out of narcissism ?"

She lays out some careful and very interesting arguments about the evolving scope of the novel and it's subject matter.

But the flyer on the cover simply reads "No more sex in novels, please" , which was unfair to both the author and this reader, I think.
My advice is to ignore the flyer and enjoy the writer.

And then, in the same issue, if you have all day, Gabriel Josipovici's extended gallop around the subject of Modernism is also very useful. This time he looks at many kinds of writing, partly through the prism of Kierkegaard's ideas about existence.

I don't have the time or the talent to go to university and study all those books, so i'm grateful for these informative "tutorials" because they offer stimulus and perspective, navigational beacons in the jungle of ideas ... for those who must creep along the forest floor rather than go swinging through the treetops.

Paula's House of Toast























One of my favourite blogs is called Paula's House Of Toast ... I approach her blog reverentially, she's a wonderful photographer and seems to have a heart of jewelled gold, so i never ever thought I'd even slightly disagree with her about anything until today.

Her blog, titled Kindertotenlied, begins ...

"The Feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us that there is a physics of Good and Evil. In nature, every action has its equal and opposite reaction. The moral calculus may not be exactly the same, but the vectors are identical."

Well yes, sort of. In mechanics, it is useful to think of actions and re-actions. But our Universe isn't simply mechanical and so those naughty physicists have long since introduced the difficult concept of entropy to alarm and confuse us. No, I can't explain entropy easily ... so you'll have to go away and do some work on the subject ... if only out of respect for Paula.

My point, ( Ok, you can't really make clear points whilst foundering in my "fuzzy kind of logic" ) ... where Paula & I might differ, perhaps ... is that I sense that if we did exist in a "moral universe", (and I'm not at all religious), then we'd all be happily dedicated to resisting "moral entropy" ... analytical sociologists want to quantify human conduct but know that individuals can't and don't simply act as vectors, it's only a tendency not a rule ... I really do love the way that our planet's "evolution" seems to be achieving it's complexities as if in opposition to entropy ... but at this point my weary argument drifts off for breakfast ...
Later ...
on reflection, our perspectives don't diverge that much ...
on reflection, they seem almost convergent ...
I'd better take another pill and lie down now. See you later.