Tuesday, February 28, 2006

nice fat numerals, formed in 1905

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nationalised heraldry

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no ornamentation here ...

every little piece had a reason and some purpose

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aaaaah ! a lovely long P !

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sheffield park station sign

notice how close together the letters have been set

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here be dragons ... sheffield park station

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she used to work along the docks in southampton

this little tank engine, Normandy, was built in 1893, and she's still working !

i love her long shadow

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ouch !

i burnt my fingers on this tiny piece of bread baked by nurielle, the french perfectionist at ockenden manor

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brighton racecourse

what a joy it must be to gallop flat out towards that distant stadium down this great curve 150 metres above the deep blue sea

and from here, on the very clearest days, you can see the isle of wight on the horizon, and sometimes, even beyond that to the round hills of purbeck

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Monday, February 27, 2006

never underestimate a fellow human being

i still haven't figured out how to use links, so apologies for an untidy page

since making a couple of ( VERY SHORT ) visits to the navajo and hopi people i've tried to keep up with some of their issues & achievements via the internet

here are two nice stories, fresh today

http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0609,lalli,72326,15.html

http://www.navajohopiobserver.com/main.asp?SectionID=29&SubSectionID=41&ArticleID=4699

dialogue

i forgot to report this scene from yesterday's blood donor session ...

as i lay down on the comfy blood donors' bed, i was unable to stifle a yawn

first loud nurse ( with needle ):

"Look at him yawning !"

me:

"Sorry, its a conditioned reflex, I'll yawn whenever I lay down"

second loud nurse ( walking past with a bag of someone else's blood ):

"I bet he snores, too !"

me:

"I'm afraid it's true ! I do !"

lady donor with very husky low voice on next bed, gives a heartfelt & theatrical sigh:

"Show me a man who doesn't !"

Sunday, February 26, 2006

untidy neighbours ...

... you wonder if some of the lads have even learned to wipe their own bottoms

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mmm ! that old apple core looks delicious !

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sunday, bloody sunday !

to putney leisure centre to donate an armful of vintage O Rhesus Positive

unlike the inept & inhuman californian executioners, these professionals had no trouble finding a vein ... why can't arnie do the job himself ? ... put up or shut up !

the haemoglobin test was a success, the drop they squeezed from my finger-tip sank straight to the bottom of the tube ... must be all that chocolate

the circulation is good, too ... it only took four minutes to fill the bag ! ... must be all that cycling

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Thursday, February 23, 2006

last night, we ...

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... flew back from ...

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... barcelona ! where else might ...

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... a major attraction ...

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... be ...

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... the hospital ?

hospital de la santa creu i san pau

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tapies; i can see why people like him, but it fails to connect for me

this painting is about twelve feet wide, the "ground" is yellow sand, about a quarter-inch thick, presumably mixed with glue, some of the marks were gouged into it; what does the rough "text" signify ?

i enjoy it's vigour but what puzzles me is that i can't follow the process of its creation as any kind of narrative, so is it just itself ? nothing more ?

i always imagine that stuff gets shown in galleries because it exemplifies some sort of ideal, or the opposite if it is iconoclastic

one commentator says that a tapies canvas is a gate to a spiritual dimension, but you could say that for any work of art ... almost as a universal truism of what distinguishes the artists we most value from all the others

please will some kind and patient reader explain what distinguishes this work for them from a million other pieces of outdoor graffiti ? translate him for me, please ?

perhaps it is too exclusively coded to be an enigma, so why say so little when you could say so much ?





n.b. here's a link to someone else's view of a similar painting by the artist ...

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_153_1.html

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casa mettler and casa battlo

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casa metller

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parc guell cloisters

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parc guell higgledy piggledy tiles i

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parc guell higgledy piggleddy tiles ii

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best dressed parc guell visitors

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