a tree within a tree ? 

trees are family

trees have an insidious way of establishing themselves as objects of affection

after half a lifetime of only wanting to look at girlz & wimmin, you suddenly discover an affection for trees an all

i'll try to take a few tree portraits as spring progresses, and whenever the progress of the cheese juggernaut can be halted in the narrow lanes of kent & sussex

here he is again ! 

out of strength comes forth sweetness

my friend laura was right about the lion and the bees

see the blogger anenglishmanscastle for the full story

i still like my false interpretation & will have to redesign the picture accordingly when i have a moment

a little gem from an unquotable, sorry unattributable, source ...

Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to give me another orgasm ?

not much scenery today 

shaun displays effortless skill 

shaun needs a holiday

so he's flying off to barbados for a week

he's taking his own sardine sandwiches because he doesn't think much of airline food

he's also rather worried about the escalating price of drink in the caribbean so any charitable contributions will be gratefully received

shaun's tow truck 

some drivers have all the fun

just as i was heading for home at edenbridge there came a call to say that shaun's van was in the ditch near "cheeseworks" which is in a "high" part of kent near goudhurst & so I was sent over to see how things were

the snow was melting & shaun & the van were ok, having only slipped on a soft verge and sunk into the mud, but the monstrous american tow truck was well worth waiting for

sunday morning table arrangement 

sunday, bleary sunday !

it is my turn to do the dusting but in my mood i prefer re-arranging the titanic's deckchairs & playing with the new camera, hence the pointless bit of domestic scenery above ...

quacking dolphins on shoreham lighthouse 

posh masonry at shoreham lighthouse 

a luvverly day

left the flat at five and cycled on frozen snow that crunched and cracled all the way through the side-streets of putney & wandsworth to nine elms

near croydon around seven there was more snow and it flopped down in big wet looking flakes on a robust looking lady who was crossing the street in four-inch black stilletos

on the south coast the sun shone & i stopped between worthing & brighton to photograph the shoreham lighthouse

i love the curved "pedestal" and the tiny carved apertures that light the stair-well, the cast dolphins-heads, & the weather vane that's big enough to see a mile away, as a seafarer under sail might wish to ... if only someone would gild it !

the things we do for money ! 

tina schol

today is tina schols birthday

everyone should stand to attention for a minute's silence

... then the drinks are on me !

happy birthday, teen !

innocent looking lisbon tram about to embark on white knuckle terror ride 

lisbon is lovely

those little trams are cute & the 28 tram ride was the most exciting thing since the roller coaster at new york, new york on the strip in las vegas

the people are lovely & the food was great, especially that "killer" bread soup with garlic & coriander that etches your tastebuds & makes the wine taste so much sweeter

but our poor feet ached from walking miles on rough cobbles in unusually cold weather

portugese food from the web 

whoa, were going to lisboa

flying out on thursday, back in time for a sunday crumpet,

where shall we eat ? any ideas ?

the burghers of belmarsh 

the burghers of belmarsh

spotted this rodin sculpture on my round-the-long-way home this afternoon

if your loved one needs extra work ... 

post valentine appraisal time

we were drunk, but not terribly

she was reading aloud from the travel section ...

she wanted to tell me how cheap it is to get married in las vegas

maybe next valentine's day ...

mystery pillar at chichester

sorry about this picture, it was hand-held at some distance

i was delivering cheese in chichester, as you do, when i spotted it around the back of the signal box to the west of the station

does any one know if it has a history ?

iron pillar at the west end of chichester station

the putney debates 

the putney debates

i cycle past this church every morning about ten past five

is this the same one where the first real public debate in England about the rights & obligations of people in a modern society took place ?

if you won't tell me, i'll be forced to do some more research ! ... and take a better photograph !

some gorgeous redheads breakfasting near sevenoaks 

redheads in sevenoaks

they told me there were some gorgeous redheads around sevenoaks

so it seems ... see above !

still, some of my friends prefer dumb cuddly animals

addicted to laughter, mister trouble & mz strife 

valentine's day

having remembered the day for once, i cycled off from putney towards nine elms, pointing my smug grin into the freezing wind & popping in to my favourite paper shop, not far from the battersea dogs home

an odd-couple of long-since overgrown school kids, hopelessly addicted to laughter, hang out there in the early hours, & he'd forgotten the formalities occasioned by the calendar

from what she was telling him, as i was leaving carrying my guardian & peppermints, this may the last chance anyone might get to see him in public for some considerable time ...

the mystery prism 

prism

i bought this prism twenty years ago in a junk shop in malmesbury

the shop was run by a great character called john kadwell

no-one has explained what the prism was designed for

can you ?

im afraid the background is a little disturbing

the one and only ellen ROSE forward 

the nicest kind of journey

i took a train to wiltshire where my daughter ellen rose cooked a real good lunch & presented me with a fine porcelain bluebird

here they are

colin berry performs sweet music for an audience of one

the trumpeter colin berry

... i got on a train & he was practising in the corridor ... honestly !

you'll never hear sweeter notes !

just look at that magnificent bicycle 

the loved one & i arriving in the big smoke 

hoarders bring country back into nine elms 

let sleeping dogs lie 

cognitive dissonance or do i mean semiotics ?

the tiny emblem on the tate and lyle treacle tin has more than one way of looking at us

i always imagined it showed a sleeping lion surrounded by buzzing bees after he'd eaten the treacle

having been born under a sweet sign, myself, i wanted to adopt the image as an emblem

however, my lovely spanish friend laura says she thinks it is a dead lion surrounded by buzzing flies

my first NEW camera 

Dear Linda,

Dear Linda,
Having just cycled home from a very hard day at work, followed by an especially materialistic diversion to Sloane Square, ( the sordid details will follow lower down this page ), nature was taking it’s usual course & I was absolutely bursting, but / &, your letter was laying irresistible & inviting upon the door mat & so I read it with instinctive urgency upon the toilet, thus experiencing two incomparable & simultaneously synergistically energising pleasures; truly, O Wise One, the best things in life are free ! And before you ask;

a) there were 88 words in the first sentence, and
b) I tend to use my right hand for just about everything.

At Sloane Square in Chelsea there stands one of this noble country’s greatest monuments to what Saint Karl Marx called the cult of Commodity Fetishism, the Peter Jones department store.

On Friday afternoon I went there furtively to buy … an Olympus C70-Zoom, I'll put in a picture when I learn how ! ( see above )

Yes, Mother-Superior, absolve me whilst I confess that I have mortally transgressed & have abused my sacred credit card big time ! Now don’t point that pretty finger this way, or even waggle it that way ! The very last straw that drove me to the brink of insanity was when you mentioned a yearning to take some pictures, so it’s mostly if not absolutely all your fault & I can still make an effort to sound almost reasonable when I refute any suggestion that I might have been greedy & / or materialistic; I’m just a silly & suggestible soft touch ! Now, all because of your damned intrusion into my sanity, I’m going to have to spend hours reading the manual because digital cameras are not half so simple as good old fashioned film cameras. Amazingly, you only get a little instruction manual in the box, because the proper one comes on a compact disc, all 190 pages of it, as does the software for downloading & then filing & editing the pictures that you want to put into your computer. I’ll just leave off from writing here for a few moments ( hours ! ) to see if I can master that basic task. Perhaps I’ll go out for a little while & actually take a few pictures ! After all, why else should I want to own a bicycle ? // This morning I woke with a shout from an all too vivid dream. I was walking along a dockside, wearing a grey suit, bare footed, & carrying a pointed shovel, when a gust of wind carried me off, away from land & higher & then higher. Looking down, I realized that the water was too shallow for me to survive a fall, which was when I cried out so loudly for “HELP !” At least I didn’t bang my forehead on the wall this time ! // STOP PRESS ! The Loved One & I have booked a flight & three nights in a four-star hotel in Lisbon, flying out on the 17th February. She is already knee-deep in guidebooks. If you have already been there, do feel free to make suggestions about cheap thrills. I’m going to stop now & catch up on domestic duties.

XXX each from Tristan

mon repos

my next home will probably have this sign outside

CHEZ MICAWBER

blow blow thou winter wind

one of this winter's new pleasures is cycling home in brilliant sunshine past battersea power station, with its attending yapping dogs home, along the riverbank in the park past the peace pagoda, infested with joggers, across the lovely albert bridge to the chelsea embankment, with its egyptian-throne style benches beseiged by house-boats, etc, etc

however, it seems that not everything in the loved-one's conciousness is fully illuminated ... i said that if she really loved me, then she'd have anticipated my imminent arrival & been waiting on the doorstep in her best underwear

she made no comment

then i found the thorntons oriental ginger chocolate bar she had left for me next to the keyboard

but if she really loved me, she'd have bought three, then remembered my weight problem, put one back, & brought home two ! Q.E.D!

one way of maintaining contact

"If you knew how sensitive i am, you would have e-mailed me months ago !"

Saturday at dawn, I suggested to The Loved One that she might be having difficulty getting to sleep at nights if she was trying to make a mental list my virtues.

She said that she had indeed struggled to get up from zero to one, but would possibly make it from one to two, if only I could

i) get out of bed right now

& ii) brew her a cup of Earl Grey.

joe bialik says ...

the best two low-down dirty emotional blackmailers cliches he can think of, after a fine education, are:

"you've really let us ( the school, the headmaster, the staff, the caretaker & cleaners, society in general ) down rather badly"

and

"now look what you've gone & made me do"

which is probably out of the original laurel & hardy primer

day one between sneezes

"There are seven deadly sins ... & the eighth & worst is EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL"

I began our early conversation on Sunday morning, baking-hot beneath two duvets, before we had opened our eyes, with this gambit:

“If you really loved me, you’d have taken my bicycle before dawn, & cycled, still in your pyjamas, with a machete clenched between your teeth, to the tropical hot-house at Kew Gardens to shin up a palm tree & bring me a fresh coconut.”

The Loved One, obviously fully alert, but sounding very bored;

“I think I’ll have to eat those last two astonishingly delicious Anton Berg strawberry & champagne chocolates myself this morning.”

Myself, badly deflated by her expert counter-punching;

“You’ll miss me when I’ve joined the Foreign Legion.”