crikey ! they've cleaned up saint pancras !

sir john betjeman at saint pancras

obsessive compulsive photographers' disorder

i got up early again on my day off and took some more night pictures in the courtyard of the royal academy

there was less wind and i remembered to tighten up the tripod parts as well, so these pictures may have gained a little clarity

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/sculpture-in-the-annenberg-courtyard/

http://www.zhanghuan.com/ShowWork.asp?id=63&iParentID=2

the huguenot cemetery ... stranded between two streams of traffic on the south circular

i imagine that huguenot mansions was a speculative development and not a ghetto

st john's therapy centre, battersea ... provides many services that used to be had a mile away at the bolingbroke hospital

general wolfe at westerham village green

any old irons ? the yard at the royal academy needs a tidy

the loved one has just gone shopping ...

sez she: is there anything you'd like me to bring you, dear ?

sez he: a different coloured armani suit for every day of the week would be nice !

fortnum and mason's ... twelve drummers drumming, 'leven pipers piping

it is my weekend off but i got up at the usual time and took a fourteen bus from the green man to piccadilly so there'd be no distractions while i photographed the christmas window display at fortnum and mason

fortnum and mason's ... ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing

fortnum and mason's ... eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming

fortnum and mason's ... six geese a laying, five gold rings

fortnum and mason's ... four calling birds, three french hens

fortnum and mason's ... two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree

... and there woz light

window shopping in jermyn street ( i )

window shopping in jermyn street (ii)

http://www.florislondon.com/FlorisSite/pages/cms/cms.asp?sCCPage=History

... and then they diversified in to motels

http://www.bates-hats.co.uk/formal.html

two new verbs in the wiltshire gazette ... i quote ...

He and the Dyson family is listed in 59th place in this year's Sunday Times Rich List, with a £1.08 billion fortune and assets including a £3 million French chateau.

The company is headquartered in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, where it employs more than 1,200 staff.

The firm manufactures all products in Malaysia since a decision in 2002 to offshore the operation, a move which caused outcry, with 500 UK jobs axed under the switch abroad.

some, no, most days, small ironies creep up behind and pinch me

i'm only fifty-eight, after all; so i haven't lost my malmesbury accent yet

this afternoon, ( whilst back at the office to do some paperwork after the round ), jonida, a very smart & pretty girl whose english is good, & who is probably aged a lot less than 25, & whose fashion sense seems balkan at times, said

"tristan, i've always meant to ask, because of how you talk, are you foreign ?"

... curiously, i suddenly recall first noticing, at about the age of sixteen, the differences between the accents of village girls from little somerford and shipton moyne, villages that lay some three miles distant on opposite sides of the town

a short speculative step on a long journey towards the disposal of ghosts

earlier this year I wrote about how I'd "seen" my parents in a vivid dream.

the link is ... http://emotionalblackmailers.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-dreamed-about-my-parents.html

before and since, i've often mused on the possibility of there being ghosts, but their existence still seems entirely improbable

for a long time i hoped or rather fantasized that there might be a "soul" that drifts around for a while, and so my parents could be out there catching up on all the myriad marvels that evaded them in real life

i.e. "had we but world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime ..." etc etc

whenever i fly somewhere i try to see the clouds and the bright sea through my mother's eyes

my father's ghost, i'm certain, would be content to linger on any sunny street corner, to listen avidly & to watch the human pantomime, as i like to do in other countries

but the best i can hope for is that i, and my siblings, and our children, are "the ghosts", and so i think again of that nice little poem by thomas hardy ...

Heredity

I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance--that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.

the only thing that's sacred is life itself

dawn at gatwick

they still use this when visibility is poor