... and who was his tailor ?

some card holders were unaware that tooting is not an adjective

professor esoterica conjectures ... was paolozzi's vision subliminally referencing a fatal incident in graceland ?

editor's footnote:

the professor had just come from boots the chemist ... having forked out £19.99 for some reading glasses in order to get a clear view of the minutae on display in the british library's magnificent ramayana exhibition ... and he he will be returning to the library for a third "peek"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/aug/23/art.ramayana

heavy weather

an early birthday present to myself

the plan is to read the whole thing before i am sixty ... then i can brush this master of padding ... who knocks joyce in to a battered trilby ... under the carpet for once and for all

fearless freddy's fine-weather friend fluffy forgot to wash his face this morning

as your eyes try to focus in the moments between awakening and feeling awake ...

dragons and doors at saint pancras

upon entering reigate from the east ... is it an x-dimensional portal that will lead me straight back to 1964 ?

a driver's fruitful break ... two lovely books from oxfam ... tunnicliffe and taylor

on epsom downs

eclectic's corner ... a delightful homage to gustave courbet on crowborough hill

and there is always this gem ... peter blake's "the meeting, or have a nice day, mr. hockney"

right to left ... howard hodgkin ?, peter blake, david hockney, daisy blake

and if you haven't yet been to venice beach ... there's still time

acquired with the help of a good woman who knows how to make a small box of chocolates last a fortnight

today would have been colin forward's eighty-fifth birthday

a handful of dust

After a life-time of hoovering,

... I am now reasonably certain that most household dust is of a feminine origin

… because nothing derived from the male could be so fine and fluffy

… ennit ?

drey making outside our kitchen window

if i start getting difficult ( in 20 or 30 years time ) just re-read this article by oliver james about dementia ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/02/oliver.james.dementia

from a short piece by hilary mantel in the guardian review

Sentimental people will try to convince you that stories, like the act of reading, are as natural as breathing.

They say that we are narrative animals, but the broken stories of people who enter psychoanalysis suggest that if stories are natural to us they are not easy to construct in a way that serves both our sense of personal continuity and our need for freedom.

A story is always on the move, and from the author's point of view there is nothing natural about it.

Constant readers become writers at the point in life when they acquire a fascination with a process of falsification: with imposing shape while simulating the evolution of character and event, making determinations while fostering an illusion that in the next chapter anything might happen.

A novelist spends a lifetime in the business of presenting what's life-like, but not like life.

It's a sobering thought - life won't actually do.

Verisimilitude and the truth are conjoined twins, one often flourishing at the expense of the other.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/02/fiction7

roll up, roll up, to the wellcome institute for skellingtons of old london

blue rosette for best teeth in show ...















http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/exhibitions/skeletons/galleries/WTD041693.htm



green rosette for oustanding success in the knobbly knees section ...












http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/exhibitions/skeletons/index.htm

essential bedside reading