a rainy day in suffolk

please don't drop too many crumbs ... it only encourages them

wewuzzaway!

tls

the subscription for the times literary supplement is no longer affordable

i shall miss finding this logo on the doormat

the artist is peter brookes ... a studious and affectionate pastiche of thomas bewick

semi-enigmatic dreams

In the last week I’ve had a number of dreams that involved anger and confrontation.

This naturally follows a real-life verbal confrontation which took place at work and created some difficulties, but has since been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

In last night’s dream I was irritated by the inability of a young neighbour to control his pet, the size of a large dog, which kept chasing and annoying everyone. The surreal part of the dream was that the pet was a long-haired, pale lilac coloured, tarantula.

I now realize that my dream has a simple two-part explanation.

On most days, a young neighbour exercises three pit-bulls on the green outside our window without the slightest possibility of being able to restrain them if the need should arise; and there was a photograph in the news this week, taken from a BBC wildlife film, of an enormous and hairy bird-eating spider sitting comfortably on the palm of a man’s hand.

But where, oh where, did my spider’s long lilac coloured hair come from ?

Ah ! Maybe it was a snatch of thirty year-old sports footage I’d seen on a friend’s TV one day, showing the balletic wrestler, Adrian Street, in combat on an afternoon when his golden hair had been coloured purple to match his frilly and sequinned purple velvet dressing gown.

It has to be said that the egomaniac Adrian was a brilliant wrestler, so brave and quick that comparisons with pit-bulls and tarantulas seem entirely appropriate.

Now that the Olympics has gone professional, they might as well introduce Saturday Afternoon Wrestling as a medal sport, in line with dressage and synchronized swimming.

http://www.bizarebazzar.com/pedigree.htm

kermudjens' kwiz ... who was this incorrigibly facetious ne'er do well ?

... 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