Sunday, October 12, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
in praise of local colour
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Friday, October 10, 2008
i'm no good at gardening ... my back hurts ... but my aunt and my daughter and my sister v are all dedicated to the soil
v has recently rented a council allotment in swindon and is studying the neighbouring gardeners in her blog ... do take a look
i did once have a marginal interest in horticulture, viz: the choreography of italian rice planting
... and so on and so forth ...
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Sunday, October 05, 2008
3BT from the last week
An undulating hillside of newly cultivated yellow soil, framed at the top with dark straggling pines, is so evenly drilled-and-tilled that it flashes past the corner of the trucker’s eye like braided hair.
The wind rips great flurries of orange and yellow beech leaves that swirl across my dazzling sunlit path as I drive on a straight street towards a brisk and unhappy looking young man with harmoniously dark red hair who seems too pre-occupied to be aware of his moment of solitary beauty.
On a darker morning, the massive mast of a cedar tree is almost black behind veils of driven rain whilst the busy silhouette of a great woodpecker methodically rat-a-tats an upward dance from base towards crown.
The wind rips great flurries of orange and yellow beech leaves that swirl across my dazzling sunlit path as I drive on a straight street towards a brisk and unhappy looking young man with harmoniously dark red hair who seems too pre-occupied to be aware of his moment of solitary beauty.
On a darker morning, the massive mast of a cedar tree is almost black behind veils of driven rain whilst the busy silhouette of a great woodpecker methodically rat-a-tats an upward dance from base towards crown.
a dark and rainy stay-in-and-read day on putney heath
The Meteorological Office tells us that, "A deep low pressure just north east of Shetland extends a complex frontal system back through the North Sea and England with a second low centre formed over southern Ireland. This is bringing heavy rains to England with some strong winds as shown by the tightly packed isobars around the south coast. North of the fronts the isobars are much slacker hence there are lighter winds".
Just the sort of day when you would leave your yachting cap on its peg and welcome in to your mahogany study Alain de Botton's sweetly good-humoured and occasionally sharper than lemon-juice taster ... once the maid has lit the fire and drawn the curtains, of course.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
a procession of curious birds ...
In the noisy car park of a supermarket besides Gatwick Airport, where I am taking a rest from driving. My new truck has a CD player and I am listening to Alan Bennett’s History Boys, which has many little ironies that I enjoy, and the sweet sonorities of two fine actors, Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths.
Just in front of the truck, a busy magpie with a few scraggy grey feathers around its neck and wing-tips arrives and perches in a small tree, but ignores the tumult of bright berries and hurriedly swoops to the ground to investigate something that I can’t see, and then flies off.
Moments later, a jackdaw with a silvery head and an icy stare, flies in, and also investigates the same patch of ground, possibly double-checking, having seen the first visitor from afar.
And when he flies off, a larger crow takes a turn, even though he’s already carrying something in his beak, white and circular, rather like a communion wafer, which he makes no effort to eat. He too, finding nothing, departs.
In itself, this little trinity of treasure seekers seems almost to be an esoteric allegory which narrative I am unqualified to interpret, but then ten seconds later comes a fourth visitor, and one I hardly expect to see so close to crowds of people; a gaudy jay who only stays for a second or two but delights me most of all with his fine feathers and the eloquent way that he almost mimes his curiosity.
Just in front of the truck, a busy magpie with a few scraggy grey feathers around its neck and wing-tips arrives and perches in a small tree, but ignores the tumult of bright berries and hurriedly swoops to the ground to investigate something that I can’t see, and then flies off.
Moments later, a jackdaw with a silvery head and an icy stare, flies in, and also investigates the same patch of ground, possibly double-checking, having seen the first visitor from afar.
And when he flies off, a larger crow takes a turn, even though he’s already carrying something in his beak, white and circular, rather like a communion wafer, which he makes no effort to eat. He too, finding nothing, departs.
In itself, this little trinity of treasure seekers seems almost to be an esoteric allegory which narrative I am unqualified to interpret, but then ten seconds later comes a fourth visitor, and one I hardly expect to see so close to crowds of people; a gaudy jay who only stays for a second or two but delights me most of all with his fine feathers and the eloquent way that he almost mimes his curiosity.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
life processes visualized
when you find the slideshow by clicking on the link below, click on frame 16 for an astonishing animation on the subject of protein synthesis, neuronal firing, cell development, etc
http://www.sciencemag.org/vis2008/show/
http://www.sciencemag.org/vis2008/show/
Friday, September 26, 2008
for the last 36 years, the 26th september has been an important day for me ... this morning i woke twice ... from a dream within a dream
Yesterday I had been thinking about those fish sellers in John Aubrey’s time, who regularly drove a cart from Poole to Oxford, stopping at Shaftesbury and Devizes, and probably one or two more towns, before arriving with the less-than-fresh brain food of the colleges.
In my dream I was in an old town on a steep hill, full of interesting buildings and shops. It was not unlike Shaftesbury, or possibly Faringdon, of which I only have vague recollections. I may have been thinking about our recent stay in Chartres, too, because I went in to a “charcuterie” which was carrying on its trade in what might once have been an old chapel; there were high leaded windows and pillars of alabaster, and even the walls were slightly translucent, although much of the finer carving had been damaged by the butchers’ carelessness with their knives and cleavers over the centuries.
In the dream, someone explained to me that many of the small specialist traders in the town had only survived so long because of the patronage of the great and noble estates on the fringe of the town who made anachronistic demands for old-fashioned goods and services.
In search of further delights, I left that shop in bright sunshine and began to descend a steep cobbled street ... and here the dream made an unexpected transition ... I was now at the wheel of a car, driving through a tunnel … with no lights.
Now this had happened to me once when the lights blew as I switched them on whilst we entered a tunnel in a car that I was driving on a spectacular mountain motorway in northern Spain, and that tunnel wasn’t straight, and so there was no light at the end of it.
But in my dream this tunnel went more rapidly downhill, and became very much steeper, and so I clung to the wheel as though I was trying to haul the car back as its descent became a fall.
Then I was woken from my agitation by someone gently taking my wrists and lifting me up from the pillow of sleep, as if it were from the theatre of the dream … and the person doing the lifting and making the reassuring noises was not my mother, or my father, but my grown-up daughter Ellen … whose birthday happens to be today !
And then I really did wake up from that dream, too, because the alarm was calling me to work !
On the short walk to the bus stop, in the cool breathless night, an owl two-whitted close by in the wood, and then a rarther plump and fluffy fox paused to look at me with sympathetic curiosity outside the door of The Green Man.
I arrived for work feeling as though I had already had a long day.
Editors Note: the extra "r" in rarther is out of deference to Miss Daisy Ashford ...
In my dream I was in an old town on a steep hill, full of interesting buildings and shops. It was not unlike Shaftesbury, or possibly Faringdon, of which I only have vague recollections. I may have been thinking about our recent stay in Chartres, too, because I went in to a “charcuterie” which was carrying on its trade in what might once have been an old chapel; there were high leaded windows and pillars of alabaster, and even the walls were slightly translucent, although much of the finer carving had been damaged by the butchers’ carelessness with their knives and cleavers over the centuries.
In the dream, someone explained to me that many of the small specialist traders in the town had only survived so long because of the patronage of the great and noble estates on the fringe of the town who made anachronistic demands for old-fashioned goods and services.
In search of further delights, I left that shop in bright sunshine and began to descend a steep cobbled street ... and here the dream made an unexpected transition ... I was now at the wheel of a car, driving through a tunnel … with no lights.
Now this had happened to me once when the lights blew as I switched them on whilst we entered a tunnel in a car that I was driving on a spectacular mountain motorway in northern Spain, and that tunnel wasn’t straight, and so there was no light at the end of it.
But in my dream this tunnel went more rapidly downhill, and became very much steeper, and so I clung to the wheel as though I was trying to haul the car back as its descent became a fall.
Then I was woken from my agitation by someone gently taking my wrists and lifting me up from the pillow of sleep, as if it were from the theatre of the dream … and the person doing the lifting and making the reassuring noises was not my mother, or my father, but my grown-up daughter Ellen … whose birthday happens to be today !
And then I really did wake up from that dream, too, because the alarm was calling me to work !
On the short walk to the bus stop, in the cool breathless night, an owl two-whitted close by in the wood, and then a rarther plump and fluffy fox paused to look at me with sympathetic curiosity outside the door of The Green Man.
I arrived for work feeling as though I had already had a long day.
Editors Note: the extra "r" in rarther is out of deference to Miss Daisy Ashford ...
the loved one brings a book home which she "wonders" if i might be interested in ... very, as it happens !
and then a short search discovers this 1991 In Memoriam Terence Kilmartin by Clive James
sales talk
i had spotted these good old boys as i drove in to reigate, and was pleased to find a parking space for the truck close by
i hesitated to read the labels on all of the jars and the feller on the left decided to try his best shop-assistant's technique with the time-worn question, "can i help you, sir ?"
my mind wasn't really in focus, and it seems hard to make decisions when you are at the end of a week of very early mornings, so i sheepishly replied, "i think i need a brain transplant"
"ah !" sez he, with a jolly smirk, "i'm sure our honey would be the ideal medium in which to condition and re-invigorate the donor's newly-extracted brain before attachment to the recipient !"
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