after the visitors have gone

insomniac photography ... putting down the book to rearrange some familiar treasures

my mother used to have a birthday around this time of the year and, chance being a fine thing, i woke up around three and found this little thought in proust ...

"When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we once were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation. Thus my whole past from my earliest years, and, beyond these, the past of my parents and relations, blended with my impure love for Albertine the tender charm of an affection at once filial and maternal. We have to give hospitality at a certain stage in our lives, to all our relatives who have journeyed so far and gathered round us."

... so then it seemed appropriate to celebrate both proust and sylvia and, as it were, the crossing of their paths in the night ...

"the goddess of small things" has been at it again

one thing ...

... leads to another

five thirty in the morning and waiting to make the first drop

colour trajectory ... from wandsworth road at four a.m. ...

... to dorking vinyard at ten

a worm's eye-view of the stingers

from his kitchen sink insomniac phase ...

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.

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

http://vievesgeorgics.blogspot.com/

i did once have a marginal interest in horticulture, viz: the choreography of italian rice planting

... and so on and so forth ...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j-HNZLg6ntI

not much change out of a united states treasury bond down at the chip shop tonight then ? ...

stockwell underground station as it looks now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

might this qualify as a religious experience ?

a catenary intersecting an ellipse ?

ampere way, west of croydon

fold up those deckchairs, winter iz a cummin ... the tide is still out in nine elms

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.

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.