Tuesday, March 24, 2009

a hollow tower at bruton







a three sided tower at stourton


it was six in the morning. "Are we ready to rock'n'roll ?"

... asked the efficient looking man with the clipboard at goods-in.

"Well, yes ! In a manner of speaking ...", I replied somewhat hesitantly, pointing down to my regulation industrial footwear

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Monday, March 16, 2009

hammersmith bridge, nice and early











my dear aunt mavis forward/ferguson/butler near blorenge ... and in 1943, with her mother violet, my grandmother




when mavis was very small, perhaps around the time that the great first world war was ending, mothers would dress their girls all in white at whitsun
some miners, bringing a wagon full of coal down from their hillside pit, discovered her dressed just so when she had wandered off too far from home that afternoon, and they brought her back sitting on top of their coal
she recalls that her mother "was not best pleased"

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

built to last ... with identical twin lady doctors ?
















in case of emergency: when emotional blackmail fails ...


Chapter Ninety Nine: In which our hero discovers the limitations of pathos ...

There is a full moon and the bright air is filled with frost.

In the nearby wood, owls cry and foxes yelp.

Imagine a darkened bedroom in which an exhausted trucker lays down in the hope that sleep will come quickly, but there is a chill in the air and he reluctantly shifts himself in search of some socks because his feet won’t warm up.

The loved one brings in her own little heart-shaped hot-water bottle and she settles down for the night in comfort, on her side of the bed, whereupon, if you had been listening, you might have heard him telling her that,

“In an ideal world, you would curl yourself around my feet !”

And after her contemptuous snort, you might just have caught her monosyllabic rejection, projected as if towards a badly behaved dog.