Sunday, January 22, 2006

pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been ?

years of searching for driftwood and oddities amongst the pebbles on brighton beach have sharpened my eyes and so i nearly fell off my bike to avoid running over this little pussy cat ... she's about 35mm x 25mm ... she's lost a couple of stones but how she escaped being crushed on one of london's busy arterial roads is a mystery

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my client will plead temporary insanity, m'lud

in the first hour of daylight, when the conscience and all aesthetic sensibilities are weakest, i murmured to the loved one, semi-dormant upon the adjacent pillow,

"if i bought you a carrier bag or two of new plasticene, you could make a life sized bust of me, brightly coloured !"

adding after insufficient consideration,

"... or marzipan !"

after a significant silence, somehow the conversation cum monologue turned to the absence of a chamberpot in our tiny residence, and whether we might have,

"wedgewood, or waterford crystal ?"

Friday, January 20, 2006

Thursday, January 19, 2006

mud, glorious mud !

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cognitive dissonance and incipient aphasia ?

I had a little trouble with the quick crossword in the Guardian this morning.

The clue was "Landlocked anchorage in the Orkney Islands (5,4)".

The words that stuck in my head for two whole minutes were Sullom Voe.

The correct answer was, lurking behind the wrong one, and on the wrong island, Scapa Flow.

Then, on my way home along the river bank, I stopped to admire some Thames mud and only half-remembered Flanders & Swann's song, "Mud, Glorious Mud!", unable to complete the tune in my head because it had temporarily fused itself together with the tune and words of "Food, Glorious Food!" by Lionel Bart.

As the old used to tell me in Wiltshire when I was a boy, "Old age doesn't come alone."

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

i think i'll renounce truck driving for religion ...

the loved one brought this picture from the wallace collection for me

it shows saint hilarion, the leader of a bunch of palestinian reclusives, resisting temptation

i've just been reading up on his life but can't find a clear description of this particular episode though many travelled to visit the recluse in his cave

am i to assume it is allegorical ?

can any one supply some dialogue ?


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Saturday, January 14, 2006

alarming !!!

walked in to the kitchen at beautiful old ockenden manor to be confronted by nurielle in her immaculate white pinafore brandishing the biggest pointy stainless kitchen knife in the world in her right hand, and warming it up with a full-on roaring blue-flamed blow torch in her left ... all part of her benign confectionary technology and not the premature vasectomy kit i was fearing ... but she's a proud artist and refuses to be photographed ... so far

Friday, January 13, 2006

lively farm sign near forest row

i've only just noticed this jolly sign, though i've probably driven past it a zillion times

perhaps it is newly revealed since the undergrowth was cut back



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Monday, January 02, 2006

holiday classics quiz, your starter for ninety-nine points ...

suggest an appropriate title for this gem

what is going on ?


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timely advice ...

the loved one is heading for the shops and is looking rarther posh in a glossy fake fur coat

so as she was leaving i suggested that she,

" Don't talk to any strange millionaires ! ".

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Map-o-philia !

When I was about nine years old & had just learned to ride a bicycle, my clever parents bought me a cleverly illustrated book about how to read the British Ordnance Survey maps, and then they stuck the local one-inch sheet on my wall. Ever since then, I have loved maps.

I told The Loved One about this quite recently, having been spotted cruising the highways of Utah and Arizona on the internet, and hoarding downloaded maps of places we've been in the My Pictures files.

As an unforeseen consequence, my Late Christmas Present has just arrived.

It is The Map Book, edited by Peter Barber, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2005. It is big, it is glossy, it is intelligent. I am in one kind of heaven.

Isn't she lovely ? Eat your hearts out, lesser mortals !

my very own copy of The Map Book !

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