Still Light with Window

This is the new window in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, it is stunning with the light streaming through. My snap does not do it justice.

The Link  gives an indication of the symbolism but the sheer joy and glory of the light is well above the bees knees!

Let there be light...

and the rest is silence.

Flagstone and 2 Girls

This is a snap of the memorial stone in the Oude Kerk in Delft

And here are two girls we found hanging about in Amsterdam.

Pictures courtesy of the Rijksmuseum; flagstone courtesy of Vermeer's mother-in-law.

Story Time.

I ran across two new stories recently.
For the young at heart, aren't we all.

A Vase for the Princess  is the tale of the adventures of a mouse

and

The Story of Doctorow/Dr Who from a ten year old.

Mendicant Musicians!

I bumbled into the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft passing a quartet of young musicians playing in the square. Hm... nice sound, Piazolla as well, must slip them a Eurosov as I come out thought, I to myself. I have a weakness for giving money to young, talented, thin musicians. I know one or two who could do with a bacon beigel and more.

On the way out I deposited my Eurosov and was immediately given a card with the details of the operation by a young woman who was cleverly targeting the punters. (I was delighted that I was not about to be bludgeoned by the nerdowells, bad boyos and pickpockets that beset the honest traveler in foreign climes.) The group, Ardesko, have an interesting project, a Website and if you are interested they introduce themselves and their project here at Our World.

If you do run across them in your travels consider slipping them a Eurosov or two. Not all, but some, look as if they could do with a good feed and they make a nice sound!

Orford

A butterfly draws the last of the summer from yellow flowers.

Damsels and dragons have their conjugations warmed by the weakening sun.

The wind cackles around me as I pass through the reeds.

They transform its power into a flowing murmuration and like water it carries me on.

A hawk slips over the sea wall.  

I see the shape of a crossbow.

It drifts effortlessly across the reed bed, flapping wings to lift it above the quarrelsome, tentative gulls and I watch with the autumn sun behind me.

It banks as perfect as any spitfire pilot and displays, for itself, for the gulls, for pure joy, or me.

Its plumage is detailed as clear as any tatoo. The bow is drawn back tight.

The world turns in days and seasons and the delight is mine.

Pardon!

The sale of indulgences.
There is a living to be made as a modern Pardoner!
For people fasting, on diets or otherwise denying themselves the sins of the flesh and chocolate, I am offering a very valuable service. At the payment of serious cash money I and a dedicated band of professional staff will take on the burden of your indulgence .
An example.
Your fast, diet, whatever, requires you to restrict your intake of the good stuff to 500 calories and change. You are assailed, as we all are from time to time, by the overwhelming desire  to eat a chunk of chocolate, cream cake, chips and pizza with double mayo, whatever your avoir du poison... you get my drift. Maybe you are committed, maybe you are of steadfast character, maybe you have the will power of a deaf, blind and dumb donkey with no sense of smell, or maybe you are like the rest of us. OK,  so  now you are 2000 calories down the guggle and the guilt is going to kill you. The only thing to do is reach for the next 2000 calories to assuage you poor battered soul which is wracked, wracked I tell you with the guilt.
Fear not the Pardoning Services of Buddhist Pizza Pardons (BPP Inc.) are available - special rates can be offered to regular consumers.
For the payment of a  paltry sum, say 1p a calorie, we will guarantee to take on our broad shoulders (and backsides...Ed)
the results of your overindulgence. An indulgence for an indulgence as it were! (Oh very good, very good. I'm beginning to like the drift of your jib...Ed)
Disclaimer.
The calories remain, of course, but the guilt, the guilt is not yours. It heads for the wide blue yonder, born aloft by the prayers, sutras, mortifications  and good work of the tireless Pardoners of BPP. 

Payment by cheque made out to BPP Inc Charity no 666 registered in the Cayenne Islands if you please, I thank you.

(Now about that sub I was asking for. It seems like there might be funds soon. I can't get to sleep at night for the moaning of the poor hungry wains...Ed)
Are they 12 year old or 18 year old  single malt wains ?

Back to School

Wondering, or even wandering, in a daze this morning about the 'Big Town' I pitched up in front of the Oxfam Bookshop. Yes I know these places are, as the moral mentors of my youth would say, DANGEROUS OCCASIONS OF SIN! However, I was early for a meeting, I am weak and anyway the odd book or three is not going to drag me down to hell. Is it?

(No, but unwarranted capitalisation and dreadful puns will drive me to the bottle or an early grave, or both...Ed)

Moving on. I saw a book under the poster advertising volumes for going back to school. The Title - Study Kills...hmm!
So does bathtub speed, unfettered capitalism and chemical weapons!
A closer inspection proves we are not radicalising a generation and the exhortatory volume was in fact a resource to enhance studying.
The Title - Study Skills; must see the old optician about a new pair of glasses.

While we are on the subject of books, a quote.
The internet is for books you want to read. A library is for books you did not know you wanted to read.
Not original, of course.
(What round here ever is. It  gets worse, folksy, homespun, mumbojumbo, quotes without proper citation and rigorous attribution. You couldn't make it up...Ed)

Exactly.

Lost for words

Cory Doctorow, who knows a thing or two, points out the fact that it is not possible to own some digital material!
You can of course sell what you like as long as the great washed and unwashed desire to buy it. In order to avoid any doubt I am, of course, only referring to that which the law and m'learned friends would approve of. (Thank god for that. We don't want the peelers round stomping their big boots on the antimacassars and the like looking for contraband and the stuff you should have turned over to the Receiver of Wreck years ago... Ed)

In an article in the Grauniad he points out that it is not possible to buy a digital copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). This raises a number of interesting questions.  I was struck again by the fact that the interweb has changed forever things we have taken for granted as being part of the fabric of society - You sell... I buy - and changed them in ways we do not recognise or see where they will leave us.

But the point is that we have sleepwalked into a new way of accessing some very ancient tools. Commercial decisions married to the lawyerly norm of asking for the world, the moon, and your first-born in rental agreements have birthed a new, non-negotiable relationship between people who live and die by words and the lexicographers whose work serves them. A university whose name is synonymous with the perpetual archiving of books is now telling scholars that their crucial references can never be their property, and that their ongoing use of those works is subject to continuous monitoring and indefinite retention.

I particularly like the idea of a lien on your first-born.

Have a gander at it and of course remember Aaron Swartz.

(Glad to see you back. Have a good break? Weather fine? Relatives and young thriving? Get much reading done?
Now about the price of coal and the vital editorial work I do for this enterprize - any chance of a sub...Ed)

More Holidays?

Another wee flower for the collection.

And a strange naming of streets...

From Grope to Grove to Union!?

At least we know what the Gauleiter  has been up to this summer.

Chocolate Pickles

and he's grown a mustache.

Well Well

Couldn't resist the pun!

Doomt, Doomt, I Telt Ye!

Maybe it was the delayed effect of seeing the World's End (not the world's end I hope, of course not, otherwise we would not be here... only my little joke...Ed!) or the curry afterwards but when the daily update concerning the Scot's latest bid for freedom popped into my inbox, courtesy of the much maligned Mr Googles, the lead story was

Scottish independence would lead to a 'complete nightmare' in immigration policy

The Scottish Daily Record reports Michael Moore, The Secretary of State for Scotland, claiming the above. Of course, I see it all. Lines of the undead slumped by the side of the A1 just waiting for the word. WWII surplus army lorries, their tattered tarps flapping in the breeze just north of Carlisle. The signal to move would be the declaration of independence. Closer inspection of the transport would reveal the horror contained within. 

Interesting fact about Scottish Independence, No. 1 in a series.
Have you ever seen
Michael Moore, The Secretary of State for Scotland, and
Michael Moore, The well known prankster and filum maker,
in the same room?

(Now you come to mention it, I have not... Ed)

Summer Filums

We went to the local flea pit twice in one week.
West Side Story
Neither of us had seen it, or seen it all the way through, or could remember seeing it all the way through!
What emotion, what music, what dancing, what panstick, and that was just the sharks! Lenny could certainly write a tune or two.
No credit for our own dear Wills scratched on the wall at the end, such a difficult name to get right!

The World's End
A bit of a contrast. However, as part of the deeply moving Cornetto Trilogy it provided a useful reminder of the perils of drink, drugs and the undead! I have yet to see Shaun of the Dead or can remember seeing it all the way through! That is a treat to come.

Erwin Schrödinger - A Joke

(Any similarity to a joke told,recently, on a BBC programme - Boffins Telling Jokes - is not coincidental...Ed!)

A garda stops a car on the outskirts of Dublin.

"Could I see your driving license please?"  He says.
The driver, an elderly academic type, pulls it out of his wallet and hands it over.

"Ah Professor Schrödinger! Would you mind popping the trunk there?"

(The guarda had been watching the American Series -  Highway Patrol  on TV and knew this was what you said.)
The driver protested, asking  if it was really necessary. The guarda was adamant. With a resignation that ebbed in long suffering waves over the top of his glasses the driver complies. The guarda walks round the back of the car, looks in the trunk, stages a theatrical double take and needs a moment to compose himself.

He moves to the front of the car and addresses the driver, somewhat uncertainly.

"Professor Schrödinger, do you know you have a dead cat in the trunk?"

"I do now!"

Visions of Poesy

I've been reading Wendy Cope's dream in 
COPE, W. (1986). Making cocoa for Kingsley Amis. London, Faber and Faber.
p 59.

It reminded me of a nightmare which occurred ten years or more before  this was published as I staggered around the festival in Edinburgh.

Down the Festival with Germaine.

It wasn't a grope I had just then
I needed some help to keep level
I wanted to set the record straight.
You think I'm a devil!

(God almighty are you at the  Poesy again, morning, noon and night. Who is it this time? Oh I see now. Old Percy Bish and his Petery Loo. You have had that far away look in the eye ever since you saw Mervyn Peak pronounce on the The Masque of Anarchy. Anarchy indeed I should get paid more for the editing of 'Poetry', highly skilled and exacting work it is too!  ...Ed)

Do you want payment by the yard or will a clip round the ear suffice?

Zero Influence

Behind the bike shed in the garden of a building in Downing St. a red faced boy of 40 something in too tight shorts takes the fag out of his mouth and extends a packet to his companion.

Want a gasper Liz?

Don't call me that Dave! You know the Lizard of Oz really gets on my tits.

The aggrieved party is also wearing shorts of regrettably revealing dimensions. To the proffered fag he addresses a swift homily on the virtues of brand loyalty and declines.

Just think, Dave, if these were in plain packages I wouldn't be able to choose.

He takes out his own packet and sparks up.
They inhale deeply and, more or less, companionably for a few moments.
Liz the Lobby breaks the silence...

I offered Gideon a fag  the other night and the soft dingbat thought I was soliciting for my intern. Jesus, you Poms!

Memento

Two pictures for Elizabeth

A bright, fierce, flower
glowing and thriving.
A silver bower,
remembering and resting.

Storms and Waves

HEADLAND

I shelter by rocks, dragon tailed.
I watch the roaring breakers,
big enough to turn a man inside
and the toe teasing tide
mesmerises me, taking me to another place.


A TEUCHIT STORM

The black shadow drifted half menace, half intent.
It circled, lazy days rich pickings.
A buzzard high above the field.

First one bird flew directly, the raptor continued,
A second flew and the hunter banked.
At once the sky was alive with lapwings.

The big bird glided on without concern.
Then a teuchit storm, a volcano, erupted and it departed
 Letting them feed their young for another day.

Austerity Plus

One might be tempted, late at night and behind closed doors, in the priv... (come on man, I have a job to do and the electricity to pay, children to feed and all sorts of business to attend to... Ed) to say ARSE to austerity, we have never had it so good. That might be a mistake. We are all in this together and I have no wish to see my neighbour beggared. I allow that I might feel different if I were the possessor of a small fortune, a millionaire Da and a name like Gideon. If I had invested my somewhat short political future on the idea of cutting the nations economic throat as a cure for fiscal obesity I would be committed (or possibly should be committed...Ed) to the idea of austerity. However, there is this wee Scots guy who makes a very strong case for equating austerity with madness. If you think of Billy Conolly on Speed with the intellectual power of the laureated Mr Krugman you may be able to imagine the economic cruise missile that is Mark Blyth. If not you can watch him here giving a talk at Google or Guggle as it is referred to in Scotlenad. For ye of little faith and shorter attention span the Grauniad has an interview here.

So Gideon, we want
- Hipocratic Economics, No Slash and Burn
- Pay down debt and build buffers when you have the money,
- Now we need hope based priorities, policies and spending!
Three pointers for the young leader of a party near you.

Merv the Swerve at the Old Lady always appeared to me to be a bit of a Banker! In a FT lunch conversation with Martin Wolf he is quoted as saying that one of his prescriptions for the eurozone's woes...

to continue with mass unemployment in the south, in order to depress wages and prices until they've become competitive again. FT Life and Arts p 3 June 15/16 2013

A brave man indeed and perhaps the shy and soon to be retiring banker will offer to share his retirement package with the sons of Hellas, Napoli and the Reyes Catolicos  who pitch up in the summer, on his doorstep, asking for a crust or two or even a job.
I believe - Da me un trabajo, pendejo is roughly equivalent to - Gis a job la! in Spanish. It might be useful to know that.

Flowers of Scotland.

First a portrait of the artist as a fat old man as we missed Bloom's Day.

We were taking the air ....

Slowly!

When we chanced upon a host of wee fleurs...

(A host usually implies a significant number and what's all this nonsense about chancing, chancing your arm no doubt... Ed)

I hope you had a good break from your labours too!.

What we did on our holidays, again.

Stoned?

History Lesson

Very Pharonic?

Twitching the Electric Snipe

And Calling the Silkies.

The Company He Keeps

So then Nige, Keith's Mum says you ran into a little trubba north of the border.
When I used to frequent the hoofs and hoosies of Auld Reekie, the Royal Mile and environs was the haunt of tourists, Nasty Nats and Old Labour. (Did you not, yourself, drink with your trot Chums in the Cowgate...Ed?)
Anyone with a thirst for genteel political debate (or anything else) would repair to Rose St., New Labour, or the New Town Watering holes for the Tartan Tories.
If you had played your cards right I'm sure you could have dropped in on Malaky for a drop of Sancerre, possibly not though.  That's frog juice, is it not?

Mass, Length and Time

I have been measured ( and found wanting... Ed.)
In various medical examinations and investigations I have been asked to provide a measure of my height. I would as a matter of course offer the value of 1.87 metres, give or take a haircut and a pair of good brogues, say 1.88 amongst friends (Not thank god, any business about six foot two, eyes of blue...Ed)

I now know after extensive measurement with the latest laser technology, adjusted for relativistic effects, British Summer Time etc. ( You were put up against a wall in you socks and a plank dobbed on your nut...Ed!)

Ahem. I now stand, corrected, at 1.863m.
I just thought the readers would be interested to know what was going on after a period of silence.
(Pah, a bloody excuse for congenital indolence and stupidity...Ed!)

You know you can be a real snappy bugger when you don't have any of this editing business to do!

Driving Over Bitter Lemons.

"Cyprus? What Cyprus?"
Mr Murphy nails most of it with this link, as usual, I love the sound of the money Swissing by at the end!

"See the Euro's turned out nice again."

Don't be stupit or a zafty  go to Cyprus and get crafty
(Zafty: A person very easily imposed upon)
Final word in this listed link from Mr Forsyth. Is the site significant, death and taxes?

Nick Shaxon may supply some answers, including quotes from the laureated Mr Krugman. If you really want to worry your socks off, Google the FT on Security aspects of Moscow Gold Plate in the Med!!

(Right having got that off your chest do you think we can get this blog back on track, you know, promoting world peace and justice, the arts, culture, fluffy stuff like that... Ed?)

Quite so!
I have thought for some time that the watch phrase for the new left should be :-
Impuestos o Muerte; don't eat the rich, tax 'em!
Step one:-  you cap my benefits I cap your tax allowances.

We are all in this together!

Interesting article, at this time,  about a part of the Spanish Economy by Giles Tremlett in today's Grauniad.
The term recession proofing is used, with some justification, when speaking about Mondragon the magic mountain.
There are problems, not all workers are members of the coop, finance can be hard if squeezed by mainstream banks or defaulting local authorities but, what is claimed,  as greater flexibility by member cooperatives and more committed workers seems to have kept the ship afloat! Broad brush it compares favorably with the devastation of other parts of Spain which, of course, we ignore at our peril.
We have our Coop, not that sexy, a bit like a spinster aunt in my youth, could be relied on for support and the odd fiver!
Linked, sadly and apparently,  without much influence or effect to the Labourandconservative party. The new face of the Big(ass) Society, the John Lewis Partnership. Good for high quality schmatter and service; god help those who can't afford it.
Fraternally yours
His Enlightenedness
Swami BP (the tall fat one)
Toady Lane
Nirvana

A Foggy Day in Suffolk

The miasma from the fens  has  seeped into the old brain box. (Now there's a thing...Ed)
I have been lurching around the house and in between lecturing Newsnight on the paucity, stupidity and childishly elemental nature of its economic analysis (ultimate put down they can't hear you dear) and proposing a cap on tax allowances and interest rates, I have proclaimed stoutly, robustly and without allowance of any contradiction to Messrs All and Sundry that today is International Book Day and not International Women's Day.

I believe I must now make an abject apology. I stand corrected. The interweb informs me that World Book Day is 23 April and also, he.. hem, that today is, in fact, in one sense, up to a point, International Women's Day, in most places.
Easy enough mistake for a busy man to make - women, books;  books, women.
The important thing is to move on going forward not to look back in any way shape or form and as both women and books are my passion I offer this tasteful portrayal of a clutch of beauties that have me ensnared at the moment.
(I'm not expected to edit  material which may contain pornography or what we might euphemistically call art photography, am I? I have standards. I left the employment of the dirty digger on a matter of ethics you know...Ed)
I didn't know there was a brand called ethics, is it 12 or 15 year old?

Runners and Riders in the Papabile Steaks

Seen outside our local health food shop, shameless.

Even more shameless, punting on:-

Marc Ouellet, good pedigree and a useful bet to date, now fading against the paced and well proportioned Odilo Scherer. Tipped, incidentally,  by Tom in the Telegraph.
(Stop forthwith! I will not have the Sacred Conclave, the expression, through Holy Mother the Church of the will of HIMSELF reduced to some seedy susurrations that would ill behove a group of blind drunk Orangemen on a day trip to Aintree...Ed)
Ooops! Somebody  dropped a pony on Angelo Scola. Looks good in the press photos but is carrying a bit more weight nowadays.

Now We are 7 (I Think)

We are in it for the Long Haul as John Wayne might have said rounding up the doagies. (What on earth are doagies... Ed? I think someone wasted their childhood watching cheap Holywood Cowboy filums!)  Yup. You gonna call me out like a man or hide behind that bottle of ink and quill pen with the white feather?
So now we are 7.
The world may appear to be a different place. We still have the most right wing, militaristic, nuclear weaponed government in our history. Italy is still in crisis. The poor are still with us. The pope is still a shy, and retiring, catholic. They are still prising guns out of the hands of cold, dead, mass murderers.  They are dying in Syria as opposed to Afghanistan. Oh they are still dying in Afghanistan and Gaza and god knows where else. Despite this Blog's call for World Peace and Justice by 4pm, non negotiable, I suspect we may all be banging away about it for a lot longer.

I am shocked and shamed by the energy, industry, and courage of individuals who challenge the evil parts of the system. The power of the big bad guys to destroy you is truly scary but many have the courage to resist and provoke.

Aaron H. Swartz was an American computer programmer, writer, and political organizer. He resisted and spent a large part of his short life organising and looking for loopholes.  Larry Lessig devotes his inaugural lecture, as the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership of the Harvard Law School to "Aaron's Laws". It is very moving so I guess we should be moved.

George Monbiot has a piece describing the actions of EDF in response to a peaceful protest. 

If you want to register a protest you can always sign the petitions.

And you could ask yourself why you get your energy from EDF if you do and you could ask yourself who owns EDF?

(Be warned! Any untoward comments in this Blog concerning Cheese Eating Electric Monkeys will be dealt with, most severely..Ed!)

Gis a Book?

Books & Libraries again...
I was discussing the merits of libraries at breakfast and realised that one of the benefits of the library system, little promoted, is the idea of sharing. Yes, libraries provide 'books for the poor', reference books, tomes  provided for  wide groups of users.  They can act as a focus for community and artistic endeavours. There are many examples of other 'uses'.  We seldom promote them as exemplars of the shared resource; learning by doing.
I do not need my own universe perhaps would you like to share this one!

Later an article in the Observ-a-Tory
It's not what a library stocks, it's what it shares | Books | The Observer

The bookless library is not a contradiction in terms, but a continuation of the library's core purpose, providing access to knowledge and information, and a public statement of the value of that access.

I'm forced to agree but a bookless library, a bit like a pub with no beer!

Falling Standards

Post at Nick's excellent blog caught my eye ( I wonder why...Ed?)
The “whore’s drawers” and the Libor scandal – a tale of two cultures

On the trading floor at Buddhist Pizza Inc we would never have used such a tasteless phrase.
It would, of course, have been the bride's nightie.

For those seeking titillation and (horse) flesh no pornography was used in the making of this blog.
(Is that a fact. I'm glad to hear it... Ed!)

Horsing Around

It may have escaped your attention that there has been, allegedly, sins of the horseflesh in the kitchens of our once great nation. I leave that matter to the purveyors of scandal and pony burghers.
There was consternation, also, for a moment in Buddhist Pizza Stables  as we sat down to our evening meal. Herself is a vegetarian of sorts but is allowed, by the dietary authorities, to eat fish. I will eat anything, though of late I have avoided eating people because it is wrong! On our plates was a wholesome repast of baked potatoes, crunchy salad and tuna mixed with sweetcorn. Lady BP chuckled that one of the benefits of being a sort of vegetarian was that it would prove difficult to consume horse meat unknowingly.
I retrieved the tin of tuna and read :-
Line caught Tuna, may contain traces of Horse Mackerel.
You could have heard the Gopaleen running in Connemara.

I made my apologies and ducked.

Walking the World

If I could not have mountains or sea as a view from my window in old age, I would choose the sight of a road vanishing round a corner in woods, or disappearing over a pass of the hills. And it would need to be a road with a surface soft enough to show ruts and footmarks, and on it a homely plop of dung, and a few puddles to reflect the stars. What pleasure is there in the contemplation of a tarmac road, with nothing significant on it but white stripes and blobs of dirty oil?
Driftwood and Tangle p183.
Margaret Leigh

Tombstone

I have mentioned this before.
I have had it out of our local library and will return it tomorrow.
I have only managed to read about a third of Tombstone.

I know what it is to miss a meal.
I have fasted before sacrament
and the work of the surgeon.
I have been careless and lost many kilos!

I know what it is to be famished.
I have anticipated food for free
and dined for a higher price.
I have been indulgent to the point of loosing pounds.

I do not know what famine is.
I may have tasted the fruits of
transubstantiation.
I have not consumed the sins of the flesh.

Guilt and the Interweb!

Just because it is amazing it does not mean it will not be abused.

I do call her Scary Mary and live in fear, in Cambridge, of her pursuing me through the streets on her bicycle with trademark red coat. That is only because I will have done something wrong and she will instantly know it!

Austerity

Gideon's  austerity has seeped into our bones with the cold and has infected the bird life hereabouts. A walk on a cold grey day in the snow was a pleasant and companionable enough experience. We spotted a nearly all white owl parading its catch, a small rodent or bird. It appeared to be quite arrogant about displaying until it was pursued by a buzzard stage right. I guess the buzzard was attempting to gain an easy meal by forcing the owl to drop its prey. Times are so hard we also came across a dead peasant.

(Maybe that was a pheasant! Could it not have been sleeping...Ed?)

Jim Dreams of Sushi

It being a cold January afternoon we turned up at our local flea pit, much improved, but alas sold to the lowest bidder!

It was a one off showing of Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Lots of good press and we did enjoy it. Inspiring, and suitably inspired, three guesses what I am preparing for herself?

 

 

Interesting on a day when horse DNA seems to have been found in inappropriate places allegedly. 

Still, every little pony helps. You know it makes horse sense.

 I wonder if you can have Shetland Sushi?

(Arrgh...Ed)

The ABC of XWD

Sad news about  our favourite crossword compiler, Araucaria. I'm sure there will be more eloquent appreciations and tributes but we have enjoyed his offerings. His puzzles often defeated us but almost always gave us pleasure. Some may find it morbid or 'inappropriate' to thrust intimations of mortality on your solvers in this way. I think it is quite something. He is quite something!

From sad to naughty as Paul, a Grauniad compiler(other papers and puzzles are available...Ed.) had the following as reported in the XWD Blog:

Cryptic No 25,783 for 2 November by Paul had the clue (25 across): Misshapen genitals, funny things? (3,5). Anne Turner says that, knowing Paul, she laughed aloud and confidently entered ODD BALLS in the grid. Unhappily her confidence was not rewarded, because those letters in the grid made it impossible to get any further with that corner of the puzzle. Paul's intention was an anagram of GENITALS to produce TAG LINES. On balance, though, I think that Anne was on to a winner, even if it did not fit.

Bless its little pointy head!

I noticed that the Gauleiter, who's picture heads this article, is much like a male polar bear.

The reason I suggest this is that  earlier in the week we watched a series of films featuring Gordon Buchanan and a number of charming polar bears in and around Svalbard. It was reported that it is not possible to fit a tracking collar on a male polar bear because its head is smaller than its neck. I know that given I am a less than perfect physical specemin myself I should not be hurling the cobblestones around the old conservatory. However, I could not resist a dig at Porker Pickles who seems to get broader and more pointy headed every day!
(Oh very good yes I get it, stones, throwing, glass houses, very good, very good. But my god you are still an ugly old bugger...Ed!)

Less of the old, if you will?

Life Rocks

Doesn't it just?

Scientists analysing Australian rocks have discovered traces of bacteria that lived a record-breaking 3.49bn years ago, a mere 1bn years after Earth formed.

The Grauniad website reports an article from Devin Powell.

Happy New Year to all our readers. Yes, you at the back, come on wake up!

 

Aint Code the Bees Knees?

Of course I should get out more and we did today, but (God that word again, I'm thinking of starting a but box in the new year. That should bring in a few coppers... Ed) Up to a point; but I digress! I  received an email on Xmas day from the library reminding me that books were due on the 27 Dec.

I finished off (and enjoyed) 3 books in fairly short order recently and I'm glad I did.
The Spark of Life, Frances Ashcroft.
One of the best descriptions of a lab discovery I have read :-

There is nothing - nothing at all - that compares to the exhilaration of discovery, of being the first person on the planet... Page 2 ff

Having been subject to a certain amount of  electrification recently it was interesting.

Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees.
In essence these numbers are a recipe for our universe. Why those numbers and what slack is there in the system provides a few, very worthwhile hours of mind bending. They also relate to the  Penrose question.

Dominion, C.J. Sansom
An everyday story of what if, smog, nuclear secrets, loyalty and betrayal.
Such simple pleasures!

On the Fiddle

Just finished Akenfield by Ronald Blythe.
Glad I read it as I have been meaning to for many years now. Thought we had a copy on our very disorganised shelves but if we do it remains burried in the mists of thrillers. SCL have an electronic copy and it proved so easy in my convalescence (and dotage... Ed) to download it. Nice contrast in a way.
Funny old place, Suffolk. Some funny old boys too!

Crooks and Nannies

John Naughton found a nice one which he duly reported at Nooks and Crannies in eBooks.

Not only did it produce the Spoonarian response which appears in the title to this blog but I also thought of the endless possibilities, a la Myles of the Little Horses, to seek gainful in the world of eBooks.
Now there are enough Flaneurs out there who have Kindles and Nooks and all manner of electronic devices with which to impress the ladies. On these devilish instruments there will be reams and reams of worthy literature whose electronic form will be as pristine and untarnished as a new born babe. They are likely to remain so for a very long time until the wife gets her hands on them. They may be referred to in the salons of Milton Keynes, with a languid disdain. Maybe flicked through in the coffee houses of Stevenage or perused under the porticoes of  Peterborough but never given the rigorous academic seeing to that your intellectual trencherman is capable of in this day and age! So why don't I offer my services to various suppliers of household goods, ladies foundation garments, and cosmetical preparations to find and replace keywords in such text with subtle and subliminal advertising matter.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

becomes

 It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife whose beauty has been enhanced by a dollop of Brady's Botox strong enough to floor a donkey.

 at the flick of a switch, and your man becomes a dollar millionaire overnight. I await the call.
(It may be some time...Ed)
Oh ye of little faith!

Frostwork

And in the night Jack weaves his way from web to flower,
And in the day the sun discloses where the diamonds are.

Is That a Mango in Your Pocket?

I've just finished A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif.
(I have told you about such fruity stuff before; it will play merry hell with the old bag... Ed)
I do enjoy a good paranoid surrealist history with walk on parts by OBL in a suit and the like.
Anyway, imagine my surprise to find a whole wall of mangoes in Lady BP's study the other day!
We have been seeing the odd mango  appear in the fruit bowl recently.
Must watch my step.

Thinking Clearly About Nothing

Full disclosure. In case some poor benighted soul thinks that the title of this post is spiritually related to the title of this blog, tough. Go seek enlightenment on someone else's doorstep! I believe Mother Carey welcomes dreamers.
I picked up on the Brain Pickings post about alcohol and the brain. The conclusion of this (Canadian (?) aren't we all now) comic strip is that the Devil's Buttermilk enables us to think clearly about almost nothing. A little harsh I feel, especially as I gave up the DB almost 2 years to the day now under starter's orders.  I do not consider myself to think clearly as a result and I am buggered if I can remember what it was that I was thinking about anyway... The U Tube video gives a link to all sorts of helpful little videos about drugs and a very useful reminder about hangover amelioration. May come in useful this time of year. I'm off to make a cup of tea, lashings of hot tea! It's cold enough to have the nuts off a nun here and the starter would judge my efforts to cut down on the caffeine as woeful anyway. One drug at a time sweet J, I say, one drug at a time.

Prentice Hand

I came across the phrase in Driftwood and Tangle by Margaret Leigh.
Chapter 10 - At the Peats - is set in 1940. It is, in part, a reflection on WWII.
Leigh also describes her kackhanded cutting of the peat leaving the bank gashed and uneven...

as if it were a huge chunk of butter at which a boy had been hacking with a blunt penknife.

For those of us that have not put 10,000 hours in the meter ours will always be prentice hands.

Every state should have one

A programme in the poverty series on BBC 4 drifted across my shortening attention span the other night. All good stuff and the pilgrim, an earnest young Swiss, was questioning the set up in Zambia in relation to the past disposal of assets, specifically the copper deposits. The VP of Zambia, Guy Scott,  happens to be white and the earnest pilgrim questioned him on his lack of pigmentation and, delicately, asked if this was linked to colonialism and exploitation. I have little knowledge of the Scott's politics, background or probity but I really chuckled at his reply. Obviously, he has been tackled about this before. He indicated that such a situation, having a white VP,  was not uncommon and that he believed the US had one!

Cause of Death?

A blog by Paul Mason  about Yang Jisheng. He is the author of Tombstone which is claimed to be the 'Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine'. At least 36 million dead!

Giles Fraser has a comment piece in the Grauniad about images of dead children.
Contained within it is  a twitter feed giving a link to the picture of his concern, 4 children in a morgue in Gaza.
Please be aware it is a very disturbing picture. No doubt there will be further horrifying pictures to come.

We certainly know how to kill!

Misty, Moisty, Morning

Off to avail myself of the democratic facilities at the urns in the Tithe Barn I slipped the old point and snap in my pocket.
A few photo opportunities ensued.
A web of deceit

A few (fig) leaves of respectability

 

 
In the graveyard of freedom.

Herself was concerned when she returned to find the house locked up, the fire out and the kettle boiling. Not a sign. I had passed into the churchyard and was presenting a damp, solitary figure to the memorial masonry of previous generations. Lost in contemplation of my own mortality.

(So the sun didn't cleave the woodwork then. God, but you can be a miserable bugger sometimes...Ed!)

The Usual Suspects

Nice little blog from our Paul  at the Great Hall.

Certainly nobody in the press made trouble: not even me, nor Channel Four News, nor The Guardian. We sat, watched, recorded.

Eee Paul, you becoming a southern softie? Few years in the Laogai; toughen you up a treat lad.

Certainly seemed to be a shortage of people considering it's their hall!
I have come to appreciate Paul's journalism and reportage. I sincerely hope Fatty Pang and the Posh Posse don't do too much damage!

Fun Guy

We may have missed the 5th November but I would hate anyone to say that I am not a fun guy or appreciate such in others.

Not much room for these sorts of things, I'll just squeeze in here.

Recycling

We do our share.
The council provides for the collection of garden waste, paper, cans and cardboard. We recycle glass (Did I not hear that you had forsworn the devils buttermilk...Ed? ) Herself is partial to a drop of red wine, possibly a nightcap of the finest blended, and who am I to object. Besides, there are always pickle and jam jars, bottles of this, that and the next thing for which our consumer society requires the finest vitrification. I could believe the bloody milk bottles keep some fellow and his mafia cousins from Murano in clover. I religiously take a few rags from my back that have threads bared, the furniture that the mice have had condemned by the parish authorities  and assorted electrical devices that still have their valves glowing to the town dump, AKA the Recycling Centre, to avoid the horror of landfill. As a result of my efforts for the environment I may be responsible, personally, for the failure of the publishing industry because I take my surplus reading matter to the shop that combats famine in Oxford. (I think we get the point, could you move on for the love of god and his blessed mother... Ed!)  Well I also take the little cardboard tube that appears when the toilet roll is exhausted (I share its pain...Ed.) and flatten it, putting it in the recycling. I feel an enormous pressure to do this.

I believe that I could more likely cull badgers, hunt foxes or other defenceless beasts, perform cruel and painful experiments on small animals than fail to recycle the small but dutifully flattened cardboard tube.
Strange isn't it?

Whistle Bright Star

A grandmother's joy at the setting sun.

A hard day.

Flatland, a stage for light.

The Great Wen boils with smelting gold,

A febrile heart.

Whistle bright star, a beacon home.

Romancing the Wind

Very uplifting, no pun intended for once and if you are not as high as a kite after watching this video well, shame. Ray Bethell, an 85-year old resident of Vancouver, is romancing the wind with kites near the Burrard Street bridge. Here he flies three kites in a ballet set to "The Flower Duet" from Leo Delibes opera "Lakme" - with Joan Sutherland and Jane Berbie. Robert  Holbrook is credited with the video.

Many thanks to Jean for the link. 

Pleutering with Swans

I had been off pleutering about and taking an easy road out of the village paused to catch breath and the sights and sounds on a bridge over the mighty river of ours which feeds the Little Ouse. Needless to say it was quiet. A good excuse to absorb the last sunshine of September, feel bones warmed and spirits lifted. Cheers, but in a good way. I thought I was on my own but a loud beating came from under the bridge. The trickle beneath my feet must have produced a huge fish if some previously unseen angler was landing his catch and dispatching it. The beating continued, increased even, but I could not identify the cause. Moving to the other side of the bridge I saw a swan paddling about in a very shallow pool going about its business of grooming and looking truly magnificent, as white as an angel on a Christmas tree.

Further on I noticed a bird scarer. The farmers use these kites, in the shape and with the motion of real birds of prey.
I watched for some time in grudging appreciation of the mimicry. I suppose they work but they probably displace real birds of pray and sometimes mistakes of perspective and general stupidity make me think that the folk at Mildenhall or Honnington have invented silent helicopters. I was mulling these daft thoughts about in my head when the bird scarer dropped like a stone into the field. It was an accept no imitation Kestrel. The real thing!

I thought of

 If you've seen the hawk, be sure, the hawk has seen you. 

 (Findings, Kathleen Jamie. p 32. I thoroughly enjoyed this book like all of hers that I have read and must attribute the pleutering to her; p51 to be precise.)
  

A Great Way to Start the Day!

Tuning half an ear to the British Broadcasting Corporation on Wednesday morning at about eight am I was greeted by the  Huapango. I have met this creature before and it does put a bit of a shine on the day despite plague, famine, war and devastating floods. Just thought you might like to know.

Gustavo has a  passable rendition here.

(That's what I like to see:- clarity, brevity, fully referenced and a bit of a punch, it's what blogs were made for...Ed)

Is it a bit of a punch you're after?

A Shell of Myself

Shells, don't you just love 'em

Shell companies, now that is another matter. A blog  by Nick Shaxson on the ever popular Treasure Islands site gives the details but I prefer to let my imagination roam.
The companies - Unbeliezeable,  Delawho;  the officers are Umberto and Desiree, your name will never be mentioned!?
Umberto will do what you tell him to do... Also included in the starter pack was a resignation letter signed by Desiree
undated!
The reporters start to have fun with things they might be able to do. “Can we have Unbelizeable sue Delawho?”
However there are safeguards and due diligence will be done.

“The beneficial owner promises that the company will not be used for the purposes of distributing drugs, money washing, financing of terrorism, production and/or distribution of kiddy porn, and some other activity that you are promising not to run through Unbelizeable.”

Oh Yeah!
So Senor Zeta do you swear to be a good boy, a very good boy?
You may wholesale huge quantities of non prescription medications, be in the premature undertaking business, sex, rock and roll, not necessarily consensual, with the liddle people but you would never lie would you? Good I'm glad we have established that.
Now we can do bidness together and, if you wan, Desiree can have your babies!
Ocala!

Paranoia - Signs of the Times

I had the pleasure this week of noticing that one of the drugs I take had been increased in its dosage.
(Now you know herself prefers you speak of medication rather than drugs... Ed)
I am an old and foolish man with a bad memory but I am quite clear that neither the hospital nor the GP had suggested that the drugs medication should be increased in dosage, still less had they consulted me. Herself who was there at the last hospital consultation agrees and anyone who suggests that she is foolish, old or with failing memory - well peace be upon him as he is not long for this world.

Imagine my paranoia, my increasing paranoia, when I saw this sign in the car park of a local village hall.

No respect at all, it will be compulsory youth in Asia next.

Books glorious books

What a great idea! Virtual Library contained in public QR codes. Projekt Ingeborg.
From the ever popular ( in our house) and useful Collaborate (Previously known as Thriving Too)
(I did enjoy the little fishes, though (I could play with them for hours))
(Are we not becoming a mite parenthetical...Ed?)
(I am not in the same bracket as yourself!)

Lots of other ideas about books and libraries in this Books and libraries link.

Accounts Receivable

 Elif Batuman is a writer that I had picked up on in the London Review of Books.  I had seen she was giving a talk at the British Museum - Cervantes, Balzac and double–entry book–keeping, the title of the talk caught my imagination. She has  written The Possessed  which I have just read in paperback.  Ian Sansom gives a whiff of it in the Guardian review link. The book reads like a short ride through Russian Literature in a fast machine - see John Adams   for rest and relaxation.
Her wit limbo dances under the academic bar. On p57 in the paperback version she reports being accused  by a colleague at a seminar of not fully understanding Lyutov's ( a character in Bable's Red Cavalry)  "specifically Jewish alienation."

Her reply  -

Right ... As a six foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman growing up  in New Jersey, I cannot possibly know as much about alienation as you, a short American Jew.

It may show irony in the soul but it is lost on her colleague who nods and replies -

So you see the problem.

There are nightmares about penguins as homestay hosts, ice-houses for connubial blisters, inspirations for conspiracies and attempts on Tolstoy's life. Do keep up there at the back.

Omposable

Not Staged, honest. I wouldn't go anywhere near digging the garden.

Omposable was 'e

You know I think herself is trying to tell me something.

Salad Daze

A Cabinet re-muffle, an Indian Summer and Salad Daze.
We are blissed out, lucky S o Bs.
I will pass over the occupants  of the deckchairs of state on the  good ship of the coalition and move on to the weather.
The Bees, even the S o Bees, have been making up for lost time.

We visited Hackney, not to indulge in Para-Julibumpic watching, but for a literary soiree!
Persons who are known to us and may even be re..(don't start on that bollix again, we will take the disclosure as being full frank and filigree transparent ...Ed) OK then we enjoyed the launch of Salad Days - see the link. Great stuff. Get a copy while it is good and hot!
After the event we wandered down the Lower Clapton Rd. The Blue lights still flashed and the sirens screamed but the old place is definitely on the way up! The party, stout and otherwise, foregathered in the Clapton Hart.
Before it was Chimes (or Crimes) we knew it as Dougies. I did not see this myself, being safely tucked up in bed, but in its Dougies incarnation a drive by shooting once upon a time produced return fire rather than the usual hitting of decks, allegedly. I seem to remember Lady BP going out for a night with the girls there but she claims I am old and foolish and my memory is failing!

Anyway,  we are making the most of it, the weather that is, not the failing memory.

Lest We Forget

Last year I referred (Somewhat disparagingly I thought... Ed) to graphs concerning the economy.
Ann Pettifor has returned to the subject and blogged her notes for a presentation to a conference entitled Just Banking.
Ha! Ha!

The arguments are well worth trawling through if you have any doubts at all that it is going to be a cold, cold winter.
The ground is also being prepared to blame us and those like us for the pickle we are in. The idea that it was a big boy called Gordie wot did it, and ran away, can only stretch so far in the collective Alzheimer syndrome that clouds The Mail, The Current Bum and the Torygraph! So now:-

Blaming the Victim
And, it is implied, those responsible for this spontaneous combustion are the victims.
‘Sub-prime borrowers’ are frequently named and blamed. Michigan hairdressers on $7 an hour with a mortgage sold fraudulently by the agents of banks at a very high rate of interest – are the innocents deemed culpable of bursting the vast global credit bubble.
Blame has been passed from criminal to victim: from the private banking system to government and to the public sector.

And for those who like to see pictures, graphs even...

Busy Bees

Lloyd's Bank in BSE has a sign which incorporates a bee hive.

This goes back to the name of the bank before it was absorbed into Lloyds
The bank may be absorbed into the Coop Bank as the TSB(ee).
Ho Ho.
Nice though for us romantics - cooperation, mutuality, bees (workers, queens, drones, fleets of drones no doubt; see where all that misty eyed nonsense has got you... Ed)

Mass, Length and Time

I have just finished Dan Falk's book In Search of Time  and no I don't know what time it is!
He has a lovely quote from Roger Penrose who has had a few thoughts on the matter.   On p240 they are discussing the the Big Bang.  Penrose is troubled by the interpretation of the evidence to suggest that there was a state of thermal eqilibrium at this time. This is a state of the highest entropy or disorder? Our universe has evolved from this!

Penrose seems genuinely troubled - to the extent that one can be troubled by events that happened 14billion years ago. .....
I don't know why people haven't worried  about this more...

( For the love of God, can you not tell us what the time is? ...Ed.)

Well it is Tree Time, of course!

Reflections on a Republican Future

Time to move on as the Julibumpics draw to a close.
To paraphrase:-

If I were the President of this Land
I would declare total war on the Snollygoster Man

What is a Snollygoster I hear you ask?
Mark Forsyth supplies the answer in a TedX talk at the House of Commons.
Some wry thoughts on the origins of the use of the title President. (POTUS to West Wing fans).
I suspect everyone will be wanting a 'fleet of drones' now. Such a seductive little phrase, such horror now and misery to come!

Alas Vermeer

Interesting 'Secret Life of the Artist' by Andrew Graham-Dixon on the Beeb recently  which uses paintings, locations and public records in the Netherlands to lay bare the life of Vermeer. I had always surmised that he was the cliched enigma wrapped in a mystery despite books, films, exhibitions and extensive commentaries; part of the attraction, of course.

    "Andrew Graham-Dixon, travelling to Vermeer's hometown of Delft and a dramatic Dutch landscape of huge skies and windmills, embarks on a detective trail to uncover the life of a genius in hiding.Renowned for painting calm and beautiful interiors, the real life of Vermeer was marred by crime and violence. His life was a bid to escape the privations of his family and yet even a glamorous marriage and artistic success failed to save him from the fate he dreaded more than any other."

When I discovered Vermeer I became intrigued by the use, and the effort, of a painting within a painting.

So there you have it, allegedly, the Last Vermeer, painted while his mother in law screamed at him to sell a few pictures for gods sake if only to repay the money he had possibly stolen from her and pay the baker.

And after Vermeer?
See the photo by John Naughton  at the link.
Very fine snap, a real cracker.