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.

The End is Nighish

Do I think that Rubberman and Gideon are heading for the taxi?
Yes.
Is it because they have reneged on the social contract?
Is it because they have lined up cuts that will alienate their voting base?
Is it because they have reduced taxes for their millionaire mates?
Is it because they have bleated ineffectively about tax avoidance?
Is it because they have tasered productive industry?
Is it because they have allowed big finance to run riot?

Possibly, but once someone states that -

You cannot run a modern sophisticated economy the way you run a tuck shop at Eaton*

describing your 2 plus years of government, you have reached the John Major underpants moment.

All Your Big Society - Dave - Belong Our Cones Hotline!

* Jimmy McGovern, Observer Magazine 5/8/12

Mind, Memory and Creativity

Be careful what you save it may come to haunt you!

I had a spare moment to plough through the instapaper list that I keep and that keeps nagging away at my tool bar.
I came across a reference to the obit of Mary Fedden in the Grauniad. 
I'm sure I marked this because of the picture that appeared with it, but if I am honest I can't think why. However, the Feather and Two Stones sparked a train of thought along the lines of:-

The birds have had a hard spring and early summer. Some of the blackbirds are wandering around the garden  in a daze;  bedraggled  and with feathers hanging out. I'm sure if I was a twitcher I would be able to explain it. The weather, the cats, the overpopulation due to St Claire feeding everything in sight, twice a day, I've no idea. But we do see a lot of feathers! it would be nice to record some of the patterns and colours. And the flutterbyes, don't start me off on the mariposal road! 

I was enjoying this thought going down the list of links when I saw one to The Painting Fool. God knows how or why it got there but it did and I thought - apposite - to say the least! Not bad for a bit of old code. But then aren't we all just a bit of old code? Soft, squishy and set in lumps of carbon that evolved for a few billion years but there you go; can't say fairer than that. Have a look yourself and see what you think!

Upgrade Now!

Buddhist Pizza Software is pleased to announce an upgrade to its acclaimed Tanka Town operating system. The fix new release (TT 17.75) will be known as Snowyleopardz and will offer truly amazing functionality, an unbelievable range of built in applications, and mouthwateringly good code design nestling behind the usual propitiatory firewalls.

Best of all it's going to squeeze gazillions more in juice outa you lemonheads who don't know sh*t from Shinola.

Can someone do a final edit on this before it goes out to the  creative fruitcakes?

Gombeen Men

I watched Bob Diamond being 'grilled' by the Treasury select committee yesterday. I'm sure in the rough, tough, macho world of fearless reporting words like grilled are used in the belief that they convey the full heft and majesty of one of the organs of our democratic assembly relentlessly seeking the truth. Not so, I was reminded of someone being savaged by a dead sheep which, I believe, is an image conjured before. As far as applying intense heat to a lump of meat in order to soften and produce a more acceptable dish, I saw no evidence. Rather, I saw Diamond Bob working on his very elegant tan, breaking off from time to time to ask the committee members to rub a little more of the 20million into his shoulders. That winsome, boyish smile, that little movement with the lips to reveal a pleasing toothy grin, how could anyone doubt his sincerity, his dignity, his integrity.

And we are going to have a Parliamentary Enquiry?

Remember it is your money that the bu**er is walking away with.
If he was a rioter who had stolen water he would be in some interview room down Tottenham Nick with Inspector Knacker having the full panoply of the law applied to his soft and squashy bits.

(Such anger in one so young and so early in the morning. You haven't had your breakfast have you? Now you know the importance of the inner man, keep the bag filled and stay off the red meat or we will be making another appearance by popular demand in A&E...Ed)

Mr Turing's musical conundrum

The Grauniad has a nice little test.
5 pieces of music, one of which was generated by that Hank Marvin Android in the corner.
Can you tell which one?
I couldn't!