This morning the sound of a flute in Grosvenor Precinct opposite Waterstone's. What strikes me as utterly beautiful is not the manner in which it is played by a girl in a red jacket and a white scarf (probably a competent performance by a music student) but the way the sound enters the airwaves without the help of an amplifier other than the breath of the musician.
Yesterday moved by a moment of irritation with the banner photograph of last summer's morning glory I changed the layout of this blog. Gone is the repetitious banner. We begin from now on with a different illustration every day. The banner and the regular daily picture have in fact merged. I also see that with the new format I can tweet the post and Facebook it too. I am not quite sure what that means but will soon find out.
5 comments:
Looks very modern and sleek here!
Have you joined the social media craze of Facebook and Twitter? I have resisted and have become an 'old fogey'. Never mind, I still blog and work on PhotoShop.
One of the pleasures of retirement is secretly observing the men who are still in work. Prim and purposeful they look whereas I slur around, admittedly thinking about Blest Redeemer, but both unwilling and unable to suggest I have a meeting to go to. As you know I wear a navy-blue fleece now half-a-dozen years old which sags in the arms and the body. Together with an open-necked shirt. I feel so comfortable that I often forget I'm wearing clothes altogether, only to be reminded when I see my reflection in a shop window; surveying this dishevelled, tramp-like figure I occcasionally wonder whether I've gone too far, that I may be turned away from a supermarket. But, so what? I'll blog about it.
The journey by Docklands Light Railway from Bank to the Cutty Sark was illuminating. Tower block after tower block, often anonymous with their blocked-out windows, occasionally disclosing a filing cabinet or the back of a CRT. I am the original traveller from an antique land. I am briefly tempted to drop in on one of the meetings you refer to; there to recite as much of Lady Percy's speech as I can remember before being hustled out by white-shirted executives keen to get through an over-long agenda.
The catholic church posits an after-life (for the goodies) based on purgatory followed by heaven. I think I am in an interim stage between real-life and death called limbo. It sounds more dignified than the government's dismissive label: pensioner. A subversive in that I am not doing anything that can be described as pro bono. A thing of rags and tatters.
On my recent visit to London C asked if my trousers were in any way symbolic. I went into trouser-responsive mode, talking about not spending more than £15, etc. But C pointed out that my trousers were not subfusc but a sort of crushed mulberry colour. And VR reminded me that she had bought me these trousers, that they were styled and were reduced from £80. I had fogotten. No wonder as I walked through the City I had merely been ignored, not regarded as an object of contempt.
This is a longish comment (which I suppose is good) but it's all about me (which is bad, or baddish).
Ah, that's better, the comment form is back! In fact it was there yesterday, come to think, but disappeared earlier this morning.
I want to be there when RR does his Lady Percy speech in the boardroom; if I had a smartphone I would video it on it and have it go viral, but alas I too have happily sunk into old fogeydom and refuse to have any truck with such things, preferring my 10 year old dumbphone which I recently just about managed to be adaptable enough to learn to change the sim card in. Your willingness, nay enthusiasm, (I like that use of 'nay', a reasonable translation of 'voire' in French perhaps?) to take on all manner of new technology is salutary.
'Dumbphone' is a newly accepted coinage I believe recently officially recognised, though I forget by which august body or publication. However, as someone on telly remarked, it will not last as a word because the things themselves will soon become defunct and therefore extinct, and there will be no need for a term for them.
I believe in fact that purgatory is no more, it was done away with as a doctrine several popes ago. Like the dumbphone, it seems it became obsolete. I don't know about limbo, surely there must still be enough unbaptised infants to fulfil the demand?
M-L My children and grand children post on Facebook. For me it's a way of keeping up with them. As for Twitter sometimes like the robins which have been unusually vociferous this winter I like to twitter. The limit of 140 syllables is a useful constraint. And as Dave Bonta once pointed out you can easily accommodate a haiku in in a twitter post.
Robbie I enjoyed your comment. What a pity we didn't have smart phones and the like to play with during those interminable meetings! Looking into offices from the train is yet another reason not to have a smart phone to play with. Clothes should always be delighted in and your are no exception in the way you delight in them. I have the impression that your disregard for the finer points of dress gives you as much pleasure as dandies get from the latest cuts and capers. Why do I envy you those crushed mulberry trousers. The Ragged Trousered Philanthrapist comes to mind. I haven't read it. And I'm not sure what it is about. But perhaps the eponymous here would underdstand. But there is a bar/ pub in The Pantiles with this title.
Lucy So glad you made it. Yes I do like gadgets though it takes me longer than most people to learn how to use them. Dumbphone is a good word. But why should they become extinct? People will nurse them like antiques. Somebody was telling me that early Nokias are already fetching substantial amounts of money. I have never really understood Purgatory. Limbo confuses me too because of the dance which even when I was more flexible I could never have performed since it seems to involve edging forward with your torso bent back at right angles and no more than 9 inches from the ground. Not my cup of tea. As the Duchess of Argyle on being offered water instead of gin,once said to me (this is true) "Bye bye Blackbird!"
I suppose the circumstances of the occasion when you blew it with the Duchess will remains as shrouded in mystery to me as when you took Elizabeth David out to lunch. I can't say I blame her for not being impressed with the choice. I'm off to find out what my old Nokia's worth.
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