Springing, materials and submission

Anticipating Spring. Doodle after lunch in the sun.

Intrigued by news of a library of man made materials which is just about to open in University College London. According to New Scientist it has at present around 1500 materials which have been gathered with such characteristics as feel, taste and smell in mind, which they call  "sensoaesthetic" properties. Among highlights is silica aerogel, also known as blue smoke. It appears fuzzy owing to the way it scatters shorter wave lengths of light. Apparently NASA used its network of tiny pores to collect comet dust.

I am waiting to cross a small side road into the High Street when a giant Council vehicle back in front of me. Its warning alarm honking and its rear lights flashing. "I'm not arguing with that," says a fellow pedestrian.

 

Peace, laughter and green

Peace: the early stages.

At the self-checkout in the supermarket I try to insert my credit card in the machine that dispenses receipts for cash payments. Sympathetic laughter from an old person waiting to use the checkout. At least I hope it is sympathetic. "That's why I like the job," says the young man in attendence to ensure that self-checkout runs smoothly. "You get some amusing moments."

Almost all yesterday's snow has melted  leaving the grass bright green. It reminds me of first reading Garcia Lorca's poetry with its guitar rhythms and surrealist images, when I was but a lad. I have never got these lines out of my head.
 Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento, verdes ramas.
El barco sobre el mar
y el caballo en la montana.
Con la sombra en la cintura,
ella sueno en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde
con ojos de fria plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Green how much I love you green.
Green wind, green boughs.
The ship on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shadow in her belt
she dreams on the veranda.
green flesh, green hair
with eyes of cold silver.
How much I love you green.
I pull out my copy of the Penguin Book of Spanish Verse which is coming apart. It has the price of 5 shillings- (25 p) on the cover.  The translator of this poem says that the first line has a secondary meaning in Spanish -" green how very deeply green". But I have never been able to source that meaning. Whenever I think of the poem it always puzzles me.

War, whistle-blower and time

War: the early stages.

There is a fine whistle on my key ring. It comes from a posh Christmas cracker which I pulled with someone two years ago. I haven't yet had the opportunity to blow it. And I don't want to in case it alarms someone.  Should I become a whistle-blower?

Numbers especially when they refer to time have a particular fascination. Today I read that Comet C/2011 visible for a few days to the naked eye  faded from our horizon on March 10. Sad to say we won't have another chance to see it for 110,000 years.

 

sex , shopping, wind and snow

Man and woman contemplate their status in the modern world and try to play them down.

A new feature of  Sainsbury's is the self-checkout which is noticeable  as customers learn the knack of operating the machines. Unlike  those in Morrison's every station has its own loudspeaker which addresses the shopper with the same words.  As there are several of them when you pass the line of machines you hear a strange chorus of overlapping statements. A polite but firm woman's voice: Welcome to Sainsbury's self-checkout. Thank you for using Sainsbury's self-checkout.   Please follow the instructions on the card machine.   Please take remove your card....There is an unexpected item on the weighing platform...." The phrases are interchangeable and monotonous. It requires someone like John Adams to produce an opera  set in a modern  supermarket. People versus machines might be one of the themes.   That and brand loyalty and brand betrayal. Two for the Price of One an aria.

The cold weather is back and with it  snow. Small snow flakes stream  in the wind, or when the wind drops. swarm like pale insects reluctant to settle.

Pond forecasts rhubarb

 There's more in a pond than meets the eye.

Is it weather forecasts like the BBC's  updated  regularly and frequently  on the web that explains why people you meet nowadays  are no longer content  simply to complain about the weather but  have to tell you what it is going to do? The woman with the Pomeranian tells us this afternoon in The Grove  that it is going to snow on Thursday. "On Thursday!" she repeats. Problem is she must be consulting a source different from mine. On my computer the BBC foresees a full day of sunshine. I do tend to watch the weather because of my gardening plans, but most of the time I would rather wait and see what it has to offer.

Rhubarb plants at the Farmers' Market. After visiting the Bank I return to buy some. Shall I have three of four? I measure the width of the bed in my mind. I ask for three. The man standing behind me in front of the stall  says, "and I'll have the other three." A run on rhubarb then.

grafitti, begging the question and rose-destroyer.

Layers of graffiti, stickers and other detritus have accumulated on the back of this telephone kiosk near the station. I don't know if it still contains a telephone but it provides an interesting canvas for fortuitous art.

An example of begging the question on Radio 4 a few minutes ago. It occurs in a piece of comedy dialogue, which goes something like this:
  Scene: a bookshop.
  Young woman customer: Have you a copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room with a View."
  Assistant: Who are they?
 Young woman: You haven't heard of Virginia Woolf! And this is a bookshop. Not  a fishmonger's."
Assistant: I hate fish.

A new neighbour is rooting up roses in her front garden. She ranges the gnarled roots on the wall. Anyone can have those for sculptures," she says. They have been much admired  by passers-by as long as I can remember. But who am I to complain?  She digs away. "I've planted a damson tree instead. I don't mind roses, but I hate growing them."

Posing cat, Satie and see-through hedge

Visiting cat poses for photograph, is hoping to play the  narrator in  a new story on the stocks.

Not yet completely used to a tablet, I forget that it is sitting snugly in my shoulder bag, as I walk through the town. Hey, I say to myself where is the street musician who seems to be following me, while performing Eric Satie's Gnossienne No 1? Not yet completley used to the versatility of tablet computers, I forget that mine is sitting snugly in my shoulder bag as I walk through the town. And I must have left it on.

At this time of year the hedge outside my window is thinner and more transparent than usual. I see an umbrella passing angled against the wind. It is Heidi and she under it and just about to enter the front gate. Time for tea.

crocuses, the smell of books and randomness

The buds still closed looked like spiky bits of litter until yesterday's sun when the crocuses open like little flames.

"It was a melancholic afternoon when I smelled the the old books in Mandelbrot's library. This was on a hot day in August 2005, and the heat exacerbated the musty odour of the glue of old French books bringing on powerful olfactory nostalgia... However abstract I wanted it to be, Literature has a physical smell and this was it."  
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is writing of his encounter with the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot who developed the concept of fractals. In particular Taleb is exploring the nature of randomness which a central theme of his book The Black Swan about the critical importance of the unexpected in forecasting. But this quote says something important about the physical nature of books which is untranslatable into electronic readers.

The aim of my scrap book is to place the familiar in an unfamiliar context often on an unlikely scale. The result is to enliven images which may seem jaded through over-exposure like Van Gough's sunflowers or Rodin's Lovers.  Looking quickly back, I see for example: The Mona Lisa next to a Bansksie Mural; Virginia Woolf looking soulfully down on the new Shard skyscraper in London; a small  black and white photo of Charles Dickens above a larger colour portrait of Ravi Shankar; Henry James next to a field mouse; Jane Austen next to the @ character taken from an ad presented as though it is a logo. Randomness as Nassim Nicholas Talib would agree can be inspirational.

Fast food, slow food and green age

Fast food.

 Apart from purple sprouting broccoli the garden yields plenty of  leeks at the moment. I strip them of their outer leaves, snip the roots and cut off the coarse green tops . Wash them with cold water from the tap and they are ready to cook and worth the trouble of cleaning them up.  The à la grecque method of cooking them is my favourite. Stew them slowly in a mixture of olive oil and lemon juice until they are tender. Dusted with a little cayenne pepper, they are as lovely to look at as to eat. They are equally good hot or cold. As delicate as asparagus.

The pleasure of digging and raking  in the vegetable garden and planting onion sets this morning is hard to define. For many it would be a chore.  But the sense of seeds sprouting and roots stirring is infectious.  Their response is similar to mine. "The force that drives that through the green fuse drives the flower, drives my green age". Dylan Thomas meant something slightly different, but the driving force is the same.

Unfolding characters tidying up

Imminent daffodils which the sun is unfolds today.

In the last few day I have pasted  at random photographs of three people - Oscar Wilde, Andy Warhol and Alfred Hitchcock - into my scrapbook.  The book is based on and seeks, though sometimes patterns emerge,  random and unexpected contrasts out of scale and out of sequence.  As I look  at their pictures it  strikes me that all three had in common the ability to construct images of themselves  which we remember apart from their artistic achievements for their impact as characters in the history of anecdote. Wilde is posing , pretty as a girl, his long hair brushed over his ears, his eyes looking into space, his hands behind his back. Warhol stares out of the frame in a blond wig, looking slightly sideways, his mouth set in a stubborn, reproachful line. Hitchcock, tubby, his embonpoint  to  the fore, hands in pocket, scowls as though he is considering something to torment you with. You might call it "character building" though it would mean something rather different from accustomed usage.

At the medical centre the practise nurse says that she would rather be in her garden than in the surgery  this fine morning: "My husband made a bonfire at the weekend, and I have to tidy up after him."

Minimalist greyhound and identity crisis

The artist as a minimalist in the process of thinking something very minimal.

My friend Nick shows me a netsuke which he produces from a pouch in his pocket. It is a greyhound carved in ivory (antique),  its legs delicately curved beneath it. It has beautiful eyes. Are they? Yes they are pieces of amber.  They greyhound with the amber eyes.

In the new Pembury Hospital they have an electronic check-in system for outpatients. It is like a game. The screen asks you what language you wish to speak in and offers a choice of flags. Sex comes next. Male or female? Then the month of your birth. Then the day. Just as an extra safeguard - you don't want to end up as someone else - what is your post code? The screen then tells you who you  think you are. Having indicated that you do not mind your name appearing on a further screen which summons you to your appointment, as you watch for yours  to appear, you speculate about  the owners of the names which unscroll before you. Fascinating some of them. Random characters in novels not yet written.  When mine shows up I do not immediately recognise it.

Hope mammals and small talk

Hoping for green in this still, grey winter I  borrow a photograph of the lake at Groombridge  from the archive.

It stikes me in considering the animal kingdom that  I favour other mammals  against insects, reptiles and the like. Even birds have a cold nature I suspect. I think I must be a "speciesist". Is that a crime?  It will stand against me probably when insects with large brains invade our hard-won civilisation.

At the  supermarket check-out a  young man with a pigtail is in an unusually talkative mood, even allowing for the fact  he has clearly been instructed to make small talk to customers.  He wants to know if I am "doing anything this afternoon?" A good question which I do not begin to answer as he tells me that he will probably being going straight to bed when he has finished work, because he went out for a meal last night to celebrate the birthday of his girlfirend's mother. I thought that I might tell him what I was thinking of doing this afternoon, but there wasn't time.

meetings flute and change

Long ago I used to go to  an office and and attend meetings in conference rooms like this. It was  a different world. I enjoyed it most of the time, but this gathering snapped through a window recalls moments of exquisite boredom.

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.

looking up names trench

Sky scape

These are a few of the names, which according to a recent study, have gone out of use:
 Chips, Woodbead, Jardel, Hatman and Rummage. It occurs to me that working novelists or short story writers might find these useful if they are trying to avoid libel actions by unintentionally using the names of living people. It also strikes me  that Chips, Woodbead, Jardel, Hatman and Rummage would be a likely name for a firm of solicitors.

Digging a  trench for runner beans provides some useful exercise. You fill it with old rags, screwed up newspaper and other rubbish mixed with compost to retain moisture and draw down the roots to where nourishment lies as the beans become established.

winter voices service

Ice on a wall.

Soundscape is a word relatively new to me, but one which I appreciate. I stand still in the vegetable garden and listen. The noises from the building site are intermittant but easy enough to exclude. Not so the din of children's voices from the primary school half a mile away. The morning break announces itself, a chorus of energy and excitement as the world begins again. Another feature of the soundscape occurs every time I approach The Grove from Belvue. It is the holly tree spilling sparrows and noisy as a party in full swing on a Saturday night.

A cup of tea at the cafe opposite the station reminds me that there are few such places where you don't have to wait to be served at the counter and are expected to pay right away. Here they say," take a seat and we'll bring it to you". And you pay before you leave. It may seem a small thing but a mark of civilisation nevertheless.

tweeting weeds minimalism

 

Birds are on my mind today. I tweeted this too.

All sorts of building components are lying about the once deserted garden next door to my vegetables. To discourage the weeds - specifically ground-elder, buttercups, nettles and bindweed, which they shelter rather than discourage -  I today  pile layers of leaf-mold against the fence to smother the roots as they attempt to invade.

The monotony of the minimalist composers of the the 20th century has long appealed to my uneducated ear. And I suppose to my tolerance of repetition.  Last night the BBC 4 programme on Twentieth Century music, The Sound and the Fury, reminded me of what for many may seem an odd preference. I am not sure how long I could sit in a concert hall and listen to  one of the works of John Cage unless it happens to be 4' 33''. Not too long to remain silent in the absence of sound.  But my taste for for the likes of Philip Glass and Steve Reich is strengthening. This morning with the the sound track of the programme  still in my head, I play my Philip Glass album which includes pieces from Einstein on the Beach and something rather lovely and soothing called Etude No 2 for Solo Piano. Hey, music lovers I'm not boasting or even recommending, merely reporting with a hint of apology to  Tone Deaf which would know better how to deal with my crush.

orange 2 magpies not for eating

Another attempt at an orange with painted with the  Brushes app.

No children in the playground this damp and cold morning where ice particles seem to form in the cold mist. Two magpies, their long black tails pointed up  in the air  have taken over the territory. They hop and flutter  between the swings and the seesaw.

A printed note attached to the  bunches of daffodils sold at Sainsbury's warns, "Do not eat!" Sound advice.It brings to mind a chef I used to know who put a starter of daffodils on his menu to celebrate St David's Day. I don't think he was a Welshman but he seemed to believe that the daffodil as distinct from or in addition to the leek was the national symbol of Wales. I don't know if he was right. But by and large I think Sainsbury's is right to advise against eating the plant. The dish was imaginative but had little else to recommend it.

drawing choice begging the question

Challenge or encounter? Composed with Brushes.













In a novel by Philippe Djian called Erogenous Zone the narrator says,"Stupidity alone does not explain why I sit like this glued to a chair. What drives me to write  all day and a good part of the night  is that  something far more terrible is not to to be writing."  Reading this made me think of my friend RR , who has written three novels including the recently published Gorgon Times in the last two or is three  years, with the same sort of single-mindedness. While I cannot match such dedication, skill  or energy, I completely understand the need to be creating something, even something tentative and unsure of itself on a daily basis. Hence I suppose this blog.

When I was at school I remember distinctly finding it difficult to understand the expression "to beg the question" which used to mean, to answer another question while ignoring the one you are supposed to be answering. Though when I did eventually grasp its purpose,  I took pleasure in using it because it was an apt description of a common behavioural lapse.  In my lifetime and quite recently  the expression has come to mean (judging by its wide use or abuse, to pose or ask a question - a clumsy and above all unnecessary phrase far removed from its original intent. A sad decline in language it seems to me.

orange order rulers

The essence of  an orange.

Flaubert's advice to writers hangs about in my mind as  try to keep my desk  tidy.  "Be regular and orderly in your life that you may violent and original in your work."

"They think they rule the world," says her mother apologetically as her little girl all rosy cheeked in the cold charges under our feet. Ah but they do.

cave-art snow snowdrops

Twenty-First Century cave art on window glass.

A fine snow blows this morning and seems to settle eventually  only because it has nowhere else to go. For the most part it swarms in the cold wind like pale insects.

The stall holders shiver at The Farmers' Market, at least those who have turned up.  But  one of the garden plant stalls is there. "Not a good day for business", I say to the stall holder who is shrouded in woolies. "Except for the snowdrops," she says. They are for sale still in bud in little plastic pots. "They're topical!"

early silent bounce

 

Small plants on top of a wall anticipate the Spring.

Through a window  this morning I watch  the head and shoulders of a young man nod and sway to music which he but not I can hear.

In the compost heap a new,  furry,  green tennis ball at least one which was new when by some strange stroke of fate it arrived there. Today following its rescue it has dried out. But sad to say, as I test it on the paving, it betrays - a condition  with which I  must sympathise - a  marked loss of its original bounce.
 

chard china-shop soup

Last year's chard is in leaf again though with little enthusiasm.

"I know what I wanted to tell you," says Peter as we pass in the street. "You know a bull in in a china-shop. The French have an elephant."

One chicken. Three meals. We finish with a broth from the stock  with small cubes of meat to which leeks and pearl barley are added. Almost   cock-a-leekie. I should have garnished it with some chopped prunes to complete the picture.

climbing wormwood models

 






































Meditation  on the yearly cycle of climbing plants. As I remove and stack away last years beanpoles I think about the beans I will grow this year.

Among the plants pushing up their shoots  in the herb garden  at the moment is wormwood, a handsome and vigorous herb for which I have little use other than the pleasure of its company. It has of course some interesting associations as its botanical name Artemis Absinthium attests. For it is the basis of the notorious absinthe which had so dramatic affect on the lives of  poets artists in France at the turn of the century who became adicted to the drink. But it does have benign applications. The Greeks infused their wine with it to make it less intoxicating and  it is remedy for weak digestion. Hippocrates believed that it stimulated the brain and could restore disorders there. It was dedicated to the goddess Diana.

Two models lurk somewhere at the back of my mind as I write this daily blog. One of them is the great Montaigne who invariably and on his own admission wrote about himself. But he wrote with an analytical  detachment, honest and amused, which removed his essays far from the egoistical. Rather they are rich accounts seen through  the spectrum of his own personality, of human nature in general. My other model is  the naturalist Gilbert White whose Natural History of Selborne describes with  vivid precision the wild life which surrounds the village of Selborne in Hampshire where he was curate to wards the end of the Eighteenth Century.

crows spices building site

I look up from the vegetable garden to  see a tree full of crows, at least I think they are crows.

In The Pantiles an overwhelming smell of spices floats out of a shop. It is the a shop called Pollyfield and sells masses of pot-pourris and the like, dried flowers woven into curious bouquets and emblems., packed into bags and cachets.  Cinnamon, cloves dominate but there must be every spice in the orient lurking among the petals and hanging in the air.

Last year and the year before I referred to the deserted garden next to the plot where I grow my vegetables, and posted photographs of the old house gradually falling to pieces. The melancholy charm of those days has this year been replaced by the brutal activity of a building site. A five bedroom house with an underground car park built into the basement is under construction. But it disturbs me   less than I might have expected. Preparing the beds for peas and salad, beans and sweet corn creates its own peace.

order random innocence

No choice?

Whereas when I read a book in English it is invariably the result of a recommendation or a connection with something else I have read, I keep finding  contemporary books in French about which, because I don't regularly read French newspapers or follow the French media, I know nothing. I simply find them on the shelves of the Oxfam bookshop in Chapel Place which, unlike Hall's down the road, seems to have good source of books in foreign languages. This random approach to reading appeals to me and reminds me of the time when I first discovered libraries and searched the shelves for anything that "felt" good with an opening sentence that made me want to read on.

The guilty but enjoyable sensation of watching, walking past in the street,  someone you know who doesn't suspect  that she is under observation. Is she behaving differently? Almost certainly.

meditation proof friends

On the edge of thought.

At the newsagent and tobacco counter in Sainsbury's  a sign insists that you must be over 25 when buying restricted products. The two women assistants refuse to sell cagarettes to a young man who appears to be nowhere near 25. He argues with the them in a good humoured way. " How old do you think I am specifically?" he says.

All over the town there are stains on walls, squares of peeling paint and  plaster, posts and pillars, boles and trunks which I recognise as old friends because I have photographed them in search of an image. Today I pass a bollard with a gaping hole in its spherical finial and resist the temptation to photograph it again.

brush strokes sharpening technology

The app which I found the other day is called Paper and I have been learning to draw with it. But I was aware of another app better suited to painting, which has famously been used to good effect  by David Hockney. It is called Brushes. Its palette is remarkable and easy to use once you have the knack. More difficult to master is the range of brushes or perhaps I should  say brush strokes available. I am learning these fairly quickly but they  will  take time to master. One facility which I particularly like is being able to saturate a page with colour to provide a base. The app has something in common with Photoshop but is I think rather easier to use, more intuitive. This  an early attempt to  use of the app. I am thinking of the sun coming round again.

Few things are more tedious than blunt knives, scissors or garden tools. Today I sharpen the scissors I use for cutting out photos from newspapers and magazines for my scrapbook. For some reason I have neglected the neat carborundum stone, coarse on one side, smooth on the other which has a slept along time in the drawer of my desk. It is  satisfying to fine the cutting edge and to feel it bite into the paper as  with a rejuvenated pair of scissor I negotiate the image of a pelican.

"It's easy when your panicking" says a man to a woman whom I pass in the street as he returns his mobile phone to his pocket. "I just pressed the red button instead of the green."  With such mistakes wars begin and worlds explode.

robin growing bean sticks

Today's robin urges me on as I clear the herb bed and collect compost from the heap. For him I mean worms.

With today's sunshine the stems of daffodils with buds pushing up have grown by two inches, If you watch  carefully you can almost see them grow.

The hard jobs are digging and spreading compost. The easy one is collecting last years bean poles from the bed and  stacking them neatly ready for use this summer.

greetings bouquets identity

Love being in the air here's my contribution to the seasonal  effusion.

While sitting outside the pub we count the separate men walking up the hill from the High Street bearing bouquets.

At the dry cleaners they ask for your telephone number before consulting their  coumputer and telling you who you are.

close up seagulls Valentine

A leaf examined.

A small flock - no more than ten or 12 - of seagulls keeps returning to one corner of The Grove. This morning I can see why. Someone has left some pieces of bread and other goodies on the grass. They must be the same birds I guess which have learnt about a regular act of charity. What is interesting is that the gulls don't settle to eat the food as land birds would, but rather swoop and pick it up on the wing, as they might fish at surface level on the sea. I know that seagulls do settle on ploughed fields where a tractor has just turned over the soil and on rubbish tips, but here they seem reluctant to land. May be it is the sheltered, intimate nature of The Grove which makes them shy.

One reason for posting this blog virtually on a daily basis is being unable to lose the deadline habit which was part of my former life as the editor of a weekly magazine. In September of last year I launched another blog less rigid in its self-imposed deadlines, but still not entirely free of them. It is devoted to short stories intended to amuse if not not enlighten.  A week or so ago, I thought that St Valentine's Day might be a reason for another post (no 21 in fact) in One Fine Day. The deadline in preparation for February 14 was today. Hence a new story, Making it Up, about a couple at a restaurant where the conversation over a lavish Valentine's Day menu is to say the least awkward.

colour saving collision avoided

More colour and light to make up for the winter gloom. Tulips in a vase in the morning light.

We meet a neighbour outside Morrison's. She has a carton of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her husband, a retired  doctor, forbids her to smoke at home. "I have just a eaten a croissant from the station cafe", she says. "So that I won't be hungry when I am shopping. If I'm hungry I usually buy more than I need".

In The Grove a woman careers towards me. She has her fingers on the keyboard of her mobile phone and her eye on the screen. A carrier bag swings noisily from her arm. As she looks up in time to avoid a collision she looks up at me with an expression which seems to say, look where you're going, as though I was not myself being forced to steer hard to starboard.

surprise piemientos fitting

Grass and moss growing on top of a wall above the railway station.

It must be at least 20 years ago that I first tasted pimientos de Padron in a tapas bar in Galicia in north west Spain. They are about the size of an average chilli and could be mistaken for one if it were not for the fact that they do not have the heat of chillies. Grilled and served with salt they taste as you owuld imagine chillies would if they weren't hot. A delightful experience. You are warned though as you eat them that every now and then you might find a hot one, but it is never embarrassingly sharp. You very rarely find them in England but here is a packet of them in Sainsbury's vegetable department. Grilled with Maldon salt served with a slice of ham they are for lunch.

Above a men's outfitter framed in the window is a man in his shirt sleaves being outfitted.  In a split second as you look up he raises his arm and you see the outfitter lift  a measure to it and to the spread of his shoulders.

thrush book exercise

Yes, Lucy, it was a thrush. And here it is caught by the powerful zoom of my compact camera about 30 metres away. You suppose a mistal thrush.  It has been singing on most days since the day in January when I supposed it (quite wrongly) to be a fieldfare. A couple of years ago  I saw a small flock  of fieldfares spread across the grass of The Grove, and I can see the difference. Apart from that they are not solitary birds at this time of year and a fieldfare would as you say not behave in this solitary manner, certainly not day after day.

This afternoon I read Neil MacGregor's Shakespeare's Restless World taken from his Radio 4 Series and based on objects surviving from the Poet's time. It is  a richly detailed account of the way people lived and thought as for example how they feared witches and assassination plots much as we fear terrorists today. But this afternoon's experience as I hold the book in my hand is that it is a solid beautiful object, made of sheets of paper cut and  bound together, encased in board and with a wrap-round cover. I love its smell. And much as I appreciate the convenience of my Kindle, it strikes me that nothing, but nothing can replace the solid feel of this book. The texture of the paper, the quality of the print, and the illustrations which fall in just the right place so not  to dominate the text as they might in a coffee table book but support it and come into view just at the right time. Long may there be books, real books.

Some people swim, some jog. My exercise is gardening. There is something to show for the expense of energy  as there is the other day when I shift barrow loads of compost to the beds which I have dug ready for sowing. Thanks to the rain I am behind with the vegetable plot and not as fit as I will be when all the beds are dug and the compost spread. Now to think about seeds.

purple-sprouting pies shadow

Cut these this  morning, steamed them for lunch. Served them with anchovy butter (butter mashed up with a tin of anchovies and a little lemon juice). Sublime.

At the Farmers Market this morning round meat filled pies are labelled Sussex Belles.  Something new to me but they sound like a revived tradition.  I ask the stall holder about them . "They've been around for about 2 months", she says, "I come from Cornwall where I used to make Cornish pasties, and I thought of starting something similar round here."

Under a hedgerow
A cat  glides and vanishes
A living shadow

daffodils snap balance

Gloomy dank winter resulted in a number of gloomy dank photographs in this spot over the past few months, or so it seems to me. Here, to make up for it are the first daffodils. They are in a vase it is true. The bunches from the flower stall were just buds a few days ago, but today they are fully open and release an amazing aroma in the process.

"Trying to capture a snap," says Olive who spots my camera as she passes me in The Grove.

"If you agree with me  on nine  out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist. " Ed Koch , three times mayor of New York who died recently.

singer three worst

Today's robin.

Further thoughts about the number three. More than three is too much; less than three is not enough.

The worst novel that I have ever read through to the end is  called Sauve Moi, "Save me". It is by Guillaume Musso. I finish it for two reasons. First because it is in French and set in the present day in New York and widens my vocabulary. Second because  it is so gripping that I can't put it down. Here's the plot in all its  triumphant absurdity.  A young French woman having failed to become a successful actress in America, falls for an American doctor who has  nearly run her over in his 4 x 4. She has booked her flight back to France but in her last two days in New York has a whirlwind romance with the doctor. He sees her to the airport and they part reluctantly. The plane crashes  into the sea and he gives her up for dead. But  it seems that she couldn't  bear to stay on the plane and it is revealed that she has left it just before take-off. No explanation of how she is allowed to leave especially in the years following 9/11. The doctor does  not know that she has survived and is sitting in Central Park moping when a female cop brings him a cup of coffee. It transpires  that the cop was shot 10 years earlier in the course of duty. She is a ghost.  She has been sent from the other side to collect the girl who wasn't meant to survive. Enough.... It goes on and on,  and  the plot becomes more and more complicated. Drugs and gangsters are involved. Oh, and it is the Doctor who shot the cop believing that she was a drug-dealer.  Disbelief suspended  long ago, as it becomes more and more ridiculous,  I can't stop reading it to find out what happens in the end. I won't tell you. Why should I?  I have had to suffer to find out.

portrait song three

Portrait of the artist on a cold day.

Song for the day is Woodstock by Joni Mitchell
  "We are stardust. We are golden
  And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."
Back to the garden that's where I've got to get back to.

Three is a good number, as in Three Beautiful Things and my brother Ken's new blog in which he posts three photographs at a time. It is called   http://whatphotography.wordpress.com  Three is good because it is less tidy than two or four. More generous than two and less extravagant than four. Look at his blog and you get an essay on taking photographs of stangers in the street and attendent problems. 

best thinking hat

A sense of anticipation. Ruddles Best in the glass though the glass bears the logo of something less attractive.

Up in the holly tree sits a pigeon
Does it think it's a pigeon or a holly tree
With a pigeon in? Does it think?
Do I think? What do I think? It's a pigeon in a holly tree,"
I think.

In The Grove I meet Peter. The wind is whistling round his head. "I'm going to buy a woolly hat," says he.

sky rushing watch

Reflection in a puddle under a pub table. The sheet of water is lying on a cement circle where they used to make carriage wheels when the pub was a carriage works.

From behind me a greeting voice, "good morning". I look up to see the back of a scurrying figure. It is Olive. "I'm rushing for a meeting," she says as she rushes on down Sutherland Road.

My watch-battery packs up after two and a half years. It is a Swatch and keeps perfect time, until it stops. So trusting in its accuracy am I that this morning I attempt to stop the bracket clock in the hall which appears to be a quarter of an hour fast in order to reset it. The clock is innocent and I am forced to apologise, as one does to innocent mechanisms.

dance fieldfare tears

Dancing trunks.

The thrush which I heard singing last month and which I discussed with another bird watcher in The Grove was I now realise a fieldfare, still a variety of thrush but I am now convinced a fieldfare. I have seen these handsome birds before in The Grove. They usually flock in fields adjoining woodland where they breed.  A  song thrush would not be singing on a frosty January day, more likely a fieldfare. They visit Britain  from central and eastern Europe in the Winter.

"We laughed a little, cried a little", is a tongue-in-cheek, self-mocking cliché that comes to me out of the past. After a bibulous dinner we explain Utube to some people who haven't yet encountered it. Frank Sinatra was their choice of nostalgia . "Do you remember that?" says Dave to Julie.  Dave is a man not given to showing his feelings but as the familiar tune erupts, feelings begin to show. "They were playing that when I asked you to marry me, " he chokes. We laugh a little, cry a little. 

ice jam time-saver

A lip of ice on top of a wall.

At the Brasserie des Sources in The Pantiles which opened in November they seek as the name suggests  to create a  cross-Channel impression. The croissants are  light and taste of butter but are small in comparison to what you expect and they are served with jam. Maybe things have changed in France, but jam with croissants is new to me. My preference would be for croissants of a respectable size and no jam.

Some articles in magazines and newspapers, particularly political articles, are becoming increasingly predictable. I find that it saves times having read the title to content myelf with the last paragraph.

He is on the up-escalator, she on the down. It is the evening rush hour on the London Underground. They recognise one another almost at the same moment despite the 10 years since they lost touch. The twentieth post in One Fine Day tells their story.

aerial love reverse

Chimney and aerial and with magpie.

In a shop window they are promoting Valentine's Day. "It must be love" proclaims one big poster. attached to it is another  poster showing a box of chocolates and the words "Half Price when you buy any Valentines Card". To set a price on true love.

While I am  proudly showing my daughter my scrap book it occurs to me that I am reversing a procedure in which 50 years ago she might have been showing me hers.

snow brave red flag

The current batch of photos mostly involves the snow which came and settled but did not stay as long as it has in recent years. Here is Mr Crow with an acorn which was probably buried by Miss Squirrel and forgotten.

A filling has fallen out. I have know Tim my dentist for nearly 30 years and he knows that the less I know about about what he is doing  the happier I am. So I lie back content to let him fill the vacancy without commentary. The drill buzzes and hums. "You're very brave Joe," he says. It is only then that it occurs to me that he has not applied the customary local anaesthetic. I have only the slightest twinge of discomfort. But brave? Me?  Flattery is better than  anaesthetic.

From the top of the park called Calverley Ground there is a good view of the southern part of Tunbridge Wells, The Common gathered round it to the west and the heights of Ashdown Forest in the distance.  The clusters of building are dominated today by a single flag flying from the ramparts of Hoopers the department store. It is a red flag on which is inscribed in white letters  the word Sale.
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

fence digging jolly

Another joint in the fence. They don't make them like this nowadays.

In The Grove a squirrel digs  frantically for something it or another squirrel  has buried. It senses me watching. Does it fear competition? It runs off a little way. I walk on and turn round after a few yards.  With me out of the way, the squirrel has returned and is back at work with its fore paw. I understand the excitement of searching for anything buried underground.  A new crop of  potatoes, truffles, or a hoard of gold coins.

In Sevenoaks bus station an old couple cling to one another as they cross the road in the rain. They are a jolly pair. She a pretty old lady.  He a  bit of a card. A large drop splashes down from the roof of the shelter. They both laugh and catch my eye. "Got me in the eye, that one," says the old man. They go off laughing.

doodle flavour dotty

 "Signature.

 In pursuit of a lost flavour. My Proustian memory concerns a dish of sweet and sour chicken made with  slow cooked onions, tomato, vinegar, sugar and spices including cardamom, ginger, Cinnamon, turmeric and chili. It was during World War 2 and my Mother, my brother and I were living in Sidmouth in Devon to be away from the bombs. My Grandmother was staying with us. Someone sent some of this sweet and sour dish to my Grandmother in a jar. It incorporated, I suspect,  though I don't think she had read Proust,  her own Proustian associations. Though it was intended as a treat for her, she kindly gave me some, I think  it was cold, though it could have been warmed up. Hot or cold the unfamiliar balance of flavours  has stayed with me for the ensuing75 years. I mentioned this  to my daughter Pippa the other day, and she tracked down  the ingredients on the Internet and the  I was able to bring the memory to life. At least more of less. Now all I have to do when I cook it next time is adjust  the spices for I think that I  was too cautious in their distribution. The last of the jointed chicken - two wings - resides in the fridge smothered in a spicy unguent of onion and tomato sauce. Now to begin a 12 volume novel pivoted on the experience.

The pedestrian crossing in Frant Road is monitored by bleeping traffic lights. The rythm of the bleeps is deliberately timed to make pestrians hurry.  At no cost must motorists be kept waiting. An old man shouts at the  bleeping lights to slow down as he approaches the crossing. "Hey," he says. It isn't me shouting but it could be.

frost greyhound nursery

Frost and sunshine in The Grove. A photograph I keep taking.

While I am photographing pigeons and a crow, a woman tells me that she has just seen an altercation between a chaffinch and a blackbird in a puddle. They seemed to be disputing bath times.  "Might interest you." The woman is walking a gentle greyhound  which is clad in a green jacket strapped over its back. We discuss the  unseasonal thrush which was singing in The Grove the other day. "Yes," she says, "he comes into  my garden."

Yesterday in the Farmers' Market the stallholder who sells garden plants, has battled into town  despite the weather. She shows me on her camera screen a photo of here nursery. Deep in snow and her in a red jacket trying vainly to clear it.

tulip-tree skipping vitamin D

The tulip tree I see every morning from out bedroom window presents a threatening view at this time of year thanks to the severe pruning which it underwent in the Autumn. It is an old tree as it is several sturdy trunks testify. In the summer when in leaf  with its pale green tulip-like flowers it will look more welcoming. In the meantime I can watch squirrels and pigeons in its branches profiled against the rising sun when, as this morning, the sun is not covered ( as it is in the photograph) by layers of cloud.

In The Grove a woman in her thirties I would guess is taking a skipping rope for a walk. Her progress consists of a series of skipping steps followed by one of brisk walking. Skip, walk, skip, walk.

We sit outside The Compasses at lunchtime absorbing bone-building Vitamin D from the sun and morale-building energy from a pint of Ruddles Best bitter.

squirrel quarter-life dress

Today's squirrel

Mid-life crisis? Having left far behind the age when it is supposed to appear, I have always wondered what precisely the term means. Now I hear on BBC 4 an entire programme devoted to the "quarter-life crisis". It is supposed to affect people between 23 and 3 0.  Apparently they do not know what to do with their lives or if thy do, how they should go about it.Well I never!

In Boots I try to find a replacement foil for my electric razor. The girl assistant goes in search of "the expert." A man in paint splattered dungarees arrives. He knowledgeable and helpful. "I must be careful not get paint on your razor," he says. Having provided me with what I want and received my thanks, he says: "I'm sorry not to be in my normal clothes."

scrap Anacreon tennis ball

 




























Today's doodle occurs because I don't want to throw away the rough cardboard backing to a notepad which I am about to discard. I like its rough texture.




Yesterday I asked for the connection between the fifth century BC Greek poet Anacreon , sometimes described as the poet of food, wine and harmony, and the inauguration ceremony this week of President  Barak Obama. in his second term of office.
It was to Anacreon that a poem by Ralph Tomlinson was dedicated in the 18th Century England. Tomlinson was a member of the  Anacrontic Society, a gentleman's club whose members wished to promote music and its performance. His poem was set to music by John Stafford Smith  a member of the Society and became a popular drinking song in Britain and America. By now you will have guessed that it was this tune - ranging through one and a half octaves and difficult to sing, certainly for the likes of me - that was eventually adopted to fit the words of a poem by the American Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment by British Navy Ships of  Fort McHenry in Chesapeake Bay in 1814. The refrain goes,
"Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave".

Outside Morrison's supermarket a Labrador waits patiently, a green tennis ball beside its paws. A talisman, a toy, a token that its owner will sooner or later return.

lichen Sharapova thaw

 Frosted lichen draws on walls. The camera looking close explores new horizons. What do they signify?

Winter is good time to work on my scrap book of random images randomly arranged. The driving force behind it is to include pictures, logos, drawings, photographs, labels and the like which appeal to me, and which I would like to see again. And which entertain, once pasted into position, with unlikely contrasts in style, subject matter and scale with neighbouring images. There are few rules on subject matter. Animals predominate because I like animals.
One notable scarcity in the book so far is sporting photos. Surprising because the quality of  football, tennis, cricket and other photographs as they appear in magazines and newspapers is so high. What I don't like is the way sportsmen and sportswomen appear on camera. Ugly expressions of triumph, mouths gaping in mid-bellow, fists pumping the air, are not for me.
There are exceptions. There is one cut-out of Kevin Petersen, bat above his head, concluding a cover drive, a classic of style and power. And today I find one of  Maria Sharapova, following through after striking the ball during a serve.   As she leans forward , her weight  is on her left foot, her racket swinging past her left thigh. Her right foot has risen behind her,to shoulder level. Her hair flies out  behind her head. Her mouth is open as it emits the piercing scream that accompanies every stroke. Not my favourite sporting personality but a photograph for our times.

Ice is still treacherous on the pavement under the melting snow and slush. But the branches of trees and gutters are beginning to release large drops which explode as they land with a monotonous plopping sound.