lecture, crier, relief

"...The subject of my talk to day is 'quantitative easing...'"

In the pantiles is a portly man in 18th century clothes - red, braided jacket, breaches, white socks, a tricorn hat with a cockade. He holds a hand bell, which he rings from time to time. He is a town-crier. Suddenly he begins to cry: "O yea! O yea!" He has a good voice but his articulation is poor. "O yea, O yea" he repeats, and follows it by something, which is lost in the wind ... or two intervening centuries.

An email transmitted to a friend is unanswered. It is a reply to an email of the previous day. It hasn't arrived, but ignorant of its loss, because my "sent file" confirms its dispatch, I wonder whether it has been received. That's two people wondering if they are being ignored and what errors of etiquette or tact they may have unknowingly committed. Days pass. There is a reluctance on both sides to chide or complain of neglect. Relief all round when communications are resumed and there is a resolution in future to ask the brutal question : "Did you get my message?"

puddle, frugality, picture

Puddles offer all sorts of surprises. Who remembers Dr Foster, who went to Gloucester and stepped in a puddle right up to his middle and never went there again?

Having, with out much thought splashed out on something, which I should not have done, I find myself meditating upon frugality. And the pleasures attendant upon it. Things you put away in case they come in useful: packaging neatly folded for re-use; string tied into rings; screws, pins, rubber bands and paper clips, tidy in little boxes. Then there are the bargains!
Oh yes. And that paradoxically is where I began with my piece of extravagance - The BBC set of DVDs of famous Shakespeare productions, with a big percentage discount from Amazon. The contradiction is that frugality probably most of all means going without. And that is what I haven't!

In the Grove, this afternoon, a pale moon in the blue sky above a silver birch. It seems that the tree, with its bright bark and the silver moon, belong inextricably together.

skin, rain forest, curry

Inspired by an onion shedding its peel in a wooden bowl containing onions, and a recent onion photograph by Marja-Leena , I took these this morning using the macro and super-macro facilities on the Olympus.

A promotional booklet in the post has a photograph of a roast chicken being carved. A slogan says: try our rain forest friendly free-range chicken.

In the Pantiles the smell of curry hangs in the air. It is a very English urban smell.

romance, statistics, waiting

Love on the roof.

An email from the Department of Psychology, Washington University of St Louis, invites me to partake in some research on Blogging and Personality. I spend half an hour filling in a form, the purpose of which is to "investigate the relation between people's personality and the content and style of their writing". Having completed the form, I learn among other things, that I have a higher score than average on 5 different "personality dimensions" - 31.7% on Neuroticism, 69.7% on Extroversion; 53.5% on Openness; 69.7% in Conscientiousness and 30.8% on Agreeableness. That is all - nothing average or below average. No other conclusions are revealed. What do these scores indicate? I am not sure what the exercise means, or who will benefit from my helping to feed one of those beasts that require statistics to stay alive. Or how the self-assessed characteristics, preferences and inclinations which I am asked to grade, will relate, one way or another, to what I write here.

With my camera on the Common, I wander about hoping that a bird, will appear and pose for me; or at best fly past, when my camera, properly adjusted, is pointing in the right direction, and the sun is in the right place to highlight its colouring. I long for a crow, its wings spread, circling a tree before landing. I doubt if it will; and it doesn't. But find that I am enjoying myself in much the same way as a fisherman, waiting for a bite, which he knows is unlikely to materialize, enjoys his solitary sport.

thrush, newfoundland, wind

Song thrush or missal thrush?

Seal, the newfoundland that lives in a house on the corner of the Grove is being washed by her master. She is tethered to a gate post, while he directs a hose over her sleek fur. She is called seal because as a puppy, she resembled one. Now she looks like a seal again.

In the tops of the trees there is a hustling and a gentle rumbling as a chill wind rises. A small flock of starlings rises and wheels overhead.

roof-mates, L'esprit de l'escalier, visitor

Conversation piece.

In the pub we are talking about the rival merits of Melbourne and Sydney. I admit not to have visited Melbourne, but recall that on a ferry in Sydney Harbour once, I head a woman say to her son, that Sydney was "the arse-hole of Australia". "Where are you from?" I had asked her. "Melbourne" she'd said. "So much for Sydney!" I say. " What you should have said," says my pub companion, quick off the mark is: "Just passing though, then?"

This morning from the telephone wire outside our bedroom window a sparrow peeps in. It flies off and the wire swings up and down.

party, moon, surprises

After the party.

Over the Grove, there is a sickle moon and almost as though attached to it, Venus shines bright and unblinking. Even the street lamps cannot dim their light.

Some experimental photographs of birds running on the grass, flying or cavorting on the rooftops this afternoon do not prove entirely useless, and there are some pleasant and rewarding surprises - unexpected compositions and curious attitudes.

remnants, spinner, infantry

  

What is left of a poster which has been stripped off a wall looks better than the original.

In the Farmer's Market, a woman, beside her wool stall, spins unwashed wool, rich in lanolin. She works the pedals of the wheel with her feet and draws out the spun wool with her hands, which are clothed in mittens against the morning cold. You see a lot of spinning wheels in antique shops and the like round here, but rarely see them in use.

The street cleaning vehicle growls along the road, its brushes whirring in the gutters. It is  like a tank. In front of it, advances the infantry, a uniformed woman wielding a large broom.

evening, old words, triumphs

Evening over Mount Sion.

Martha's almost lost words, I can now confirm, are still to be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, which hangs on to every new word that is established by written usage and never relinquishes an old one. I'm moved to write: Our nidifice echoes with my crocitations following the aretalogy of Martha's research. Translated: our nest echoes with my caws following wondrous tale of Martha's research. Incidentally the verb nidify, meaning to make a nest, is still to be found in modern dictionaries.

It strikes me this morning that the pleasure of reading a foreign language comes from the satisfaction of repeatedly overcoming an initial failure to understand a phrase or a sentence with a sudden dawning of comprehension Trumpets sound for a moment, much as they do when the numbers begin to fall in to place as you get to near to solving a sudoku.

leaf, unchanging, flowering

 

A leaf out of Barrett Bonden's book is this classic Le Creuset cast iron casserole, exhibited here for its resilient  technology and functional beauty.  Two leaves in fact. When I use it yesterday in the preparation of some end of season partridges, I think  to myself: I've always had this casserole, or so it seems. And then I remember that it is a wedding present from friends, who must pass here as Mr and Mrs Barrett Bonden, no less.  It is a long time ago, and my memory may be playing up,  but I'm 99 per cent  sure that this is the case. If I am wrong, doubtless BB will put me right.

In the window of a charity shop is  a book of photographs of World War II.  Faces of Londoners in a London Street are the same faces that you might see today, only their clothes and hair styles are different. Spotting similarities  with the present day down the ages is often a moving experience, making you think of the persistence of the human race and the odd strains of consistency which it manages to show.

It must be  a year since I was last commenting on daffodil buds  and their imminent flowering. Today,  in some sheltered gardens, there are already daffodils in flower.

crocitation, relief, headlong

Martha, who visits this site and who goes by the name, Crow, on hers, hasI think invented a word, which deserves to end up in the Oxford English Dictionary. See her comment on my 22 February post. Her word is "crocitation". She says that she has"adopted" it which half implies that it already exists. But having looked it up in two dictionaries, I now suspect that it must be of her own making. She says that she is going to use it as much as possible, and as, a fellow crow watcher, I can promise my support,. According to a TV programme I saw recently a word can be included in the OED, once evidence of its printed usage is established. I don't know if blogs count as printed usage, but it should not take long for it to spread from the screen to the page.
On the question of my crows engaging in Springtime bonding, I confess that I have not witnessed such behaviour. Though the wood pigeons in these parts seem to do little else in the Spring. When the leaves appeared on the trees last summer the crows were much less in evidence, and later in the year were joined by two or three other crows. I assumed these to be offspring, the result of bonding no doubt, but bonding carried out, as befits old fashioned English crows, in private.
Meanwhile though I like the idea of crocitation, I am not sure of its precise meaning. Could we have one please, Martha.

I reach for my wallet and find that it is not, where I think it should be, in my pocket. On coming home, when to my relief I discover that it is on my desk, I count this as a beautiful thing, and can proceed with writing this blog, without first contacting insurance companies, banks and the like.

Even more remarkable than the speed with which squirrels run up the trunks of trees, is the speed and assurance of their headlong descent.

comfortable, RSB, morality

There is usually a wood pigeon or two in the lime tree on the corner opposite our house. It is a comfortable place to sit if you are a wood pigeon, with an interesting enough view.

Sometimes a resource turns up, which you didn't know existed but which you realize must now be hard to live without. Witness the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds http://www.rspb.org.uk/ website. It would have saved me a blush or two if I had thought of checking it earlier. Click "blue tit" or "great tit" for example, and not only will you have a picture, notes on its habitat and behaviour, but a sample of its song.

At the traffic lights, the road is clear in both directions, but the light is red. Everyone crosses except a small boy and his mother, who is setting a good example. Sometimes, I think to myself, this is the way that morals work..

great tit, parody, hollandaise

Great tit just in focus.

What is best about parodies is the respect that have for what is parodied. They aren't always easy to write, but sometimes they come together tidily with the idea that prompts them. I don't know whether the one I found myself writing the other is any good, but it came into my head and had to work itself out. I suppose that Gerard Manley Hopkins' Glory be to God for Dappled Things is much parodied, but made me look at the poem again to see how much of it I had remembered. I wonder whether Dave Bonta's meme-like essay, in which, reflecting some irritation with the mode, he lists 25 gloriously surreal, random things about himself, could be described as a parody. It certainly mocks gently certainly made me and, apparently, a lot of other people laugh out loud. You'll find it, a few posts back, on http://www.vianegativa.us/

A large disgruntled looking brill from the fish stall at the Pantiles farmers' market demands a Hollandaise, and gets one. Hollandaise is one of those things, like bread and mayonnaise, which it resembles, that are notable because they translate original ingredients into something quite beautiful and completely different.

lunch, territory, speed

In the Pantiles.

Although I would not describe myself as a birdwatcher - a description which suggests more knowledge and commitment than I have - I do listen to birds and attempt to identify them by their song and appearance. In the Grove, recently I have learnt to recognise certain territories where different species regularly appear. In one tall silver birch there is invariably a great tit, which I was able to identify the other day high up in the branches through the lens of the camera when I zoomed on to it, though I could not have seen the detail (a yellow breast with a bar down the middle) with the naked eye, for it is a very small bird. In the opposite corner of the Grove, a song thrush is invariably in the branches of one of two oaks, singing now, as it is supposed to, in mid-February, a the top of its voice. A few trees away, the ring doves reside. Of one I posted a snapshot, yesterday. I find that the closer you look into the branches of the trees here, and the harder you listen the more there is to see and hear. But clearly for me, it will be necessary to put a name to the many I do not yet recognise.

Although I enjoy taking photographs, I do not and never will claim to be a photographer. Digital cameras make life very easy and their ability to simplify complex procedures for the amateur are remarkable. Even then it has taken me a long time to fathom what the Olympia which I acquired last summer can do with a little prompting. Objects in motion have, until now been a problem, because I have not know how to coordinate speed and aperture appropriately. Now I have discovered that by turning a dial and clicking, the camera will make the calculations and operate the machinery more or less correctly, I can photograph running dogs, flying birds and the like, and I have been experimenting ever since. Nothing very much to be proud of, as I can scarcely lay claim to the art of capture, but there is a pleasure in the achievement.

ring dove, season, contrast

 Caught in the light of the afternoon sun the feathers of this ring dove look white rather than the usual  grey .

As Spring makes  its promises this afternoon I feel the warmth of the sun and note that shadows are becoming shorter.

In the Pantiles among the crowds at the Farmers' Market, a small elderly man in a broad-brimmed leather hat, holds hands with a tall, elderly woman.

new bear, probably, carton

Another bear has turned up here. The last one, burgundy in colour, using the French pronunciation, was called Hubert. This one answers to Camembert.

An advertisement on London buses has attracted attention by proclaiming "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy yourself". This worries me, not for the reason that it may worry believers; it worries me because it begs so many questions. "You might equally say: "There is probably no God. So start worrying." Who ever heard of the word "probably" in an advertisement, anyway? Early this morning, as all this comes to mind, I amuse myself devising subversive advertisements.

In the High Street I pass a woman holding in her hands a square carton. It looks new and is yellow and has something printed on it in a handsome type face, which I cannot read. I suppose what is odd is that something like that would normally be in a bag, one of those smart stiff bags with a thick string, and a logo on the side. Curiosity is my favorite vice and one which I seldom apologise for. As we proceed in opposite directions I know that the contents of the box will always be a mystery. Perhaps that makes it more intriguing. What did the woman look like? What was she wearing? I haven't a clue.

parrot, notebook, catkins

Inside a parrot tulip, the sun is stirring.

A new note book today. Eight identical black pocket books are stacked beside the printer. I am not sure that I am proud of their content. To begin with I omitted dates altogether, so that they do not help me, as a diary might, piece together the passing days. Now at least I know that the last book begins on June 6, 2008. I see on the first page that I was reminding myself that the Spanish word for swift is venceja, which means that I must have been watching those agile birds slicing the air above the old town of Sitges, and listening to their sharp, wild cries.
When the series started, the books were almost entirely devoted to drawings, now relatively few are scattered through the pages. The words are hard to read and are marred by hasty composition. Still the books are a precious record for me of thoughts and observations, which have often filtered through to this blog.

From the train I see hazel catkins. Who was it who compared these parallel spikes of minute flower clusters to "green rain"? I think to myself that it might be Mary Webb, the now forgotten Shropshire, poet and novelist. I have a slender volume of her poems, but cannot find the line.

drey, meeting, job

A drey, or squirrel's nest. At least that is what I suppose it to be. For I have never seen a squirrel enter or leave it.

I have an appointment with a friend and collaborator of several years standing. We have never met or even spoken before. Emails and blogs have sufficed as a basis for exchange of thought and sentiment. During four hours of talk, the person I am talking to stalks the person I partly knew; facts bow and dance. Threads are taken up and left fluttering in the wind; byways are entered and abandoned. "We'll be in touch." We, both of us disappear in opposite directions, into London's hustling present and nagging past. It is a beautiful thing to see you Lucy, surrounded and informed by different and unexpected dimensions.

From the train, I catch sight, in an office block window, of a woman alone at a table in a meeting room. I think to myself that she is waiting to be interviewed for a job. Through the window, behind which she sits, across the train line, over the graffiti, and through the train window, I sense with mixed feelings of dread and nostalgia, the world of business and competition.

shadow, cauliflower, celebration

On the trunk is a shadow of a branch.

"I want a cauliflower, " says a woman to her husband at the supermarket, "I just feel like one."

Above the High Street, caught in the wire, which straddles the road, where the Christmas lights are hung in season, is a bouquet of balloons, yellow, mauve and white, which have broken loose. The wind blows the bunch along the wire until it reaches the centre. There it bobs and writhes, a celebration with nothing to celebrate but itself.

frozen, independence,small talk

February rose.

A small girl on a small fairy bike, with a pair of auxiliary wheels at the rear, wears a pink crash helmet. "You're helping me!" she protests as her father, tries to help her negotiate a corner.

A Sainsbury's this morning, the young man at the checkout practices customer relations as some might practice a tennis serve. "Have you had a good day, so far? " he asks. It is 10.30 in the morning. "So far, " I admit. Whereupon, as he applies my purchases to the bar code reader, he demands: "Are you looking forward to anything special later today?" I remember that I have been similarly questioned by the same young man on a previous occasion, and I find myself again too surprised to come up with a suitable answer A backhand, passing shot low over the net straight to the base line, is what is called for.