reality, ball, crow

"The universe is such a strange and wonderful place that reality will always outrun the wildest imagination. There will always be things unknown and perhaps unknowable." The late Arthur C Clarke.

This morning against the base of a wall, I spot the remains of a tennis ball. It is cut open and a tuft of its soft covering sticks up like an ear. It reminds me of the West Country, nature photographer, Johny Kingdom, who, the other night on TV, showed how he had cut open a tennis ball and left it suspended in the woods in the hope that a dormouse might nest in it.

In the Grove I meet an artist friend, who tells me that she has been watching a crow chasing a squirrel round a tree. I realize that it is the crow I call Mr Crow, who, as she speaks is waddling across the grass with Mrs Crow not far off. "I've never seen a crow chasing a squirrel," she says. I explain that Mr Crow owns the Grove and has to keep the squirrels and others in order.

1000 posts, red tail, tea stain

Post number 1000 in this web log means that I have now managed to note, on an almost daily basis, 3000 beautiful things or at least, things "counter, original, spare, strange", that have touched, amused or interested me and I hope done the same for visitors to the site.

Through the crack in the top of a desk-drawer, a red tail betrays the presence of a ball of red string.

Teas stains are always good value. On a yellow post-it note, a sepia stain from a tea cup needs only a dot for an eye, three lines to make a snout, and I have a bear's head,

Daffodils, strange language, conscience

The discussion on daffodils and Wordsworth's poem on the subject, which followed Lucy's montage in her blog http://www.boxelder.blogspot.com/, sets me thinking. I had forgotten until this morning that the source of the poem is to be found in the diary of William's remarkable sister Dorothy. Her entry for April 15 1802 reads:
"...We saw a few daffodils close to the waterside, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them. They looked so gay ever glancing ever changing."The poem was not written until 1804. William we are told, in this context, would often make Dorothy read out a passage from her journal to revive his memory. For merit and freshness Dorothy's words may seem, in our less polished age, to have the edge over her brother's.

The ink from the roller ball pen on one page of my note book was not dry when I closed the book . An interesting script appears on the opposite page. What does it say, in what language, belonging to what beings, in what remote corner of the universe?

Someone shouts across the road at a parking meter attendant, who is busy noting car numbers: How do you sleep at night?" Horlicks," says the meter man. Disarmed by his sense of humour, the hostile note dissappears. "Something a bit strong in it, I expect," laughs his antagonist.

feet, stained glass, rain

Through a window half obscured by a lowered blind I see, from the street, a pair of feet in trainers resting on a coffee table. Beside the feet is a pint tankard, half full. Opposite, in the otherwise, bare room, a television screen against the wall.

On one side of the Compasses pub is a window, in the centre of which is a circular area of burgundy, stained glass, edged by a ring of lead. I had not noticed this detail until I passed it this afternoon. In the centre of the circle is the pub's insignia, a pair of compasses, in lead relief.

I sit beside the window with a book. Every now and then I look up to see the rain, faint against the bay tree and the hedge behind it. On the wisteria, raindrops hang at regular intervals.

territory, triumph, ballet

Two blackbirds on the roof of the house opposite, this morning, dispute territory. One sits on the chimney stack while the other marches up and down on the ridge of the roof. Every now and then, the roof-walker hops on to the tiles, then back on to the ridge. Suddenly both birds fly up in to the air, peck vainly at one another in mid-air, and return to the front line.

In one of his mysterious, densely structured Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges describes an imaginary novel, where one of two antagonists will not refute the sophisms of his opponent "so as not to be right in a triumphal fashion."

In the Grove, this afternoon, I stand still for a moment, look around me and listen. There seems to be a ballet in progress. Children on swings; families strolling with and without push chairs, each at a different pace; boys throwing balls at one another, turning, diving and catching; dogs scampering, birds on the wing, in the wings. The music is provided by the shouts and cries of children, the gruff calls of adults, the song of birds. The choreography is self-defining.

car-cruncher, herrings, red cardigan

I read with satisfaction about a the fossilised remains of a 50ft long marine reptile found in Svalbard in the Arctic circle. The creature, which lived 150 million years ago, apparently had teeth the size of swords. According to the paleontologist Dr Jorn Hurum of the University of Oslo, it would have been able to pick up a car in its jaws and crunch it in half.

Surveying the label, this lunchtime, on a container of sweet pickled herrings (one of my favourite things to eat, because, in the right mood, they make me imagine I'm a sea gull), I read, under the heading "Allergy Advice", the simple statement, "Contains fish".

The story of the red cardigan. I have, for many years, owned a red, woollen cardigan. It is a comfort garment for cold evenings. For a long time, I could not bring myself to use it, because it reminded me of an unsympathetic sub-editor, who, on arriving in the office, would, every day, put on a garment, which happened to be of the same colour. I think it must have been to save wear and tear on his suit, an indication of his Dickensian malignity and compulsive meanness. As time went by my memory of the sub-editor faded, and I went back to my cardigan. It has since become a favorite again. So much so that a vast hole has appeared in one of its sleeves, something I am prepared to live with. Not Heidi. She can see the hole while I, the wearer, can only feel my elbow sticking through it. So last night she cobbles the hole and can look at the me without shuddering at her ragged consort. Now she threatens to look for a new one. But new clothes are never the same. Old ones with their associations and familiarity, their knowledge of your protrusions and inclinations, are irreplaceable.

risotto, waking, clear

The chicken we roasted on Sunday serves four people. There is cold chicken for the two of us on the next day and yesterday a risotto made from the stock. The risotto rice is gradually swollen with hot stock. It is dressed with a mixture of dried ceps and fresh cultivated mushrooms stewed in butter and a little dry Madeira. A fitting end to this generous bird.

Wake this morning to the song of blackbirds.

Satisfaction this afternoon at having cleared a line of books that has accumulated on my desk. Now only two stand by - Chambers Dictionary and Petit Larousse.

lamppost, laisser passer, donated

This morning, as I watch the lamppost outside our window swaying in the wind, I remember, or think I remember, a lamppost in the film Gone with the Wind. I may have got it wrong, but it is, I think Vivian Leigh, who, overcome with grief or anger, at one point, runs down the steps of a town house and stops her onward rush by holding on to a lamppost. The lamppost sways and, until today, when I see our own lamppost sway in a similar way, I think, quite mistakenly, that it reveals a weakness of the film set, which the director has not spotted.

There is a pedestrian crossing controlled by traffic-lights on the route which links the traffic free Pantiles with the traffic free Chapel Place. The pavement is very narrow, and this afternoon a crocodile of well behaved, nicely chattering French school children, queues to get across obstructing other pavement users. Coming up behind, a school teacher shepherds the children to one side against a railing, "laisser passer, laisser passer," he shouts at them. I make my way to the edge of the crossing as the lights change. "Vite, vite, vite " says the teacher, and then to me: "Sorry! You're not one of our kids." "Quel dommage," I say.

Jorge Luis Borges is one of may favourite authors and his little (in size) book Ficciones is the one which I might well choose to take with me to a desert island. The short stories, complex explorations of mind, language and culture, are so dense, that they can be read again and again.
My current copy of the book is published by Everyman as part of its Millennium Library. The publishers gave complete sets of its titles on the occasion of the millennium to a number of schools for their libraries. Unfortunately many schools saw no use for these handsome editions, and sold them on. Mine has the stamp of Bradbourne School, Sevenoaks on the fly leaf. It is otherwise in pristine state. There is no sign of any child having opened it. In the preface by John Sturrock, I read; Something to be remembered about Borges, even in the casual context of a preface, is that he used so few words that all of them must be attended to." That no one at Bradbourne School attended to any of his words, may have appealed to the ironical, searching multi-layered mind of the author.

page 123, customers, mistake

In response to Lucy's wheeze of quoting the sixth, seventh and eighth sentence on page 123 of a book you happen to be reading, here goes:
"O Wazir," broke in the other, "this old man is in his dotage. He does not know what he says. I alone killed her and must pay the penalty."
The provenance may be a give away. If anyone is in doubt I can reveal it later. I am supposed to tag five others in the hope that they will take up this interesting exercise. I'm sorry, Lucy I can just about muster four suitable people with access to the internet: Lucas, the poet; Barrett Bonden, the nautical man; Tristan, the cavalier of the road, and Clare, originator of the three beautiful things theme for bloggers. The mechanical procedure of tagging defeats me, but I hope that they may pick this up, and pursue it in one way or another. It should make an interesting anthology.

"Customers wanted. No previous experience needed." So reads a billboard outside the Mind charity ship in the High Street.

In the post office where the queue is long and irritable, a little girl suddenly hugs me round the legs. "Wrong person, darling", says her mother.

moon rise, spider, bed centre

Yesterday evening, Heidi says, "Look outside". I go out.There is a dense bank of cloud, like a solid hillside above the Common. Overhead, the sky is clear and lit by a sickle moon. The moon's unlit area and outline, are clearly visible, in shadow form, below the bright crescent.

In a the windscreen of a car a giant spider straddles the glass from roof to bonnet. It is the reflection of telephone wires radiating out from the telegraph pole beneath which the car is parked.

In Mount Sion a big delivery lorry bears the inscriptions "Bed Centre. Sleeping solutions.uk.com"
I think of John Donne's poem which begins:
Busy old foole, unruly sunne,
Why dost though thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us...?
And concludes:
...Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere:
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy spheare."

laughter, thrills, winking

I step out on to the front doorstep to see if anything is going on. A magpie laughs raucously. I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian and it seems that I have succeeded without saying a word. The noise that magpies make is perfectly represented by the French word jacassser, which means the noise that magpies make, and gives rise, I suppose it's this way round, to the alternative French word for magpie, jacasse, the more usual one being pie. Jacasser also means to chatter.

In the Grove, it is just beginning to rain. Two small children on a single skateboard, precariously sitting, one in front of the other, hurtle down a sloping path. They scream with a mixture of delight and fear. One holds upright an open, pink umbrella.

A battered turquoise car of the sort, which boasts headlamp-covers is parked in Mount Sion. The mechanism, which raises the covers automatically is working only for one lamp. The other one is raised like a pronounced eyelid. The overall effect is a car winking.

spice, anemone, advice

Last night, a spicy mayonnaise is based on a paste of anchovies, Dijon mustard, lemon juice and blanched parsley. These are creamed in the food processor with egg yolk before the gentle addition of oil. It brings vividly to life a fillet of pan-fried cod, which might otherwise have been dull.

The wood anemone plant, perhaps my favourite flower, which I found in garden shop has settled down nicely in a relatively sunless spot beneath the bay tree next to some pale yellow primulas.

It is one of those days when , though it doesn't rain properly, drops of water seem to blow in the wind. I retire indoors and open an anthology, which I haven't looked at for some time, in search, I suppose, of advice It is The Rattle Bag edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. The advice which I find is from Ogden Nash and brief. It is entitled Notes on Ingenuity.
Here's a good rule of thumb
Too clever is dumb.

coffee, empty bottle, motto

The coffee-roasting machine at Ishmael is going full blast and the busy smell drifts across the pavement.

In a telephone kiosk, abandoned on the shelf beside the phone, is an empty bottle of Irish Meadow. What is a Irish Meadow? According to the label, " A smooth blend of fresh cream with white wine and Irish whiskey."

Pondering my life so far, I say to myself this morning, that I have been wrong more often than I have been right, and that I have been fortunate to reached the present more or less intact. In fact, were I to need a motto I can think of nothing better than Muddle Through

eros, sweet and sour, cucumber

A middle aged Big Issue seller outside Charing Cross stands on one leg and spreads his arms like Eros to improve his trade.

Beauty is better for a rough edge, and sweetness for sour thoughts.

A man takes big bites out of a cucumber as he walks down Regent Street.

after the bang, feather, pigeon

A circular tunnel, 17 miles tunnel long and 1o ft wide, has been completed under the French Swiss border with the sole purpose of crashing sub-atomic particles into one another, at just below the speed of light. It is the largest particle accelerator ever built.The objective is to try to recreate the conditions that occurred within seconds of the explosion, which kicked off the universe more than 13 billion years ago. That the people, who devised the experiment and perceived the need for it, are themselves products of the explosion to which they and everything else, sun, moon, earth and stars, owe their existence, is thought-provoking and not a little moving.

A soft, white feather, wedged into the base of an unopened bud, waves in the wind - a strange surrender.

A pigeon, pecking at a sandwich-crust in the gutter, without bothering to use its wings, hops out of the way of a car on to the pavement, and returns to finish its meal when the car has passed.

gloss, buds, scarf

Ivy leaves on a wall reflect sunlight as though they have been varnished.

The sun shines on magnolia buds on the verge of opening. Profiled against a bank of dark clouds, the buds look like pink candle flames.

An elderly man whom I sometimes meet in the Grove, in the face of an icy wind this afternoon, says: "My mother used to tell me never to wear a scarf. When you take it off , she'd say, you'll feel the cold."

curious book,speaking French, leylandii plus

In Hall's book shop I find a curious book. It is a collection of pieces of advice, proverbs, recipes and other odds ends made into a book with the title How to do it for sale in aid of the English Church in Stockhom in 1898. It is mostly in English but there are entries in French, German and Swedish. King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway is the first contributer with some trite advice on getting things done properly. Most other contributors seem to be connected with the British legation and other legations in Stockholm. Queen Sophie comes next with Do all in the glory of God! The contents are an astonishing mixture. "How to catch a Rabbit: Get behind a hedge and make a noise like a turnip" is closely followed by this: "An accomplished woman of the world should above all things, possess the secret of never allowing her sentiments to be read in her face. Anger, gaiety, all that which is exagerated can rage in her inner being, but must never be allowed to be perceived. She should welcome her dearest enemies with the same gracious smile, which serves for those of her preference ...." That from Madame Cherif, née Princess Eminée d'Egypt, Legation de Turqie a Stockhom. A recipe for crab omelet from Mrs Wilton Allhusen is brief and one would have thought unhelpful to the novice cook: Boil three large crabs and pick them; beat them up with six eggs, and season with pepper, salt, parsley and thyme: mix together with a little stock and fry in butter.

I do not often have the chance to speak French and doubt that when I do, I do it at all well. I often forget and wonder if I ever knew, when I first learnt French at school, that it is usual to put the emphasis on the last syllable of a French word. I'm not sure that many English people are used to this feature of the language either. The other day I happened to mention Emile Zola to a German professor who pulled me up. "Who"? he asked. "Zola," I said. "You mean Zola, " he said placing the emphasis on the "a". He wasn't being pedantic. He genuinely didn't understand me. Yesterday on the telephone I mentioned Zola to an old friend, an extremely well read and accomplished English woman. I took care to place due emphasis on the last syllable. "Who?" she said.

Through a dense leylandii hedge weave a few golden flowers of forsythia.

Hidden signs

Following the example of Lucy Kempton, who does them so well, I thought I would try the collage facility on Picassa. These wall and bark photographs came from the same batch which I took last Autumn. On reflection, they seem to capture something more interesting than I thought at the time..

Once or twice, kite chain, no hyphen

On my way to the newagent, I catch sight of Clare on her way round the Grove, and again on my way back. Has the author of the 30-word blog http://www.oncearoundthepark.blogspot.com/ made one or two circuits? Would she have noticed something that I had not, or vice versa? I hasten to read her post for the day but it has not yet appeared.

In Calverley Park, a young woman in a smart red jacket is flying a long string of small paper kites (about six inches x 9 inches) attached to the fine yellow cord at regular intervals. Each kite has a short green tail. There must be at least 30 kites, which stretch up into the sky and sway in the wind. She doesn't have to move at all to keep the kites aloft. She is on her own. No children or other interested parties are in sight. After a while she begins to haul the kites in, stacking them neatly in one hand and allowing the cord to dangle in tidy loops below. I have always loved kites, but I've never anything like this.

It is not just old age. I have always been a bit dim. I'm more than half way through L'Oeuvre by Emile Zola, and I'm beginning to congratulate myself on how few words I am having to look up in the dictionary, when suddenly I am confronted by amabi and lité one after the other. No clue in the dictionary. I read the passage again. The context suggests that some quality is being described. I note that amabi comes at the end of one line and lité at the beginning of the next line. You will be there before me. My only excuse is that there was no hyphen linking the syllables to make the word amabilité.

contrasts 1, contrasts 2, slippers

Last night I fall asleep to the sound of wind in the trees and rain beating against the window. In the morning, while it still seems dark, I wake to the sound of a blackbird.

A flowering cherry, still little more than a sapling, mingles its white flowers with the shiny leaves of a laurel. It is an uneasy liason, like a young and pretty girl on the arm of a sleek businessman.

"Mummy, you've got your slippers on," says a little girl to her mother who is seated on the bench opposite the entrance to the Grove. "Mummy, ypu've got your slippers on." And so she has. " Yes I know, darling," she says, " I just had to run out of the door with you didn't I."