Category: little fluffy clouds

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Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends’ sofa, New York

the view from the sofa - dawn, glass table

Note the two extremely elegant greyhound sculptures reclining, but in a poised and alert way, in front of two huge lenses. And if you can’t see what I’m talking about go below the fold to see a close-up crop. This place is absolutely amazing. Like a tiny art gallery with a huge picture window. The latter, however, has its disadvantages. Even though it’s on the eighth floor I realised that there was an interested crane operator examining me as I typed, naked, on the carpet.

Continue reading “Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends’ sofa, New York”

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Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends' sofa, New York

the view from the sofa - dawn, glass table

Note the two extremely elegant greyhound sculptures reclining, but in a poised and alert way, in front of two huge lenses. And if you can’t see what I’m talking about go below the fold to see a close-up crop. This place is absolutely amazing. Like a tiny art gallery with a huge picture window. The latter, however, has its disadvantages. Even though it’s on the eighth floor I realised that there was an interested crane operator examining me as I typed, naked, on the carpet.

Continue reading “Dawn, glass table – the view from the friends' sofa, New York”

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Broken washing machines are GOOD

This wasn’t, of course, my first thought on the matter as the lights went out on the panel and the recently-inserted clothes flopped from the top of the drum down into a stew of brown soapy water and their own juices.

However.

If the washing machine had not been broken I would not have gone round to my friend’s to run through an emergency load.

If I had not gone to my friend’s she would not have remembered I was leaving for New York the following morning, early. (Yes, tomorrow.)

She would not have thought about the invitation to her friend’s exhibition opening, in New York, which had arrived in the post that morning and was now sitting on her mantelpiece.

She would not have put two and two together and made a swanky evening out at a gallery “do” on Fifth Avenue for me. Daaaahling.

On the other hand this means I have to pack something smart to wear. Damn!

(Meanwhile Marlon has worked his magic and by a laying on of hands, and not much more, the lights are on and the washing is home.)

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Sausage's unconformity

You would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. Round. As in roughly cylindrical. Ok, there are individual variations on the theme – the skinny pink chipolata; the thicker, and disturbingly flecked, Cumberland sausage; the massively-dimensioned and curvilinear heft of the boerewors. These differences do not detract from the unifying form. Not for nothing is the term “sausage-shaped” in common use and widely understood.

So, like I say, you would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. But you would be wrong.

In Scotland the sausages are flat and square.

lawn sausages

When I first came across this, um, delicacy, I was told it was “lawn sausage”. What a peculiar name, I thought. I supposed it referred to, er, the squareness and flatness of grass-covered gardens. The word is actually “Lorne”, as in Lorne sausages. But assumptions that they hail from Lorne are, apparently, incorrect.

The cooking instructions advised “blotting” the sausage with a piece of kitchen towel to remove excess fat before serving. With a 20% fat content that requires most of a roll of kitchen towel to mop up and doesn’t leave much actually to eat. It didn’t go down well with the assembled masses (apart from Maizy) but the black pudding was a hit, rather to my surprise.

The title refers to Hutton’s Unconformity, past which we walked all unknowingly. Here is our palatial accommodation guarded by our faithful hound:

home 1

More pictures (mainly of the boys, invisible to those not “friend”s on flickr) here.

Posted on

Sausage’s unconformity

You would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. Round. As in roughly cylindrical. Ok, there are individual variations on the theme – the skinny pink chipolata; the thicker, and disturbingly flecked, Cumberland sausage; the massively-dimensioned and curvilinear heft of the boerewors. These differences do not detract from the unifying form. Not for nothing is the term “sausage-shaped” in common use and widely understood.

So, like I say, you would be forgiven for thinking that all sausages are alike. But you would be wrong.

In Scotland the sausages are flat and square.

lawn sausages

When I first came across this, um, delicacy, I was told it was “lawn sausage”. What a peculiar name, I thought. I supposed it referred to, er, the squareness and flatness of grass-covered gardens. The word is actually “Lorne”, as in Lorne sausages. But assumptions that they hail from Lorne are, apparently, incorrect.

The cooking instructions advised “blotting” the sausage with a piece of kitchen towel to remove excess fat before serving. With a 20% fat content that requires most of a roll of kitchen towel to mop up and doesn’t leave much actually to eat. It didn’t go down well with the assembled masses (apart from Maizy) but the black pudding was a hit, rather to my surprise.

The title refers to Hutton’s Unconformity, past which we walked all unknowingly. Here is our palatial accommodation guarded by our faithful hound:

home 1

More pictures (mainly of the boys, invisible to those not “friend”s on flickr) here.

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Shorts for summer with an extra leg

I’m quite enmeshed in Facebook and flickr and thus feel slightly decentralised. Tripartite? trinitarian? a tripod? highly stable? [stop. now].

Anyway, from Facebook I hereby reproduce a fengtastic response to the previous post:

I’ve been looking at fly fishing flies. The Purple Egg Sucking Leech comes close to lav:

eggsuckingleech

(from the Wooly Buggers)

There’s the Red Flying Ant and the Red Ibis among the Queens, Parmachanee Belle of the Dry Flies; a whole variety of Italian tapestry shades in the Crystal Buggers, just no lav. Outdone by a landslide though by the feather boas of Pink and Purple Rabbit Leeches.

Personally I like playing with my crab but if it’s size you want, conking the bloody fish out is always a last resort if you’re wired up with Bomber Salmons.

Oh here we go, the standard BDSM superhero vinyl costume types we use back home:

assred

I’m not entirely sure whether this means mr feng squeezes into a glow-in-the-dark rubber cephalopod costume for an exciting night out hooking or goes fishing with squid lures. However I find it appropriate that the picture is titled “assred”.

“Lav”, I should probably explain, is short for lavender well-known, of course, for its calming and soothing effect. Spritz! spritz! And here’s one I saw earlier…

lavender

Which of course brings us from Facebook to flickr. The public element of Tate Britain‘s How We Are: Photographing Britain exhibition has been wrapped up… no more entries are being accepted to the How We Are Now flickr pool and ten finalists have been chosen from each of the four categories. None of my submissions, you will be astonished to learn, is among them.

However a very delightful and clearly highly discerning photographer, Stuart Haden, thought that one of them should have been, which makes me extremely happy. And he gives a fundamentally important piece of advice – “Follow your passion, never give up, enjoy what you do.”

I went to see the exhibition but don’t recall writing about it. Did I? I seem to remember having a couple of passing thoughts about it but all that now remains in my small-capacity brain (apart from the OCD vegetable and fruit photographer who later used his glass plates for cold frames) was that the most exciting moment was standing in front of a huge ever-changing display of pictures by a portrait photographer and seeing a friend scroll by.

Elsewhere I’m really enjoying Xtinpore, with whom I share displeasure about 29, and her friend pluvialis. Energetic, superbright, gorgeous, funny, multi-talented/obsessed and fascinating. Damn! And one of them is a real live falconer. Double damn!

Shortly I am off to a gig about which I was alerted by a friend on Facebook. He is a member of the band. As is his sister (she’s the drummer). They’re both my friends on Facebook and they’re both the children of one of my dearest bosom buddies. Much has been written about Facebook but I have yet to see an anguished plea about what to do when one of your mother’s friends befriends you digitally. (Oh the things I could tell her. Not. Well, perhaps. For a small fee. Silence is also available in multiple currencies.)

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Coneheads

coneheads

Apparently salmon go wild for these things. And what a great name – conehead. Like an egghead but less, um, ovoid. More pointy. Possibly.

These flies sport a wing of soft mobile fur – for example Arctic fox or possibly a soft synthetic fibre. This is tied in facing forward then folded back to create a sinuous teardrop-shaped fly that flutters and darts enticingly in the stream.

I love fishing flies – the sheer audacity of the colours and shapes and textures, exotic and sensuous, fur and feathers and sparkles. I adored helping my father when he tied his own. All the little plastic bags and transparent boxes full of brightly dyed fur and feathers, lengths of metallic thread and shiny stuff like very tiny tinsel. The miniature vice to hold the hook as the layers of extravagant fluff and fibre are built up. It’s jewellery-making for boys. (And girls too of course.)

We were in Farlows, my father and I. “One for me and one for J [my stepmother] to steal off me” he muttered as he poked through the compartments of different coloured and sized pieces of spangly fluff.

“Where is the fun,” I asked, over espresso, later, “in fishing with something infallibly attractive. Surely it takes the skill and excitement out of the chase?”

His answer lasted some time. Almost as long as the video of him fishing in Argentina which I have been privileged to sit in front of watch on more than one occasion. The subtleties and nuances of the exegesis were possibly similarly infinitesimally varied, to the unenthusiasticinitiated viewer/auditor. However for those unversed in the piscatorial arts the response can be condensed.

No.

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Eyeshadow

Look! look! the sun is out!!

eyeshadow 1

Well, ok, that’s a shadow. But it is proof of the existence of the sun, no?

We were fantastically lucky. I booked our trip to the London Eye more than a week ago because lovely Z from Hungary is staying and it turned out to be the only sunny day in living memory.

going up

There are more in this set of pictures on flickr.

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Weekend

I went to stay with Tall Girl at the weekend. She is indeed very tall.

tall girl

It was lovely. We made the most both of an unusual state of not-rain and the delights of Hebden Bridge. Women appear to learn their role in life particularly early in Yorkshire.

siblings

The absence of rain continued in the afternoon allowing a longer and less sploshy walk than had been possible in the sluicing downpour of Friday.

eye on the sky

We came across this family shearing operation – father with hand clippers, daughter in charge of the shorn fleeces, son bringing refreshments, dog peering fixedly through the bars of the make-shift fold, mother directing operations. “Don’t get his bum in” she said when I asked if I could take a picture. Ooops. Too late.

The circuit closed again back by the water, one of the many streams which cut through steep-sided valleys down to join Hebden Water which in turn joins the River Calder and on to the River Aire, the River Humber and on to the sea. Brown and frothy it rushed over the stones but caught in the circle of an abandoned mill pond its stillness reflected the gold of the late sun and the extraordinary, almost oppressive, green of tree and moss and fern.

duck

That evening we went to see Gambian kora player Seikou Susso with his band at the Trades Club in town.

kora, drum and bass

Check out the drummer in the middle there who seemed to spend the whole time peering anxiously at the kora and bass players in turn. The first half was good, but after the break they appeared to play the same songs all over again and Susso’s strange smile and habit of using the phrase “tickety boo” made the experience disturbingly surreal. However I’d become fascinated with the face of the fourth member of the band who played the djembe drum and spent most of my time trying to get a decent shot of him.

djembe drummer

It’s lovely seeing an old friend. Like a home-from-home. And Maizy had a great time too.