Category: little fluffy clouds

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Rabbit rabbit

One of the pinnacles of my (brief) tenure as arts correspondent was covering an exhibition of knitting of which the highlight for me was “Domestic Interior” by Janet Morton. Despite the walrus-like harrumphing and spluttering of various (male) members of the newsroom the item was run at least once, as far as I can remember.

A delightful former colleague and fellow yarnivore has drawn my attention to the excellent Ming Yi Sung and her wonderful crochet which drew more than harrumphs from certain workers at the building it was being exhibited in. The video below tells the story of Public Art, Private Parts.

A certain amount of burrowing about on the internet reveals what has to be my favourite of her works so far:

White Rabbit

It puts a different spin (hook?) on Alice in Wonderland doesn’t it. I’d certainly dive down a rabbit-hole after that statuesque creature despite my history of lagophbia. I wonder what he’s got in that front-cottontail. Maybe I have a preference for bucks over does. I hadn’t thought of that before.

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Clear the smear

I wondered, vaguely, why recent photographs have had an unintentional soft-focus effect. Yesterday I actually thought to look at the lens of the camera and it was covered with a thin layer of something I can only assume was canine saliva. A great big slurpy deposit which took a considerable time to remove. Note to self – cameras and dogs shouldn’t be on the floor together. Oh, and put on the lens cap.

Thus armed with greater clarity we, boys and dog and camera, set out on a walk. Yesterday was all about sunshine. Beautiful, glorious, peachy, slanting winter sunlight striking from an open blue sky throwing long shadows.

At last a world of subtle gradations and stark contrasts after weeks and months of deepest dullest stultifying flattening uniformity of grey. The camera gambolled like a spring lamb, despite the lack of legs and fluffy tail.

More light and less slobber. A heart-lifting combination.

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Please play with me

please play

It’s difficult to work when being gazed at with such a combination of pleading and accusation. Not to mention having a de-squeaked squeaky hedgehog repeatedly dropped on your foot.

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I’ve found God AND mortality

Not bad for a weekday lunchtime.

mortal(ity) and God

On the left there we have Ivy Alvarez with mortal, on the right we have Natalie d’Arbeloff (in the guise of her alter ego Augustine) with The God Interviews. Both have very recently been delivered, after long labour, of a book. As you can see.
I shall endeavour to review both when I’ve read them in their entirety. So far I can say I thoroughly recommend both babies books.

Also I can say that I find it puzzling that the name Natalie d’Arbeloff isn’t as famous as that of Maira Kalman. The latter is a wonderful artist who’s clever with words. So is the former. The latter has book deals and a blog with monthly posts which is syndicated by the New York Times. The former, utterly mysteriously, does not.

Unfortunately the NYT has hidden Ms Kalman behind a subscription, but a couple of her posts can be viewed here. And here’s a picture from her December post which I rather liked.

Bach dress

Anyway. The point of this digression is to suggest that anyone who wishes to support an artist and writer of true talent, grit and determination can easily do so by offering her a lucrative book deal for the follow-up which is already in the pipeline. Or failing that (if you don’t happen to be a publisher) buy the first instalment!

Posted on

I've found God AND mortality

Not bad for a weekday lunchtime.

mortal(ity) and God

On the left there we have Ivy Alvarez with mortal, on the right we have Natalie d’Arbeloff (in the guise of her alter ego Augustine) with The God Interviews. Both have very recently been delivered, after long labour, of a book. As you can see.
I shall endeavour to review both when I’ve read them in their entirety. So far I can say I thoroughly recommend both babies books.

Also I can say that I find it puzzling that the name Natalie d’Arbeloff isn’t as famous as that of Maira Kalman. The latter is a wonderful artist who’s clever with words. So is the former. The latter has book deals and a blog with monthly posts which is syndicated by the New York Times. The former, utterly mysteriously, does not.

Unfortunately the NYT has hidden Ms Kalman behind a subscription, but a couple of her posts can be viewed here. And here’s a picture from her December post which I rather liked.

Bach dress

Anyway. The point of this digression is to suggest that anyone who wishes to support an artist and writer of true talent, grit and determination can easily do so by offering her a lucrative book deal for the follow-up which is already in the pipeline. Or failing that (if you don’t happen to be a publisher) buy the first instalment!

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Cats and offal

In view of the previous discussion on the dining habits of cats versus dogs I was interested to hear, entirely coincidentally, the story of Thomas Hardy’s heart.

In the course of a delightful weekend away with merely my faithful hound for company in the gorgeous cottage of generous friends in Cromer (photos here) I broke the habit of several years and watched the television. From which I learnt the story of the cat and the biscuit tin. Which goes something like this.

Thomas Hardy wanted to be buried in his local churchyard in Dorset. The authorities wanted him to be interred in poets’ corner in Westminster Abbey. A compromise was reached – his heart was removed by a doctor, for local burial; his body was cremated and the ashes despatched to London.

The story goes that the removed organ was stored overnight before the burial ceremony wrapped in a tea towel and placed in a biscuit tin. The next day the doctor returned to find an open tin, a bloody towel and a fat cat.

Sadly the internet reveals a huge number of variants on this tail tale. The cat was his own beloved Cobby, a blue persian given to him late in his life. Cobby disappeared when Hardy died. Alternatively it was another moggy belonging either to his housekeeper, his sister or the doctor himself. The cat may have just snatched the organ from the kitchen table without having to open a biscuit tin. The consumed organ may have been replaced, for purposes of the burial, with either a pig’s heart, a calf’s heart or, best of all, the slaughtered body of the offending feline. There’s poetic justice!

That’s more than enough about cats. Here’s a picture of Maizy the salty sea dog to redress the balance. While we were away she licked the sky and reports that it tastes remarkably similar to the sea.

Maizy licks the sky

What do you mean, a dog would also eat a heart if it found it lying about, regardless of whose chest it had been removed from? Prove it!

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Three little maids from school are we

Pert as a school-girl well can be
Filled to the brim with girlish glee
Three little maids from school

I have two friends from my schooldays, and it’s a bit of a miracle. We scattered when 16, did stuff, went places, stuff happened. Years passed. Whole decades elapsed.

The fact that we’re still in touch is largely the result of the gentle concern (dogged determination?) of one of us. We now lie along a line between Yorkshire, London and Brittany.

One of us may be a sad-minded pedant, but almost undoubtedly isn’t. One of us definitely writes brilliant poetry. Another might. Two of us certainly have dogs. And now, all three of us have blogs. How fantastically cool is that? It’s the first time I’ve had the blogging thing working in reverse, meat-spacers coming online as it were.

So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please meet the fellow perts:

Tall Girl of Smoke and Ash

and

Lucy of Box Elder

w00000t!

(I resisted the temptation to refer to another famous female trinity

Thunder and lightning.
Enter three WITCHES.

First Witch
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.

Third Witch
That will be ere the set of sun.

They probably didn’t go to school together.)

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Baubles fire blanks shock!

[Festival of the Trees #7, the first of 2007, is now up at The Voltage Gate!]

unviable

Not only is it difficult enough to find a patch of urban ground that isn’t stony, I now discover that the poor old London Plane tree (Platanus x hispanica aka the bauble tree) is generally infertile. According to the first-born’s new tree book:

Female flowers mature to give the familiar, rough football-like plane fruits. The seeds are rarely viable, however, for London Plane is a hybrid between two trees, the Oriental Plane P. orientalis of Asia and south-east Europe, and the American Plane P. occidentalis. Where and when the hybrid appeared is a matter of controversy…

But the Plane entry at The-Tree.org.uk has a seductive theory:

Some sources say this hybrid between the Oriental Plane and the American Plane originated in Spain or France around 1650, but there is also a possibility that it originated in the Tradescant nursery garden in Lambeth, south London. John Tradescendant the younger (1608 -1662) was a gardener to Charles I and inherited the nursery his Father had established for the study of plants. Both P. occidentalis and P. orientalis are on record as having grown in this garden, so it is a real possibility that the London Plane did originate here. The first description of the tree in Great Britain, which we have in writing, is from the Oxford Botanical Gardens in 1670.

There are all sorts of other fascinating snippets – the fact that the peeling of the bark helps the tree survive heavily polluted environments because it prevents the pores becoming blocked; the bark boiled in vinegar is allegedly efficacious in cases of dysentery, chilblains, hernias and toothache etc etc.

Continue reading “Baubles fire blanks shock!”

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Music laughter love fun happiness

So many wonderful people. I started a list in my head last night and it was long, long, long. Long. Even longer than long.

I am so lucky. I am so grateful.

Teju has given us man-music to see the year out. Here’s the distaff (with one small alteration – who would have thought a rose room to be female-free?) to keep it company.

1. Diana Krall: Come Dance With Me
2. Marina Laslo: My Funny Valentine
3. Edith Piaf: La Vie En Rose
4. Sarah Vaughan: Perdido