Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

Write an essay, girls: 'My Sunday Out In London'

Picking up Colonel Jim, we set off for Greenwich at 7.30 am; by 9.40 we were parked 90 miles away on Blackheath. From Observatory hill we gazed over the Thames at sunlit London. When you are showing your country to 'visitors' you want it to shine - boy, did everything look and act the part today.

Steeply down through the still quiet parkland we walked to that most elegant suite of buildings, freshly painted and planted for the summer.

A brisk walk under the Thames to the Isle of Dogs brought us to a stall selling coffee and bacon baguettes. On a bench by the riverside an old man with a toothless smile and a hold-all full of bird bread chatted while his Jack Russell wooed us for bacon. An immense black lady pushing an immense white lady up a slope in a wheelchair saw the funny side of her problem.

Greenwich filled up; the flea and craft markets were busy, crammed with lovely junk. I craved a North African woodcarving of a fine female head but balked at an un-negotiable fifty quid price-tag. Jim learned the word 'busker' for the first time via a guitarist playing Rodrigo, badly.

Lunch was here, a pretty good outside barbecue, plus pints of "Nelson's Blood" real ale which the blokes rated. I, the driver, had spritzer.

Aching feet forced a quick whirl through the National Maritime Museum (I didn't go into 'Tintin', drD, but got diverted by some fantastic graphic work by Camberwell Art College students. Encouragingly original and skilful - our future is safe in their pens.)

The highlight of my day was a ride in the park on a proper old horsey roundabout, lights flashing, organ playing 'Tulips from Amsterdam'. I love them beyond anything and braved ridicule to ride prancing black "Zara" among the excited kids.

An easy run home along the M11, past yellow fields of rape and broad beans just coming into flower (great perfume). Jim said, "I'm potty for London after that; we'll do Portobello Road next then?"

a e i o u

There were interesting vowels floating about this morning in a programme about Vera Lynn's song " The White Cliffs of Dover". Her original rendering of the lyric was all clipped clarity a la Julie Andrews; but in an interview with today's Vera she described the old days in pure Estuary English, all rubber vowels.

The programme used excerpts from WW2 BBC broadcasts where most of the announcers had those horrific 'Ealing Studios' actors' vowels, full of references to "bettle-hardened troops", "lending-craft" and "Buckingham Pellece".

In the 30's and 40's this standardised elocution was practically statutory for top British movie stars and radio personnel. It imposed a peculiar accent, obviously born in snobbery, yet not the true English of the aristocrats, but some construct fashionable at the time. Noel Coward exemplified it perfectly, and Cecil Beaton brought it to high art form.

I wonder how it came about? It quickly died out in the post-war levelling and actors like Joan Greenwood and Dennis Price, while still plummy, rounded out their voices to a less mannered form of speech. Mind you, it took the Queen another twenty years to purge her voice entirely.

Ungrateful

The gentle art of caring
Is a tricky thing to learn;
Give to the max' within your power,
Ask nothing in return.

To this tough law I bow my head,
But make one stipulation;
That, giving, I might yet receive
Minor reciprocation.

Sick PC
After many attempts to post last night with my browser playing merry hell, I gave up. I seem to have found a brief access window here tonight, so am using the opportunity to say that I will be probably off-line for a bit. I had a virus attack which (in spite of current Norton software) has caused a lot of operating problems - the least of which is a cascade of pop-ups. Ah well, I've had a long run of trouble free motoring on here - I had forgotten all about blue screens of death!

.....one hour later...I'm flying, no problems, fast download...so cross fingers.

Hopper again
I am squirrelling up a treat. The thought that I have the prospect of the Edward Hopper retrospective before me is like a kid knowing that Christmas is coming up. I heard a keen review of it on "Front Row" tonight which made many effective points; how amazingly (or boringly, according to one reviewer) consistent are his themes and style - what he painted at the end was recognizably the same as at his beginning. Just more spare.

An artist from from Baltimore said that for her he had managed to distil and fix the very essence of New England; that we have become used to his depictions of gaunt houses, brownstones and weary cafes but they startled the eye in the thirties and forties with a new perception of America.

His influence on cinema was considerable - the house in Hitchcock's 'Psycho' being an obvious example.

His nudes, so numerously posed over and over again on the edge of beds in lonely bedrooms should have shown eventual finesse, yet they were often crudely drawn as if only the atmosphere, the emotions really mattered, not the form.

I adore this painting with its yellow light, the odd angle of the building, contrasting dark trees and the street lamp glowing, it is full of the promise of evening. I hope it will be in the show; I do know that the last canvas in the gallery is "Sun in an Empty Room", the most minimal of all.

I linked a while ago to a wonderful scrapbook on Hopper - here it is again in case you missed it.

Snippets
- I've strained my hip lifting up a double bed to push a carpet underneath. I lay flat on the floor this morning with a hot water bottle under my back and tried not to move for a bit. I had pressed on doing gardening and made it worse. After a couple of Ibuprofen and a day of nothing strenuous it's feeling rather better.

- I found treasure trove in the charity shop last week, a pile of cassettes at 30p a time; two Courtney Pine live concerts; two Brahms symphonies and some Scarlatti. Then a replacement for my worn out Philip Glass "Songs from Liquid Days". There's an amusingly apposite review, 'Up Late Listening', here.

I hadn't heard much by "Everything But the Girl" - 'Language of Life' is a smooth, pop/jazz collection with some interesting lyrics. I rather like it. But then I like Sade and that sort of stuff. I'm so old hat.

- Talking of which, my hair dyeing job has been quite successful - went to have my roots done today and managed to keep in the stronger blonde streaks acquired under the Cyprus sun. It's really great to get rid of those dingy old grey wings and pepper & salt effect. If it's a bit tarty, who cares?

- Went to a well-attended meeting on a prospective village archive; there were loads of people there who had brought in photographs, cuttings and some impressive written records of village history. The chatter was deafening. The idea is to get groups together to work on oral history and to process the materials into digital format. It will all form a village archive and will eventually join the county archival records. I'm really looking forward to getting involved.

Sort of harrassed
It's 9.15 pm, my sister just phoned to say they are on the M25 making quick progress through the hellish 40 mph section approaching the M11 exit. I still have to make up their bed. The garden looks magnificent but the house is only just presentable. But I have made a very good shepherd's pie with eight vegetables; and a new sort of rice pudding cribbed from the Turkish Onar Airlines dinner tray! Recipe later

What a couple of days we have had. The Boy has been here with his new small mechanical digger excavating a large section of the drive made of badly impacted gravel infill. It involved far more manual digging than we were expecting and collection of five tons of gravel from the pit up the road. I drove the lorry and did OK, so I have a part-time job if I want it!

Then we had the idea of gouging out a pond in the willow patch while he had the machine here. The pond emerged, but The Boy and his digger sank into the wet ground. He got out eventually at the expense of a big budding clump of yellow iris. It took an hour to hose down the digger and sweep away the mud.

So here I am typing, when I should be dusting whatnots and checking the loo. Better go. I think we'll go to the coast tomorrow - maybe Hunstanton.

But the car is full of dog hairs from Wednesday's trip to Wicken...

BUGS - various
- There is a steady tapping on my window, it starts as soon as the lights are lit. So I know that THEY are here again - I always think of them as acorns with wings. They are big this year, I try not to venture out when they are flying, they hurt a bit if they hit you. This is their American cousin. Pretty, eh, especially the fur? Are you still coming to stay this week-end, my sister? I know how you like de creepy crawlies

- Help the RSPB - be sure to check in for your Splatometer - what an odd activity this promises to be.

- We went to Wicken Fen for a long walk today and saw a lot of sex among the damselflies. Who is doing what and to whom in this picture? Such human little faces they have close up. As usual we picked a too hot day for our visit, all the birds were hiding up - but the fen looked beautiful with the hawthorn blossom spilling everywhere and the meadows full of buttercups and ragged robin.

Notes from Kibris

Here, if you have the patience, are a few scenes from North Cyprus - an extremely loveable island, beautiful, peaceful, chronically untidy, peopled by the kindliest folk I?ve come across.

At Bellapais, a village in mountains above Kyrenia where we were staying is a broken Gothic abbey; one hot morning, sitting on warm stone, I listened to a pianist practicing Chopin for the night?s concert there. Jackdaws and swallows flew through carved arches and the tapping of workmen building the ubiquitous white villas on the slopes below rose as accompaniment.

I went searching there for Lawrence Durrell?s house, his ?Bitter Lemons? tucked half-read in my pocket. I found it - white walls, deep red bougainvillea and two great wooden doors at the top of a vertical climb. Opposite, a dozen stinking hens were penned in darkness behind rusty wire in a basement cage. Orange trees loaded with fruit peeped over walls and thin cats flattened themselves in wedges of shade. An old man, white stubble shining, smiled at me with the teeth of a twenty-year-old.

After a rough drive on rutted tracks through olive groves we came to a remote beach on the Western peninsula. The waiter in the deserted cafe brought Turkish coffee and iced water. He hastened back to hang up an old radio on the terrace - carefully tuning it to a rock music station. We pretended to be pleased that the sweet rush of the waves was lost. The bill came to thirty pence. In the ?hole in the floor? lavatory out back I was horrified to find that I had inadvertently peed on a small lizard.

Halfway down the frightening mountain track at Vouni, a ruined Persian palace perched high on a dizzying peak, a coach came up and forced me backwards to the top again round hairpin bends. Reader, I funked it - after a first arc that sent a scatter of stones over the steep edge, I left the car and let the coach driver take on the long reverse. It?s sensible to know one?s limitations and I am still too young to die.

In Lefkosa (Nicosia) the bazaar was piled high with bright fruit and vegetables, mounds of Turkish delight glowed above sacks of pistachios and almonds. Fezzes and belly-dancing costumes and charms against the evil eye lured the tourist. Every stall had a basket of loquats, just in season. These were offered free in restaurants after a meal, a little dish of rather blemished, but delicious sweet fruit with a slightly acid kick.

At the Selimiye Mosque a man held my hand in greeting as we reclaimed our shoes outside ? ?From England? We like English. Here we have had much change - start Byzantium, then Ottoman, then Roman, then Venetian, then come British and now Turk. So, we friends anyway ? this place is for Allah ? your or mine ? it is God, no matter.?

Taxis (and everything else for that matter) are cheap. The cheapest is the Dolmus - a stretch limo?, usually a battered old Mercedes which accommodates eight people comfortably at £2 a head ? or, as on our return from Nicosia in broiling heat, nine adults and three children at only £1! I was crammed up next to a young woman; she pulled off her small son?s tee shirt for coolness and held him on her lap in his little white vest. She soon slept and the child?s heavy head fell to my shoulder; I rode home to Girne with his warm hair under my chin and his open brown hand resting on mine. I wonder what he will become, my tiny fellow traveller.

On the last night we walked a mile back home in the balmy dark, past our supermarket where we had bought bananas and raki and where, when I asked to buy a pen, the cashier had taken out his splendid black and gold one and made me a present of it. Past the blowing papers and plastic bags, the holes in the pavements, the ankle breaking kerbstones and the Turkish cafes where men played backgammon and drank coffee. The scent of jasmine hung in the air and girls in headscarves and Islamic dress played handball in the children?s park. We cut through the small side roads, past workshops, dark places. We felt no fear, nor needed to ? there is virtually no crime, no one locks doors, there is still respect and friendliness there.