Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

Woke up this morning
Put my feet to the floor
Head was swimming,
Throat was sore.
My chest sounds hollow,
My poor eyes weep,
I have a fever
And want to sleep.
I caught it last Sunday
From a careless sneezer,
I'll send in the bill
To the rotten geezer.
Disappointed,
Sad and blue,
Feeling ancient,
BOO HOO HOO.

The week's a bit crammed, being the lead up to a birthday that everyone seems to feel needs marking. Quite honestly, this is one I'd like to disregard. I decided to leg it to London for a couple of nights, disinclined to set up a big entertainment. So, tomorrow and Friday we have booked in to a rather posh Knightsbridge B&B just behind Sloane Square in a mews house owned by an artist, she sounds chatty and pleasant. I prefer this to staying in impersonal hotels; we are wonderfully placed for museum land (I want to spend most of Friday being surreal at the V&A), otherwise we will bum around and be Londoners again for a bit. I expect I'll call into a few of the local emporia, including the big H. For evenings, rather than a show, I think a concert (this looks rather birthdayish) and a film will overcome the deafness problem of half the party. I haven't seen "The Queen" yet & notice it's showing again in Leicester Square, or maybe "300", or Mr. Bean if we are feeling silly.
Anyway, I'll be back on Saturday older and poorer, but probably no wiser.

Sometimes one takes a photograph and sees later the interactions, actions, adjuncts and messages. I took this in Norwich today - one of three shots of a map of the world on which people were invited to walk as part of an exhibition of photographs - The Earth from the Air. I just keep looking at it, marvelling that, by accident, I trapped so much. Especially the pink scarf.

One thing's for sure, I shall be off to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park sometime between now and January 2008. Last time I was up there I spent most of my time with Moores and Hepworths out in the pastures, among wandering sheep, but it looks as though there will be enough Goldsworthy to fill a whole visit.

Have you heard of artist and mystic Austin Osman Spare? I hadn't till one of his paintings from the 1940's came up on the Antiques Roadshow. His strange life is worth checking out. His drawing is superb, there's a short presentation of his work on You Tube
'In 1936 he turned down a commission from Adolf Hitler to paint his portrait. Instead he took his models from the street life around him and exhibited their portraits in local pubs. These completely realistic studies provided him with the money he needed for beer and fags. Although his home was hit by a bomb in 1941 and much of his work was destroyed, Spare stayed put, living through his art in the face of advancing poverty and malnutrition. He liked "rotting away in a dismal basement", he said, surrounded by stray cats and a mouldy little yard where nothing grew. In 1956, suffering from anaemia, and treating himself with home-grown cures, he eventually succumbed to appendicitis.' (The Telegraph)

She had 19 last year in two hatchings, this time she's starting early with 9. She is so tame that she pushes them forward to us and quacks at the kitchen door for food. They all slept by the water bowl for an hour in the sun today; she just opened one eye when the pheasant strutted past and totally ignored the chickens fussing round.

I've been AWOL - Always Working On the Land. Days of really hard graft, cutting, weeding, clearing, edging, dredging, hedging. Result, immediate zonking out as soon as I hit the sofa after dinner. Result also, a garden that isn't worrying me any more, that's cleared of annual debris, shrubs pruned, grass cut and the whole thing looking again as if someone cares. And looking beautiful as spring gallops along - lilac in bud, foxgloves stretching, prunus in flower and carpets of cowslips in all the wild bits.

I find when I don't write my blog that I get more and more disinclined to do so. I'm feeling media passive anyway at the moment, wanting to watch and listen. My leg's playing up and needs to be kept propped up when at rest - not very feasible when typing at a PC. So all in all, bloggin's taken a back seat lately.

I'm not stopping long tonight either as I have to make a visit in the village, but I thought I'd just mention that I'm still alive and will be back shortly with my usual riveting material.

I'll leave you with the boys; they came for a bonfire and teatime yesterday. One stuck my best rubber garden glove on a pole and inexplicably poked the fire with it. No Pringles for him. We played bad-tempered animal snap and they completed in 4 minutes a fiendish frog puzzle that had defeated me after a whole hour of trying. I have photographed it so that I may quietly cheat in future. After they had raided the biscuit tin and drunk two cartons of juice, the magic mood ring got another outing and my 20Q got a thorough interrogation. Sadly, it failed to guess 'fart'.

Trompe l'oeil paintings by Ron Francis.

'Now watching this spot, like the hawk looking down
Without blinking, the smug hens
Passing close by in their pecking order,
The bug whose view is balked by grass.
Or the deer who shyly from afar
Peer through chinks in the forest.'

A powerful celebration of Good Friday. One of the greatest.

This relationship has turned into a real love affair. It's not unusual to see J nearly knitting Shamar's plumed tail into the baby shawl she's making - he spends hours on her lap. They are inseparable. She said yesterday, "I can't imagine being without him now."
We need to get him a bit of obedience training to stop him pulling on the lead and getting over-excited with other dogs, risky behaviour with an older owner. I have found a chap locally (also a healer, incidentally) who will come to the house & sort him out. Apart from that it's a match made in heaven.

From BBC Radio 4:

A guy on the South coast is sending off thousands of messages in bottles, listeners were asked to email suggested messages. Top answer: "My other bottle's a Veuve Cliquot." I'd like to have thought of that.

In a music biography : "It's not easy to get a handle on Purcell."

M.P. urging patriotism - "We can be proud of who we are, there's no shame in that."

In the 1950's women were being encouraged to give birth in hospital; a poster was published that said 'The first three minutes of life are the most dangerous.' In a doctor's surgery, a wit wrote underneath 'Really? What about the last three?'

The incomparably funny National Theatre of Brent (Jim Broadbent & Patrick Barlow) returns tomorrow at 6.30 p.m.. Anyone who saw their Messiah will know that it's impossible to listen and keep a straight face for longer that twenty seconds. This new series is The Arts and How They Was Done - starting with The Birth of Art and How They Done The Cave Paintings. A look at the Lascaux Caves.

I long to see again the American desert landscapes:

(Days later, the Canyon left behind,
We board another train,
Illinois Central Railroad in gold along its side.
In the hot evening it pulls away from Flagstaff,
Whistling, chasing tumbleweeds.

An orange sunset burns, hazed with dust.
Talk dies down, our sleeper waits,
A tiny space - mighty small for loving.
We close the door and the magic night begins.

Speeding to the City of the Angels
America unfolds across our private screen,
Empty desert, fields, small towns and animals
Running beside us in the dark.)

So I fell in love with the cult film Bagdad Cafe, set in a diner somewhere along the highway in the Mojave Desert of Arizona. It has, as soundtrack, Javetta Steele singing a haunting song, Calling You, that always gives me the shivers. I found it recently sung by a young French Canadian, Jean-Sébastien Lavoie, on French Idol. He has one hell of a voice. I have just ordered his album. More disapproval for my unsophisticated tastes out there, I'll bet. It'll be Celine and Barry next.

Vanessa Bell: The Garden Room