Henry Moore is famous for his sculptures of deformed ladies; so famous in fact that a London council can sell one for a mint of money during these cash-strapped times. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20197610
But I prefer his sheep, having frequently studied them myself from my windows in the Derbyshire Dales. No, not his sculpted versions but his drawings which grace the pages of a book. I recommend it.
My teacher says Guy was a terrorist – and
The Government practised rendition back then.
Is it true that this is a protestantfest?
No. (And please don’t breathe the smoke, dear.)
My mate and his dad made this really cool Guy,
To burn at the stake on November the fifth.
So can we have one of our own next year?
No. (And please don’t breathe the smoke, dear.)
Sometimes headlines catch the eye for their sheer incongruity. I mean, what are the qualities usually associated with the Church of Scotland (anecdotally, at least)? Thrift and ascetism perhaps – the antonyms for luxury and lavish living. Then today, there it was:
Scots Hotel: Why the Church of Scotland has a Galilee getaway
On the waterfront at Tiberias no less, where the Sermon on the Mount was preached, stands a multi-starred hotel, created from the buildings previously used as a hospital by a mission (est. 1880), then a hospice, later a guest house.
It’s a nice story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20126585
My name is Fookes, Guy Fookes, the spook. 
Yes, Doubl’-O-K, so spell it right!
Licensed to kill, I am, and look!
I’m all tooled up and fit to fight.
You’ll want to know who runs my show.
A British ‘M’? A Euro-cell?
The Mossad? CIA? Er, no.
Thing is, I actually don’t know. Continue reading “‘A modern GF’ – a November pome”
Is it just a British thing or is authority a dirty word everywhere? I mean, a politician swears at the cops for enforcing some no-go rules in Downing Street (did he say plebs or plods?); and now a football referee is accused of verbal retaliation after an ill-tempered match in which both sides harrassed him constantly over his decisions. More generally, school teachers are verbally abused every day but would be sacked for answering in kind. Is this the price every ‘authority’ figure pays for their job? Is respect only to be accorded to self-selected groups of misfits defined by celebrity, wealth, social disfunction, ethnic origin, sexual proclivity and religious bent?
Some years ago I bought Claire Tomalin’s biography of Samuel Pepys (The Unequalled Self) and have enjoyed re-reading it several times since. Ms Tomalin offers all the pleasures of academic study; every source is noted; every reference given its provenance. But she is also a lively story-teller – no dusty tome, this! And Sam was a perfect subject: not a saint but a reluctant sinner, living during England’s most troubled times – the 17thC, the Commonwealth, the Restoration; with politics, war, plague and fire; all played out in the heart of London. The book presents the context for Sam’s often gossipy, irreverent views both as a family man and a successful civil servant coping with the turbulence of his times.
And now I have bought another of Claire Tomalin’s biographies, this time Charles Dickens (A Life), which promises to be equally engrossing. Another subject whose life was spent in critical observation of his species, again centred on the capital during an interesting age.
So I said to Obama: “Well, some like Kofi, some like Ki.”
Cherished chatterers were uncharacteristically silent yesterday. I wonder why. It can’t have been the T20 cricket ‘cos rain stopped the Yarkshire match which they might otherwise have won. Just a regular Thursday. Was it hair-washing – again? Was it a dinner to celebrate the incomprehensible, nay skeletal Lord Home becoming PM in ’63? Or the ousting of Erik Honecker in the DDR on the same day in ’89? Or the release of the Guildford Four a day later? (Pause to remember the market researcher who asked a Dubliner what he thought of the Renault 5: “Not guilty, sirr!’) Probably not. I suspect the truth is much simpler. Life.
Let One explain. One was born fantastically superior to, well, anyone else One can think of. No, except Mama and Papa and Nanny and Spike Milligan; oh, and that Dutch-sounding guru chappie I knew for a while, who would be a teeny bit miffed if One didn’t recognise their status. Goodness knows what Nanny would have done to me. But One digresses, as so often. The thing is, One gets rather bored with all this waiting for kingship. Unlike the rest of you ordinary mortals, One has done Oneself out of so many actual things to do Oneself – like dressing, shopping, driving, digging holes for plants, visiting the cash-machine – that One has had to write letters, longhand – yes, Oneself! – to some of Mama’s ministers about things that really, really matter. One thinks immediately of architecture. It’s obvious to any man of unparallelled culture like Oneself that Britain should be exclusively populated by buildings in the neo-Tudor style. Get rid of everything else. And One has told them so. It’s not political, is it? It’s sound advice from the High Ground Highgrove perspective. And what’s more, it’s a salutary experience for those ministers to spend their time responding to One. And that Judge chappie had the affrontery to suggest that One’s correspondence with them was training for One to become King. On the contrary, One is training ministers in preparation for One’s accession. But the Judge did get something right in this case: One’s private letters are none of the plebs lower classes One’s subjects’ damn business. And when One accedes, One will rule. Rule, One says! (sounds of smashing china, screaming and soothing words from minions)
Boadicea's Chariot 
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