Category: Creativity

Will Meryl do Julia next?

Awesome photo: Meryl Streep as Maggie Thatcher in Film4 part-production The Iron Lady. Australia"s Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaks during a news conference at Parliament House in Canberra on 27 February, 2012

I can’t wait for the announcement that Ms Streep, still bouffant from her Maggie efforts, will accept the challenge presented by Australia’s own iron lady, who has seen off her closest rival in short order.  It was understandable that the top 2012 oscar honours went to a silent film, when the alternative was to reward  those famously strident tones echoing along Downing Street. But as voices go, Julia’s deserves to be immortalised too – and who better than Meryl to pull it off? A bit of a red rinse and hey presto!

Order

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has recently had a grand make-over, but as the exhibition (New galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia) has been open a while, that is since November, I had hoped that there would be fewer visitors today so that I could enjoy it in peace and quiet.
Nah.
It was crowded and there was  great deal to see and take in. We borrowed the hand-held sets for an auditory commentary which was a little unsatisfactory being incomplete – and with so many people around it was difficult to be in the right place at the right time! In addition two things I had been keen to see (the ultrasound scan of a mummy which has been taken to show the insides of a mummy which has never been unwrapped and a CT scans of a child mummy) were both out-of-order… so I shall have to go back. However the artist Angela Palmer has used these scans to make a wonderful piece of art which you can read about here.

I took a few pictures, but it is difficult to capture the exhibition. The order and exactitude required to be a museum curator is illustrated here

for the Photo Competition

The wages of sin?

Sorry to hog the page, but some things get my goat.

Does anybody here think we or anybody else knows what really happened when Meredith Kercher died? No. Nor me. So why on earth does any civilised judicial system allow Amanda Knox to make megabucks on a ‘very thoughtful, reflective and serious book’ deal with a respectable publisher?

Some things are worth raving about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17069980

Arrows of desire

Luckily for me, St Valentine’s burial in Rome is celebrated on 14th February, which happens to precede my birthday by a couple of days (69, yin yang, nod nod, wink wink, say no more, cheeky!). So every year I get the chance to romance Mrs Janus in good time, to ensure that my birthday will receive the attention it so richly deserves. Yer gotta speculate to accumulate, innit?

But, cherished readers, have you ever wondered what my title is doing in Blake’s famous poem, ‘Jerusalem’?

 File:Eros@Piccadilly.jpg

‘Bring me my Bow of burning gold; Bring me my Arrows of desire……‘ What on earth is the mischievous Eros doing in a hymn? As far as I know, the random or serendipitous demands of lust are not recognised as Christian (or even Roman Catholic) virtues.

Answers, please, on a pink, perfumed blank cheque addressed to yours truly.

This one makes its own custard

I’m not a big maker of puds, though the chaps would eat one everyday… but somehow with yesterday’s weather I thought maybe a pudding would be appropriate.

The main course being duck, I thought an orangey pudding would fit the bill (sorry, I couldn’t resist) and I altered a recipe to take into account the ingredients we had. And here it is:

Orange Surprise Pudding Continue reading “This one makes its own custard”