I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Kathy's song, Paul Simon, sung by Art Garfunkel, (written in 1965.)
KATHY'S SONG
Paul Simon - 1965
I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls
And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies
My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day
And a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme
And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you
And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Extreme Car Testing no:2... Beach Assault With the Royal Marines.
Mr Clarkson's methods for testing a compact family car are rarely ever mundane...
(from BBC's "Top Gear").
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Fingal the Giant.
From "The Old Straight Track, by Jack the Lad.
Jack the Lad was a Northumbrian band formed by three ex-members of Lindisfarne (remember 'Meet Me on the Corner', or 'The Fog on the Tyne'?). They had three albums.
Max at Britishspeak posted a picture of Fingal's Cave on Staffa Isle, which reminded me of this track... and of Mendelssohn, of course.
Hey! I wonder, could any of the visitors from Japan explain why I 'm getting a lot of Jajanese visitors to this post? ありがとうございます。
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Isaac Button, Country Potter.
Isaac Button was a country potter in my part of England, near Halifax, -Soil Hill Pottery, which had been working since the early 1700s belonged to him. Robert Fournier (I think it's Robert in the film carrying the board of pots away) and John Anderson made this film in 1963-64. The full film is about forty minutes long. I don't know if it is still available.
Update:March 26th, 2009.... Almost 40 minutes worth of Isaac, which I think is the full film, now posted HERE
In the Independent, November 18th, 1995, John Windsor wrote:
"Isaac Button was a true English country potter. In a day, he could turn a ton of clay into pots. I timed him as he threw a lump of clay on to the wheel, pulled it high, then cut it off with wire: 22 seconds. In an hour, he could turn out 120 pots. In a day, 1,200.
Button's kiln, at Soil Hill, near Halifax, now lies cold and desolate. He died in 1969. But the 41-minute video that records his dexterity had me on the edge of my seat. In his day, speed was essential. Even before the packaging revolution, household pots and jugs made from clay were treated as disposables. They cost only a few pence. Craftsmen potters had to be quick to earn a living from poorly-paid villagers.
Unlike other mass-produced art, hand-thrown pots seem to look better the faster they are turned out. The potter's skill improves with practice - yet there is no time for pretentiousness. Hence the charm of English country pottery made for cooking, baking, brewing, storing, growing seedlings or feeding chickens.
The founders of British 20th century studio pottery - Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew and the Japanese Shoji Hamada - sought out the few remaining English country potters and copied their techniques. But their debt to them is often overlooked and English country pottery remains largely undiscovered. There are fewer than a dozen collectors, few textbooks and no national collection. By contrast, the Japanese prize our country pottery, as do American folk art enthusiasts.
On 29 November, the first private collection of English country pottery to come to auction is at Bonhams - 85 lots discovered over 20 years by the artist-designers Peter Highley and Ruth Scott-Walton in markets and shops, in particular where the last country potteries clung on: Cornwall, north Devon, Dorset and Yorkshire.
Mr Highley defined its appeal: "The old country potters did not think of themselves as artists. But there is a purity and an honesty in their work that is sometimes missing from more refined contemporary studio ceramics."
By 1900 England had only 100 country potteries and by the end of the depression a mere dozen. There has been a pottery at Soil Hill since the 17th century. Before the war it employed 13 men. After that, Button could find no more apprentices and worked it alone for 18 years.
Most of the pots in the sale are "slipware", slip being creamy white diluted clay. Red earthenware was either dipped in it or decorated with it. The country glaze was galena, toxic lead sulphide, now illegal, that gave potters "bellyache" if they pulverised it when dry.
There are some Victorian remnants from Soil Hill in the sale: three bulbous jugs with cream slip interiors are estimated pounds 80-pounds 140 the lot. At the turn of the century, few earthenware cooking utensils cost more than 7d - pounds 1.60 today. In 1964, Button's 28lb cider jars cost 28s - pounds 14 today.
Button's strength and endurance were Herculean. The ton of clay he could pot in a day he dug himself from the hillside. Each firing of his 500 cubic foot kiln had to be stoked with two and half tons of coal at six firemouths. That kept him up for 48 hours or more at a time, during which he would climb on to the hot kiln roof, even in gales, to pull out test firings.
Once he had emptied the kiln he would begin barrowing to the wheel blocks of clay that he had processed: first blunged (mixed with water), sieved, dried on a stone floor heated by the kiln and twice pugged (compressed); all the time he smoked his pipe.
Button did, somehow, find leisure time, maintaining that he never left a pub on the same day that he entered it.
Bernard Leach, the father of British studio pottery, sought him out, wanting to know how much grog (gritty bits) he added to the clay of his "bigware". The dry Yorkshireman told him: "I have enough trouble gettin' t' bloody stuff out wi'out puttin' it in."
Me Again: Some years ago I wandered over the land at soil hill, picking up broken shards. The buildings are dilapidated, on a bleak hillside. In the pub opposite I found two old men who had known Isaac, and talked about him, the way he would stride down the hill at the end of the day, ready for a long session of ale.
Apparently, despite what John Windsor said, he lived there with his brother, and they worked together, but following some argument, years ago they would not speak to each other. They'd talk volubly with others, but if asked anything that referred to the other, they'd say "Tha'll 'ave ter ask 'im, Ah dooant knaw".
The brother died first, Isaac kept on until 1965, when ill health forced him to retire, he died in 1969, last of an era.
In pubs and cottages around, you'll see his pots, often regarded as just old things of no real value, though the antiques market has in fact seen a sharp rise in values, especially of marked pots clearly attributable to Isaac. He'd have laughed and shaken his head, "Dooant be daft, They's nobbut clay".
Disclaimer... I was once a potter, maybe I still am.
Monday, 1 December 2008
An AWARD!!!!
"Because I'm worth it",
as that tiresome woman on the television keeps saying.
MYSTERY CARROT AWARD
for website adequacy
Just about all the curry-house fliers I get through my letterbox seem to proclaim that they are Restaurant of the year, or have been awarded Best Asian Chef, or Best Fried Cat in Britain, or some such. I really do think they just create the awards themselves. Just like I would, if I was clever enough.
(Go on, click on the carrot and award yourself one!)
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
They're Back!
All I am able to reveal here stems from my industrial espionage skills....
(reading The Grauniad, and visiting Aardman's website).
My favourite, absolutely favourite actor ever, has to be Gromit.
And of course, his trusty sidekick, Wallace.
Their house, at 62 West Wallaby street has been converted into a bakery... Monster robotic kneading arms, flour dust, a windmill on the roof, a forklift with hands in oven-gloves... But danger stalks the streets.. bakers are disappearing... a cereal killer is on the loose... Wallace is too in love to notice, but trusty Gromit is the detective on the case..............
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
Absolutely Smashing!
Tablewear!
I just love this, part of a body of work by Li Xiaofeng.
As a potter, I'm fascinated by the many uses of ceramics, from the earliest times to the present day. The space shuttle is protected from the searing heat of re-entry by ceramics, main battle tanks have ceramic armour plates, I just bought a vegetable peeler with a ceramic blade, I've eaten my breakfast out of a 2,000 year old Roman Samian ware bowl, I've drunk beer out of a tankard last used in 1642. Egyptian tomb paintings show the god Thothmes creating a man on a potter's wheel, nearly seven thousand years ago.
Yet ceramics, despite their extraordinary longevity and endurance, also speak to us of fragility, preciousness, of great value, easily broken.
Li Xiaofeng uses shards of Qing era porcelain, (about A.D.1830), stitching them together to create these garments. I can only guess at the meanings she holds attached, the past creating a shell, a carapace for the future, thoughts of fragility and breaking, but also of timeless durability, -fragile, but can last thousands of years... And the dichotomy of broken, yet precious.
In China's history, mountains of broken porcelain have been created, but treasured pieces were often stitched back together, small holes drilled in fragments and precious metal wires used to hold them, cracks rebuilt, filled with gold-leaf lacquer.
I saw these first via a link that led to Le zèbre bleu.
See more at Hongart.
Here's a few made a little earlier, in China, about 210 b.c. -current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there are over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 chariot-horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried.
Argh! I'm just having a little html crisis. damn! I can't figure it out. never mind.
Friday, 14 November 2008
The Coolest Dancing Camel You'll See Today
On Donkey Gifts for My Birthday....
You may have read about the troubles thai ladyboys go to, to become as authentic as possible women. Well, you may not of course... Umm. But lets assume you have, eh?
Believe me, that's nothing to the trouble a woman can take in becoming a genuine Mule. Stubborn-ness is not enough.
Imagine for a moment the length of time it takes to decide on the exact shade of mule... Sorrel? Bay? mmm Red?
Oh yes, Red.
Can you imagine what it costs, and how long it takes at the salon?
Bit of trimming?
Bit of waxing?
Clairol tankers waiting outside?
Maybe some eye shadow?
You ever seen mule lashes?
Then the hooves... shiny black?
or scarlet?
And the SHOES?
And the surgery.
(I just googled mule shoes... 7" platform mules, in crystal acrylic with l.e.d. lighting. The very mmm opposite of classy and understated, I couldn't bring myself to post a pic here. My god, the things women will endure. Many a time I've heard woman claim that high heels are something foisted upon them by men. But it's not men I see with their noses presssed against the shoe store window, it's not men who will buy a shoe that's the wrong size because it's the last one in the shop and they'll endure the pain because it's so lovely...)
Mule Shoe
She sent me, amongst other things on her birthday present post, a Donkey Piñata.
I wondered what it reminded me of... Then it started to grow! And mutate!
Like this!!!!!
And suddely I knew! It was a TROJAN PIÑATA!
I'm still laughing...
Oh. And by the way........
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Sometime poetry is a wave that sweeps you away.
I want to read her book, "Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse" from whence come these words.
(Link to my earlier post of Herrick's poem, Corrina's Going A-Maying)
It was a geologic instant.
Fine-bone plates moved under the Pawtuxet
& up sprang West Warwick. In an instant
the houses were up & the shutters open.
Then the paint was peeling all over town.
Then the instant passed with a shudder
& all the houses fell down.
The lilacs die. The lilies of the valley. April & May blow up & away.
"We are ready to live as before,"
says the last bald priest to the last white-May-dress girl,
who touches her chalked hopscotch sidewalk
& beneath her palm detects an earthquake
& in a gutter puddle sees her skull
& on her tongue catches a white blossom,
the last one. With her chalk she bawls
"The spring days are going to the graveyard."
The pet goat eats poison oak. The puppy bites the bitty lamb. All the kitty's whiskers fall away.
The little Lamb girl straddles a Chrysler Plymouth,
queen of the car parade, with a kitty
in her arm crook & a hand to the crowd.
She calls out, "I can see the end from here"
& tosses all West Warwick some Tootsie Rolls.
The Chrysler driver blows his horn.
Where have all the May-dress girls gone?
—To the classroom, for learning Latin & blushing
over Queen Dido's open, bebassing mouth.
The dust turns to tar. The rain to chalk. Undertakers cart snow angels away.
My hearse slides by a girl astride a puddle
wearing her mom's wedding gown. A downpour
smacks Arctic, Natick, the Greenwich Inn.
All the front door keys to all the places
I have ever lived drip from the dogwood tree
& chime in the wind. The girl in the gown
sinks. The puddle turns to a pond. West Warwick,
my West Warwick, drowns. Drowns world,
my clapboard castle & the moonface I was living in.
Sentimental Atom Smasher
by Darcie Dennigan
So this guy walks into a bar and asks for a beer. Sorry,
the bartender says, I only sell atom smashers
And the guy says well isn't that America for you—
every happy-hour Nelson's a homemade physicist and no thank you,
just an ice cold one, but it's too late—suddenly, he's on his butt
in a ballfield where handsome men are chasing a ball over grass
sad grass, yellow like the hair of his once-young mother!
and again he says, no thank you—I've seen this movie before
And the bartender says it's a joke and you're inside its machine...
Hey, the guy wants to say—I'm not the guy—I'm me
I'm just a guy who walked into a bar. I'm just a guy who retreats
to his car for a private cry. Instead he sniffs and cries out—
The sky smells like the bologna from when I was a boy!
Ahh, says the bartender, ahh yes. Someone has left
the refrigerator door of the cosmos open a crack
And the view! cries the guy. The beauty of an atom smasher,
says the bartender, even from the cheap seats you see
clear into 1952. And the guy, squinting into the distance,
starts to bawl. Maybe it's the vendors hawking
commemorative popcorn, or the programs promoting emotion
("the matter of the universe!") printed on material whose pulp
was milked from the trunk of a winesap apple tree, but—
What's the matter? says the bartender. And the guy says,
I'm confused. Am I allowed to be homesick in a joke?
Yes, the bartender says. It's elemental, the bartender says—
How streets are downtrodden atoms and falling leaves are aflutter
atoms and beer is over-the-moon atoms. The moon's an atomizer
of all matter's perfumes: And the guy starts to parse it out—
Wait, I'm not smart, but if emotion's a material substance
then when a leaf falls in my lap and I hold it,
like an about-to-be-abandoned baby, I'm touching "aflutter" in 3-D?
Dear fluttering leaf!
Streets—I'm sorry for stepping on you! Apples—for coring you, and beer—
* * *
A guy walks into a bar,
—actually just the beer-drinking bleachers of a ballfield—and says
is this some kind of joke?
Well, says the bartender who has observed the little lamb
and the tyger burning bright and tickled their particulates,
because your life has lately been stagnant, we have yoked you
to a joke and we await the gasp that will gas up the cosmos...
Just then, there's a hit at the plate—and it's going,
it's going—gone to smash the guy in the skull
And since baseballs are made of nostalgia atoms, the guy,
with concussion, says I want to buy a coke for a nickel
I want to install apple pie perfumemakers in the crotch of every tree
Bartender, bring me dried nosegays! Start the stalwart pageants!
And the moon's spritzing its perfumes and the phlegm is thick and fast
And the bartender says time to wallow in byproducts:
Where we planted peanut shells, we got shaky, palsied trees
Where we planted nickel cokes, we got nicked cans
Where we planted baseballs we grew large, sad eyeballs
as we watched for something to grow. Still, still
we atom-probe: In a dark building a child is
about to be born. The smell of bread is about to
break. And our guy is going, O spring evenings!
How I used to stand yelping in the alley by the bakery...
Who are these boys throwing baseballs? Who is this baby?
O bartender, tell me, what is the message in this light rain?
But the bartender's dark eyes are flying
over centerfield, over the rooftops and watertowers of the joke's
universe, over alleys and cold valleys of refrigerator light
toward an aptest eve where these street kids are hurling a ball into
the moonlight and the moonlight is curdling into freon...
Poem. (Inspired by recent events). By Soupbucket.
The universe disassembles.
My car, okay, not new,
But newer than me.
A gearbox.
A drive shaft.
Universal joint.
Universal.
Entropy.
Four-wheel-drive.
But sometimes none.
Or one.
It churns,
Steadfastly,
mud.
Drive shaft.
Centre differential?
Hm.
Entropy.
And below my hearing range,
Rust.
Degrades.
Slowly.
Shiny steel
To
Red powder.
So close, the mysteries of the universe,
Displayed in this
Universal joint.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Comments;- At last I notice a backlog.
I keep writing blogposts in my head... but I have blogger's block when I get here. Ho Hum.
I'll get unstuck, eventually.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Saturday, 18 October 2008
Labio Dental Fricative
Labio Dental Fricative
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.....
This was in response to a post by The Inner Minx, and the ensuing comments thereon.
"Soubriquet said... Oh , hello, me again. See there was a misunderstanding about Labio-Dental Fricative, and a correspondent suggested it was suggestive, and that my comment was naughty. It was the Labio bit that brought about the tut-tuttage.So, let me clarify.Ladies, this is NOT about dentists in your undercarriage, the labile constituent of a Labio-dental fricative is your bottom lip... No, the one on your FACE...Labio-dental fricative describes a sound, made by passing air through a narrowed channel (fricative) modified by the bottom lip (labio) meeting the upper teeth.(Dental)So Labio-dental fricative is a linguistic term to describe a sound. In English, the letters F and V are labio-dental fricatives...The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band sang a song of that title. To which I referred.
Sheesh! surely you all knew that?"
Labio-Dental Fricative (Stanshall/Innes)
Cannibal chiefs chew Camembert cheese
'cause chewing keeps 'em cheeky
Big Fat Fred sticks fur to his head
'cause he thinks fur makes him freaky
Benjamin Bland and his Bugle Band blow the blues bi-weekly
(Yee hoo hoo!)
How many pies can a porpoise poise on purpose if she pleases?
I got up at eight, it was half past two
I said to myself, "Well, how do you do?"
I've gotta get on, so I soon got off
Stuck a clean shirt on, and had a good cough
Back at the boozer, a bloke I knew
Said he knew a secret no one knew
He pinched some snuff, and he sniffed and sighed
So I pinched his snout, and he replied,
"Cannibal chiefs chew Camembert cheese
'cause chewing keeps 'em cheeky
Big Fat Fred sticks fur to his head
'cause he thinks fur makes him freaky
Benjamin Bland and his Bugle Band blow the blues bi-weekly
How many pies can a porpoise poise on purpose if she pleases?"
Here am I a sailor
Seabirds fly above me
Listen to their cry
See them in the sky above me
Here am I a sailor
Fishes swim below me
Even while I sleep
Growing in the deep below me
I rode a long worm to the end of the line
I asked Tin Man if he'd tell me the time
He took off his hat, and he took off his head
Took off Max Bygraves, here's what he said,
"You take first right and second left."
The man in the moon says, "How's your chest?"
The man in the sun says, "Have another one!"
So we're all tanked up and singing along
Cannibal chiefs chew camembert cheese
'cause chewing keeps 'em cheeky
Big Fat Fred fixes fur to his head
'cause he thinks fur makes him freaky
Benjamin Bland and his Bugle Band blow the blues bi-weekly
(Mmmmm, mm)
How many pies can a porpoise poise on purpose if she pleases?
Saturday, 11 October 2008
Human Behaviour
Transport for London, the agency responsible for the capital's public transport, had 40 million pounds invested with Landsbanki's subsidiary, Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander. Fifteen police authorities had nearly 100 million pounds invested in Icelandic banks, according to the Association of Police Authorities, with London's Scotland Yard authority saying it had 30 million pounds invested.
This put our government in such a tizzy that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was moved to a cunning stroke... Let's use our newish laws designed to stop terrorists money laundering through british banks.... And seize all Icelandic assets in Britain!
Some of that money's not been there very long. Foreign banks got a lot of british money as british banks wobbled under the hit they took with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the U.S.
Here's the take on Landsbanki's Icebank on the 18th September, less than a month before it collapsed.
"A large number of savings account holders in the UK transferred their funds to Icelandic banks on Monday, reports Mbl.is Icesave, a savings account offered by Landsbanki, and Kaupthing Edge, a similar high interest product offered by Kaupthing Singer Friedlander, saw a surge in business after UK customers lost faith in their own banks, according to Kaupthing.
“Savers in the UK became somewhat nervous of their banks and moved their money over to us,” said Gudni Adalsteinsson, managing director of Kaupthing’s Treasury Department.
The share prices of major British banks such as HBOS and Barclays plummeted in value on Monday, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank in the US. Kaupthing said that Monday was in fact the fourth best day of business since it launched its Edge savings account in February this year. The two Icelandic banks have completed this year’s refinancing of ISK 820 billion (USD 8.7 billion, EUR 6 billion) worth of loans and next year’s is well underway."
These market experts are so wise, we should always trust their utterances, shouldn't we?
This rather sets the cordial relations between the U.K. and Iceland back a bit.
Almost to the Cod Wars...
Or the British invasion of neutral Iceland in 1940.
Anyway, it seems we are seizing Iceland's assets even as I write. I would argue that using the anti-terrorism laws is of course, nonsense, and I expect Iceland to challenge the legality of Brown's move, and he's hardly in a position to criticise the Icelandic state's lack of foresight, as Prime Minister Brown, with a number of years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, britain's top money-man, under his belt, proved no more prescient as british financial institutions collapsed and were bailed out by the state, following the New York debacle.
Björk
HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
If you ever get close to a human
And human behaviour-
Be ready to get confused
There's definitely, definitely, definitely no logic
To human behaviour,
But yet so, yet so irresistible
And there's no map
They're terribly moody
And human behaviour
Then all of a sudden turn happy
But, oh, to get involved in the exchange
Of human emotions is ever so, ever so satisfying
Oh oh, and there's no map
Human behaviour, human
Human, human behaviour, human
Human, human behaviour, human
Human behaviour, human
And there's no map
And a compass
Wouldn't help at all
Human behaviour, human, human
Human behaviour, human,
Human behaviour, human,
Human behaviour
There's definitely, definitely, definitely no logic
Human, human
Human behaviour
Human.
There's definitely, definitely, definitely no logic
Human, human, human, human.
It's So Quiet
It's oh so quiet : it's oh so still
you're all alone : and so peaceful until
You fall in love (zing! boom!)
the sky up above (zing! boom!)
is caving in (wow! bam!)
you've never been so nuts about a guy
you wanna laugh you wanna cry
you cross your heart and hope to die
'Til it's over and then
it's nice and quiet
but soon again
starts another big riot
You blow a fuse (zing! boom!)
the devil cuts loose (zing! boom!)
so what's the use (wow! bam!)
of falling in love
It's oh so quiet : it's oh so still
you're all alone : and so peaceful until
You ring the bell (bim! bam!)
you shout and you yell (hi ho ho!)
you broke the spell
gee, this is swell you almost have a fit
this guy is gorge and I got hit
there's no mistake : THIS IS IT
'Til it's over and then : it's nice and quiet
but soon again : starts another big riot
You blow a fuse (zing! boom!)
the devil cuts loose (zing! boom!)
so what's the use (wow! bam!)
of falling in love
The sky caves in! the devil cuts loose!
you blow blow blow blow blow your fuse!
when you fall in love
Ssshhhhhh...