Month: January 2007

anybody read any good books recently?
would be great to have some suggestions

last week, i read ‘a winter book’, the selected short stories of Tove Jannsen, you know the kooky old Finnish/Swedish woman who wrote the Moomintrolls, ‘cept stories for grown ups
first time i read the book i thought it was slight, but now on the second time through it’s quite beguiling!
kind of happy and peculiar, with lots of fear and the sea

I think it’s partly a Finnish thing as my friend Rikka was just lovely, but some days she’s get a spooked out faraway look and it really would be best to just leave her alone

Tove lived on an island in the bay of Finland, her other tale ‘The Summer Book’, is set on the island, and is just about a small girl and her grandma and their adventures. lurvely

actually prob best just to read ‘Finn Family Moomintroll’ again!

…..
Tom McCarthy – Remainder
Ever heard of him Richard?
……
ha. the shame! not being able to finish my mates book.
nearly made it to the end but stumbled at the final hurdle
It’s really good, but he does go on a bit

I shall think up some Tom in Prague tales for you

once, in a hammock, i read about 1000 pages of Keseys ‘sometimes a great notion’ only to find that the last 5 pages were ripped out! cruel
i still wonder what happened.
…….
still thinking about the hammock, on the same day, i found a cockroach in my stash of ganja cookies.
he looked a bit like a dried apricot or a date and was happily wriggling his legs
I set him free
then to compensate i drank too much mekong whiskey and must have gone for a dip…. with my passport…. as it was completely soaked the following morning

some days

……..
who remembers when wangchuk got a salad box from food for friends?
he opened it up and went ‘ugggghhh a slug’, he dashed back to the restaurant to complain
the owner plucked the offending ‘slug’ out and ate it
‘aah dried apricot’

….talking of dried fruit, that is

wood waffle

Hmm all a bit higgledy piggledy the seasons at the mo
when i was in the woods in surrey at the weekend, there were still a few lingering summer Roses, autumn yellow leaves confetti stuck onto the branches, a thin layer of ice on the surface of the ponds and strangest of all, many of the trees were in full blossom … catkins too
some birds, but mostly green parakeets flip flapping overhead
a breeding pair escaped in the seventies and have been whooping it up ever since.
Whatever next.
Pterodactyls?

any suggestions for things to entertain kids in the winters woods?

have stick sword fights
see spooky faces in long toppled over rotten tree trunks, we spotted a wooly mammoth in one
pretend your in a beatles movie
play pooh sticks
stumble stuck, squelch stagger through muddy puddles. ‘Oh Sib-é-a-l your dress!’
hug a tree, many of the trunks have a girth of 3 persons finger tip stretch. impressive
Search for dragons nests
poke a stick into holes beneath trees, rude, but who knows who or what might just pop out
break pieces of ice off from the edge of the pond, then hurl them across the ice, as they whoop holler whistle skip skiddadle out of sight.
and my favourite, run very fast down incredibly steep hills. geronimo!

……….
ah now what i actually meant to say was

we three kings of orient are
one in a taxi, one in a car
one on a scooter, beeping his hooter
smoking a fat cigar… wearing a womans bra

oh star of wonder, star of light
jesus set his pants alight
…… etc …
…..

Steiner School Christmas Bazaar
this Saturday (2nd) prob elevenish till late afternoon
Arundel Road, the far end of Kemp Town, opposite Mulberry Wines, just before the road goes up to Whitehawk
a great place to buy christmas gifts, particularly ones made from lumps of wood and other sundry hippy knick knacks
They’ll be a cafe with lots of homemade cake.. and carol singing
the perfect cure for post christmas party doldrums
………..

bump, bazaar this saturday
…
but as i’m here, may as well burble on about the steiner school as it’s the advent spiral festival today,
very sweet just for the little ones, 4 – 6 year olds

they all have to wear dark colours, blue or black and very quietly shuffle into the school hall.
It’s eerie dark, theres a fiddle playing in the background and a woman squawk singing peculiar celtic melodies
taking up most of the floor, laid out in pine needles and other greenery is a labyrinth,
the teacher bearing a lit apple candle, solemnly walks this leaf spiral in to the center, where she waits.
The first child takes an unlit apple candle, then follows the maze path (often skipping or jogging as kids do)
when they get to the middle they light their candle from the teachers candle, turn about and walk the path back out again
wherever they wish within the maze, they place the candle on the floor, then continue slowly on to the end.
child by child each does this in turn.
the effect of this is that the room starts dark, but after 40 kids have been around, the entire labyrinth and room is lit up with the comfortable flicker of candle light.
Not a word is spoken
moving

oh and i guess the symbolism malarkey is the obvious, the labyrinth is the path of life, the candle each childs immortal soul spark, the importance of choice as to where to place your candle
this season of the year is about silence, the seed nurtured within the soil, light hidden in the darkness
hippy stuff
gawd knows what the wailing singings all about!

……….
When Kafka went to see Steiner in search of enlightenment, Steiner spent the entire interview burrowing a handkerchief up his nose.

………
his first name was Rudolph
Rudolph the Red nosed Steiner

i can’t imagine that meeting would have been a barrel of laughs
crack open another bottle of bollinger Franz. nope

Freud though was a notorious coke head

once when rather trollied in prague, we found a really old telly in a skip, one with diodes, valves and capacitors.
we smashed it up. big time. immensely therapeutic and such good fun.
Either it was devil posessed? or those diodes store loads of electric charge because it fizz firework sparkled magnificently
……

indeed we could well hurl hurtle a few monitors out of the hotel windows, rock and roll.
nobody would even know who we were on account of the racoon masks

we had a black and white tv for a good long while when i was young, the first day we got a colour one i was amazed, when the cowboys died, they bled red blood! which shows what sort of age i was

whose been on tv then?
………..

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:01 pm Post subject: don’t wear dayglo

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from an old email….soz…

i always used to go up to watch the tennis at wimbledon
Back then it was free standing on center court.
we bunked off sixth form college and went up dead early to join the queue.
strawberries and warm lager for breakfast!

We got in and were stood right at the front. saw McEnroe, who was then at his tantrum throwing peak. You cannot be serious! marvelous

Next morning back at college, feigned stomach ache as an excuse for being off the previous day
Dr Rispoli, my tutor, was having none of it. he said
‘I saw you on the 9:00 news last night. front row of the McEnroe match, wearing a fluorescent Orange T-shirt’
ho hum. rumbled

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Once i was off ambling through the hills and bogs of bonny scotland
away down a track, miles from anywhere, when what should I see come a fluttering by?
A ten pound note! Oooh that’s lucky I says to myself.
I pounced on it butterfly collector stylee. ‘got you my beauty!’
Wonder how that got here?
Next a second one came by. Quids in!
lottery millionaires whirling blizzard of cash?
Another! bonanza. the simple elation of greed.

It was then I looked done and noticed that my money belt was unzipped.
noodles of dosh! An entire cashed gyro, scattered on the scottish wind, It was all my money! bagpipe wail
frantic lunges into the heather, oh the moot despondency of mood.

money belts. pah. your better off with a sporran

back when it was built, 1890’s, the Volks railway ran all the way to Rottingdene.
the track must have run on some sort of bridge, viaduct thing, within a few years, the track got washed away, by huge seas, much as todays

but if you look out over the marina wall at low tide, you can still see a parallel lines of stones stretching away into the distance, marking where it used to run

kind of right yes… was for a different type of train though have a read of http://www.urban75.org/railway/brighton-sea-railway.html

cheers james, thats great
life is always much more pleasantly bonkers than i could imagine it to be

as Yeats would have it

Long-Legged Fly

that civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

my new chair makes a twanging spangle tinkle glockenspiel pianola noise when i swivel. hurrah!

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,–
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen