Author: basgallop

Rumination

I love Kemp Town. I stopped to ponder outside a pet shop on my home, it was called ‘Paws Fur Thought’
When i’m older i’m going to get a shop of my own there, just so it can jostle alongside shops, such as, the hairdressers, famously ‘Ba Ba Blacksheep’
and my own fave, the flowershop ‘Aloe Petal’

here be pooches…

knobbly knees

we-e-ll as the days are getting shorter the troosers are getting longer
i’ve finally abandoned my summer garb, shorts are just so last season, doncha know
it’s blooming odd going on a bike tho’, you have to tuck your trouser leg into your socks
does that action alone allow me to be a free mason?
in the words of bartholowmew simpson…’ eat my shorts’

shakespear

…. in response to an ed post
……..

hot date!

well i’d watch the Polanski film version of the play, whatever you may think of him personally, it’s a fierce, brutal, visceral interpertation.
It feels grimly scottish and even survives comparisons with monty python and the holy grail!
when we studied it for o-levels, we got to watch it in class, which was just fab
….and much better than say RE, where Mr Blanchflower, one of those blokes like Michael Eavis, with an upside down head beard thing.. oh and he wore a string vest under his shirt and just dreadful tediously monotone read excerpts from the bible. oh woodworm dull, waste of my life

… back to the film… plus bonus, that bloke from the proffesionals, martin shaw(?) plays banquo and his ghost
once you’ve grasped teh story then you can concentrate more on the text for the stage version and it really is beautiful in places!
famously:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

free food

…. reply to a foraging post
……….

a dismal drizzle lunchtime, still rain like this, then a couple of days sunshine and mushies will be springing up just everywhere!

…. as for Sweet Chestnuts, how about trying Petworth?
slightly beyond our usual stomping ground, but a lovely place
Theres a big grove of truly ancient sweet chestnuts up on the hill,
an ‘old chestnut’, but imagine gathering chestnuts from a tree that was full grown, when the Prince Regent, in his breeches was sprightly about brighton!
them be huge trees, a falstaffian girth, proper gnarly. full of brooding spook faces
obviously not quite the spirit vibe of oaks (ancient oaks are called dodderers!) but fantastic none the less
The sweet chestnut is not actually a british native but was bought over by the Romans, who were rather partial to chestnut paste.
togas and peanut butter and jam sarnies?

… forgot to say my 2 fave tree books are

Jacqueline Memory Paterson – Tree Wisdom: The definitive guidebook to the myth, folklore and healing power of Trees,
a curious tome by a druid, she ought to look like the piccie above
book is full of stories like Odin hanging upside down in the branches of yggdrassil, the world tree for 3 nights, in order to obtain knowledge… and why that tree was an ash

also

Meetings with Remarkable trees – Thomas Pakenham, lots of glossy piccies (tree porn?), he’s a pleasantly fusty raconteur

… and

the word deodrant? is that from the aroma of the bark of the deodar tree?

the other day i took the kids up to Nymans, we found a giant Sequoia, obviously but a titch of a thing compared to the ones in colorado,
but still took five of us, finger tip to finger tip, to encircle it.
face pushed right against it’s soft, warm red spongey bark
It rubs off on you like rust!

instant (pot noodle!) nostalgia

in the evening reading S a story, the evocative pong of the tree still on our jumpers.

calling names

heres a link
http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk

then click on surnames, it apparently shows the regional distribution of your name today and in 1881, and just how common you are. cheers malc

another very old java applet one, this shows how your first name popularity has changed over the generations

http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

……
……………….
acchh rumbled, just an excuse really to tell one and all the noble and exotic provenance of my name
sure i’ve told everybody this before, but…
….from an old gabble…..
……………………………….

my name was originally italian, Bache Galluppa from Genoa, it means ‘galloping kisses’,
Jonny Bache Gallupa came over to sell oranges in Curry Rivel down in deepest Somerzet back in the 1860’s, 1880’s,
in the time of Garribaldi, the great biscuit.
We know this because one of my dads property developer drinking cronies in the 70’s was a Primarollo and his ancient granny actually remembered him!
Apparently the Baz y Gallupas were a rather famous family of organ grinders from Chiavra
Anyway, once i was on a dole course and met a genovese fellow, i told him this tale and he went ‘oh my sister lives in Baz y Gallupa’, it’s a village, sadly the galloping kisses is thoroughly spurious, and he thought the lupa was from wolf,
me heap big running wolf

about 10 years ago nearly all the Basgallops on the planet were gathered together in one room, in a hotel just off the M25 in Essex.
My uncle had just been awarded the OBE, he was a middle manager at BT, but claire my civil servant spy friend knew him well, rumour has it, confidentally, natch, that he was in charge of some GCHQ project whereby computers listen to every word in every telephone conversation in the whole world, so if you say ‘Nuclear powered Uranium detonation device’ they just so know.
When the queen hands out gongs she has a postcard telling her what each person has done for their honour, when she got to my uncle she queenly squawked ‘Goodness, i had no idea we did that sort of thing!’
back in Essex tho’ golly gosh gorman I met my doppleganger namesake.
the wail, the gnashing of teeth, the debris of hubris! I always thought i was unique. there is another Richard Basgallop. a very sweet fellow too
a 14 year old speccy brummie.
……………………
…………………………………

…… anybody else care to share the tale of their name?

Oxjam

i was moseying along kensington gardens at lunch and there was a free concert going on in the oxfam bookshop
i think theres lots of stuff like this all month, and all in a good cause!

the concert i saw was a pleasant middleaged croatian woman singing gypsy ballards and balkan lullabyes
i thought it was quite beautiful. the sound from her mouth really not what you’d expect
the melancholic songs matched my autumn moods,
one was about a young woman on her death bed, who asked her mother to lift her up, just so she could see the wedding procession of her ex boyfriend go by!
me oh my we’ve all had days like that

this bunch tho’ look just wonderfully carefree cheerful

..and he’s rather chuffed too!

Rantings and Railings

Nobody ever gets there head stuck in railings anymore!
Back in the 70’s you could barely walk down the street without some child stuck and being attended to by Firemen
Whats wrong with the kids, the Yootha Joyce of today
Have childrens heads got bigger, and won’t fit through? All that brain food, omega this omega that, something fishy (oil) if you ask me.
And don’t get me started on the lamentable lack of quicksand
a tired time of year, heres an old email

………….
…………………….
one morn, yonks ago when we were living in Crouch End
pam stormed off out to uni after a row. right! I thought, I shall storm out too, and, and sort out the recycling!
So I did slamming the flats front door behind me.ooops only i didn’t have my keys.
couldn’t get into the flat and as the front door had a dead lock couldn’t get out i was marooned in the corridor. no mans land.
Help! Help! Au secours, I stuck my fingers out the letterbox, like the wafting tentacles on a coral polyp?
Then i hollered. hollered some more. A talking letterbox?
eventually a postie arrived. ‘cor mate, thought you were some small kid, saying hello. i’ll call the fire brigade’
One hour later a fire engine arrived. six burly chippendales sauntered over.
‘How can we help, it’ll cost you 120 quid if we break the door down’
by now, a bit cabin feverish i was somewhat irrate and blustered barnacles.
‘120 , you must be blooming joking. i’ll wait! hrrrumphhh. You can go off and rescue a cat. pew pew barley mcGrew’!
Amazing how bold and rude you can be to burly folk, when safely locked behind a strong door
So away they went.
By now our friendly neighbours were alerted, thgey popped by and posted me some lunch, sandwiches, a small carton of drink, a banana and tobacco, surely it should be an essential requirement of package design ‘in an emergency can this food be posted?’
tyhey also phoned pams uni to try and get her to come home, to no avail
finally after 3 hours of thumb twiddling, somebody came home and let me out.
one week later pam got a note in her uni pigeon hole ‘go home. now. boyfriend locked in corridor’