The week before last I was rather on a roll, I thought, in terms of getting somewhat forrader on various projects in the pipeline -

And then last week I was drooping around feeling a rather sad miz weary hedjog, due to sleeping badly, which was mostly due to the achey bits deciding to be particularly achey or flaring up after having long been ( Read more... )

This poem by William Empson has been much on my mind... Missing Dates Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
....
It is the poems you have lost, the ills
From missing dates, at which the heart expires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills ( Read more... )

Happy 139th birthday, Dame Rebecca West! O to read what you might have had to say about the present lot in the present circs, thinking upon your devastating commination of the Men of Munich in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon... (and especially, perhaps, given that your sister Letty was a Public Health doctor with a senior post in the London County ( Read more... )

Take it away, Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
....
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of ( Read more... )

1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
Apart from staying indoors for months on end? Getting organised to order deliveries of groceries/prescription meds/toiletries/etc? Not a year of the excitingly innovative.
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Didn't have resolutions, did have ( Read more... )

Okay, I can see that with What A Year It's Been people want something that is What It Has Ever Been, and that this gets tagged to the Solsticial Rites as they are celebrated in a historically culturally Christian country even if they are largely secularised -
Except I was thinking, are they unchanging over, lo, these many years, and not just in ( Read more... )

I was going to post Sir Noel him very own self doing Bad Times Just Around the Corner, but looking for that, I see somebody has cleverly updated it to the present predicament:

Click to view

(I was wondering about the Divine Mr Coward's Why Must the Show Go On, but in the present parlous position of the performing arts, no, I think not: I was hoping it was ( Read more... )

A bit belatedly, if anybody does have any questions/topics/etc they'd like me to address over the coming weeks, have at it in the comments, and I will take them in advizance.
***
And since this seems to be a thing at the moment...
I'm not sure it's supposed to look like this, but wotevah: holiday love meme 2020
my thread here
***
Today I thought I ( Read more... )

Like, in previous years I am sure the advice columns were all 'how do I deal with compulsory getting together with FAAAAMILY for trad celebration angst angst angst' -
- but on reflection, probably the people who were heavying them into obligation to get together with FAAAAMILY for trad celebration are the ones who are blithely going ahead and ( Read more... )

This weekend is Diwali, and I find that there is an amazing installation at the Tate Britain: Chila Kumari Singh Burman transforms the front of Tate Britain into a celebration of neon light and swirling colour: Inspired by the artist’s childhood visits to the Blackpool illuminations and her family’s ice-cream van, Burman covers the façade of Tate ( Read more... )