Today is a lovely (if still somewhat chill) day, bright sun, blue sky etc.
I had occasion to go the Post Office (and there was a time, my dearios, that conducting some small transaction requiring a PO did not require careful planning and strategising, sigh).
Which involves crossing two Bloomsbury squares (Tavistock out, Gordon back).
Daffodils! ( Read more... )

Spotted making the rounds on Twitter, what looks like a cutting from a C19th magazine about flirting using various items of dress such as gloves, handkerchiefs, and parasols, and the meaning of the various ways they can be deployed.
( Cut to spare your reading page )

Why do old musicians always think the kids have lost their way? (Not just ageing rockers, surely): [W]hen people want to sniff at the inherent banality of modern media they almost inevitably fixate on cultural phenomena with predominantly female fan-base.
....
Your failure to pay attention... does not cause the rest of the world to wink out of ( Read more... )

(It is round about 100 years* since my darling Dame Rebecca, then a fiery young thing, remarked that 'men are terribly poor stuff'.)

This week I had occasion to read some essays by a younger historian who works within the same general field that I do, one of which was a self-reflexive one about people's assumptions about why we do what we do, and ( Read more... )

Had a very agreeable time flaneusering in Toronto with
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20 Genuinely Awesome Date Ideas

- that would have had me nervously backing away even in my salad days.

What is wrong with meal and a movie, really?

***

Further to my post on Friday, I was very amused by Stephen Collins' cartoon in yesterday's Guardian Weekend in which the daffodils speak back to Wordsworth - 'ogling us up with your poety eyes...'. ( Read more... )

Daffodils! daffodils! in Euston Square.

Not quite hosts and clouds, but quite a few.

Houndz ov spring b goin arf.

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- No, really, it's all more complicated.

Roses can be all sorts of colours, including blue thanks to genetic engineering.

Ditto violets, which can be e.g. yellow or white

And much enjoying the various subversions appearing at #AcademicValentines.

Still unable to find a V-card saying 'I'm quite fond of you, old thing'.

This entry was originally ( Read more... )

Advice on your hanging baskets this winter: Do not overlook the beauty of the dead and the decaying.
[T]rek to the cold and cheerless nether reaches of the garden centre, where the past-it perennials are for sale at half price or less. Look for gone-over echinaceas, irises and acanthus or, if you are very lucky, a vibrant, orange-podded Physalis ' ( Read more... )

Still very cold in London today, although the flurries of snow yesterday didn't settle.

But, anyway and however, I was walking to the bus stop, having had a massage, and outside the really rather grim blocks of council flats (they are probably lovely inside, and the location is v central and convenient, but they were not put up at a good period for ( Read more... )