A rather more eclectic mix than usual this week. I just love some of the names in this first quote …

Transport on Water: Barge Driving Race – Saturday 18 June 2011
Race Start 1200
A number of Thames barges will be raced, under oars, from Greenwich to Westminster Bridge on Saturday 18th June 2011. The race will start at Greenwich at 1200 from 3 start lines for the different classes of barge, off Greenwich Pier, off Trafalgar Tavern (lower end of Scrap Iron Park) and off Tunnel Glucose Wharf. Each start line will be marked by 2 pellet buoys, one on each side of the river.
[Port of London – River Thames, Notice to Mariners, M34 of 2011]

Scrap Iron Park indeed!

Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
[Horace]

I’m not a beatnik, I’m a Catholic.
[Jack Kerouac]

Which reminds me that in response to some god-botherer’s query “are you saved?” a friend once responded “Good God no, I’m a Roman Catholic”.

You kill ’em. We grill ’em.
[Bart Simpson, aka Matt Groening]

That sums up the feelings of last couple of days quite well!

To us, the moment 8:17 AM means something – something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance – did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time.
[Aldous Huxley]

Time can’t be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.
[Jorge Luis Borges]

Earth laughs in flowers.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

If so then our garden is rolling on the floor peeing it’s pants ‘cos we have an absolute riot of roses at the moment. Our large apricot-coloured climber Lady Hillingdon currently has more flowers than leaves – it really is just one mass of flowers like never before.