Category Archives: books

arts, books, current affairs, music, natural history, nudism, quotes, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

I’ve been reading quite a bit over Christmas, so this week there’s a good selection of quotes; something for almost everyone here …

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
[Paul Harvey]

If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.
[The Economist; unknown author and date]

You can’t prove that there isn’t a magic teapot floating around on the dark side of the moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoots lightning out of its boobs but, it seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it?
[Kurt Hummel]

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is in the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements but not with as much strength, though it is deficient only in power of maintaining equilibrium.
[Leonardo da Vinci, The Flight of Birds, 1505]

Newton saw an apple fall and deduced Gravitation. You and I might have seen millions of apples fall and only deduced pig-feeding.
[Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher; Letter to the Times, 12 January 1920]

All dog-lovers must be interested in Lieutenant-Commander Elwell-Sutton’s account of his white whippet which insists on singing to the accompaniment of his (or, may I hope, his young son’s?) accordion – presumably one of those gigantic new instruments, invented, I think, in Italy, which make noises as loud as those made by cinema organs, and rather like them. This dog’s taste is low; but a musical ear is a musical ear.
[Sir John Squire; letter to the Times, 11 January 1936]

They [18th and early 19th century Quakers] became a bourgeois coterie of bankers, brewers and cocoa-grocers.
[Mr Ben Vincent, letter to the Times, 13 March 1974]

[The correct] forking technique is called the Continental method. It’s the method used in Europe as well as anywhere else that the British have killed the locals.
[Scott Adams]

Alice: Would you please tell me which way I ought to walk from here?
Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where –
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.
Alice: – so long as I get somewhere.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.
[Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

books, quotes

The Lure of the Limerick

Lying abed last night I got to thinking about limericks; something I have not visited for quite some while. And of course I didn’t need to revisit WS Baring-Gould’s The Lure of the Limerick to be reminded that as an art form the limerick is both clever and bawdy – as well as being a peculiarly English art form, much older than it’s supposed inventor Edward Lear – viz:

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space which is quite economical
Though the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

The limerick’s an art for complex
Whose contents run chiefly to sex.
It’s famous for virgins
And masculine urgin’s
And vulgar erotic effects.

The thoughts of the rabbit on sex
Are seldom, if ever, complex
For a rabbit in need
Is a rabbit in deed
And does as a rabbit expects.

There once was a queer of Khartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room
And they argued all night
As to who had the right
To do what, and with which, and to whom.

And it’s all downhill from there!

Must buy a new copy of Baring-Gould; my cheap 1971 paperback has literally fallen apart.

arts, books

Puppets in Aliceland

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For all you theatre buffs out there, here’s something different. I’ve just come across this trailer video for Little Angel Theatre‘s current show Alice in Wonderland which runs until 30 January.

Click the image to play the video or double click for a larger version direct from YouTube …

No, I haven’t seen it yet. We have that delight in store for my birthday.

books, music, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

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Sorry, not too many posts recently as I’ve been too preoccupied with other things. But here’s this week’s selection of quotes …

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
[Andre Maurois]

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
[Thomas Jefferson]

This is what you shall do: Be loyal to what you love, Be true to the Earth, and Fight your enemies with passion and laughter.
[Edward Abbey]

If you were addressing humankind, and all its groups were listening, what advice would you give?
The best advice I think was given by Douglas Adams: DON’T PANIC.
[Arthur C Clarke]

And finally a somewhat longer than usual offering:

Reasons briefly set down by th’author, to perswade every one to learne to sing.
First, it is a knowledge safely taught and quickly learned, where there is a good Master, and an apt Scholler.
2 The exercise of singing is delightfull to Nature, & good to preserve the health of Man.
3 It doth strengthen all parts of the brest, & doth open the pipes.
4 It is a singular good remedie for a stutting and stamering in the speech.
5 It is the best means to procure a perfect pronounciation, & to make a good Orator.
6 It is the onely way to know where Nature hath bestowed the benefit of a good voyce : which guift is so rare, as there is not one among a thousand, that hath it.
7 There is not any Musicke of Instruments whatsoever, comparable to that which is made of the voyces of Men, where the voyces are good, and the same well sorted and ordered.
8 The better the voyce is, the meeter it is to honour and serve God there-with : and the voyce of man is chiefely to bee imployed to that ende.
“Omnis Spiritus Laudes Dominum”
Since Singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing.
[William Byrd c1543-1623; Psalms, Sonets, and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie (1588) ]

books, photography, pleasures, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s selection …
Enlightened One
Enlightened One by martisimas on Flickr

Enlightened One
My staff pays the mortgage,
but the house is all mine …
For the world is my oyster
… but tuna’s just fine.
[Cool Hand Luke]

Any photographer who says he isn’t a voyeur is either stupid or a liar.
[Helmut Newton]

What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.
[unknown]

Love is space and time measured by the heart.
[Marcel Proust]

books, personal, pleasures, quotes, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

Here I Am

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Having last week quoted the opening couple of lines from Roger McGough’s poem Here I Am it seems opportune to post the whole poem as it isn’t very long.

Here I Am

Here I am
getting on for seventy
and never having gone to work in ladies’ underwear

Never run naked at night in the rain
Made love to a girl I’d just met on a plane

At that awkward age now between birth and death
I think of all the outrages unperpetrated
opportunities missed

The dragons unchased
The maidens unkissed
The wines still untasted
The oceans uncrossed
The fantasies wasted
The mad urges lost

Here I am
as old as Methuselah
was when he was my age
and never having stepped outside for a fight

Crossed on red, pissed on rosé (or white)
Pretty dull for a poet, I suppose, eh? Quite.

Now OK, one knows that here will likely be a degree of poetic licence and tongue in cheek, but it is interesting what one even might consider it important that one hasn’t done (or would have liked to have done) in a lifetime.

So what would be on my list of things I’ve never done, and feel I want to have done? Hmmm … well … OK …

  • Visit Japan, Iceland, Norway and Sweden
  • Discover that I’m entitled to a coat of arms
  • Had a lot more sexual partners (what a waste of the 60s & 70s not to have done!)
  • Had sex in a hot, sunny hayfield
  • Travelled on the Orient Express and the Trans-Siberian Express
  • Not been depressed
  • Known what it’s like to be female

Well there’s still time to tick off some of those; better get going!

You can also check out my list of 111 Bucket List Things To Do.

beliefs, books, nudism, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

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This week’s weirdos …

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
[Bill Watterson]

Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.
[Charles Schulz]

The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendour and its beauty … Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness … Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person … The human body is not in itself shameful … Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function of the interior of a person.
[Pope John Paul II]

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
[Philip K Dick]

Here I am
getting on for seventy
and never having gone to work in ladies underwear
[Roger McGough, Here I Am]
amusements, books, topographical

From Youth to Paradise

I was reminded today of that lovely GK Chesterton poem The Rolling English Road.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

What could better summarise the English countryside, the fun of youth and the eventual wisdom of age!

books, quotes, science, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

It’s been an odd week, apart from the fact I’ve been ill, with not many good quotes which are short enough for here, but lots of long ones. Maybe I’ll blog the long quotes in separate posts later, meanwhile here are a handful of short ones.

James Joyce fans in Dublin spend up to 36 hours reading Ulysses aloud every year on June 16.
[Times; 29 September 2010]

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
[Isaac Asimov]

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.
[Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]

Life is change that we don’t attend to.
[Cory Silverberg at http://sexuality.about.com ]

Our experience of sexuality is inseparable from our experience of life.
[Cory Silverberg at http://sexuality.about.com ]

books, people, personal, pleasures, quotes, topographical

Tube Strike Poetry

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It’s an ill wind … at least today’s tube strike in London means Noreen is at home (albeit working) on her birthday. Mind, she is currently out taking Harry the Cat the the V E T again. And it’s wet here which is unusual for Noreen’s birthday.

On the subject of the tube strike I just have to repost this from the BBC News website. I love the Liverpool poets, especially Roger McGough.

Poet Roger McGough has written two poems in response to Sunday and Monday’s London Tube strike to mark National Poetry Day.

Millions face disruption during the 24-hour strike, which is in protest at plans to cut ticket office staffing.

The theme for Thursday’s poetry day is home, and McGough suggests his lines may help commuters see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Liverpudlian poet presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please.

He was also a member of The Scaffold, which topped the charts in 1968 with Lily the Pink, and was an uncredited writer of some of the humorous dialogue on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film.

Along with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, McGough was one of the Mersey Poets and they published two best-selling volumes of verse during the 60s and 70s, having started out giving readings in Liverpool’s clubs and cafes.

Here are his two poems:

A Striking Soliloquy

tu be

or not

tu be

Tube strike Haiku

trains that are side-lined

idling in rusty sidings

fear the knacker’s yard

* * *

tunnels empty now

can see the light at both ends

birds risk a short cut

* * *

rails sleeping, dream of

a parallel universe

a new perspective

* * *

platforms yawn and stretch

enjoying the holiday

mice minding the gap

I must look at the Liverpool poets again; haven’t read them for ages. They’re brilliant!