The very first thing I feel I must do is to provide a link to Lord Deedes' obituary in this morning's Telegraph because I know that not all readers have it daily. Bill Deedes' death last night sorrows me greatly. I thought he was a very like-able man and he wrote beautiful, pithy, English. He wrote his last article, a powerful piece about Darfur on August 3rd on his laptop in bed because he was poorly.This morning, awfully unsettled weather, we nipped over to Arnold mainly to try to get another outside table cover from Wilko for Debra. Hammock cover, seat cover, swing cover YES. Table cover NO.
But I did tackle the Charity Shops and the Remaindered Book Shop and Picture 1 shows my haul. The Chambers Dictionary of Quotations is £25 new at a Bookshop, £16.25 new at Amazon, but..................new in Arnold remaindered bookshop £2. And it is the 2005 edition with recent stuff i.e. quotes from Lynne Truss's 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves'. Its 1,283 pages might become my quotation dictionary of choice ! But I have no plans to throw away the others.
Bungus and AnonymousRob might be right about letting the 'Attie' story run but I don't know how Reg feels because I haven't heard from him. Having been a bit programmed by work to tell the truth unless on oath, I felt I couldn't have carried it off. And I realise AnonymousRob that you weren't 'having a go' at Reg's pictures and the words 'beautiful lack of quality' meant that it added to the sense of mystery. Sorry for any misunderstanding.
By dint of much decoding and ferret-like research I now realise that my 'many happy returns' to Bungus was a little premature. Sorry about that too. But to paraphrase, "better early than never". Ferreting also revealed a bbc Rick Stein Mediteranean page and the programme links down the left-hand side are live if anyone is interested the recipes. The 'Pastitsio' intrigued me, cinnamon with mince beef !, and it looks good for a change from a bolognese sauce. The quantities will need scaling back for us two but I will report back when I've done it.
Oh dear! Isn't it getting dark early? Just 9pm and virtually pitch-black, or bible-black as Dylan Thomas memorably described it in Under Milk Wood.
"It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black........."
I'm off for a preliminary nose-about in my literary acquisitions. Bungus's 'The Electric Michelangelo' sounds like a good read and, like him, I've hardly had time to skim ArtDaily and I could almost welcome a 'poor night' in order to catch up on things. But the Elvis tribute sounds good. An eminent lady once told me that Elvis's voice went 'straight from the ear to the vagina'. Being a man I couldn't fully grasp the concept but I sort of understood !Sleep tight everybody.
p.s. Re: AnonymousRob's 'comment' request for EPS subscriptions I have just received an e-mail from Reg, which I'm sure he won't mind me publishing:- Graham -- re - Rob's blog reply Subs next season are
£30 Full
£44 Family
£19 concessions
£ 31 Family Concessions
Supplement for Critcising the Chairman's Attie pictures 100% payable to the chairman or at least buy him a pint Reg
Graham -- re - Rob's blog reply Subs next season are
£30 Full
£44 Family
£19 concessions
£ 31 Family Concessions
Supplement for Critcising the Chairman's Attie pictures 100% payable to the chairman or at least buy him a pint
Reg.
2 comments:
I saw there was a Rick Stein recipe site when searching for a complaints page - wanted to voice my displeasure at not getting the two new episodes of Inspector Lynley as billed and as promoted in Radio Times with a whole page article on Nathaniel Parker.
The recipe you are interested in, with the cheese sauce and the meat sauce it sounds like a cinnamon-flavoured lasagne to me....
As well as getting dark early (and we have had lights on all day here, it has been very grey) it's also jolly cold....the hot water bottle is coming out tonight.
I watched the British Film Season again - enjoyed seeing all those glorious wide-screen films again, esp. the bit where Omar Sharif comes over the horizon in 'Lawrence of Arabia'. The commentator repeated the oft-quoted remark from Nowl Coward " if Peter O'Toole had been any prettier they would have had to call it 'Florence of Arabia'".....
Enjoyed Jill's Noel Coward quote which I do not recall hearing before. And I had the central heating on tonight.
I do not read the Telegraph ANY day. SOME of us have not yet abandoned our principals; although I do think the crossword is probably the best for my level of ability and I felt obliged to write to the Observer recently to complain about the ‘tabloid’ level of a couple of their major articles about (a) Colin Gunn and (b) Staffies. But I too was sad to hear of Bill Deedes’ death; although he did have a pretty good innings. I liked his comment that because of his slurred drawl he was often assumed to be drunk (even when he wasn’t).
The Chambers Quotations sounds a real bargain. You should have texed me!
The Rick Stein link didn’t work but I’ll find it. I want the sausage & potato recipes.
The Elvis song on the ArtDaily video is the Battle Hymn of the Republic with all the sort of exaggerated effects that I usually abhor and deplore. But Elvis’s voice shines through and above it. ‘Tears to the eyes’ sort of stuff; as is the description of an elephant being executed in The Electric Michelangelo, which I think I mentioned reminds me of Milk Wood. Very poetic descriptive language full of inventive similes, unexpected adjectives and alliteration.
Retrospective:
Some other programmes that Robbie Coltrane’s put me in mind of for tedium:
1) The Dimbleby Tour which started off with a fascinating programme including Ely cathedral and then went rapidly downhill as he seemed unable to think of anything interesting to either tell or ask the rather bland people he met.
2) Gryff Rees Jones’ mountaineering series which, apart from the occasional few seconds of wonderful scenery, has been pretty much of a yawn.
In contrast, the rock climbing first of a three=parter last night (repeated tonight) was enthralling (especially for acrophobics like me for whom three steps up a ladder is plenty: and to think I once mounted Eve, or was it Adam? on the summit of Tryffan).
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