A packed week, which started, startlingly and hilariously, with James Naughtie's now infamous slip-up just before 8 o'clock on Monday morning. Then the gratifying announcement that Susan Philipsz had won the Turner Prize (see my post about her installation Surround Me). Also tickled to hear about the campaign Cage Against the Machine, which aims to …
Category: musings
The Unfortunates
A few (random, appropriately) thoughts on Radio 3's dramatisation of B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates, broadcast last night: his searing honesty that wonderful mix of humour and pathos the vividly evoked detail of place and time (the sixties, a Midlands town, British Rail trains, a walk on the Downs...) the relishing of food, of language held …
autumnal leanings
It's only the second week of August, yet there's a definite sense that we're on the cusp of autumn. There's a nip to the air in the mornings. The sun is lower in the sky, the shadows are longer, more angled, and by 9 p.m the last light is draining from the sky. Most of …
the week that was
was rather high on stress and somewhat low on culture. The stress arose from a little spate of domestic/technological crises (yes, they do seem to come in threes), and the mundane but wearying frustrations of earning a wage. Still, I did manage an early-ish morning swim at the lido on Thursday, twenty lengths, beneath a …
dawn chorus
How long did it take me to adjust to the level of noise in London? I can't remember now. I think about this as I lie trying to sleep on another warm, muggy night, the windows open for the bit of breeze which shimmies through the plane trees outside. For about five hours, overnight, there's …
On Margate Sands
From Eliot to Emin, or Emin to Eliot, is just a short stroll across the broad stretch of Margate Sands. Here we were, on our short trip out of London, the mercury rocketing into the 20s (celsius, obviously), and enjoying most of what Margate has to offer. Adorning Droit House, on Margate Harbour Arm, is …
dipping my toe
We could start with a quote from John Cage: "I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry." 'Lecture on nothing' (1961)
Hilaire 