Courtly love

Well today has been all about Wimbledon - things are pretty tense on Centre Court right now, but here's my mom earlier this afternoon, waiting for it all to start...



Okay, back to the telly for me. Stress-a-rama!

Stars by any other name

Among her many many volumes, Sara has the same edition of Louis MacNeice's Poems that I used to have - I took it out today and leafed through, gazing at words and couplets like old friends. I stopped to reread one that I used to have on my desk at work in Exeter. These days, there are probably different words that I would keep close to me in an office environment, but that's where I was, then: treasuring the stand-still quality of the last lines...

What is truth? says Pilate,
Waits for no answer;
Double your stakes, says the clock
To the ageing dancer;
Double the guard, says Authority,
Treble the bars;
Holes in the sky, says the child
Scanning the stars.

After some beautiful cooling rain this morning, the world has heated up once more. I must divine the secret to a good iced coffee...

The weekend round-up

Lovely weekend, kicking off with drinks under the arches of London Bridge (but in an actual pub; we weren't just camped out with tinnies), then on to catch Skatroniks Jamaica in the Jazz Cafe, Camden. Fabulous night.



As the main summer sales opened in London, I spent Saturday morning with the 'Heart of London' sangha: meditation with a most welcoming group in Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition. Then I made a beeline for home (shall brave the sales on a quiet morning). Sunday, I headed out to Greenwich and caught up with friends over a pint while the world watched football (over several pints). Before we parted, we-the-laydees got matching bracelets and the Blood-Sister ceremony was complete :-)



Struggling to get stuck back into work today; trying to engage my brain calls to mind the Bagpuss mice... heeeeeeave!!

Friday Medley

Piccies from the British Museum last night: we got to see a good selection of what was on, though I think we'd have both gazed at the islamic calligraphy demonstration for the entire two hours. While we were there, the calligrapher wrote out a verse from Rumi:

“When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”

It was fresh in my mind because, coincidentally, someone had tweeted that verse the day before :-)

Anyhoo, a fun night, which continued down in Chinatown for food and several much-needed refreshing beers. For it was, as the song goes, hot in the city.



Forgot to mention - last Friday's 'Sorry I Haven't A Clue' session at the South Bank Centre was just great. Lots of sexual puns (which I did my best to keep up with). The highlight of the evening was Festival Hall brimming with the audience's interpretation of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on wazoo. Yes, wazoo. Great musical moment. And the wazoo is not as easy as it appears...

Have a great weekend, folks X

A world of delights

Scribble scribble scribble. Thus went the day, happily :-)

Off to the British Museum later for their 'Belief and Faith' evening. The programme has oodles of things running simultaneously: lectures, performances, demonstrations and storytelling. I'm thinking a little gospel music, islamic calligraphy, Easter Island statue-making, and maybe finish up listening to a storyteller conjure up some Hindu myths. It seems a lot to squodge in to two hours; we can but try!

In Kitty News: they are gradually getting introduced to the local wildlife. They encountered their first squirrel yesterday; they were duly psyched. And although the Cat of the House regularly faces down the adult foxes that frequent these parts, the little munchkins have not yet had the pleasure...

Worlds within worlds

I feel like I'm coming up to the surface, after a day of writing.

Then again, writing feels like coming up to the surface too :-)

Out to sit in the sunshine and savour the cool breeze. In the meanwhile, here's an image of one of the mermaids at Weeki Wachee that I seem to post every year or so... Just the right level of 'cool' suggested:

time to refresh

Blazing sunshiney day: the miniature waterfall is gurgling into the koi pond, the kitties are napping in the cool shade, an occasional wind chime tings...

In a garden somewhere close by, a mother struggles to subdue her children's exuberance: she tries to convince them that a paddling pool filled with imaginary water will be just as much fun as one splashing with real water.

No-one believes her words, not even she :-)

Midsummer Night

Yawwwwwnn! One of the lovely laydees of this house decided that there should be fire to honour the Solstice, and so a BBQ was duly arranged.

I didn't know about it until later: my email was acting up in the British Library, and I couldn't open emails but could only read their titles. And so, when I saw the email exchange between the House Folk entitled 'Fire!' I paused a moment. Then I reasoned that in an emergency, they'd be using phones, surely...

So, I stayed at my research, and when the Manuscripts reading room closed, I moved to Rare Books, reading of unicorn tapestries until that room too closed at 8pm. Then homeward bound, to what I hoped was a welcome fire.

Anyhoo, it all worked out beautifully!

The Great Unknown

Wimbledon tickets arrived safely :-) Yet another treaty outing in place...

I'm off this evening to a live recording of the BBC's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. I first listened to the (slightly loopy) panel show in Grand Haven many moons ago; to get to see it live is a big treat.

My camera's finally recharged, so photos of everyday life shall resume shortly. In the meantime, here's one my brother prepared earlier. It was my second last night in Baltimore: before heading in for dinner at The Glebe, we nipped in the gardens to glimpse the irises before their all-too-brief flowering faded. Glorious colour.



Of all the events people have organised for Aung San Suu Kyi’s 65th birthday tomorrow, my favourite is the NLD Youth Members' planting of 20,000 trees in townships across her country. As a symbolic act, it resonates on oodles of levels, but for me, it's as a gesture to future generations that packs a punch. The foresight, the long-view it takes to plant these little saplings through the troubled land, in forests and on barren hilltops, where they will help to restore life; the willpower and sense of trust, that what the saplings represent will reach fruition, even if it is beyond our lifetime's reach. And to those future generations, those trees will say 'We believed'.

Have a great weekend, all X

Golden Moments

Sneakily logging on from the Rare Books Reading Room, where I've been trawling through museum-ey stuff for the afternoon.

I did the BL's Conservation Centre tour today, which was an absolute treat. A batch of conservators took our small group through aspects of their role, and we got a glimpse of several works in progress. One book had been taken part, each page washed (that's right, they wash paper), strengthened and painstakingly spot-healed with japanese tissue paper; after that the pages would be remounted and finally rebound. To get that one book stabilised, ready for next generations, would take about 250 hours.

The BL holds 14 million books.

Now, I'm not saying that all of them need looking at, yet, but you get the impression that there are no 'down' times where the staff twiddle their thumbs, waiting for paper to degenerate or a spine to break.

We finished up, appropriately, in the Finishing Room. Book Finishers are the rock stars of the book conservation world - those who stamp lettering on spines in gold leaf. It's a thing that you're either excellent at or not, irrespective of training. By all accounts, scientists will identify a Finisher gene marker some decade.

Our guide asked us to pass around a sheet of gold leaf, which of course crumbled in our hands. And left several of us with sparkley fingers, which we perhaps delighted over while sitting out in the sunshine, eating popcorn with care :-)