Beach

Can't stop to chat darlings, I've got to pack so that Mrs P and I can fly out to this very beach first thing in the morning.

Back in a week or so. TTFN

106 Pretentious Books

I got this from Pandora's and Jane's blogs. The 106 most least read (???) books. The bold I've read, the crossed-out I've given up on.

* Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

* Anna Karenina

* Crime and Punishment

* Catch-22

* One Hundred Years of Solitude

* Wuthering Heights

* The Silmarillion

* Life of Pi : a novel

* The Name of the Rose

* Don Quixote

* Moby Dick

* Ulysses

* Madame Bovary

* The Odyssey

* Pride and Prejudice

* Jane Eyre

* The Tale of Two Cities

* The Brothers Karamazov

* Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

* War and Peace

* Vanity Fair

* The Time Traveler’s Wife

* The Iliad

* Emma - half way through this, I lost it under the bed for a few months

* The Blind Assassin

* The Kite Runner

* Mrs. Dalloway

* Great Expectations

* American Gods

* A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

* Atlas Shrugged

* Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books

* Memoirs of a Geisha

* Middlesex

* Quicksilver

* Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

* The Canterbury tales

* The Historian : a novel

* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

* Love in the Time of Cholera

* Brave New world

* The Fountainhead

* Foucault’s Pendulum

* Middlemarch

* Frankenstein

* The Count of Monte Cristo

* Dracula

* A Clockwork Orange

* Anansi Boys

* The Once and Future King

* The Grapes of Wrath

* The Poisonwood Bible : a novel

* 1984

* Angels & Demons

* The Inferno

* The Satanic Verses

* Sense and Sensibility

* The Picture of Dorian Gray

* Mansfield Park

* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

* To the Lighthouse

* Tess of the D’Urbervilles

* Oliver Twist

* Gulliver’s Travels

* Les Misérables

* The Corrections

* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

* Dune

* The Prince

* The Sound and the Fury

* Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

* The God of Small Things

* A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present

* Cryptonomicon

* Neverwhere

* A Confederacy of Dunces

* A Short History of Nearly Everything

* Dubliners

* The Unbearable Lightness of Being

* Beloved

* Slaughterhouse-five

* The Scarlet Letter

* Eats, Shoots & Leaves - spit on it

* The Mists of Avalon

* Oryx and Crake : a novel

* Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

* Cloud Atlas

* The Confusion

* Lolita

* Persuasion

* Northanger Abbey

* The Catcher in the Rye

* On the Road

* The Hunchback of Notre Dame

* Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

* The Aeneid

* Watership Down - pants

* Gravity’s Rainbow

* The Hobbit

* In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

* White Teeth

* Treasure Island

* David Copperfield

* The Three Musketeers

photo is the pile of books on my bedside table, which is getting bigger rather than smaller :-(

Jenny Who?

It seems that combat mascara is in, this season, on the planet Messaline

Posh Noodle

Only a joke, I wouldn't really spoil such a culinary delight by putting asparagus on it.

This is the antidote to Heston Blumenheck's snail porridge. Though if anyone would like to harvest the raw material for Charlton's dubious dish, they are welcome to visit my garden. In fact the sooner someone invents slug surprise, the better...

Shortlist

You'll never guess where I went yesterday!

I mentioned a while back about an opportunity to exhibit my art work. Well there was too much happening at the time, and I missed the gap in the gallery's calendar. So instead I submitted a couple of things to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and one of them was shortlisted!!!!

My meagre efforts were counted as sculptures, so I had to send off photos, and yesterday was the drop-off day. So, as I submitted them in Penny's name (all that gendery stuff), I had to deliver them in drag. And at seven in the morning I was in my most stealthy wig and slap, heading down the motorway towards that there London.

This year the subject for the Summer Exhibition is 'Man Made', and my piece of work definitely is man made

The selection process until this year was that anyone could submit up to three pieces of work, you queued up for hours and handed over your precious offering, and some time later the selection committee decided that the work was either X (refused) or D (doubtful and hence on the shortlist). About half of the shortlisted work goes on to actually be shown, and I'll find out at the end of May which my 'thing' is. This year, the number of submissions was reduced to two, and sculptures were initially judged on photographs.

It all went well until I hit the London traffic, missed a turn, couldn't drop off at the RA and had to drive around the block (which took forty minutes) to find somewhere to park. I waited for a gap in the showers and dashed over to the delivery point. Afterwards I sat in the courtyard of the RA (top photo), watching the rain.

Then it was down to Piccadilly Circus to meet Suzie Tate and catch up on all the latest gossip. I hadn't seen her for ages - we live at opposite ends of the country, and our last couple of attempts to meet up have fallen victim to various unfortunate circumstances. So it was great to see her again and have a good natter. Unfortunately I decided that we should drive over to Covent Garden for lunch, so it was half-past three when we finally sat down to eat. A spot of window shopping, entertaining some gawping tourists, and it was time to hit the motorway again. I finally got home at 10:15, but I must confess to taking my wig off as soon as it went dark. Well, it 's a new wig and still a bit too tight.

Witness

In a stable that stands in the shadow of the new stone church, a grey-eyed, grey-bearded man, lying amid the odour of the animals, tries to will himself unto death, as a man might will himself to sleep. The world slowly turns, following the great and secret laws, and lengthens the shadows in this humble place. Outside lie the ploughed fields, a ditch full of dead leaves, and the faint track of a wolf in the dark soil near the woods. The man sleeps, dreams, and is forgotten. The toll of the bells for orisons wake him. Bells are one of England's new customs now, in the evenings. As a boy, this man saw the face of Woden, the sacred horrors and the exhultation. He saw the crude wooden idol laden with Roman coins and ancient vestments. He saw the scrifices of horses, dogs and prisoners.

Before dawn he will be dead. With him will perish the last witness of pagan rites, never to be seen again. The world will be a little poorer when this, the last of the Saxons is dead.

Things and events that occupy space come to an end when someone dies. They may make us stop and wonder. An infinite number of things dies with every person's death, unless the universe itself has a memory, as is thought by the Theosophists.

There was once a day that closed the last eyes that looked on Christ, the eyes that looked on the battle of Junin. The love of Helen died with the death of one man. What will die with me, the day that I die? What feeble, fragile images will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez? The image of a bay horse in an empty lot on the corner of Sarrano and Characas? A bar of sulphur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?


Jorge Luis Borges - 1949
(died June 1986)

Humph

Oh dear.

This is so upsetting.

I grew up on Radio Four. I remember, a long long time ago, in another world, listening to a new comedy programme called the `Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy`. I remember, more recently, hearing that Douglas Adams had died.

I remember Julian and Sandy on `Round the Horne`, and thinking that there was hope for the world. And I remember when Kenneth Williams died. I remember when Willy Rushton died.

Linda Smith, Alan Coren - I used to fall about laughing at his stuff in Punch (often in public). Both gone now.

Tonight, Humphrey Lyttleton died. Last Saturday I was on the Northern Line and we went through Mornington Crescent tube station - I almost got out just to stare at the station name.

I don't understand why Humphrey Lyttleton, who gave so much people so much pleasure, is dead, and why so many bad people are still causing so much suffering.