Might be of interest?!

Clearly a closely related review to Couperin's 3re Ordre
I assume it is triggering on Volume 3...I'm playing (Couperin's!) Les Rozeaux at the Alderley Edge Festival on Saturday and was looking some something written on the work but google is not being helpful!
I'm also playing the Poulenc 3rd Novelette - with the Couperin two almost barcarolle'ish works - I should be putting a Faure Barcarolle in for another class! I'm currently reading (on the train to and from work) the Richard Burton book on Poulenc very good on the religious, sexual background of what made the man.

Round and round

Some lol-cattery

Teaser Tuesday - 12 May

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Bit of cheating today as this isn't a very random selection!

Learning the Queen's English is like scrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toenails the morning after a dance. It takes a long time and there is always a little bit left at the end, a stain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had.

From Chris Cleave's 'the other hand' a review is here as well as lots of links on his website. The book is strongly recommended (by me!)
I wanted to place that quote alongside this one from Salley Vickers 'Instances of the Number 3' which I finished today:

Something sharp attacked her toe. Frances looked down to see a tortoise nibbling at her feet. 'Hey!'
'It's your red nail varnish - thinks you're a tomato!

'the other hand' is our current book group book, I'm looking forward to the discussion!

Industrial Archeology

I first had a job in computing back in 1970 - back then it was punched cards as a means of creating programs. The old cards tended to be thrown away - no recycling then - and i saved some of them to use for record cards and I passed some of them to my parents for use as shopping lists or recipe cards. On a visit to my mother's last weekend I spotted one:

I think this is a line of S1 - the language used to design the ICL 2900 series of computers

I = CURRPINST(PROCESS)<<8>>24

no lower case then, and the << operators are shift left and shift-right.
There's an interesting (pdf) article by Martin Campbell-Kelly on the history of mainframe development at ICL here
Maybe the recipe on the other side of the card was more interesting?

Mutterings a little late!

Unconscious Mutterings - bit late this week, I've been away.

1. Again :: late
2. Shower :: curtain
3. Flirting :: eyes
4. Moving on :: job change
5. Rachel :: Leah
6. Chips :: Mr
7. Texting :: Tedium
8. Feel better :: for it
9. Cashmere :: sweater
10. Sucked :: under

On the hills

young lamb
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

We had a trip to WIldboarclough last weekend with lunch at the Crag and then a shorter than intended walk over the hills. Bluebells are just coming out and then there were some lambs. Here's one with Shutlingsloe in the background.

Good news on the SSG/SPCK front

Dave Walker who was the subject of a gagging order has posted on the SPCK saga. The Brewer's bookshop is also being evicted, at last, from Durham Cathedral. The wheels of justice may turn very slowly, but they are turning!

The Engineers guide to cat yodelling

and annoying..

via The Wardman Wire

Kestrel Webcam

Webcam of a kestrel nest - at Muttenz near Basel. Thanks to Ursi. The inline pictures don't work for me with Firefox (and Linux) but the buttons beneath are fine!
Here - slightly closer to home are some peregrines nesting on Derby Cathedral with recorded sequences from youTube and live links at the top left..oh go on - here's one of the sequences

recorded on Bank holiday weekend, as you can hear from the background jazz band.
There are also some peregrines on Manchester town hall (even closer) but, at the moment, I can't find a link to the webcam.

Teaser Tuesday - 5 May

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

The air was at first steamy as a bathroom with the door closed; then the earth dried out and it began to feel like another climate had come to visit. Seattle reacted predictably. It called in sick to work, took off its shoes and sweaters and hit the glorious outdoors with sunglasses and fast tanning lotion.

Barbara Wilson 'Murder in the Collective - politics (mostly of the left) and crime.
I havered over including that extra sentence but decided that otherwise it was too much of a cliffhanger!

Biology revision

Remember basic biology... Helpless laughter!

Upgrading Mandriva to 2009.1

(Beware, this is fairly hardcore geekery, but do read the link to the Mandriva release!)
Since my last upgrade a newer version of Mandriva has been released - last week - and this time I decided to be less conservative and do an early upgrade - I normally wait at least a month for the bugs to be ironed out!
Again I tried it on another machine before upgrading the email server - so I found out that it would be good to remove kdelibs-common

urpme kdelibs-common

which gets rid of any remaining traces of kde3, before starting the upgrade - where I largely followed this procedure adding a --noclean to the urpmi command to prevent deletion of the downloaded files so that I could use them to upgrade machine two. Note, those are the instructions for a 2008 to 2009 upgrade, but the procedure is the same.
Once complete I had two issues, googling solved them, but let me quote them here, with links to the helpful pages:

• Initially the X server would not start and I had to reboot into safe mode as I couldn't switch to a dumb virtual terminal. I disabled the nvidia driver and ignored that for the moment
• Once I got to the login screen I found that neither the mouse nor the keyboard worked! Fortunately I had another machine to websearch and found this, so these two commands and a reboot (not really necessary but just to check:

  chkconfig --del messagebus
  chkconfig --add messagebus

  gets the messagebus running at the correct point in the boot process.
• I then tried getting the nvidia graphics card working - with the default driver various fancy graphics apps fail to run. I'd been getting the following:

  
  (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized GART.
  
  Backtrace:
  0: /etc/X11/X(xorg_backtrace+0x37) [0x8135f97]
  1: /etc/X11/X(xf86SigHandler+0x56) [0x80cca26]
  2: [0xffffe400]
  3: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//nvidia_drv.so [0xb7074c48]
  
  Fatal server error:
  Caught signal 11. Server aborting

  
  Again I found a bug report here. Adding 'nopat' to the options in /boot/grub/menu.lst also solved the problem for me

Mutterings - 3 May

This week's free association set of words from Unconscious mutterings

1. Avoid :: swerve
2. Castle :: Howard (closely followed by Dracula - that might be a UK political joke!)
3. Episode :: Dr Who
4. Limited :: company
5. Nail polish :: red
6. Dip :: bathe
7. Share :: open-handed
8. Damage :: Irons (Jeremy)
9. Improper :: conduct
10. Handle :: pan

Somehow I appeared to lose two words (from the middle of the list) when doing a copy/paste?! I think everything is there now.

That 'one' piece of software I need

Wise words from tante:

But let us look at the people claiming that they need Photoshop on Linux and they'd switch. From my experience those people often don't really use the power of Photoshop, it's just the tool they use for rather simple tasks. Why? Cause it's free. When "a friend" sets a new computer up for someone they'll more often than not slap all kinds of pirated software on there, just cause Windows doesn't really come with a lot of software: You will get a pirated MS Office, pirated Photoshop and all kinds of other "expensive" software. Why? Because when something is expensive, it's also "good". It's a very common perception that a software that you have to pay 300 Euro for is better than one that's free. Not cause you know why or cause you need some feature, it's just cause those programs feel like they are worth something.

Having spent some time talking to someone who 'really needed' multiple copies of Microsoft project this week and free alternatives just weren't the same because they were free. Go and read the whole article!

John Sentanu at St Michaels's

introduction
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

The Archbishop of York paid a visit to St Michael's Macclesfield this afternoon, I took a break to hear him and take a few
pictures

How not to apply computer techniques

.. particularly Microsoft ones. Hat tip to MaggiDawn

curtains for Sid

curtains for Sid
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Sid enjoying the replaced curtains.

Teaser Tuesday - 28 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

This is our current book group selection:

As he trudged through the new snow cover, tuning out the low grumbling of the Leitwolf's engine, Raclin glanced up at the rock buttresses above him. Not a nice way to go, he decided, swept off a mountain or buried in an avalanche.

From Jack Drummond's Avalanche I'm keen on climbing and skiing - these days as a spectator - so I shall be keeping an educated eye on this one!

the rockery

the rockery
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Our garden rockery coming into life after a week's sunshine and the recent rain.

Coming EU election

Thanks to this profiler it looks as if my voting mind is made up (assuming you can trust the profiler!)
Hat tip to Elizaphanian

Preferring to live in darkness

David Keen reports that the Brewers owners of the ex-SPCK bookshops are still skulking around trying to hide things - getting google to remove a blog post containing questions they'd rather not answer. Unfortunately google have caved in to these playground bullies.

Mutterings - 26 April

And this week's Unconscious Muttering word associations:

1. Soul :: friend
2. Fold :: origami
3. Breakup :: tragedy
4. Will :: Shakespeare
5. Fond :: affection
6. Powers :: Super
7. Ho-hum :: Hi-Ho
8. Hustle :: Propel
9. Avenue :: trees/France
10. Tower :: Mordor/Twin

The apostrophe as a lifestyle

Some time ago I put my name on one of the American Family Association petitions - just to register my opposition to something they were proposing, that act signed me up to their newsletter, I try to skip over the parts of content I don't like but what I find interesting is the 'recurrent' 'use' of 'a' particular item of typography. Mostly it's around 'gay' particularly with reference to 'marriage', 'bisexual' is another good one. What sparked this post was this which has as a headline (you may need to scroll down at the link if you really want to see it):

Dems caught in 'lie' during hate crimes debate

either it is a lie or it isn't, don't these folk believe it in plain speaking? Or is the hope just to fling around accusations and hope some mud sticks!

One with no apostrophes which I did like

Take the pledge not to vote for any politician who votes to raise taxes or increase spending

I would guess that rules most of them out at some time or other!

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

Went to the Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope party at the BBC in Manchester.
We had some debate as to whether the cake was going to have 9.04 candles (picture in this flickr tag set)
I had a bizarre experience trying to run Jaunty on the laptop during the evening. Tony had a bootable USB stick with Jaunty which he had just demonstrated. I tried it on mine, it got to the Ubuntu splash screen and just sat there never getting to the booting progress bar, lots of flashing the wireless and disk lights but no reading of the USB at all (except initially). Eventually I got some cryptic error message (sorry can't remember!) tried a couple of things but then tried again and got the same issue. I then tried the Jaunty cd they had around and that wouldn't boot either!?
I then tried booting off the hard disk (Ubuntu Intrepid) and that also failed with some weird gdm error - I use this version on a daily basis, so it normally works. Laptop battery then died (it is not lasting well) so when I found a mains socket I think I then tried a Jaunty DVD which someone else had used which didn't work either, then I managed to boot my hard disk Ubuntu - much to my relief! - tried again with the USB and the same failure, refusing to read the USB stick.
On the way home on the train the cd which didn't work at the BBC put me into Ubuntu Jaunty with no problems - bizarre - I'll blame too many laptops too much wireless network or something!
Jaunty has a very impressive review here and I will be installing it on the laptop - but not that one - I hope a new machine will be delivered early next week!

La Mort et L'Amour

Just had a very pleasant meal at the local college catering training department (yes, this does link with the subject!) with a poetry evening and the Macclesfield and Alderley Francophiles(facebook group). Ended with recitations of poetry, I was tempted to read Peguy's Heureux ceux qui sont mort - but decided we'd still be there at closing time and so I settled for Desnos final poem to his wife:

J’ai rêvé tellement fort de toi,
J’ai tellement marché, tellement parlé,
Tellement aimé ton ombre,
Qu’il ne me reste plus rien de toi.

Il me reste d’être l’ombre parmi les ombres
D’être cent fois plus ombre que l’ombre
D’être l’ombre qui viendra et reviendra dans ta vie ensoleillée

Flying penguins

.. via Slashdot

About sums it up

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
I'm sure things will improve!

I've plunged

The blog roll is missing a bit at the moment, but things will gradually get back to normal! Have patience!

Teaser Tuesday - 21 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

When they had gone, the helicopters rose from their waiting grounds along the highway. Trabert looked up as the sky was filled with these insane machines. Yet in the contours of his wife's thighs, in the dune-filled eyes of Karen Novotny, he saw the assuaged time of the astronauts, the serene face of the president's widow.

Provoked into re-reading and posting this teaser by the death of J G Ballard yesterday, from his The Atrocity Exhibition, strong meat! not for the timid! As I quoted yesterday:

You need to be well hard.

J G Ballard

Following the news of J G Ballard's death, let me post a few disorganised thoughts:
I first read Ballard back in the 60's I think introduced through an early evening programme on The Third Programme on contemporary SF writing, at the time I was familiar with Bradbury (and English master's enthousiasm) so it wasn't a big leap. Drowned World seemed to resonate with my end of teen years, I read his short stories many times over the years - recently acquiring the two volumes. For a long time I was convinced that I'd nicked part of a plot idea of his for my Cambridge entrance exam - but the device I remember isn't in any of his works, I think now it was a self invented extension inspired by the claustrophobia of his writing.
I've taken longer to get to his later works - some are still unread, maybe I don't want to meet another Ballard style which I might not like!
I'm puzzled that searching this weblog for Ballard gives no hits when I know I've posted at least two items which refer to him, it looks as if Ballard doesn't match Ballard's I think this is a bug, but this post will ensure at least on hit!
From a summary of his work posted last year linked by the Guardian bookblog tribute

A warning: Don't start with Crash or The Atrocity Exhibition, unless you're feeling well hard. They will do serious damage to your head. (Either you will throw the book across the room, or the book will throw you across the room.) Work up to them.(Yes, I know some of you ARE well hard. Fair enough, OK, go for it.)

- he has lots of links to the novels (from Amazon).
If you only know the Ballard of The Empire of the Sun and afterwards, do read The Drowned World, The Crystal World with the early short stories - I will try to reciprocate!

Summer approaches

Summer
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Next door's cat enjoys the sun whilst his housemate tries to ignore the exhibitionism.

Mutterings - 19 April

This week's word associations from Unconscious mutterings

1. Lease :: hold
2. Dead :: wrong
3. Removed :: stolen
4. Broke :: stoney
5. Lips :: sealed
6. Flight :: of the Heron
7. Three hours :: at the Cross
8. Give :: 'n'take
9. Technical :: paper
10. Hurry :: rush

Terragen 2

Back in Spring last year I posted a render produced with a beta of terragen 2 and mentioned that it had taken around 30 hours to produce. Planetside are now nearly at the release point - folks like me who have pre-paid can download - release is waiting for the website and maybe a few other things. I'm running it using Linux and wine and something has definitely speeded up - maybe the betas had some debugging code, maybe it is better at spotting dual cores (though that fix appeared to go in an earlier beta), I've just repeated that render - well same base file, slightly different camera position and it now takes just over 7 hours! I didn't really notice much of a slow down either.

Four times the speed is certainly appreciated!

Harehill

Harehill
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

The azaleas are out at Harehill, we walked over from Alderley Edge this afternoon. See here - the first few - for other pictures from the walk

Rachmaninov (lots of)

We went to the Bridgewater Hall on Thursday to hear an all Rachmaninov concert. I wanted mainly to hear the 3rd concerto - never heard it at a live concert (obviously excluding broadcasts) - though I seem to remember the college rehearsal orchestra may have performed it - with Nick Redding in spite of his piano teacher issuing an interdict - but it was a long time ago.
This week's concert consisted of the Vocalise, 3rd concerto and 3rd symphony, a little nervous whether I could handle so much romanticism! Cristian Mandeal, Nikolai Demidenko and the Halle.
No reviews on the internet so far that I've found - let me give a few impressions. Not sure whether it's where we were sitting - side circle - but much of the 1st movement of the concerto descended, as far as the piano part was concerned, into a high-class mush, with at one point a mis-hit A(?) emerging from the gloom. By the time he got to the cadenza, the balance problems - or whatever it was - seemed to have been sorted and the rest of the work was rather more involving - even to the bronchial audience participation which seemed to kick in at that point!
Demidenko played an encore I couldn't identify, Chopin arranged by Rachmaninov? - if it was I couldn't identify the original, lots of hand crossing and much feux-follet style fireworks. Kelvin suggested the Polka de [VW]R but no it wasn't that.
I don't know the 3rd symphony well wasn't too taken my it, lots of SR trademarks recycled, slavic sighing and rather more effect than (I thought) substance. Looks like we'll be walking near the Villa Senar where this was written this summer, I'll try to walk by! Interesting that the programme note highlighted similarities between the finale and that of the Walton 1st - both of which were written in the 30's and in both cases the composer had a block before he was able to complete the finale.
Before the concert, some hurried rearrangement, as our normal pre-concert restaurant appears to have disappeared! We'd arranged to meet outside so a quick move to another eating location!

Design your own motherboards

We're waiting for some laptops to be built for us at work. While we wait, thanks to B3TA comes this.

Lunch!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

How indeed!

'How is it that in the 2000 years since Christ came, we have managed to make generations of gay and lesbian people believe that they are not welcome in our churches?'

said from the platform at Spring Harvest. Go to the Changing Attitude Blog to read the rest. Pebbles beginning to move.

Teaser Tuesday - 14 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Grateful for this temporary relief Bridget took down one of her glasses that she had brought back from Limoges and filled it to the brim; the white milk glowed green behind the thick glass. She poured herself coffee and sat down opposite the boy across the kitchen table. 'I am Mrs Hansome,' she said.

couldn't avoid adding that final sentence!
Salley Vickers, Instances of the Number 3 - reviewed here by Penelope Lively.
Also can't resist adding the classic quote from last weeks teaser Zazie dans le métro:

- Qu'est-ce que c'est un hormosessuel? demanda Zazie
- C'est un homme qui met des bloudjinnzes, dit doucement Marceline.
- Tu me racontes des blagues, dit Zazie

I hope I don't need to translate - best read aloud with conviction!

They always do this in Belgium

well it beats waiting for the train.
I think the auditions office is next to the booking office! Hat tip to uk.rec.humour

An award for promoting cross-cultural understanding?

James Holden has a web page, enabling you to improve the current British transport police campaign.

Hat tip to the Wardman wire, who does a lot better than me in his slogans!

Mutterings - 12 April

This weeks free associations from Unconscious mutterings

1. Animal :: Vegetable
2. Temporary :: /tmp
3. Moan :: grumble
4. Rapid :: flow
5. That’s for me to say :: intolerance
6. City :: subway
7. Bumper :: to bumper
8. Eclipse :: solar
9. Problematic :: challenge
10. If? :: then (I was tempted to respond ':')

A mature debate?

From Blake Morrison on the Edlington and Bulger cases:

In the UK you have to reach 16 legally to have sex or marry, 17 to drive a car, and 18 to drink in a pub, serve on a jury, or vote in a general election. Yet at 10 you can be found guilty of murder or rape.

When are we going to have a mature debate on age, responsibility and crime, it is far easier to demonise young criminals and lock them away...

Well it may be more exciting than preparing tomorrow's talk

over the top
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

The local URC minister Marion Tugwood abseiled from the Church tower this morning to raise money. More pictures of the descent on my flickr pages - and on the church's website (in time)

Update - the official pictures are here

Rain coming

Rain coming
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

A Good Friday walk around Bakewell/Chatsworth - around 9 miles in rather wet weather. Here the rain approaches, rest of the photos are here. Ended with a long pull up the hill from Edensor back to Bakewell. Then a restful meal at the Cock and Pullet in Sheldon.

Doty on poetry and silence

Mark Doty on really listening to poetry

At the Zendo, I felt that I was placing the poem into the space in front of me, where it sort of hung for a moment as it was being taken into a deeply receptive listening.

Go and read the whole post!
I need to look up Fanny Howe too!

This week

Rowan Williams thoughts on Easter

Teaser Tuesday - 7 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

- Vous êtes un vieux salaud, oui.
- Absolument pas, déclara le type avec une véhémence qui étonna Zazie.

I think I'd better attempt a translation:

'You're a real dirty old man'
'Certainly not, said the guy with a force which astonished Zazie.

As I've blogged here, I'm reading Queneau's 'Zazie dans le métro' - 50 years old this year. I'm currantly finding spotting the buns a little difficult. Knowing the film well has been a great help though!

Connecting arcs

Bond Street
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Spotted these patterns on the way to church on Sunday. The vertical line is the sun but some form of diffraction pattern caused by that building having two grilles has caused that arc of light - I didn't take a very, very long exposure!
And then there's the vapour trails criss-crossing it.

Berlusconi has a sense of humour!

I am tempted to direct and strong actions against the media because of their disinformation about me

Go to boing boing to read the rest of Silvio's latest tantrum.

Blink!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

With gratitude to Niles for hilighting these Dr Who tribute felines.

Mutterings - 5 Apr

This week's free associations from Unconscious Mutterings

1. Log :: cabin
2. Plaything :: toy
3. Broom :: sweep
4. Heels :: dig in your
5. Smoke in :: your eyes
6. Guests :: celebration
7. Attraction :: magnet
8. Shiny:: kde
9. Risked :: gambled
10. Velvet :: underground (-teen rabbit)

Oops

From today's GuardianInsert some meaningless verbiage here to finish off the weblog posting nicely.

Wonderful anarchaic fun

Spent an evening (re-) watching Malle/Queneau's Zazie dans le métro, the book was published 50 years ago this year and the film followed it a year later. Zazie is well into bus-pass territory.
Dangerous, edgy, non-PC, fun, with, in the film, Philippe Noiret (a breakthrough role for him) and Catherine Demongeot (her first and practically only role) giving it verve and off-the wall lunacy. Vittorio Caprioli does a wonderful prophecy of Berlusconi in the final scene...
I don't think the Pythons and the Goodies would have happened without the powerful influence of the film.
I've not read the Queneau book but it is downstairs and I think the challenge will be worth it!
Don't watch the clip if you're scared of heights.

It's a bit late

but I did enjoy it when I got around to reading the email advertising the Swiss keeping their mountains clean

Towards a reopening

News from the Scargill movement site that there will be a day of commemoration to celebrate the completion of the sale this(!) Saturday at the House. I'm considering at least when I recover from the present state of exhaustion, I'm also preaching the next day.
It should be a good day though!

It's that day

Guardian switches to Twitter#

Expenses

When our ever so high-minded and principled press have finished with the sordid elements of MP's expenses, no doubt they'll move on to other things we can curl our toes about.

Why would a minister of culture buy that colour curtains with that carpet. Taste, culture, he has none and should resign!

Iain Dale is right (can't find where I think he said it though - maybe I just have a fertile memory!) - a lump sum and no breakdown - it just gives opportunity to the nosy and the prurient.

Going, going

Macclesfield Borough Council is having a end of all things sale

Only 24 hours to go! (try to ignore the handsome photographer, he is not for sale!)

Simple pleasures

For some obscure reason (well obscure to some) I got far too much pleasure from this item from the Mad Priest. Combination of the first photo and the reason for its choice.

Unconscious Mutterings - 28 March

This week's set of word associations from Unconscious Mutterings are as follows

1. Road trip :: finding yourself
2. Pool hall :: gambling
3. Extraordinary :: rendition
4. Jackson :: Pollack
5. Heartfelt :: condolences
6. Wet :: outside
7. Strangle :: Boston
8. .com :: startup
9. Touched :: engaged
10. Insipid :: tasteless

Station in the snow

Station in the snow
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

It looks as if I shouldn't have taken this picture in view of this story in the local press this week. Maybe they'll take away my rail pass?

Teaser Tuesday - 24 March

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

In Hell the boiling oil at least has smoke rising off it, but on nights with no moon and few lamps, there is little here to tell black water from black stone, and in the darkness sound moves differently, so that voices which start moving towards you end up surprising you at your back. Since many of the bridge parapets are higher than my nose and most windows start above my head, any journey after dark is like running through swerving tunnels, and there are moments where the water comes loud on all sides and my heartbeat interferes with my sense of direction.

Sarah Dunant's dark claustrophobic take on Venice In the Company of the Courtesan I'm hoping to have more fun with her Renaissance Italy than the Pope's Rhinoceros!
And as I'm still working my way through the 668 pages (just two over!) of Dostoyevsky's The Devils, here's another teaser:

You're an atheist because you're the spoilt son of a gentleman, the last son of a gentleman. You've lost the distinction between good and evil because you no longer know your own people, and you won't know it at all, neither you, nor the Verkhovenskys, father and son-nor I, for I, too, am a gentleman - I, the son of your serf and footman Pashka.

Hope to finish the Devils this week...

C

Set to music by Poulenc, Aragon meditates on the fall of France in 1940

Ô ma France ô ma délaissée
J'ai traversé les Ponts-de-Cé

Sung by Hugues Cuénod. Haunting music paired here with wonderful images.
I wasn't intending a tie in to the previous post, but here's more Cuénod and a mention of his civil partnership, entered into when he was 105.
Not many pieces in Cb...

I'm sorry

.. and want to apologise to all who are offended by this posting.

Mutterings - 22 March

This weeks Unconscious mutterings

1. Studio :: flat
2. Meetup :: mashup
3. Ostrich :: eggs
4. Jokes :: on me
5. Estranged :: partner
6. Random :: wibbling
7. Slap :: happy
8. Hotel room :: suitcase
9. Inscribe :: plaque
10. Polar :: bear (r, theta)

Twittering parents

Wonderful cartoon today from Foxtrot.

Early morning looking over Sparrow Park

Early morning looking over Sparrow Park
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

..begins to feel warmer in the mornings. You can just see Arighi-Bianchi in the photo. The crane is converting the old Clewes building into a hotel. Both those are visible from the West coast main line.

Street View - again

I suppose, due to having lived in one of the cities featured, there are pictures of two previous residences. Here's the terrace in William St, Leeds:

We bought it, but it seems to have entered the buy to rent market - at least when the camera went past! The coal hole has a plant in front to disguise it, but it has been replaced from the rusty cover in our time!
(And here's a link to a picture of the cats enjoying the hole in the coal hole cover)

Happy Go Lucky

Wednesday was the last Silk Screen of the season with an AGM and a showing of Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky. I thought it was a joy to watch, though it's easy to see how the character of Poppy - the lead, could grate. One would be very tempted to physical violence after a short time in her presence. As the Guardian Review says 'relentless chirpiness'. Wonderfully funny, but I'm still reeling from the emotional punch in the final scene between her and the driving instructor. Go and see it!

A final comment from Redbox:

Poppy does not see the glass as half empty or half-full; instead, she's ecstatic about the fact there's a glass at all, and overjoyed that there's water in it.

The Silk screen is now planning next years programme and at £25 pounds for 12 films that's pretty good value!

Mum, look at me! - 2

Looking again at the picture this morning there are subtle differences, and I'm definitely visible!

The people walking past seem to have shifted slightly...

Mum, look at me!

Google street view has today added some UK cities. We were standing at this York bus stop in Clifford St last October when the google camera car came past three times:

I'm not sure whether we're there or not, maybe they came past other days too!

Synapse

Downloaded and installed synapse this afternoon - new instant messenger client. Drool worthy graphics but currently only supports xmpp - however that's extensible so you can layer other protocols on top. Looks worth a try though an alpha release at the moment! - took me ages to find the site - even when I could remember the name of the application - hence this post!

Tomorrow

I'm - unexpectedly - travelling on the Manchester to Leeds train tomorrow (and beyond) - maybe I should try wearing a white haired wig and see if I get feted.
I'm sure someone will understand this!

Teaser Tuesday - 17 March

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

There were, of course, many fine impulses and most commendable initiative in her nature; but everything in her seemed to be perpetually seeking its equilibrium and not finding it; everything was in chaos, in a state of agitation and restlessness. Perhaps the demands she made upon herself were too severe and she was unable to find in herself the necessary strength to satisfy them.

Phew! Dostoyevsky The Devils - following on from the reading the Rowan Williams about the author (and books) I felt I needed to refresh my memory - at least of this one (Here's my comment on a re-read of Crime and Punishment - over 2 years ago now!).

Careful where you put that sticker!

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Requiem

Last night St Michael's choir sang the Fauré Requiem as part of choral(!) evensong. Plenty of space for meditation, payer, thought. Sometimes it's a work I find too saccharine - the waltzing into paradise at the end of the Agnus Dei but at its best moments there's simplicity and bare power. Beautifully sung particularly the young soloist in the Pie Jesu. We wondered to what extent the work was influenced by the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war but I see it's primary spur was the death of Fauré's parents. The work was interspersed with English liturgy, prayers, Bible reading and a talk.
A good congregation for a moment of quiet in Lent and particularly to enjoy the decidedly non-Lenten food and drink afterwards!

Hatred and Intimidation in the USA

From Mark Doty's blog:

Later, my legs feel liquid, my heart isn't ready to slow down. Thinking about how strange it is for a woman alone to come after two six-foot guys. Thinking how she wanted this to happen, somehow -- singling us out for her rage instead of the people in the car ahead of her, coming back to provoke us, then running into the restaurant to fetch the men. So that she could feel her power over them, or us?

But go and read the whole thing!

Dead Russian Composers

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Considered the leader of the 19th Century Composer group "The Mighty Handful," I am indeed the teacher among them. My orchestration skills are superbly colorful, and are explained in my book on the topic, but works like "Scheherezade" explain my mastery better. Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

Inevitably it's the one with whom I have least sympathy (well probably as it doesn't tell you who the other possibilities were!)

Transfigured Night

A trip last night to hear the Northern Chamber Orchestra their soloists performing the Beethoven Serenade for flute, violin and viola Op 25 - I kept waiting for the bass notes to appear, I didn't think I knew it but the melodies were familiar so I guess I must have picked it up somewhere along the line.
Then Verklärte Nacht by Schönberg, in view of the title of the group doing the concerts I was expecting the chamber orchestra version, I hadn't noticed the 'soloists' qualification, it was an unexpected pleasure to hear the sextet original. I became familiar with this work at college in the Ramor Quartet version but I'd never heard it live. A wonderful performance which enthralled me - like last week's Ravel Quartet an sensuous experience - Schönberg at that point just two years before the Ravel was very much a traditionalist the Ravel sounding far more modern. Though some of the sextet effects must have shocked the original audiences (it was originally refused performance because of an 'unacceptable chord!).
Part 2 of the concert contained the Mendelssohn Capriccio (for quartet) and the Dvorak Sextet - the concert billing had the Schönberg and masterpieces by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Dvorak but my view was Verklärte Nacht was the masterpiece - with the Dvorak running it close.
I see there's a You tube uploaded version (3 parts):

Unconscious Mutterings - 15 March

And for this week:

1. Sunburn :: lotion
2. Aquarium :: weed
3. Otter :: tarka
4. Awesome :: man!
5. LOL :: usenet
6. Accordion :: du ciel
7. Hot Pocket :: rocket
8. Grandstand :: saturday afternoons (Dr Who...)
9. Shaved :: smooth
10. Upgrade :: problems

Five Famous Russian Novels

(or some permutation of those words!)

From this amazon search.
Thanks to Plaible for this! Lots more examples if you look around - apparently some Australian has uploaded a garbled database.

Entre les Murs

A trip last night to the Cornerhouse to see Bégaudeau amd Cantet's 'Entre les Murs' a film about teaching in an inner city Parisian school. Cinema 3 was packed out at 5:45 with hardly a free seat - and they're been showing it for two weeks! A slow paced absorbing film immersing you in very real dilemmas.
As Peter Bradshaw's Guardian review says:

This story builds quietly, almost invisibly, through the film, and culminates in the disciplinary hearing in which Souleymane's non-French-speaking mother is present and in which the gloweringly silent and defiant pupil must translate her passionate and heartbreaking defence of him as a good boy. Like the rest of the film, this scene is natural and unforced and effortlessly persuasive, but it is the non-dramatic sequences that I somehow found the most gripping. François has a lesson in which he simply demonstrates at some length the imperfect subjunctive tense.

Strongly recommended! Don't think it could have been filmed without the previous example of Etre et Avoir which takes a junior school, this one is very much teenagers and, for me, throughout, the shadow of yesterday's events in a German school darkened the picture.
Apparently the Bégaudeau novel is even slower paced, making it not to difficult for non-native French speakers to get to grips with.
A dinner in (too much) haste on the way back to the station at Don Giovanni's - risotto - delicious as ever!

A big difference

From A Flock Divided, Paul Elie on Rowan Williams

Barack Obama invited Gene Robinson to give an invocation at the beginning of the inaugural festivities – but only after he’d invited Rick Warren, who regularly speaks out against homosexuality, to give the invocation at the main event. Was that a token gesture, or something more substantive?

That’s our new president’s “contradictoriness.” It’s been pointed out endlessly that Obama is willing to sit down and have a conversation with people on different sides of an issue—meeting with the conservative journalists as well as the more progressive ones, and so forth. To some extent that was the point of having both Rick Warren and Gene Robinson give invocations at the inaugural. This is a president who's saying we can't resolve all of the questions beforehand. He’s saying we need to bear with a little contradictoriness and go forward together, even though we don't all line up on the issues in the same way. I think that's been Williams's strategy too. And it's a big difference from what we've been used to both politically and religiously.

We much prefer to be told what to think!
I've just - today - finished Rowan's book on Dostoevsky! But I probably need to re-read some of the novels to really appreciate it on a re-reading after that, I haven't read most of them since the 1970's (apart from Crime and Punishment!)

Click, click, click

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It hardly needs music or choreography to summon up that film.

Teaser Tuesday - 10 March

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

And a swift turn from the previous two postings...

Exactly, Mack, so don't beat yourself up. Something may come to mind later

From Wm Paul Young's The Shack - our current book group book. People seem to have crawled all over this book seeking heresy, complaints about God as a black woman - to this Britisher - the Trinity as a Americans is far more suspect!!
Not sure about heaven as a grand family reunion either - which underlies much of it - but it is definitely worth a read!

Nature Watch (continued)

And while you have that image of a partially clothed man and a kangaroo wrestling in your mind, here's a tale from West Sussex about gay ducks in Arundel.

Kangaroos and Violence

Australian wrestles kangaroo from family home, hat tip to Andrew.

Ettlin, a chef originally from the Swiss city of Stans, wrestled the thrashing and bleeding 90 pound (40 kilogram) marsupial out the front door.
"I had just my Bonds undies on. I felt vulnerable," he said, referring to a popular Australian underwear brand.

A A Milne was never like this.

Bring out my bath chair

E Music asked me to fill out a survey last night. It asked for my date of birth and the earliest date specified was 1950!
.. Nearly falling off the end!

Prescient!?

From a review of Sallinen's 'The King goes forth to France' in yesterday's Independent:

Battered by climate change, England is in hock, its economy unmoved by the Prime Minister's "very best fiscal stimulation". Icebergs are "breeding like rabbits" in the North Sea and fuel has run dry. On the shores of the frozen Channel, the King prepares for a war without point or justification, while the icons of national identity – telephone boxes and post boxes, currency and stamps, Marmite and victoria sponges, Tube maps and brown ale, policemen's helmets and Routemaster buses, cricket bats and (ouch!) newspapers – are assembled for a final closing-down sale.

Probably a carefully tailored summary - I just about remember listening to this from a broadcast in the 1980's(?). Unfortunately for me, this is being staged in London!

Looking down

Two examples of local Google Earth Imagery. Recently Macclesfield has had new images and this is our back garden.

I spent some time trying to identify the indicated object wondering if it had caught one of the household occupants but I think it must be the bird table! Meanwhile in the town centre -

this dates the image pretty well, you can see the green hoarding placed in front of ex-McDonalds while the bulders did their work!

Mutterings - 9 March

This week's Unconscious mutterings:

1. Mourning :: Dancing
2. Approval :: Tick
3. Lotion :: Sun tan
4. Perspire :: Walking
5. Language :: Barrier
6. Defection :: Berlin Wall
7. Play :: Group
8. Graphic :: ASCII, sex
9. Spicy :: Sausage (ummm.. sex)
10. In love :: devotion

Thought for the day

Institutional religion, by its very nature, always looks for a way to be authoritative. The process of transformation into enlightenment is itself authority. When we have been through such a process of transformation, we do not need to look outside of the experience for authority: the process itself becomes our authority.

Richard Rohr (a Roman Catholic...)
Hmm, maybe I should have stuck with the first sentence?

Listening to each other

Off this evening to a Bollington Chamber Concert to hear the Barbirolli Quartet (used to be the Stillmans). They played Mozart (K589), Brahms Op51 No 1, Emily Hall's 'From Listening to Trees' and the Ravel.
I was mainly there for the Ravel, not sure why I enjoyed it so much more than the Mozart or Brahms, maybe the surface sensousness, but it was a magical, rapt performance, much appreciated.
The Emily Hall was written for this Quartet - I see they're performing it in Woking tomorrow, strong Reich and Nyman influences (in my opinion) I began to enjoy the work more once they got past the first movement where I could hear fingerprints of 'Different Trains' all over it, the other two movements were more of her own voice and the work is well worth a listen.
But the evening - for me - belonged to the Barbirolli's performance of the Ravel!
(An account of our visit to this series last year is here)
We recommend you take a cushion for this venue - for the seats!

Lent i

We'll see how this develops, an initial Terragen render

Anyone there?

Great amusement at this letter left in reception at work:

I've blurred out bits of the address, but probably not a lot of point.
Meanwhile The Register has a classic SPAM purporting to come from Fred Goodwin. It appears to be genuine (genuine spam that is!).

Mutterings - a bit late

Unconscious mutterings has -

1. Pain :: Bread
2. Lego :: Denmark
3. Trooper :: Super
4. Flicker :: Gaslight, son of
5. Character :: Part
6. Determined :: Set on
7. Wing :: and a prayer
8. Control :: C
9. Automatic :: Manual
10. Yeah :: Yeah, Yeah

If anyone will have him!

Email from the AFA (American Family Association) clearly they're trying to get rid of their toxic liabilities.

D'hyacinthe et d'or

Gérard Souzay singing Duparc's L'Invitation au Voyage:

Thanks for rmcr for this link.
I remember - still - hearing Souzay leading a master class in this song on Radio 3 back inthe 70's - or maybe even the 60's - it was my first encounter with this work and the spell still entrances.

Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!

As Souzay said, always `his sister'!
(hmm where's the youtube video gone!?, try here if it remains invisible)

Been away

Bare in Sussex
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Been to Sussex for the weekend, I will catch up slowly! The fields were bare and dry as I walked across them to go to a Sunday morning service to hear the new Rector of St Mary's David Beal, it was a thought-provoking talk for the first Sunday in Lent. Also to the Squire and Horse (again!) for a delightful Sunday lunch and home.
Today's David Shenton cartoon is worth a look