Rodalquilar

One of the buildings at the deserted gold-mine at Rodalquilar had an English label on it.

I assume this happened when the mine was part of a set of a film, this site leads me to expect it might be The Reckoning but looking at the plot (set in 1300's England) I somehow doubt the presence of Guard Blocks! Can anyone identify this?
Also in Rodalquilar the one food shop - Lola's - was frequently closed during normal opening hours whenever the elderly proprietress found something more interesting to do. The owner of Jardín de los Sueños - a German - said without blinking - just go into Rodalquilar and ask for Lola.

More Almeria pictures

Some pictures taken by some people doing the same inntravel walk on the same week as us are here. I like the fact that we both took pictures of the same plant emerging from the rocks in the huge scree on the way down to San Pedro.

Fountains of smtp

Following on from this, I've had a sudden need to go up to Newcastle (upon T) tomorrow as there's a mailbot loose somewhere on the network spewing spam everywhere and my job is to find and exterminate it! I hope it isn't reading this... as it has caused our email server to be blacklisted thus stopping outgoing mail from leaving the server - the server inspects the email discovers it's from a blacklisted site - itself! - and won't proceed further!

I am NOT young, cute and furry!

.. with adorable eyes - well not all of those! I've no idea what even makes google images think that might be so. Do I have grounds for a defamation action? Looking at the google analytics stats there are some disappointed web searchers - unless they scroll down a bit.
See the first hit in the above link - at least as of today and I suppose this posting might keep it there a bit longer ;-)

Independent on the Cabo de Gata walk

From someone else who did a rather similar walk to us

San José from the cliffs looks like a time-share prospectus pasted upon the surface of Mars; the ranks of white houses, resplendent marina and palm-lined promenade are incongruous in this kiln of sun-scorched hills. Where the track ought to be is a descent over rocky outcrops between the new villas. Mostly deserted, their owners' provenance is uncertain, though some do have garden gnomes.

Beach-level, San José is a northern European's Spanish fantasy come true. It looks fresh; the original fishing village - official population still 175 - is somewhere under the cement. It has, we admit, a certain unreal charm - a sanitised south where you might safely bring children - but whatever is it doing in a desert natural park? At a promenade café, people stare at our backpacks as if we are aliens.

I knew there was a reason why I bought and read the first volume of JG Ballard's collected short stories on this trip, all those bleached and deserted villas! Though we didn't go into San José at all....but we didn't see any illegal immigrants

Bambi gunned down(old news!)

Via Andrew Brown, my attention has been drawn to this obituary in the Independent of Sammy Duddy:

Sammy Duddy was a colourful Belfast character who combined membership of one of the city's most lethal paramilitary groups with a career as "Samantha", a highly suggestive drag act.
On one occasion, Duddy's home was attacked with a pipe bomb, while on another shots were fired into it. While he was uninjured, his pet chihuahua, Bambi, was hit by gunfire and died.

Fountains of Home

Slightly unexpectedly I'm working from home today. We had a new central heating boiler installed this week (Tuesday). Last night I turned on the (dual fuel) cooker for the first time since and was greeted with a fountain of water emerging from the gas jet! Workmen appearing to unscramble the pipes later today...

John Cage

I spent some time at the Jardín de los Sueños reading John Cage's Silence - last read it in the (19!)60's, I bought it on a (the) trip to the US in 2000 but hadn't yet got around to the re-read. It seemed in retrospect a rather appropriate book to read there, sitting in their Zen gardens...here's an animation - beware if you don't like flashing things...

Almeria album

The album is now up (discussion about the state of the webserver snipped)

.. home webserver as usual. I thought the JAlbum Nature skin might be nice though I'm wondering if it is too flowery.
I have some more pictures I want to comment on but thought I'd get the intensive stuff done!

New anti-crime measure

Absolutely loony disguise yourself as a drinks dispenser - found on the ship of fools forum

Helpless laughter

pinched via Niles

Blood Wedding

We paid a visit to Cortijo el Fraile, the scene of the tragic events that inspired Lorca's Blood Wedding. Here are two photos, one of the farm, and the other of the chapel which is part of the farm.


Couldn't get inside so the picture was taken though a hole in the door...
A very isolated spot, one can understand the isolation that led to the events of the horrific tale.

Lawrence of Arabia

..in a plastic mac. The beach at Monsul has apparently been used as a setting for Lawrence of Arabia

When we passed by - hastily - on Friday, I don't think there were many film crews around (not even the fashion shoot that was using our hotel)

unfortunately there was no ice around (from the ISIRTA 8th series)

From the Garden of Dreams to a Fistful of Dollars

We stayed at these two places this last week, the first in Rodalquilar - Jardín de los Sueños - the Garden of Dreams

Then in San Jose, at a hotel which was in part of A Fistful of Dollars (I hope I have the right one! - it is see this site)

Spanish kittens!

We've been away on an Inntravel arranged walking tour to Almeria

This photo was taken at the ever so slightly hippyish San Pedro
More photos and accounts will no doubt follow but this evening I have a talk for tomorrow's service bearing down on me! For some reason (well a few reasons) the last verse of the Old Testament reading attacts

The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip

(Genesis 32:3-31) or should that be hip-py?

Windows on the cathedral

A quick shot of Newcastle cathedral through the windows of our new offices: taken on a day visit to sort out some computer issues! The local staff now get the bells rather than police sirens to accompany their work.

Eccentric cartography

Some wonderfully strange maps. I rather like this one, I was set there by jeev.

Someone is getting confused

and it is probably me! Here is the weather forecast for Almeria off the Le Monde Website, and here is another weather forecast for Almeria off the Le Monde website. About 5C between the two forecasts every day, the hotter one has constant storms and the cooler one no storms - maybe it is the other end of the province?

Spiritual experiences

Via the Ship of Fools forum comes this quote from Ned Sherrin's obituary in the Telegraph

He believed in God, but "avoided" spiritual experiences by regular attendance at church, turning up before the Communion, but after the Peace. He remained unconcerned about the Bible's strictures on homosexuality, noting that the Good Book also forbids the eating of shellfish and pork. He was an energetic campaigner for Aids charities.

Not sure whether it was the time he arrived or his church attendance that was there to avoid spiritual experience. Well worth reading the rest of the obit - that was the penultimate paragraph. The Guardian one is quite fun too, inevitably they have different stories...

This web page has been tangoed!

Well it suppose it's pretty, I was looking for Sarah Walker's 'Shakespeare's kingdom' with Mervyn Horder's wonderful tango version of Under the Greenwood Tree and could only get at this page using the google cache. I suppose I need a screenshot in case it is a firefox/stylesheet issue:

Weekend press

On an Overgrown Path has this quote from the Guardian letters page:

I asked Roger Wright, head of Radio 3, a few years ago why the BBC didn't broadcast more new music. We get too many complaining letters was his reply

Then there's Rowan Williams on the right wing American loonies:

When people talk about further destabilisation of the region - and you read some American political advisers speaking of action against Syria and Iran - I can only say that I regard that as criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly

should make his next meeting with Nazir-Ali fun!

Arighi Bianchi

I've fallen a bit behind with my 'on the way to work pictures' so here are two firstly Arighi Bianchi covered in scaffolding - if you pass through Macc by train you'll see the shop - rather conspicuous from the railway.
and then yesterday felt like the first really autumny day
-looking over the local carpark(!) towards the hills.

Harvest supper

To St Michael's last night for their harvest supper and barn dance (interrupted by a quick trip out for a piano lesson). Barn dance done by the lifeboat band - with considerable panache (IMHO) - recommended. Sorry about the blurry picture! Had to make a swift exit shortly after this as a young lad had managed to pour orange juice all over the seat of the chair I was sitting on (at least I hope it was that!) and I didn't notice until too late!

Icons? What icons?

Following an open invite from A Blogspate, here's a screenshot:

don't think I've done a screenshot before on this blog. This is Mandriva 2007 and blackbox - I don't like stuff cluttering up the desktop - as you see!
The instructions say -
A. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun.

You can do a screen capture by:

[1] Going to your desktop and pressing the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key).

[2] Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and do a Paste (CTRL + V).

[3] If you wish, you can “edit” the image, before saving it.

[4] Or use screen capture from The Gimp

For MAC users: Press [ Apple] [ Ctrl ] [ Shift ] and [ 3 ]

B. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of icons. Things like that.

C. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well.

.. and (later) look at the uptime on this machine - at the bottom of the gkrellm monitor

BATS protection league

I've blogged here occasionally on our book group BATS for which the main blog is here - though it needs a bit of dusting off. Due to Cheshire wanting to save money it looks as if we - and a fair number of other book groups are going to have to do things rather differently and I've just set up a blog to publicise things and see if we can get things going as to a way forward. If you live in Cheshire and are affected by this please visit and comment on the entry on the new blog!

Fame

Stephen Fry on Dan Doodah (gosh the title on that website!) is well worth a read - but you've probably already done that!

Current piano work

Currently looking at the Schubert Ländler D790 - easy to think of Ländler as rum-ti-tum two lots of 8 bars that Schubert might have churned out on a boozy evening - but these have buckets full of subtlety (sorry!). Beautiful harmonic touches in no 1, I think no 2 prefigures Wagner with its horrendously difficult piano (that's the volume indication) octaves, no 3 is pure Schumann - if Schumann hadn't seen this before writing Papillons one would want to know why! Then the extraordinary no 5 with its long held slowly resolving dissonances - reminds me of Sibelius with brass chords and a slow changing melody.
So much musical wonder hiding away there - I have a ancient vinyl recording of Brendel performing these but must find a cd while I continue to polish my own performance.

Mrs Senzatalento goes to a concert

Well to hear Gaydar (err Gardar) Cortez (is he really called that?), at the Barbican. Read the review!

Upgrading Mandriva

This month I decided to upgrade my work laptop from 2007 to 2007.1 of Mandriva before the 2008 gets released in November! Attempted to upgrade but for some reason the upgraded system still thought it was 2007.0 and when applying updates it attempted to get the updates for that version. So swiftly cutting my losses - needing to get work done! - I went for a fresh install.
Overall I'm pretty happy -

• the version of the kernel that came with 2007 had a bug that meant the machine (an HP nx6325) tended to overheat - so I fixed the BIOS that that the fan was running when a mains supply was attached, this bug has now been eliminated and the temperature stays around 55 rather than zooming up to 75 when running a hefty compile!
  
• The fresh version displayed a bug with the graphics with a large corrupt cursor on my second monitor installing the ati drivers.
  
• Our application which gets the machine id sometimes was getting 0 in 2007 for licensing, so far hasn't misbehaved - previously I was having to relicence the application every few days.

My only bugbear is the wireless networking - I eventually got this working a few days ago - I use it at home but not at work - however it keeps locking the machine up! As I wrote on alt.os.linux.mandriva:

I was using 2007 with which ndiswrapper worked well for my home wireless connection on a HP nx6325 however with 2007.1

I initially tried using the builtin driver, couldn't get that to work - getting messages something like 'unable to find bcm43xx driver' so I went back to using ndiswrapper, the instance with 2007.1 didn't seem to work so - after a bit of googling and seeing comments on the
ndiswrapper with 2007.1 - I've installed 1.47 from the tar download (getting rid of the rpm first).
If I'm very careful this - the wireless connection - works for me (having blacklisted bcm43xx) however it appears that if anything is attempting to use a network connection when the wireless is in - I think - an unconnected or initialising state the machine locks up and
the only way out is the power button :-(

Typically I'll see this by doing
modprobe ndiswrapper
... for the moment I've commented out the reference to ndiswrapper in
modprobe.conf ... and the system immediately locks.

I'm using 2.6.17-15mdv and have installed bcmwl5 for ndiswrapper to use.

Anyone seen these symptoms and have a solution?

Henze and Nono

Hat tip to Geoff Coupe who points me to an article on Henze's new opera Phaedra, very thought provoking:

Nowadays it's enough for Henze when he sits there like that to direct his gaze to the five telegraph wires behind the old wall in order to imagine twelve-tone series in these airy staves. "More and more I would see an E-flat, an F, a C-sharp…" And certain complex polyphonic passages, he says, "I didn't need to check on the piano, they were simply right.

I spent some of yesterday listening to Henze's oratio 'The Raft of the Medusa...
And in today's Guardian is an article on another Italian composer (Henze was German but has lived in Italy for 50 years) Luigi Nono:

Hans Werner Henze, whose second symphony was first performed in the same concert, recalls that Nono's Variations hit their first audience "hard, so hard that they whistled as if in pain". The evocation of Schoenberg may have been part of the problem. Schoenberg's Op 41 is a setting of Byron's "Ode to Napoleon", and when Schoenberg wrote the piece in 1944, he conceived it as a protest against totalitarian tyranny. Nono wanted to align his own work with both the atonal modernism pioneered by Schoenberg and the political sentiments of the ode, but his music has none of Schoenberg's romantic rhetoric. To an audience for whom Schoenberg's music - banned in Germany throughout the second world war - was difficult enough, the generation gap between old and new modernists must have appeared painfully wide.

I don't know that work and am not sure whether the BBC is broadcasting any of the current Nono festival - I hope it's going to be recorded for a future broadcast but I won't hold my breath!
Both Henze and Nono distinctly composers of the left!

Against the tide

From Peter Selby's Face to Faith in today's Guardian:

The context of that early-1970s article is of ordinands in the US, many of whom had to work out their vocation when the choice was between ordination and going to Vietnam. If you have never been faced with such a choice, you do well to reflect on what kind of understanding of truth and of the justice of God such a context will engender. I do not notice many in my church understanding this aspect of the American inheritance, let alone giving credit to those who have resisted a culture dominated by religiously motivated and justified war-making. We may discuss whether calling an openly gay person as a bishop was right or wrong; but we should not do so without noticing that history and that context, and certainly not without thinking twice before the language of exclusion and ultimatum becomes our chosen vocabulary; right or wrong, the most controversial decisions of the Episcopal Church are part of a resistance to a culture that has taken us over too.

but go and read the whole thing.

Imaginary Landscapes

Giornale Nuovo has pictures from a recent Érik Desmazières exhibition -in Vevey - go and have a look!. Unfortunately the exhibition is over - and I need to be in work tomorrow!

That's how to do it!

Fabio Armiliato singing Nessun Dorma:

bit of early applause but you can understand why..via Opera Chic.
Eat your heart out Mr Potts! - I've nothing against amateurs as long as you realise they are amateurs.

From the spam bin

Personal Message No. 2474186176 - well that's a lot closer to being uncountable!. Spamassassin scored it at 15.1

Tsotsi

The SIlk Screen was showing Tsotsi on Wednesday, nearly didn't go - too much on - but glad I did, beautifully photographed and a gripping narrative. Manipulative? maybe but sometimes plots have to grab you by the throat. Official site - I wasn't aware that it was adapted from a novel. Strongly recommended!
Then on Thursday to the Bridgewater hall for a Halle concert (50 years to the day from Sibelius' death) so they have the rather atypical Valse Triste and Violin Concerto, I wasn't at all keen on the first half, everything seemed to drag, but then came the second half - Rachmaninov 2nd symphony - was rather dreading this after the laboured performances in the first half but it was taken at a thrilling pace, don't think I'd ever heard it live, Still conductors who stop beating and conduct by twitching their shoulders drive me up the wall! Guardian gave it 5 stars but their review doesn't appear to be on the web site yet. Concert is repeated on Sunday...

I've now spotted it (the Guardian review)

Where countless == more than one

(probably). From the Bridgewater hall publicity:

The iconic performer Engelbert Humperdinck has defined romance for countless generations and this year he celebrates a milestone with the 40th anniversary of his first international hit, Release Me.

Online here

Ouch!

This was sent to someone at work. (couldn't get the embed copy to work..). .. Later .. no doubt OCICBW would point out that the hooded garment looks slightly papal but I would never do such a thing...

Unintentional humour dept

From the Macclesfield Community news after the news that the MP for Macclesfield may be facing a challenge from a gay Labour candidate (there doesn't appear to be a Community News web site), Sir Nicholas says:

I have a very progressive young outlook on life

then goto writetothem.com:

Sorry! Something's gone wrong.
Nicholas Winterton MP has told us not to deliver any messages from the constituents of Macclesfield. Instead you can try contacting them via the Parliament website. There you will get a phone number, a postal address, and for some MPs a way to contact them by email.

so off to the Parliament website and this page tells you that he has no email address. I won't mention his 'progressive' political views!

ahhhh and grrrrrr

Via Alex Foster comes a kitten eating melon (get it the right way around)
And The Gay Bar reports that boing-boing (need to restart reading this!)says
The latest iPods have a cryptographic "checksum" in their song databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be used with operating systems where iTunes doesn't exist -- like Linux, where gtkpod and Amarok are common free tools used by iPod owners to load their players.

Me being a Linux (and an amarok user) but not yet an iPod owner (I think that's now 'not ever')

Book cafe

From tonight's talk came this quote from Harare's Book Cafe

music [and poetry] gives a voice that maybe can push the boundaries a little bit

I think the sermon tonight was on poetry and dissent!
And (much later) you can hear it here, the notes - in Word format (offstage hissing!) - are here

Squeak!

And from the same local historical site go here, for a delightfully silly cartoon. Do stay to the end!

Remember

with prayers/good thoughts/wishes (as appropriate) our neighbour, Sue, in intensive care after a lorry ploughed into her car on the motorway...likely to be in hospital for some considerable time

Yesterdays

From here:

Can nothing be done in the present stupid deadlock with regard to the tram service between Ashton and Stalybridge? Twice to-day have I been unfortunate enough to be turned out of the “ha’penny” trams at the park gates in the pouring rain and compelled to tramp to my destination, with the chagrin of seeing the Stalybridge tramlines outside my house in full working order and no trams running.

Stalybridge people are compelled to go to Ashton for business purposes, and whilst recognising the clever move of the Ashton committee in inconveniencing the public in the hope of bringing the joint committee to their knees, I must emphatically protest against the stupid policy of “grab” which is being shown in this unreasonable dispute. If the two bodies cannot agree, why on earth cannot they go to arbitration?

We all know that railway passengers exist for the convenience of the railway officials and railway shareholders, but it is a pity to find the notion creeping into tramway management also, and that such a splendid service of trams should be disorganised and so much money wasted (Ashton cannot work its ha’penny trams at a profit) on account of the fads of our “men of light and leading” on the Town Councils is disgusting indeed.

Let some of these clever gentlemen wait until next November, and they will hear a few things.
Yours, &c, THOMPSON CROSS, 13th June, 1904

Ah yes, the delights of separate bus companies...

Chester and Jacob

Off to Chester on Thursday for the Changing Attitude Chester's (yes the blog looks a mess, needs tidy up!) meeting with Trevor Dennis (Chester Cathedral's vice dean) talking on 'The God Who Cannot Reject. Trevor was typically deeply thought out, sparky and provocative.
Started with Cain/Abel, Isaac/Ishmael, Esau/Jacob which rather showed the converse but then moved to the New Testament and the Prodigal Son (quoted Kenneth Bailey's Jacob the Prodigal) his thesis being that the parable leans heavily on this story and ends up by subverting it as far as the Jewish audience would have been concerned.
Suggested that Jesus ended it at 'every I have is yours' so in this case the elder son was accepted and not rejected in preference to the youngest (as with the Genesis stories)

The New Testament contains even more violent language about God than the Old

... should have taken notes...

Early morning cat

a cat very close to the station this morning

But who's paying the bill?

Music Zone went under at the start of the Summer but from our local branch it looks as if the last one out wasn't too bothered about who was in charge of the electricity bill!
(need to look at that shaky hand...)

She only wants to play valses..

I spent some of my holiday (re-)reading Firbank - I acquired the complete novels when the local library sold them off - camp? ever so slightly! Another graduate of Trinity Hall - also as Anthony Powell has it - 'he was interred in the doctrinally inappropriate, but romantically incomparable Protestant cemetery' (in Rome). And I was taken by this piece:

She only wants to play valses!
"She hardly sounds to be ambitious"
"It depends; measured by Scriabin's Quasi-Valse, or the Valse in A flat major, she may have quite intricate idylls..."
Mrs. Thoroughfare simmered. "I do so love his Étrangeté"

having recently worked on some Scriabin - who was only very recently dead when Valmouth was written (1919).
In the latest bout I read 'Caprice', 'Valmouth', 'The Flower beneath the Foot' and 'Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli' - a samey after four but wonderfully frivolous and interesting biographical sketch is here..

Some years later, when Siegfried Sassoon pressed him for his views on literature and art, the only thing Firbank could find to say was, “I adore italics, don’t you?”.

Way, way back in a frivolous mood I used a Firbank quote as a .sig

The blessed St Bathilde who by dint of skipping changed sex and became a man

.. Valmouth

Two links

Dave Walker gets another direct hit.
And the latest xkcd appealed a lot!

But if I don't have a well?

phone number blurred...

Ferns

Sometimes the evening light is better...

Brunswick hill again

BATS

BATS is the name of our reading group...and here's Chris our leader (is there a word for a chief BAT?) trying some reading glasses at the start of this month's meeting - she'd forgotten hers - note how her dress beautifully matches the furnishings!

We discussed Paul Coelho's the Alchemist - I was one of the few who wasn't keen, a little of such books goes a long way (IMHO)!

Wires in the morning

At last a clear morning when walking down...

Should be ashamed of myself

but I only need another 6ft for a thoroughly evil score...

at kittencannon. I found this game via swfblag. Not seen this before though I remember similar things!

Nice conjunction

Not sure that I'd noticed this before:

if you get too many S&M supplies your waters may well be green...with a possible need to attend a clinic.

Brunswick Hill

And from slightly further back on the way down to the station:

we have the more scenic view. It's a lot easier down than going back home!

Tithe maps

And via Lindsay Marshall (no relation), here are some Cheshire tithe maps. This link should enable you to zoom in on a map of the area of my last posting at the end of the 19th century.

Transport

Following on from something I read last night, I'm going to try to record my journey to work in a variety of moods. So we'll start with the most scenic bit -

but maybe I have my back turned to the prettiest part! Cobbled steps, cobbled road, the bypass (which goes though the middle of the town), the London Manchester railway line and a pedestrian walkway. This is the far end of Brunswick St. Macclesfield.

À la recherche du temps perdu

It must be nostalgia day...

It will only encourage them not to eat them

Cool veggies, via Blogspate, I think the sheep are wonderful!

A cat's map of the bed

here, via Plep

Just for a contrast

You’re St. Melito of Sardis! You have a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

Via Inferno XV, if - like me - you're not sure who St Melito was then a trip to Wikipedia may help! I see that his feast day is April 1st - hmmmmm

Looking though the logs

Examining the machine logs is usually a pretty boring job, I now have an ssh-block process which kills probers on the ssh port but I did spot this failed login:

Invalid user blowjob from 85.185.250.18

people login with usernames like that??!! If you are the owner of machine 85.185.250.18 I suspect someone else has control of your machine - or you're in trouble especially in view of your country...

The real Vietnam comparison

Says it all really. Via Paul Ilechko on r.m.c.r

A musical interlude...

we shall have to model this...

Google earth

The google earth coverage of Macclesfield seems to have considerably improved. Here was a corner of the town back in 2005 and below is a (far more zoomed in) picture of the same area now (or at least when the picture was taken!).

I was also amused by this picture of a ferry across the Seine

The ferry is quite clearly visible, however there's a ghost image of the same ferry on the other side of the river, not sure why it is so much fainter, when they stiched together tha patchwork!

Not this decade!

Don't think I'm going to be able to make the Trinity Hall college reunion this time around. Maybe in 10 years time! Posted in the remote chance that one of my contemporaries reads this and might decide to go not to go due to my absence!

My dog has two noses

No doubt everyone has seen this already? Gareth comments

Things that might have been better phrased..

from today's Guardian weekend section:

There was the same icky expectation of seeing a former child actor in a sex scene, but Radcliffe pulled it off, as does Bell in Hallam Foe

well I hope they re-attached it afterwards!
And there's a WTF from this week that I greatly enjoyed - I put a TODO on a form in our application only yesterday - need to make sure it goes before release!

Glug!

(another from the recent holiday) We enjoyed - well the drinkers amongst us enjoyed - a visit to the Taittinger cellars in the cellars of an old church that was demolished in the Revolution. I found it a spectacular eerie visit and it made up for my deciding to miss a similar trip back in Spring 1968 (yes that Spring!) when I had an exchange visit with the Emmanuel Raoul and family at Choisy-au-Bac

Back in Honfleur

..and a selection of those holiday photos for some particular comments!
Here's everyone else outside the same shop in Honfleur as last year!
And here is Beth consulting the menu at La Tortue - under new owners far lighter inside after being decorated, we've eaten there on 2 previous occasions - we didn't eat there this time!

And here's a link to the full sized album photo in case you want to examine the prices (if your eyesight and my photo is good enough!)
But here we are waiting for a restaurant in La Bouille to open, where we did eat!

well it was the day of our Silver wedding....

Holiday photos

.. for those that are interested, the photo album from this years holiday is on the home webserver.
It didn't rain this much!

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

As promised pictures from the 'sur les pas de Rimbaud' walk:


The walk was based around his Voyelles sonnet:

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes :
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d'ombre ; E, candeur des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles ;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes ;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux ;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silence traversés des Mondes et des Anges :
- O l'Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux ! -

have I lost my photo of 'a' or was there none or did I just note take one? A translation is here. There were also sculptures of which this was one:

I'll put the full album up on my home webserver when I get time (and announce it here!).

Losses

Last week we had a TV in the gite - well we had one in both but the reception was considerably better for week 2! - and on the news on France2 on Monday they covered the deaths of Michel Serrault and Bergman. These were items 1 and 2, in each case they had a biographical sketch, film clips and then an interview with (the same) film critic live in the studio. By the time they'd done this we were 20 minutes in to a 40 minute bulletin - I just couldn't imagine the BBC doing a fraction of this in the main bulletin with anyone involved in the arts! The next night one channel showed La Cage aux Folles I & 2 (and another of Serrault's films on another channel) and there's been at least one of his films every night since. Bergman also collected a couple of schedule changes to include his films.
I didn't know that Serrault had spent time studying in a seminary makes the relentless camping up in La Cage Aux Folles a little uncomfortable but maybe it was so far over the top one could put the doubts about agendas to one side.
Serrault's funeral service was in the wooden church in Honfleur I photographed last year and which we'd seen a few days before.

Translations

I hope they didn't pay anyone for this!
- you probably need to click on the image to get the full effect. crudités = crudenesses - 'nice of pig forest' is also attractive etc.. It doesn't appear to be Babelfish's responsibility. but I'd guess that this can be pinned on a computer! Unfortunately we didn't get around to eating there, but we did try! Though we skipped the pizza restaurant in the same town that was offering pizza aux escargots (or something)
I should now hurry and make sure there are no English to French translations of mine visible on the Internet!
In a similar vein, a couple of faux amis (for which I am wholly responsible) that I enjoyed were 'flamin Gothic' and 'formation holes' - both on road signs.

Hell's own launderette

The instructions for gite #2 said - turn right at the launderette (laverie) - this seemed a little strange as elsewhere it said the nearest shops were 4 miles away, so anyway we drove there and there was a total absence of commercial premises! Retracing our steps though Roche (the hamlet) we saw a sign for 'Lavoir de Roche' and the penny dropped and wheels began to turn in my brain from when I'd read Rimbaud at the age of 18 (probably the best age for such things!). The gite was more or less on the site of the farm where Rimbaud completed Une Saison en Enfer and the walls of the gite were dotted with framed poems! Roche was full of literary walks - a pleasing and unexpected bonus for a week in a very quiet piece of France.
.. 'could have inspired'.... hmmmmmm
I'd agree with the second link mentioning the terrible drawings!
Pictures of the gite and walks to follow!

Hibou

I'm sure there's a Messiaen Catalogue d'Oiseaux with a text about walking in the Ardennes at harvest but at the moment Google is not cooperating with my thought patterns - or am I getting my French regions confused?

Rustle..

it seems to have been a bit quiet here - before I restart properly let me mention that a few days ago I had a dream where I was taking a Cambridge Maths Exam on a lecture course entitled 'Group Theory and Dr Who and... "insert title of adventure here"' - unfortunately I'd forgotten the title when I woke up but the adventure involved groups(!) of feline brightly coloured aliens (the Ecclestone End of the World? doesn't mean that was the actual one of course there may have been extra internal garbling!)
As I hadn't attended the lectures for the course - for some reason - I didn't have much success - thought the exam paper was very pretty! Only actor I remember from the dream was Troughton.
Please don't send round the men in white coats!

Gun Hill

Yet another walk ending up at the Royal Oak, Rushton Spencer, splendid evening views over the Staffordshire countryside, saw orchids and an asphodel.

Jen's leaving

Steve managed to delete an earlier picture - but he didn't get this one!

From Jen's leaving do at the KroBar in Picadilly Gardens

Excitement!

No idea what we were looking at..but the photo album that I took and some of the official photographers are here

Advertising for all it's worth

Dave Walker points out the current state of the Church of England Newpaper website - totally bananas! If - like me you use firefox and NoScript (you wise people you!) you'll need to turn on scripting for CEN and adbrite to get the full wonder of this!

Chester - again!

For the second time in a fortnight to Chester Cathedral for an ordination!? Went to see Philip Robinson's priesting in a service which I shall remember for an incandescent sermon from Grace Sheppard who took the ordination retreat.
(I hope this is her - I wasn't intending to take her photo!) She spoke movingly on friendship in the face of death both taking the Last Supper narrative and speaking about her husband David's (bishop of Liverpool for many years) death in the evening after her 70th birthday party surrounded by friends and relations.


We'd decided to have a meal after the service (which started at 5 pm on a Saturday afternoon) however we reckoned without it being Chester race day - and so having made a note to try Chez Jules on a future visit, racegoers, or maybe bishops! had bagged all the tables - especially as the City seemed to be filling with drunks and police - we went back to the car and drove back looking for a pub/restaurant thinking that Knutsford would be a suitable place if we really didn't find somewhere.
So we arrived in Knutsford and after considerable difficulty(!) found a parking space and after more difficulty a restaurant with a free table Rose & Crown/Portofino we ate late but it was a lovely meal enjoyed being next to the customer visible frying pan. We had pasta and a pudding - my pudding was a little ordinary but everything else was wonderful. We'd stopped eating here a few years back - well before I was made redundant from somewhere based here - probably because the Early Bird menus were over meaty but we are likely try it again!

A Wednesday walk

Just for a change, went on a St Michael's arranged walk last Wednesday - the meeting I had to go to that evening was cancelled. A very wet long and muddy experience but it was worth it for some of the views:

both were close to the Macclesfield - Leek road.

Ummmm

Our mail server hoster had an interesting day yesterday. We were unaffected though one of our sites wasn't and got the above screen when visiting the uk2 webserver. From Manchester their webserver was unaffected so we suspect one of their DNS servers was the actual victim.

Southern Baptists hack Word?

well it seems so

Manchester

Into Manchester for Clare's degree day - more photos no doubt to follow! Lovely occasion enjoyed being at a degree ceremony where I wasn't a participant (at least in one sense). Better than Cambridge where you immediately get (or at least I was) shoved out of the door after your name was called instead most had a chance to relax and enjoy others receiving their reward!
Dinner for the second time in a month at Don Giovanni's in its new location, much enjoyed both times - I see that Manchester eating has some rather mixed reviews but we were there early which probably helped the service.
Trip to the HMV shop and as a result I need to do some serious listening, two boxes of 10 cd's (£5 each!) or Furtwängler and Mengelberg amd the 21 CD Stravinsky * 2 box of boxes is in the post...