2008 — 20 September: Saturday
I very much enjoyed the pair of BBC4 programmes featuring Roxy Music. I can still remember buying their albums on vinyl while working as an aeronautical engineering apprentice in Hatfield back in 1972. Thirty six years ago, for heaven's sake! Again, time for tonight's picture of Christa, and then time for some sleep:
Christa and one of her soft toys, 1976
When she'd finished sewing the living room curtains in our Old Windsor house, she still had enough material left over to go (as it were) to the dogs. Though I have no idea with which nephew this canine fella ended up. She reworked the same curtains for our (my, dammit) present house, too, back in 1981. (Junior, you can be proud of your Mum's creative streak.)
G'night.
Novel imperial clothes... dept.
Having stopped taking the Guardian daily, I missed this on its first appearance. Good for Mr Hughes, say I:
One might as well get excited about seeing a dead halibut on a slab in Harrods food hall. Living sharks are among the most beautiful creatures in the world, but the idea that the American hedge fund broker Steve Cohen, out of a hypnotised form of culture-snobbery, would pay an alleged $12m for a third of a tonne of shark, far gone in decay, is so risible that it beggars the imagination.
Julian Spalding put it very neatly in the eclipse of art, in 2003:
A cow and calf are cut in half
And placed in separate cases.
To call it art, however smart,
Casts doubt on art's whole basis.
Well, the first hour of Brian Matthew's "Sounds of the 60s" has gone rocking by. Must be time for breakfast and a second cuppa. The sun is shining away and I got a few shots of some early morning spiders and their webs out in the back garden. It's a bit of an obstacle course out there. Goodness, our risible PM and noted art critic has just been quoted as describing JK Rowling as "one of the world's greatest living authors". Nothing to do, I'm sure, with her £1,000,000 donation to the Labour Party coffers (of course).
Polygraphy rules...? dept.
I've always assumed only widespread telepathic abilities could be expected to winkle out the "truth". The BBC reports that "Sex offenders in some parts of England and Wales could be made to take compulsory lie detector tests to see if they are still a danger to the public". (Source.)
Idly researching the polygraph, I find totally conflicting opinions at Wikipedia and at the rather charmless British and European Polygraph Association regarding the reliability and accuracy of these devices.
There's even an anti-polygraphy site. And the Society of Professionals, Scientists and Engineers is in on the action, too. Tricky stuff, truth.
"You lied to me, Leo."
"I'm a politician, Ainsley. It's what I do."1
Suddenly...
... it's 21:17 and I'm listening to a most beautiful mass on BBC Radio 3. I don't seem to have got a lot done today, but both PVR hard drives are now empty, and there's a little something or two in the orders pipeline. (A chap needs a treat or two in the week of his favourite aunt's funeral, don't you agree?) And I guess a cuppa wouldn't go amiss, either.