lblanchard | Reading

I dreamed I was in a bus that was going through Oldham. "Hey," I said to my companion, "I've never been in this part of town before." We were travelling up a hill and to the right was a ruined temple complex with very tall Roman pillars. "Ah," they said, "That's the headquarters of the Milice- the military police....."

poliphilo

Picture Diary 107

1. Flow, flow, my tears

2. Manifestation

3. She is taking her leave

4. A walk in the woods

5. The veil is thin

bWTAKkA7mvz3U1D3XsxJ--0--siisf_1.5x-clty-upscale-nuvn7.jpeg

6. Music, maestro, please

poliphilo

Teenage romance: we've all been through it but no-one has ever described what it feels like as lovingly and minutely as Marcel Proust. By the same token he does go on a bit.

There are two masters of this sort of thing. The other is Henry James. Together they represent the end of the line. No-one since has wanted to take things any further.

Nothing happens in Proust. Nothing by way of action. He's like Jane Austen only more so, beavering away with a camel hair brush at his little square of ivory. Except that "little" is hardly the right word. One begins to wish for a touch of melodrama. Towards the end of the sequence the Great War- unplanned for when Proust began- imposes itself upon the cushioned life of his characters and I'm rather looking forward to it.

poliphilo

Not so very much is required of a modern royal. You don't have to be virtuous, you just have to be seen to be virtuous. On the whole, unless word has gone out from on high that you are to be monstered ( as has happened with the Sussexes) the media will play along- and not make a fuss about your misdoings.

Edward VIII got away with being a traitor.

Louis Mountbatten got away with being a paedophile- until the IRA blew him up.

Philip Duke of Ediburgh got away with numerous affairs.

Charles III (careful now!) got away with being friendly with Jimmy Savile and various other undesireables.

And Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor got away with all sorts of awfulness until the optics became too, too shaming.

The Sandringham estate isn't Siberia, nor is it Abu Dhabi. I'm told Mountbatten-Windsor has seven dogs; well, they'll have plenty of space to run around in.

We're told a modern nation state requires a human figurehead. A monarch by preference, but failing that a President. I don't see why.

But then perhaps what I really object to is the modern nation state....

poliphilo

I've not been counting heads but I'm pretty sure we've had fewer trick or treaters than in the past couple of years. The first group showed up at around 4.30 and the last at around 6.30- and I have plenty of "treats" left over. Am I detecting a falling off of enthusiasm for Halloween?

The LRB sends me selected articles to read for free- which is nice of them. I've just been reading a review of a couple of books about Haunted Houses. They both sound interesting but the title of one of them, "Hearth of Darkness", is pure genius.

Our friend Jacky just did a course on Quakers and the Supernatural. I'm keen to have her report back, but why Quakers need to agree a line on ghoulies and ghosties is beyond me. As I hope I've made clear in previous posts, I believe in everything!

poliphilo

We were at the Meeting House yesterday and the kids took themselves off to Cuckmere Haven- which is the best vantage point for viewing the White Cliffs- not, please note, the White Cliffs of Dover- which are 50 to 60 miles east of here- but the range known as the Seven Sisters. They had passable weather for it.

Cuckmere Haven isn't exactly isolated , but you can't drive to it. The nearest car pasrks are a mile away- and you have to walk- or possibly paddle-board- the winding course of the Cuckmere river to get to the beach and the coastguard cottages.

Coastguard cottages? Of yeah, back in the day, this is one of the secluded spots where smugglers unloaded their French contraband- "Brandy for the parson, Baccy for the clerk...etc etc..." As the chalk erodes so the cottages come closer and closer to sliding into the sea. We'll miss them when they're gone because they serve as the perfect foreground objects for the picture that everyone takes.....

Here's my version, snapped on a glorious September Day in 2021.....

Cuckmere_Haven,_Sept_2021_08-1.jpeg

poliphilo

I'm not seeing much in the way of Halloween decor in Eastbourne this year. We passed a house that had filled its front garden with junk and it stood out because it had no competition.

I asked Mike if was the same in Greenwich and he said, Well, no, his street had a lot of skeletons and such. They're going home tomorrow morning because he has some inflatable gravestones on order and he needs time to blow them up and get them installed before the evening's candy fest.

We don't give out sweets. We give out plastic doodads. I sort of enjoy the mad rush.

poliphilo

Family coming to visit and I need to put on my paterfamilias face. It's not the best fit.

Right now I'm in my dressing room- or tiring house to be Shakespearian about it- waiting for my cue. Things will become easier once I'm on stage.

poliphilo

Last time I rode a bike was in Belgium quite a few years ago. Long straight roads, no hills and a culture that doffs its cap to the cyclist at every turn.

As a young man I rode a bike round Cambridge and the surrounding countryside. Again, that's fenland- so nice and flat. I have memories of carrying on with the cycling in my first curacy, in Wythenshawe- which isn't flat at all. I have memories of tearing up the hill for Holy Communion on a Sunday, arriving with minutes to spare- and getting the stink eye from the vicar, my boss, who thought I was a horrible scruff. He once threatened to send me home if I showed up again with my shoes unbrushed. "When I was a curate," he said, severely, "We thought it important to have neat hair and shiny shoes- for the honour of the priesthood and in order to impress the laity." What I wish I'd said in reply is, "And what did Jesus wear on his feet then?"

That was a bit of a digression.

As a teenager I did a fair bit of cycling. I had a bike at my boarding school. If you went out for a cycle ride it was considered an adequate alternative to playing team sports- and I hated team sports. The road from Lancing up to Bramber and Steyning is pretty steep. Travelling the same road in the car I have compassion on my younger self.

Looking back, I wonder why, since they'd been foolish enough to give me my liberty, I didn't just keep on cycling until night fell.....

I was never a daring cyclist. I never went down a hill without toying with the brakes.

I was riding a bike in a dream last night. It was dusk. I switched on the headlamp and instead of showing up the road ahead it blinded me.....

poliphilo

Something I try to avoid is going off on old geezer rants about how much better things were when I was a lad, but the temptation is there....

Childcare for instance. Now when I was a child etc, etc.....

No, I may sometimes succumb in conversation, but when I'm writing a post I have time to take thought and shut myself down.

Back in the day thre was a one-man show called Brief Lives in which Roy Dotrice, then quite young, slapped on the old man makeup to play the antiquarian John Aubrey and give us anedotes about famous people from Aubrey's book of the same name. The piece was set in the reign of Charles II and Aubrey had a memory that went way, way back. As the curtain fell, Aubrey, surrounded by his manuscripts, fell asleep in his chair- or possibly drew his final breaths- muttering, "It was not so in good Queen Bess's time...."

poliphilo

I was psyching myself up to get out of bed when Ailz returned from the bathroom and said, "Do you know what happened last night?"

"Oh my god," I thought, "Something world-historical has gone down. Please let it be good news...."

And she said, "The clocks went back...."

I had no idea.

This is the first time in my life that I've been caught unawares by this twice-yearly phenomenon. Usually I'll have gone round the evening before re-setting the clocks in advance.

It was rather nice. I got to doze an extra hour and indulge in those fantasies and speculations that are almost dreams but not quite.......

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

poliphilo

This morning I spotted the first instance of the T**** Ballroom being referred to as The Epstein Wing. I trust there will be many more.

It is being suggested (but perhaps it's fake news) that the construction of the Epstein Wing is actually cover for the making of a new and improved nuclear bunker. I pass this on for what it's worth.

I have always thought that in the event of nuclear war, the last people to be allowed into the bunkers should be the people primarily responsible for bringing it about- which is to say the government, the diplomats, the generals etc. In societies with a code of honour it was expected that a failed leader would fall on his sword.

On a related topic (another titbit from the airwaves) it is being said Andrew Windsor is being offered a Palace in Abu Dhabi. Why anyone would not only want him as a neighbour but also offer to maintain him in the manner to which he's accustomed is beyond me, but there it is.

Who runs Abu Dhabi anyway?

Easy. His name is Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan. He's also President of the UAE. Ah, and here's a clue. He's a close "friend" and ally of the current US President. Might he be thinking it would be a friendly gesture to keep Andrew Windsor squirreled away in a beachside palace where journalists (who are discouraged in the UAE) will be unable to get at him? This is highly speculative, of course.

No, no no, this is not the T**** Ballroom aka The Epstein Wing but the Sheik Zayed mosque in Abu Dhabi.

Ain't it grand!

poliphilo

Ballrooms are in the news. Firstly there's the huge vanity project the American President is erecting over the grave of Eleanor Roosevelt. And secondly there's the affair at the British Museum.

The British Museum (which contains very little that is actually British) is a vast warehouse full of Imperial loot. It's new director had the wizard wheeze of inviting 800 of the world's richest, vainest and least self-aware people- many of the identifiably friends of Jeffrey- to come and disport themselves in a peculiar shade of pink among the ruins of the world's great civilisations.

The old East Wing was a serious building in which serious people did serious things. It's replacement is a frivolous building in which frivolous people will do frivolous things. The Museum is also a serious building full of serious things- and not intended to serve as a backdrop against which Mick Jagger and Naomi Campbell might flex their arthritic limbs. Frivolity is a splendid thing, but there's a time and a place.

What caused particular annoyance in the case of the BM's "Pink Ball" was the use of the Duveen Gallery- which houses the marbles from the Parthenon- as a dining room- for the penguin suits and the ladies in pink. Phedias would have been unamused- or simply bemused. Ditto Pericles. Ditto the modern Greeks who want the marbles back and housed in a gallery on the Acropolis where they will be treated as the foundation monuments of modern civilisation that they are.

The T**** Ballroom and The BT's Pink Ball: there is a distinct aroma of fin de siecle/last things/collapse of empire about them both.....

poliphilo

I had a dream about the chap from whom I was anticipating trouble. He was smiling, in a golden glow, and he said "I have got my constitution back" and I thought, "Either he has regained emotional stability or he has died and gone to heaven."

As it turned out he was still alive and had decided overnight that he can find new meaning in life by alerting the world to the dangers of of AI. He used to be a player of sorts on the international stage and forgets that his influential friends have either passed on or will no longer take his calls. I think he might be happier if he resigned himself to being an inconsequential old gent living in an English seaside town but that's my mentality not his and if his illusions keep him happy why question them? At least he's still alive And it's not an ignoble thing to embody Don Quixote.

By the way, I'm chalking that dream up as precognitive.

Feverish illnesses of the kind I've been passing through, cause the veil to thin. It's the upside of them- and one could almost wish for them to hang around longer. I had very sharp colourful dreams last night, not quite lucid, but still more "real" than "real" even though they didn't exactly hang together. In one there was a garden enclosure that was all mine and full of trees and ever so lush grass, in another a nice little boy was asking me the meaning of the word "Hilversum" on the display of an oldtime transistor radio and in the third "we" were perfecting some sort of magical acrobatic trick involving eggs under the supervision of Ailz's mother- who was being much nicer and sweeter than she ever was in life. The eggs would somehow become kittens and the kittens were to be given to the babies who were trundling wheelbarrows around. Also the broken eggshells would turn into flakes of beautifully patterned enamel. I think what we were actually doing was helping human souls reincarnate, but this may be an interpretation too far....

poliphilo

I came around this morning singing "The Miller of Dee" to myself.

You know it?

Goes like this (to what I read is an old Welsh harp tune- which fits because the River Dee which flows through Chester- is on the Welsh borders,)

There was a jolly miller once
Lived on the River Dee.
He worked and sang from morn til night,
No lark more blithe than he.
And this the burden of his song
Forever used to be,
I care for nobody, no not I
If nobody cares for me."

I'm facing what could be emotionally demanding day's work at the Meeting House- and decided the Miller had been given me as a mantra- because he's so cheery and zen

I sang it to Ailz and she said she'd never heard it before.

I was astonished. I've known it since I was wee small child. Also it's folk and Ailz is a folkie.

I have memories of singing it in school. Like the Lincolnshire Poacher (message: "fuck the ruling class and their game laws) or "There is a Tavern in the Town" (message; "men are cheating bastards") it's one of the ditties we were taught (considered harmless because trad) that subverted a curriculum otherwise loaded with pious, paternalistic, legalistic crap.

poliphilo

The best thing about the White House is it isn't a palace. it isn't Versailles (God forbid!) or Blenheim or the Vatican. it doesn't impose, it isn't even very wonderful as architecture. It's simply a decent, dignified 18th century gentleman's residence- as befits the leader of a scrupulously-conceived democracy. The person who is temporarily installed there isn't going to look round and think. "Finally made it!" or "King of the world!" but "Tolerable decor, nice view!" and "It'll do for the next four years..."

The core has been added to down the years. But the additions have been functional. The East Wing, which is currently being chewed up, was built in the 1940s to serve- primarily- as a work space for a peculiarly active and activist First Lady.

Franklin and Eleanor- ah me- those were the days!

Power that is legitimately based- by, to and from the people- doesn't need to be bigged up or blinged up. It doesn't require halls of mirrors and gold taps. It exhales its own authority.

The current resident of the White House hasn't understood any of this....

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lblanchard

August 2025

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Page generated Nov. 4th, 2025 03:59 pm

The News from South Philly

and other points of interest

Reading

An Unfamiliar Part Of Town

Picture Diary 107

Part Way Through A L'Ombre Des Jeunes Filles En Fleur

Random Thoughts On Monarchy

Spooky

Cuckmere Haven

Inflatable Gravestones

Tiring House

Biking

It Was Not So....

An Extra Hour

Database maintenance

More Balls

Load Of Balls

A Thinning Of The Veil

On The River Dee

Fucking Big Ballroom

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August 2025

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