Definitely time for tea!

I'm a complete sucker for a pretty trinket, hence why my room looks like a kleptomaniac magpie's nest. 

A few discoveries to share with you:

Pal Louise's LouisaRose Etsy shop where you can buy prints of her very lovely photographs. Not on the High Street sells all sorts of yummy things for house, home and personage, and for fans of tea like myself, scrumptious little teapot and teacup jewellery, amongst other things, at Temporary Secretary. Loving Alice's Teacup necklace (pictured).

Classical music to melt into

15 little slices of classical audio heaven

1. Symphony No.3 - Henryk Gorecki
2. The secret life of daydreams - Dario Marianelli
3. Gabriel's Oboe - Ennio Morricone
4. Opus 36 - Dustin O'Halloran
5. Her Gentle Spirit - Jocelyn Pook
6. Weep you no more, sad fountains - John Dowland
7. O clemens, o pia - Giovanni Pergolesi
8. Sul Aria - W.A. Mozart
9. I giorni - Ludovico Einaudi
10. Nulla in mundo pax sincera - Antonio Vivaldi
11. Misere Mei - Gregorio Allegri
12. Nocturne No.1 in B flat minor - Frederic Chopin
13. The Humming Chorus - Giocomo Puccini
14. The Coventry Carol - mediaeval traditional
15. Prelude, Cello Suite No.1 in G Major- J.S. Bach

Possibly the world's worst poem...

A Tragedy

(You're not wrong there, son)
Theophile Marzials, 1873

Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.
Plop, plop.
And scudding by
The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,
And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"
And my heart shrieks -- "Die."


My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
Plop.
Dead.

And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
Flop, plop.


A curse on him.
Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --
My Devil -- My "Friend"
I had trusted the whole of my living to!
Ugh; and I knew!
Ugh!
So what do I care,
And my head is empty as air --
I can do,
I can dare,
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip drop.)
I can dare! I can dare!
And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.
Drop.
Dead.
Plop, flop.

Plop.

To sleep, perchance to dream

I am terribly tired tonight, and just about ready to hit the sack for a date with the Sandman. William Shakespeare wrote of a good kip in Macbeth that...

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast

This links nicely to today's discovery of a good article on the BBC news website about the discovery of a verified portrait of Shakespeare, or as Bill Bryson and assorted scholars would have us now write, William Shakspeare. This is on account of this particular spelling being the most common variation of the name in the Bard's own hand.

Only six examples of Will's signature survive, and bearing in mind they're from a time when spelling was not standardised. Elizabethan Scrabble must have been a riot, quite literally. Given that the vast majority of Elizabethans were illiterate, a bag of X tiles would have served Scrabbel in the Age of that moste Excellente Prince, Gloriana, our beloved Queene quite sufficiently, meaning everyone was a high scorer on the board even if they could only muster a measley cross by way of a word.

Eight points for an X, in Scrabble. I think I can beat that with the ten pointer, Z. Zzzzzzzzzzz ....

From the sublime sign to the ridiculous...

I spotted this little corker in Bouverie Place shopping mall in Folkestone yesterday. It appears to be working; there were no dogs on bicycles in the pedestrian zone at all.

Sam found an equally amusing sign tonight: on a packet of Durex in Sainsbury's, said store had helpfully put a label on the condoms that 'This packaging is not microwaveable'.

Hot sex is out then, folks.

What cannot letters inspire?

I made a point today to write a few paper letters. It vexes me no end that no-one writes a nice paper letter anymore. When one considers that most communication, of love, of feeling, of sentiment, is conducted by such transient, tenuous means these days- email, text, phone-then you can only imagine what beauty is heartbreakingly denied to posterity.

I can count on one hand the number of people that write me a paper missive from time, and the effort expended by those few in producing something lovely, a gift on paper, is something I appreciate immensely. I should write more. It's exciting to receive something that is not asking for money or offering a credit card in the post.

I think that I have exhausted my spiel in the doing of the above, so I shall leave you with the following excerpt from a letter:

"What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions. They can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present. They have all the tenderness and the delicacy of speech, and sometimes even a boldness of expression beyond it. Letters were first invented for consoling such solitary wretches as myself!"

This was a letter from the French scholar, and later prioress, Héloïse to scholar Peter Abelard, between whom a legendary love affair was borne out, ending rather tragically in castration on his part, and the taking of the habit on hers. There are over a hundred letters attributed to this couple, dating back to the twelfth century, displaying poignantly, the enduring nature of an earnest missive.

After you're gone

There is a glazed case towards the back of the room, the fruits of the taxidermist's labours, mounted on a beautiful hard wood, probably mahogany. Behind the glass, a bird. Dust does not settle upon it and the years have been kind for there is little of the bird itself left to decay. It perches, replendent, in its engineered bower, a craftsman having defined a fitting backdrop for its comeliness and it has been posed, postured and affected to look entirely attractive in the little tableau . It sits mantled by an irradiant plumage, its beak half-opened as if it were about to joyously trill. It is wonderfully still, stiff, unyielding and proud, and visitors remark on its beauty, and in secret whispers, how macabre it is. Its beautifully fashioned glass eyes - don't they look real?- stare confidently, brightly and fixedly at a single point ahead. In short, it is an excellent specimen, and will last forever encased as it is, if well looked-after.

And if you don't look too closely, you won't see where it was wounded, that fact hidden oh-so-deftly by the skilled craftsman. You won't see where it was pulled from its natural state, the life drawn from it and the warmth left to dissipate on a cold workbench before it was dressed up, posed and placed in its beautiful new roost, for all the world to admire behind glass.

Scents & Sensibility

Mum had just switched over to a new washing powder, and had asked me to load up the washing machine with our school shirts. I took a scoop of the powder as instructed, slightly entranced by the fact that it had little blue specks in it, and took a sniff. It smelled wonderful - clean, fresh and actually quite enchanting. I suddenly liked washing the clothing. Mum thought there was something wrong with my noggin, but nevertheless acquiesced to the repeated offers of assistance with the washing. I was mad for that powder. It got to the slightly unnerving stage where I had to take a small tub of it upstairs. I'd open it periodically and have a whiff of the lovely aroma of clean white shirts ready to iron. Mum confiscated it and then they changed the powder. The mysterious Keznip ingredient was different and gone.

Smell is the most evocative of the senses. Sure sight, taste, touch and hearing are all grand but nothing beats a scent to transport you back in time. It has the ability to conjure up an image, powerfully summon a memory or inspire an emotion. Old perfumes, grass, soaps, foods, smoke and for the unstable amongst us, washing powder, all have a mastery of memory.

If I want to feel a particular way, I'll return to a perfume I wore at a time that I felt that way. I wore Ghostfor Women throughout a change period, and I'll return to that to galvanise myself into feeling confident about doing the same again. Paul Smith's Floral is my happy scent; I'd regularly borrow it from Leah and wear it on a flouncy day. She bought me my own bottle for my last birthday and I douse myself in it when I feel particularly cheerful. Flower by Kenzo inspires holiday feelings, Impulse o2 the same but more innocently as I was 17 when I last wore it, Ghost Deep Night and Ghost Cherish make me feel different about myself. I will not wear Georgio Armani's Sensi or Emporio Armani's She again for they remind me of a person I was, and do not wish to return to. Armani Code is Leah, Oscar de la Renta is Mum, Chanel no.5 is Nan and J'adore is Sam. I will look up if another woman wearing them wafts past me in a cloud of fragrance worn by my family members.

I think perhaps the most powerful of all scents is that of the people you love. There have been many research projects into whether humans have pheromones, with differing results and uncertain outcomes, but it's not this I refer to. It's the day-to-day smells of those close to you; the smells beneath the perfume or the soap. Nan smelled of Imperial Leather and home and safety. I regularly hugged her and her scent was as familiar to me as my own. Her house smelled of her, and when she died, I took a blanket that smelled of her for a while before she faded and I grieved. My parrot smells feathery; I like to cuddle up to him and breathe it in (Psittacosis, here we come! ) and the smell of a lover is dear and private.

That perhaps is the true purpose of scent and smell; to know your mate above all others. It is the fragrance that will wrap you in your history when you're just in bed linen, or cling to you in absence, or evoke in you the memory of moments shared and private - the true wonder of this most marvellous sense.