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Cambridge trip

My father has not given up the fight to secure the BG for his alma mater and this year,recognising the scientific bent of the BG's mind,I acted against my own interests and booked a visit to the home of Fenland Poly. Sadly, my father's campaign was hampered by the holiday closure of pretty much all of the colleges and the science museums. There were three treats for us....well,four if you count the joys of Heffers,which even my Pa acknowledges to be inferior to Blackwells. Treat 1: the Fitzwilliam Museum. Glorious building,very fine Vermeer exhibition plus delightful mini exhib on graphite. Treat 2 was the permission to wander through two of Magdalen's quads. I always feel a powerful yearning for the academic life when in Oxford. The sight of an aged staircase and a lofty casement window makes me want to be back in a college room,slaving over an essay.I experienced the same emotions here. I think the BG feels something,too. I hope he manages to get in when the time comes.
Treat 3 (probably the highlight): Kettles Yard....not the Bridget Riley exhibition...those nausea-inducing patterns and revolting germolene pinks do nothing positive for me...no,the house itself with its fabulous collection of 20th century art..especially St Ives school plus Brancusi and Gaudier-Brzeska sculptures. Visitors are encouraged to sit on any of the many chairs in any of the many rooms to contemplate the work. I am not crazy about Alfred Wallis (several of his in the upstairs rooms), but I do love Ben Nicholson and was thrilled to discover a new name....well,new to me,anyway: William Congdon. An amazon trawl revealed that he is too obscure at the moment for any books/monographs to be affordable,sadly. We were also able to spend a very pleasant half hour browsing the extensive collection of art books bequeathed by the house's owners. Delightful.
All in all, a lovely sojourn in the flatlands.

I HATE PASSWORDS and LOGIN IDs!!!

OK! I know it's for my own good, but can't these companies help at all? John Lewis sent me stupid scraps of tracing paper with barely legible codes and passwords on and I have , of course, burnt them/forgotten them and now I have to jump through a bazillion hoops to get access to my account. What is more, I find some of those 'special private question' thingies REALLY annoying! I must have made a typo on one answer because now the machine argues with me about what my first job was and I find myself shouting at it: 'I know what my first sodding job was! It's my sodding life you are arguing over'. The BG says I must calm down. He says that rather a lot at the moment and it instantly makes me want to blow a gasket....

'Share' Reviews

Review

`The book's got a rattling rhythm that makes it fun to read aloud, it's funny and the pictures are lovely. Highly recommended!' --Armadillo Magazine

`Children with younger siblings will find this story very easy to relate to and it makes a great starting point for a discussion about their experiences of having to share.' --Nursery Education Plus

'Parents will recognise the familiar dynamics of sibling rivalry in this sweet and endearing picture book. The cheeky siblings are gorgeously drawn, and of course discover that sharing can be fun after all.' --Fiona Noble, The Bookseller

'A heartwarming picture book (with) delightful illustrations. There's just the right balance between naughty humour, sibling rivalry and affection.' --Daily Mail

'Simple and eye-catching, and funny too.' --Thebookbag.co.uk

'Share is a gentle poem told gently and humourously through bright, bold and colourful illustrations. Great (for) the emergent reader.' --Early Years Educator

'A very sweet tale of siblings and sharing, with a suitably snuggle-up ending.' --Families Magazine South West

'Masterful and funny and the final few pages are a natural celebration of family togetherness.' --Teach Nursery

New home needed URGENTLY!

She had been contemplating a life-size painting of a stag for some time -in her part of the world, deer are a regular feature in the rolling landscape of West Dorset and East Devon. When the news of the demise of the Exmoor Emperor broke, Christine knew immediately that she HAD to paint him.

She had to wait for the custom made canvas but ever since it arrived, she has been working frenetically to capture the creature’s majesty and presence. The painting owes nothing to the Landseer legacy. It has a raw energy which will stop the viewer in his tracks. Indeed, the viewer should feel themselves to be in the stag’s presence, held by his imperious gaze.

This is a trophy painting , satisfying the spirit of the hunter.

Now the Emperor needs a home. Christine is moving her studio back to her house and The Emperor simply won’t fit! Photo cannot do it justice..loads of glorious painterly texture.

 

Lovely review on Amazon

Pig Nuts and Peacocks", a collection of poems by Anthea Simmons, arrived safe and sound in my letterbox some days ago. The poems number 24 in all, arranged according to a tacit seasonal cycle (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), on a wide variety of natural topics. These include hens (her little Eiffel towers), foxes (they deserve and get four super poems; she likes them best, even if the hens and peacocks are catching up), peacocks, herons, trout, rabbits, pigs (she likes them quite a lot), geraniums, the moon, the four seasons, bracken, mud (two on that one!), owls, mares, and trees. Into the bargain, there are exquisite drawings by the poetess. Printed on high quality 70 lb white paper with a handmade paper cover.


So an excellent deal for your ducats.


Now for some impressions:


It is wonderful. The collection is worlds away from any hint of A Dorset Lass, grumbling about the land of lost content. Instead, it is brimming with little catapults of colour, that ping one into a state of good humour and love of nature. Ex-Batts made me laugh, as did Pig Roast. But the ones about foxes are best of all. Especially Fox Attack:


"The fox observes from the bracken 
Into which he, too, has vanished 
Like the hen. 
No men today. 
No tractor. 
No chainsaw.


Patience rewarded."


One just sees Him pause at each of the three full stops, thinking, full of cunning and craft and guile and calculation and intelligence. Before drawing his deadly conclusion. And the lovely line that follows, catching his litheness and coat perfectly:


"He scans the fields once more 
Then stretches his frame long and low 
Into the landscape 
Which Autumn has made his friend."


And I liked Tree Planting too, with its echo of Stevie Smith, having had the experience of putting in 400 trees in Normandy, and whacking the spade into the unsuspected cement winter underlay.


Anyway, the poems are so enjoyable. I cannot begin to convey what you must read first-hand to appreciate. A natural lyricism of wide-ranging sentiment.


In fact, they almost made me forget the beautiful drawings! Equally delightful. Absurd of me! 


The audio version is eagerly awaited. Poems of this quality read aloud are too good to miss. If a pig were reviewing, he'd say they were just pure apples! Foxes, however, are already travelling first-class to Dorset to obtain signed copies.

Definitive explanation of debt crisis!

Helga is the proprietor of a bar.

 

She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar.  To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

 

Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers' loans).

 

Word gets around about Helga's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Helga's bar.  Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in town.

 

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Helga gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.

 

Consequently, Helga's gross sales volume increases massively.

 

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Helga's borrowing limit.  He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral!!!

 

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS.  These "securities" then are bundled and traded on international securities markets.

 

Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as "AA" "Secured Bonds" really are debts of unemployed alcoholics.

 

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb!!!, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

 

One day, even though the bond prices still are climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga's bar. He so informs Helga.

 

Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts.

 

Since Helga cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Helga's 11 employees lose their jobs.

 

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank's liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

 

The suppliers of Helga's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.

 

Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers. Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the government.

 

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Helga's bar.

 

 

 

Now do you understand?