F.U.N.

This blog is happy to endorse the balloon bending powers of Rodneys Balloons (balloon modelling for every occasion). He was doing his stuff down at the local fair (every year held on the first rainy Saturday in May). Incredibly, some people were not buying them.

New feature random words

Car crash Carlos - he sounds like an amusing fellow.
Exploring Fabienne Delsol - I wish.
Jazz Jesus & Mary Chain - the direction they should have taken after Darklands.
Weird war Welsh Wendy - doesn't mean anything, I just like the sound of it.

Jonathan Livingston Parkbench

Exploring, I found this today. Lovely isn't it? Almost too nice to sit on. Overlooking a lake as well. It's in a good bird spotting area, I spotted a jay (which I class as a minor bird spotting treat) and additionally a largish, green bird. In the brief glance I got I think it was probably crested. Colour and size-wise it could have been a woodpecker. But I didn't notice a bright red head. 

With the beetles

Tempted by the presence of David Attenborough I wandered down today to a local mini wildlife safari. I didn't catch the great naturalist in the end, but I did have a pleasant time. The first things that caught my attention were some slow worms, such lovely little creatures. Just like little snakes really, apparently they're all over the place if you look hard enough. They were good but I probably spent longer at a table displaying beetles.

I've been fairly keen on beetles ever since I saw a documentary about dung beetles years and years ago. The programme mentioned a theory that the ancient Egyptians may have formed some of their ideas about mummification and reincarnation from observing the dung beetles' antics. I was persuaded.

I love the look of them as well. I bought one once (Acrocinus longimanus it says on the label) stuffed and mounted in a glass case from a shop on Portobello Road, and which my wife won't let me hang on the wall. I've some sympathy - I can admire them aesthetically under glass or at a safe distance, but I admit I do freak if they try to get in the bath with me, or otherwise invade my personal space.

One summer at college we were plagued by may bugs, really horrible things. Everyone was freaked out by them. As the link says, they made a really loud clicking noise when flying, which only added to the terror. And I remember what inexpert flyers they were. I was having an excellent go on Raiden in the games room one evening when we heard the clicking. Transfixed by the game I could see, reflected in the black glass panelling, my mate Syd ducking as the beetle repeatedly dive bombed him. After the last of my spaceships had been zapped I turned round to see that the frenzied bug had flown itself into one of the fluorescent strip light boxes and was stuck on its back.

Happily there were no may bugs on display today, instead we had a live specimen of a rose chafer and about four dead stag beetles. Perhaps not co-incidentally I have actually encountered both these characters in the wild. Well, if you can call the high street the wild. Walking down Twickenham high street (just outside Blockbuster) I saw a rose chafer wriggling away on its back. I know in these circumstances one should adopt an Olympian detachment, but instead, very carefully, with the tip of my shoe I nudged it the right way up. I was rewarded with the sight of a dazzlingly golden beetle which then took off almost vertically.

(I do my best to help little creatures in distress. Apart from big hairy spiders. They get hoovered up I'm afraid. I'd like to get over my fear of medium to large spiders. I have tried, once I staggered in drunk to find the missus cowering from a gigantic spider in the living room. I lunged at it and I remember touching one of its legs. But he sprinted off. He could smell my fearlessness. Or possibly the booze.)

Despite the fact that I always keep an eye out for them when I go to Richmond Park my only sighting of a stag beetle was on my way to a Chinese takeaway at Busch Corner a few years ago. Quite a busy street, there's Syon House over the road I suppose, but it's basically an urban environment. Anyway, I saw a stag beetle there making its way along the pavement. One of its antlers was damaged and it looked a bit confused. After a good gawp I moved on, only to be passed almost immediately by a group of teenaged boys. I feared for the beetle but when I looked over my shoulder the hoodied gang were coo-ing in wonder at the disorientated lucanid. A most uplifting experience all round.

More cafes

The other day I set out to take some books back to Whitton library, but due to a local event the car park was full, so I drove around searching for alternative parking. And this is how I discovered secret Whitton. I returned there today on foot. Originally I thought I'd only stumbled on a decent looking pub (the White Hart). Then I realised there were a couple of cafes there as well. My eye was first caught by the highly intriguing Dick's Triangle Cafe. This is that most excellent of things - a ghost caff!

Peering through the net curtains you can tell the chairs were put up on the tables years ago. A tea towel folded and laid over the counter one closing time, obviously they expected to come back in the next day. But for whatever reason it was not to be. The Marie Celeste of cafés. I'd put money on there being a copy of the Sun or the Mail in there, it'd be interesting to see the date on it. 

Anyway, back to the land of the living. The other cafe, Sam's cafe, is quite small but they've arranged nine formica tables with bolted on plastic seats very sensibly. It was empty when we walked in but filled up over thirty minutes or so, mainly with little, bald, fat men. The food, while not exceptional, was good. Another sausage would have helped balance the abundance of chips you see up there. Next time I'll specify two sausages. The place is done out in blue tiles (an Islamic influence?) which gives it a chilly vibe. This is only partially remedied by the slightly forlorn prints of Istanbul that adorn the walls. We sat under a good one of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge.

Whitton high street does okay for greasy spoons actually; the Whitton Cafe (I think it's called) which I would grade as okay, and the Golden Grill which is, all things considered, probably the best. Lighting not too bright, some nice exposed brick decor. I always go for the corner that has an accumulation of potted plants. And it's open till midnight. A bit unnecessary for my purposes, but it's nice to have somewhere that doesn't shut at 3 o'clock.

But Sam's gets extra points for serendipity. And its location. It's very near Kneller Hall. that was another surprise a year or so ago, I was driving along (having got into the wrong lane coming back from the Royal Mail depot) and I clocked that rather impressive building. I parked up and got out to investigate. Noticed a pub on that occasion too, the Duke of Cambridge. Still not been in.

Propheteering

One of my favourite daydreams used to be imagining how I'd manage if I were somehow catapulted back in time. My brain, on autopilot, would most often take me back to ancient Rome. The first thing that occurred to me was that I could use my knowledge of (what would have become) future events to my advantage and become a famous prognosticator. But when it comes down to it, I don't know that many exact dates, accurate to the day. There's the Ides of March in 44 BC I suppose, I could try to save Julius Caesar. But he was allegedly warned by a soothsayer, who's to say he'd have taken any notice of me? (Maybe the soothsayer was me?) I used to know the regnal dates of the first however many emperors, I could perhaps go in for laying bets on who would succeed. But the whole area of seeming to anticipate an emperor's death would be fraught with danger - it was illegal to cast an emperor's horoscope I think. And of course there's the less mystical scenario of such knowledge possibly implicating you as a conspirator. Far better to steer clear of that sort of business.

Anyway, my favoured solution to this not really very pressing problem eventually came to me, I think, after reading somewhere that the Romans had had the potential to have invented the gramophone (i.e. it didn't require the precision tooling that only came in with the industrial revolution). I wouldn't have a clue as to how to make a gramophone, but it did get me thinking, and the result was that I'd invent the printing press. They'd have gone crazy for it, I just know it.

Newsflash

I was caught unprepared for Thatch's death today. The plan had always been to crack open a bottle of champagne. However, our emergency bottle of champagne was whisked off to a friend's engagement party a couple of weeks ago and hadn't been replaced. 

So I marched down to my local and had a couple of pints. You might think that these could be construed as the actions of one who admired the late baroness and I suppose they could. But that was not my intention. The idea was not to exult in an individual's death, she was, after all, a mother. The ritual quaffing of drink was instead just my small gesture against the oncoming tsunami of bollocks in the media, a definite rejection of the idea that she should be granted any sort of special funeral, and that I do not sign up at all to the idea that Mrs Thatcher was a good thing.

How bible was my black

I found an old Welsh Bible in a bookshop a few weeks back, going for 50p, who could resist that? And here, picked for its sheer, eerie weirdness, is a verse: 

A'r pedwar anifail oedd ganddynt, bob un o honynt, chwech o adenydd o'u hamgylch ; ac yr oeddynt oddi fewn yn llawn llygaid : ac nid oeddynt yn gorphwys ddydd a nos, gan ddywedyd, Sanct, Sanct, Sanct, Arglwydd Dduw Hollalluog, yr hwn oedd, a'r hwn sydd, a'r hwn sydd i ddyfod.

A little bit of vocabulary to help you out. I've got a feeling Welsh spelling might have been revised at some point since this Bible was printed (an inscription by a D. H. Thomas of Treorchy gives us a terminus ante quem of 1915).

pedwar - four
chwech - six
llygad - eye
aden - wing

Beermat of the month

Very pagan. I wasn't actually drinking the beer, they've not got it on at the moment. They did have their Summer Lightning a bit back, which, after four or five pints, I decided I wasn't that keen on. Somewhere else though I tried the Odyssey, which was one of the nicest beers I've ever drunk. But, looking at the website, I don't think they're making it anymore.

Peru too*

That's what the post title for the letter P was going to be. But I couldn't find the Peruvian track I had in mind. I thought I had a bit back in Static Records, he played a tune at one point and it sounded just like it. I asked what it was: the b side of Redbone's Witch Queen of New Orleans. But my Peruvian track was a proper field recording type thing. I've interrogated an old hard drive's favourites, but no luck. I remember I used to listen to a snippet of it over and over on a digital downloads site that had an orange background with white writing. The track was in the ritual/tribal section.

Instead we travel to Puerto Rico. I'd never really been quite sure where Puerto Rico was, nor had any knowledge of its constitutional arrangements. According to wikipedia it's sort of an American protectorate or something and will probably become a fully fledged state in due course. So, quickly, before that happens here are the not at all brilliantly named Davila 666. It's what I would call punk in the Pebbles, Nuggets, Garage Rock sense of the word rather than the more political and uptight British sense. I've no idea what they're on about (they may in fact be overtly political), but I like it.

Davila 666 Basura

* Name the track. No prize (other than the kudos, obviously).