Two Medusas

Tags

Archaeology, Ashmolean, Damien HIrst, Medusa, mythological monsters, Sculpture, Tartaro

 

                       One by Damien Hirst – the other considerably older. 

                        (Ashmolean)

                       Photos by Candia Dixon- Stuart

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Where there’s Muck, there’s Brass

Tags

Abel Tasman, Ancient Evenings, Beatles, Billy Connolly, Bjork, Blarney, Chris Ofili, Cloaca Professional, Damien HIrst, David Austin, David Walsh, Disneyland, Eden rose, Emerson, Evandale, Gilbert & George, Glenorchy, Golden Gay ice lolly, Hemingway, Hobart, Imagine, James Kelman, Jeffrey Archer, Jimmy Reid, John Brown's Shipyard, John Lennon, Keir Hardie, Lady Luck, Lenin, Leonidas, Matthew Barney, Michael Connor, MONA, muck brass, Norman Mailer, Pierre de Ronsard rose, Quadrant, taboos, tassie, Tours, W S Burroughs, Whitman, Wim Delvoye

Well, I have to admit those Tassies are nothing short of enterprising.

One has heard of carrying coals to Newcastle, but some of these guys

are trying to sell loads of sheep poo in plastic bags for five dollars-

and largely failing, from what I could discern from the car window.

I didn’t unwind it to check.

We passed a somnolent vendor who had parked his pick-up filled

to the gunnels with the stuff at the roadside and had hung out a

handwritten sign advertising his wares, in the open sun.  Not too

many takers, but full marks for bright, or something that rhymes

with that adjective, optimism.

For something a little more fragrant-and I don’t mean Jeffrey Archer’s

wife, Mary, do visit the Old Municipal Building in Evandale.  At least it

was open to customers, unlike nearly every other establishment on

the tourist trail, at the height of the season.  The garden outside the

cafe is resplendent with, and perfumed by, cascading Pierre de

Ronsard roses, whose beauty I last witnessed in the original Abbey

Gardens near Tours, where the poet once composed, and perhaps

composted this Eden variety.  Mind you, it was probably before

David Austin perfected the floral breed.

When I saw the pick-up was just as laden on our return journey,

I thought its owner could do worse than making a donation of his

unsold goods to the aforementioned garden.  I’m sure the

Romanticae would be appreciative and would bloom even more

bountifully.

In the heat I was tempted to partake of a Golden Gay ice lolly,

but I was unsure of making a politically incorrect request.  Not

that the descendants of Abel Tasman have particular scruples in

respect of language use.  Even the term Tassie apparently refers

to female genitalia.

David Walsh, the evil -??- genius behind MONA, in Hobart (Museum

of Old and New Art) does not mince his words.  He is quite capable

of challenging the untouchables in the art world, such as Damien

Hirst:

The first fact about Damien Hirst is that he is the richest artist who

ever lived.

The second fact is that he doesn’t deserve to be.

Walsh is not backward about coming forward and has

broken all sorts of taboos, even decorating the walls of

his amazing temple to Art with a line of plaster- well-

tassies. 

Described as presiding over a subversive adult Disneyland,

Walsh exhibits a keen interest in all things excremental,

so, maybe the vendor chappie could pitch up and station

his pick-up in the parking space  irreverently marked: God.

He might be able to shift a few tons, justifying it as a multi-

sensory installation.  After all, the medium has been popular

with Gilbert & George, Chris Ofili and the like.  It might sit –

oops, nearly made a typo- well with the Cloaca Professional

by Wim Delvoye, which literally turns food to faeces before

your twitching nostrils.  I don’t think the fact that the artist

is Belgian has any bearing down on it.

I think most people prefer the other similarly-hued national

export: Leonidas.

Michael Connor of Quadrant commented:

MONA is the art of the exhausted, of a decaying civilisation.

However, I found the building aesthetically stimulating and

Walsh’s statements self-ironic.  Or were they?

He has made remarks such as:

I suspect that our marketing is probably better than our

museum

and

Now I am the bloody institution.  Now I’m the arbiter of good

taste.  The thing I abhor.

For someone who grew up in the allegedly working class

suburb of Glenorchy, and who beat the casinos at their own

game, Walsh has dug something back into his Tasman soil,

producing a tourist magnet, so I say, Good on you, mate!

If one doesn’t like anything in the museum, there is an

opportunity to vote on the exhibits by expressing approval

or dislike, via an Ipod.

What will Walsh do with the feedback?

W: Take the popular stuff out.

The main exhibition which The Husband and I took in was

Matthew Barney’s River of Fundament, which had connections

to a Norman Mailer novel.

Apparently zombie actors had roamed around Barney’s studio

in New York, which was fitted out like Mailer’s former Brooklyn

home.  The undead spoke dialogue from Mailer, Hemingway,

Whitman, Emerson and WS Burroughs.  There were speeches

on rot, decay, defecation, putrefaction and fermentisation.

No wonder Bjork, his erstwhile partner, has voted with her elfin

feet.

Barney referred to descriptions from Ancient Evenings, on waste,

city sewage systems, sanitation and re-cycling plants.

If this is art, then his name would be better represented as

Blarney, some would say.

I wish I had Lady Luck on my side and patronage by the bucket-load

and then I could produce River of Tenements, representing the Clyde

in a frozen stream, with pop-up talking heads rising out of its silted

depths, mouthing philosophical patter by holograms of Billy Connolly,

Keir Hardie, Jimmy Reid and James Kelman, amid abandoned shopping

trolleys.  Mangled cranes would form the entrance arch

I would gild the gates of the old John Brown’s Shipyard, re-named with

a consonantal substitution and would have a video on a loop, recalling

the epic moment in the Seventies, when an encouraging bouquet of

roses arrived at the usurping workers’ entrance, bearing a card from

one of the Beatles and his Japanese companion-in-politics.

They’re from Lenin?! cried an incredulous wee would-be Communist.

Ah thought he wis deid!

Spin the wheel one more time, David, cast the die and pull the

pokie lever one more time, baby, and find me the dosh and I’ll

be right over deluging you with my creative juices.  But first I

have to find a supplier for formaldehyde.  Maybe Damien has

some left over?

Jist Imagine!

And finally a dedication to the successful gambler

who is King of the Tasmanian art world:

Baa baa black sheep

have you any poo?

Yes, sir; yes, sir,

I have a bag or two.

Two for the gardener,

who’ll mix it with leaf mould

and one for that mad alchemist

who’ll turn it to gold.

 

Epiphany (O Mega Town of Basingstoke!)

Tags

Away in a Manger, Bambi, Basingstoke, Beanie Baby, Christmas Houses by Hartley, Damien HIrst, epiphany, Gloria in Excelsis!, Harris Manning, Last Supper, Loom Bands, Magi, Mary and Joseph, Mcdonalds, Pax Hominibus, Pooh Bear, Rudolph, Tesco, The Anvil, Toys R Us, Yuletide log

Another re-blog, but plus ca change!

The Christmas lights have just appeared in Suttonford, so we will

be pleasantly decorated in time for Santa’s arrival in the town.

Basingstoke will also be ablaze, but in a more gaudy fashion.

Here’s a tribute to its display in a former year.

EPIPHANY

O mega-town of Basingstoke,

how shrill we see you lie!

Above your phosphorescent glow

the silent stars go by.

Yet in your dark streets shineth

the Wondrous Light that draws some from the motorway,

yet fails to signpost Magi through your roundabouts’ array.

(Praise Him in the filament, anyway.)

In Toys R Us they’ll buy a Beanie Baby for the King;

from Mcdonald’s, a children’s meal

with a collectable key ring.

(Those Loom Bands are maybe not His sort of thing.)

Mary and Joseph, Rudolph and Pooh Bear

watch o’er the child beloved and fair.

All is calm.  Sleeping in heavenly rest.

Most take taxis to avoid the breath test.

Mixed iconography screams houses into shrines:

iced Yuletide logs in lurid neon signs.

What shall I give Him, poor as I am?-

I’ll nick a Tesco trolley and use it as a pram.

Blest be that apple near the wheelie bin-

someone’s Last Supper on the lawn close to us:

the turkey carcase an oblation for sin?

A Damien Hirst Pax Hominibus?

 

God rest ye merry, Basingstoke,

you’ve always got The Anvil,

but it’s closed on Xmas Day

when the kids can be a handful.

While housewives wash sports socks by night,

men get their flexes convoluted

and for the love of flashing Bambis

prepare to be electrocuted.

Away in a Manger, no crib for a bed,

the little Lord Jesus flashes green and then red.

The stars in the night sky have nothing on this-

Basingstoke’s Gloria in Excelsis.

 

• The Anvil is Basingtoke’s Theatre.
• 
• Hartley, Harris , Manning: authors of above book.

 

 

 

 

Sole Legatee

Tags

Antalya, belly dancer, Bosphorus, Britten, Cappadocia, caravanserai, chick peas, Damien HIrst, dervish, Early Church Fathers, For The Love of God, pacemaker, palazzo pants, pomegranate, Stansted

Drusilla Fotheringay had excelled herself in the end of term

Christmas concert.  Her performance on the harp had

charmed the audience of parents, staff and pupils and

had deeply impressed Geoffrey Poskett, the choirmaster

of St Birinus Middle School.

Nigel Milford-Haven, Junior Master, had been fully supported

in his Britten solos and could see that this could be a partnership

made in Heaven- possibly a marriage planned in Paradise.  He had

only taken his eye off the conductor’s baton once, in order to beam

encouragement in Dru’s direction and consequently earned himself

a deep frown and a strong downward beat from his tense colleague.

Now Drusilla was looking forward to a trip that she and her parents

had organised earlier in the term.  It involved some Turkish delight

in the wintry sun of Cappadocia, so they were flying from Stansted to

Antalya forthwith.  They were going to view some strange geology and

Augustus Snodbury had been revising the theology of the Early Church

Fathers.

Dru opened yet another congratulatory card -this one from Juniper

Boothroyd-Smythe.  She knew that she had scored a hit in settling the

potentially delinquent student into her boarding house.  The card showed

a not particularly cheery image: it had a Damien Hirst For the Love of God

skull on its front, but Juniper had super-imposed a Santa hat which hung

down in a somewhat louche manner, over its glittery sockets.

Other less original pupils had sent her a robin with a standard wish that

she would have an a-ma-zing time in Cappadoccia, Capadoccia, or in other

orthographically challenging destinations.  Why did they never bother about

spelling?  In her day..Oh well, it was the end of term, so why should she get

her palazzo pants in a tangle?

She wondered if they would be warm enough for a hot air balloon

trip.  They had been packed and unpacked several times, but she

felt, on the whole, that they would preserve her dignity if the landing

was less than smooth.

She gathered up the wrapping paper and boxes which contained last

year’s unwanted toiletries which had formed the basis of some of the

girls’ presents, no doubt cobbled together by their mothers.  These could

go straight to Help the Ancient charity shop, if they had not derived their

origin from hence.

But, hold on!  What was that letter that was sticking to some clear plastic

wrapping by static?  Someone had forgotten to stick a stamp on it, but the

postman must have delivered it in a spirit of goodwill, or because he received

a tip at this time of year and didn’t want to jeopardise the custom. At any

other time, there would only have been a card with a sticker instructing her

to pay a pound if she wanted to come and collect whatever it was.

Dru tore it open impatiently and a grubby five pound note fell out of a

letter. It had come from Snodland Nursing Home for the Debased Gentry

and the calligraphy was somewhat shaky.

She read:

Dear Grand-Niece, (spelt correctly, she noted)

It was good to see you and your father recently.  I do hope that you

will both manage to fit in a visit in your copious free time and will

endeavour to remember not to leave bottles in the car.

The chocolates were slightly past their sell-by date, unlike moi, I can

assure you.  I off-loaded them on the auxiliary staff, who having lost their

bloom didn’t mind devouring the chocolate variety.  They disappeared in

a twinkling.  The chocolates I mean..

Thank you for the letter which informed me of your holiday plans.

Don’t drink the tap water and eschew all salads, there’s a good girl.

Believe you me, I have suffered on several caravanserai trips in my

girlhood.  If it wasn’t my camel allergy, it was those blooming chick peas.

To this day, I refuse to clean my dentures with anything other than gin.

I suppose you’ll be whirling around like some dervish, packing your clothes.  I

thought I’d enclose a little something, but don’t spend it all in one bazaar.

And remember to take a toothpick.  Those pomegranate seeds used to give

me the pip.

Thank you for your photograph.  I can see the family resemblance:

the Snodbury jowls prevail.  My mother has evidently influenced your

DNA.  Mind you, we always suspected that she had had a fling with a

carpet seller in her days of gallivanting round the Bosphorus.  Still, it

saved us all a mint in suntan lotion.  A swarthy complexion can be a

problem in wearing certain hues, though, darling, and so I just give you

a little hint: yellow is not your colour.

We actually had a belly dancer here last week, arranged through our

cultural programme in the Activities Room.  One old boy had to be lifted

out as he was immobilised at the conclusion.  No doubt he enjoyed the

gyration of the nubile, if not so youthful, genie, but most of us

would just prefer the bottle.  They were able to re-set his pacemaker,

fortunately.

Forgive my rambling.  Must go and investigate why the drinkies are late.

Look forward to hearing all about your travels on your return.

Who knows? If we continue to get on so well, I just might make you my

sole legatee.

Merry Christmas.

Your Great-Aunt Augusta.

Democracy Has Bad Taste

Tags

Bentham, Charles Saatchi, Damien HIrst, Dan Snow, Ernest Hemingway, FT, Grayson Perry, List of Reith Lectures, Manet, Nigella Lawson, Olympia, Proust, pushpin, Richard Hoggart, sociology, springer spaniel, transformation, Trinny Woodall, Uses of Literacy

Brassica could hardly hear herself speak for the frothing of the coffee machine

and the screech of a toddler.

Yeah, it’s that bloke in a frock who’s giving The Reith Lectures, she informed

me.

Who?  Grayson Perry?  Suddenly I was interested in what she was saying.

Yip.  I liked his tapestries on class but I admit that I used to think they-

the artists, I mean- actually made the stuff themselves.

What?  You thought that Damien Hirst went out and caught his own shark,

like Ernest Hemingway?  I was somewhat surprised.

Well, I thought they would weave the tapestries, or, say, Henry Moore

would cast his own bronzes in his back yard.

Right.  Before the scrap metal guys nicked them.  Brass, you’ve just got

to understand the difference between craft and art.

Which is?

Some philosophers have described it as the difference between pushpin

and poetry.

Pushpin?

It’s like shove halfpenny. I tried to clarify the analogy.  Look,

I addressed her.  Read the front page of the Life and Arts section of the

FT.

I reached up and took down the pink pages of a grease-stained

newspaper from the wall rack.

You see, I gestured, take a look at the artwork in this cafe.  I think it comes

from The Suttonford Art Society’s Annual Show.  You be the judge.  Is it art?

If it goes by financial value, then I’d say not, she deliberated.

Emmm, yeah.  Not many of them have a reserved sticker.  I suppose that

they could come under therapeutic, or popular art categories.

Some of them could be improved by more sympathetic

presentation, she decided.

Yes.  Proust wrote that we can only see beauty if we look through a

gilded frame, I expanded on the theme.  I wonder what Charles Saatchi

is collecting now..? Certainly not portraits of Nigella!  Maybe Trinny

Woodall woodcuts?  Skinny Trinny as Olympia.  Not a good look!

My granny used to commission oils of sunsets to match the colours in her

swirly carpets, Brassie mused.

(You could never accuse Brass of being a snob.)  She was reading the

front page by now and she came out with:

Are individual works of historical significance, or do they exhibit aesthetic

sophistication?

No, I replied quietly, looking carefully round the room for any paint

stains on clothing.  There is an acrylic over there which shows the oldest

pub in the town, though.  It all comes down to Bentham’s pushpin/ poetry

distinction again.

But, endorsement is surely part of it?  I mean, if we placed a label under that

unconvincing representation of a Springer Spaniel and it announced that it was

by Dan Snow, would it change our perception of it? Brassie probed.

No, but it would change my perception of him, sadly, I replied.

Brassie began to show enthusiasm for this debate.  Didn’t Richard Hoggart,

who incidentally lived not too far from here, discuss some of this in his book

on popular culture, The Uses of Literacy?

Yawn.  Early sociology, I said dismissively.  Mind you, he made some good

points.

Brassie pushed on, paraphrasing as she read: Apparently, what the’ lovely

consensus’ agree on is seriousness.

Mmm, some of these are seriously bad.  I tried to be generous and failed. Okay.

Who is going to validate them?

Brassie brightened up.  I expect their mummies, grannies, aunts, husbands

and wives might rescue them from ignominy.  They’ll probably buy them.

So, laying aside meritocracy, they will be saved for posterity by love? I

ventured.

The greatest ennobler, breathed Brassie.  The Art of Human Understanding.

Compassion. An act of grace.  Love for the unlovely.  Transformation!

 

Epiphany (O Mega-town of Basingstoke)

Tags

Basingstoke, Basingstoke roundabouts, Beanie Baby, Damien HIrst, epiphany, Mcdonalds, Safeway, Teletubbies, Toys R Us

The Christmas lights have not yet appeared in Suttonford, but soon we will be pleasantly decorated in time for Santa’s arrival in the town.  Basingstoke will also be ablaze, but in a more gaudy fashion.  Here’s a tribute to a display in a former year.

EPIPHANY

O mega-town of Basingstoke,

how shrill we see you lie!

Above your phosphorescent glow

the silent stars go by.

Yet in your dark streets shineth

the Wondrous Light that draws some from the motorway,

yet fails to signpost Magi through your roundabouts’ array.

(Praise Him in the filament, anyway.)

In Toys R Us they’ll buy a Beanie Baby for the King;

from Mcdonald’s, a children’s meal

with a collectable key ring.

(Teletubbies are maybe not His sort of thing.)

Mary and Joseph, Rudolph and Pooh Bear

Watch o’er the child beloved and fair.

All is calm.  Sleeping in heavenly rest.

Most take taxis to avoid the breath test.

Mixed iconography screams houses into shrines:

iced Yuletide logs in lurid neon signs.

What shall I give Him, poor as I am?-

I’ll nick a Safeway trolley and use it as a pram.

Blest be that apple near the wheelie bin-

someone’s Last Supper on the lawn close to us:

the turkey carcase an oblation for sin?

A Damien Hirst Pax Hominibus?

 

God rest ye merry, Basingstoke,

you’ve always got The Anvil,

but it’s closed on Xmas Day

when the kids can be a handful.

While housewives wash male socks by night,

men get their flexes convoluted

and for the love of flashing Bambis

prepare to be electrocuted.

Away in a Manger, no crib for a bed,

the little Lord Jesus flashes green and then red.

The stars in the night sky have nothing on this-

Basingstoke’s Gloria in Excelsis.

 

• The Anvil is Basingtoke’s Theatre.
• 
• Hartley, Harris , Manning: authors of above book.

 

 

 

 

Learning Difficulties, Bullying and other problems.

Tags

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brassica, Bullying, Castor and Pollux, Damien HIrst, flugelhorn, Frida Kahlo, Gerald Nabarro, Jedward, Julia Roberts, Keira Knightley, Learning Difficulties, Love of God, moustache, Road to Damascus, school orchestra, Shostakovich, Three Little Pigs

Brassica was horrified.  She had her eyebrows threaded as she was beginning to develop a monobrow like Frida Kahlo’s.  The beauty therapist offered to do her moustache on the next visit.

Moustache!  What moustache?  She was peering into the mirror in her dressing room and yes, although not exactly a handlebar, or a Gerald Nabarro version, there was a shadow on her upper lip.

 I wonder how long I’ve been going around like that? she deliberated.

There was nothing else for it but electrolysis, so off she scooted to Suttonford’s Pride Knows No Pain beauty studio, where she subjected her hirsutism and her husband’s credit card to a series of expensive shocks.

Suddenly, everywhere she looked, she could spot moustachioed women.  Was that a tell-tale penumbra perched over Keira Knightley’s lips as she kissed Aaron Taylor-Johnson?  Whatever.  She had no intention of stealing Conchita Wurst’s thunder.

It was as if she was experiencing a post Road to Damascus revelation, where, sight returned, scales having fallen from her eyes, she saw everything more clearly.

Julia Roberts might have been cool about hair in certain parts of her anatomy, but Brassica knew that she personally would wage war on any productive follicle.  Dermo-abrasion- whatever!  Should one dot be visible, she would stud her skull with diamante until she resembled For the Love of God by Damien Hirst.  Or she could wear a hoodie, balaclava, visor, diver’s helmet, burka or a World War 1 gas mask, asbestos or not.

Mum, why can’t you take us to school?  moaned the twins, Castor and Pollux.

I’ve got an appointment at the studio, she mumbled under the bandaging.  She simply couldn’t face the other mothers in the school yard.

But we don’t have to go with Rollo, Ferdy and that lot, do we?  They’re always late, so we will end up getting a detention too.  Anyway, Mr Milford-Haven wanted to talk to you about our school reports.

What school reports?  You didn’t give them to me. Are they still in your satchels?

Castor and Pollux exchanged guilty glances.

We were scared that you and Dad would be angry.

Angry? Why?

Because our form teacher wrote us a joint report which said that we had a glorious future in show-business as Jedward 2.

That is unacceptable and unprofessional, said Brassica.  I will have to have words with Mr Milford– what is his name again?-

We all call him ‘Caligula’, the twins interjected.

Well, whatever it is, I am going to see him about the bullying you have both been subjected to this term.

Bullying?  They looked puzzled.

You told me that that boy in the orchestra was calling you Bastard and Bollocks.

But John’s our bestest buddy, Mum.

Well, I am not having him copying your Latin prep when I spent so long looking up all those words on the internet.  He’ll probably end up getting the end of year Classics cup.  And, I saw his mother sniggering when you- she paused to look directly at Castor– were playing your flugelhorn solo in the Claustrophobic competition.

Shostakovich, mum, supplied Pollux.

John! Such a common name anyway, Brassica continued.  After all, he’s only on Grade 1 violin and you two are sitting Grade 5 theory at Christmas.  Hasn’t he got learning difficulties?

Probably, said Castor.  He is allowed extra time in the school orchestra rehearsals and he is always behind the beat.

Then, horror of horrors, just as Ferdy and Rollo’s mum’s 4X4 drew up and the horn was tooted, Pollux asked:

Do all mummies have hair on their chinnie-chin-chins?

Brassica shoved them both out of the porch:

Only when they have produced little pigs!

Very bad parent, she admonished herself as the children waved goodbye out of the window.  But not as bad as John’s mum.

She would soon blow her house down!  Now, where had she put these tweezers?

Rain, Rain….

Tags

Andy Murray, BIrnam Wood, Boris Johnson, Damien HIrst, Dunsinane, Ed Balls, Financial Times, FT, George Osborne, husband, Macbeth, Mastermind, Olympics, Roger Federer, Scottish Play

How did the Porter scene begin in the Scottish play?  Rain. Rain. Rain?

No, Knock, knock, knock.”  I had to keep re-testing myself, as if checking that I was free of doping substances. I might have to revise my chosen subject if I were ever to appear on Mastermind, with earthrob, John Humphries.  He was the one with the wrinkly face like that canine breed whose name I could never remember.  Better not choose anything to do with dogs as a special subject.

Drip Drip.  Yes, if Andy hadn’t had to have the roof on, he might not have had to creep out his petty pace from day to day.  Victory was looking as likely as Birnam Forest coming to Dunsinane.  But, hang on!  A wood, or moving grove, DID come to Dunsinane. Think metaphorically, Andy.  Don’t lose any sense of irony you have.  Was Roger untimely ripped?- that could be the question.  Only one man of woman born could destroy Andy’s hopes and that was the gorgeous, hunky, balletic…. No, stop that! I reproached myself.  It’s tantamount to imaginative adultery.

For, yes, I have a husband.  Not that I would notice now that the Olympics were approaching.  He would probably watch every event, whether the rain continued or not  Why did he take such an interest in sport, when his personal exercise regime was restricted to removing a stubborn cork, or picking up The Financial Times from the newsagents which was all of a hundred yards away.

Yes, I would shed no tears if rain stopped play, flattened Boris’ hair and soaked every Trades unionist who might decide to march on the Millennium Dome, in spite of the missiles trained on them from residents’ roofs.  Talk about over-reaction.  Al Quaeda’s resolve would be as dampened as the rest of the inhabitants of these wondrous isles.  Even terrorists would be affected by SAD and the unremitting precipitation, so might seek sunnier climes.

And what about the economy?  What if we taxpayers had forked out all that dosh for a damp squib?  That Bob Diamond  banker guy could put something back in the collection plate- maybe a bonus or two.  Or Damien Hirst could stud a few financial wizards’ skulls with precious stones and flog them off for the nation’s benefit.

I had heard on the radio that George Osborne’s name was actually Gideon.  From what I remembered from Sunday School, Gideon had received divine signals by leaving a fleece out overnight and then inspecting it to see if it was wet or not.  There would be no guesswork in that activity this summer, but he might as well try to get some guidance on the economy.  Heaven knows, it would seem as good a strategy as any other.

Dry!  So, we should stay in Europe. Wet- I should probably apologise to Ed Balls.  I’ll just do best of three.

I sat down with a takeaway latte.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012