herring

the big występ

The venue:
The star (I rotated her, but she just rotated right back; I repeated the rotation, but the photo remains stubbornly horizontal):The other stars (and the same technical problem, plus some blurring - oh, and it was artfully cropped too, but no longer):The verruca, I mean, the farruca (both rotated & cropped!):
The guajira (aka the one with the fans):The allegrias:
Shawls aloft (Em wasn't in this one):
The finale (never have so many Polish women - and one man - danced the sevillanas en masse):

dinosaur

I was excited to find out just now that the original line-up of Dinosaur Jr have made a new record (it'll be out in May).
So excited that I wanted to put
something celebratory up here. It wasn't easy - what with me being so fussy and all - finding a suitable picture. An image search for J Mascis and friends yields lots of hair, childlike scrawl, all manner of vaguely gothic stuff and guitar amps. And the young girl hitching up her slacks, cigarette in mouth, on the cover of Green Mind. I vividly remember Mark Lamarr saying that Freak Scene was his favourite record when he had a late-night show on the old Radio 5. You can hear it on their myspace page & it still sounds really good. The photo here is from the BBC website's Keeping It Peel pages, which look like a generous slice of anorak paradise. ("The top 125 Peel Sessions of all time have been selected by the people who knew John best - his family, friends, studio engineers, producers and musicians, and we've provided snippets of audio from each to ensure you get the best round-up of what made the Peel Sessions truly unique." Pity it's just snippets.)

what are the other ones, Graeme?

Graeme Diamond, principal editor of the OED, in today's Independent: "Wiki joins a small but distinguished group of words which are directly or ultimately borrowings into English from Hawaiian."

i feel like a moa

anonymous people with accents

This place - that's the Speech Accent Archive - is great! Well, I've only listened to a few so far, but it's been great fun.

A man from Edinburgh says something unlikely.

A Glaswegian says the same thing.

Can you guess where this guy is from? Or this one? And what are snow peas?

One last one especially for Em.

(Thanks to the archives of The Midnight Bell for pointing me this way. Does Sean know that The Slaves of Solitude is now in print?)

frangipani

This is the best site - by a country mile - that I've found for learning about Australia in French.

the Embarrasses

There is an Embarrass in Minnesota.

And another in Wisconsin.

Which do you prefer?

the orchid and the yucca

Pray for these plants. They are in our care, so they'll need all the help they can get. As you can see from the before-and-after diptych above, the orchid (I think it's an orchid - the label just says Roślina doniczkowa, i.e., potted plant) and the yucca have been repotted. On a brief break from Empson this morning, I engaged in my most intensive burst of gardening this millennium. Happily it wasn't too cold out on the balcony today, but I did feel the want of gardening gloves. A trowel would have come in handy too.

in which Boswell lets a gag loose & mentions one of my favourite islands (mercifully, his illustrious friend keeps schtum)

'Next morning, Thursday, March 21 [1776], we set out in a post-chaise to pursue our ramble. It was a delightful day, and we drove through Blenheim park. When I looked at the magnificent bridge built by John Duke of Marlborough, over a small rivulet, and recollected the Epigram made upon it -

'The lofty arch his high ambition shows,
The stream, an emblem of his bounty flows:'

and saw that now, by the genius of Brown, a magnificent body of water was collected, I said, 'They have drowned the Epigram.' I observed to him, while in the midst of the noble scene around us, 'You and I, Sir, have, I think, seen together the extremes of what can be seen in Britain: - the wild rough island of Mull, and Blenheim Park.''

Brockwell Park lido

I'm very sad about the demise of Brockwell Park lido. You can see a picture of the hole in the ground where it once was here, (though you'll need to scroll upwards a little bit). And if you like, you can write and tell me if the rest of the blog is worth reading or not.
The lido was even cooler than this picture makes it look.

Nippon

unhemmed has been quiet recently. I can tell you why: me and Em have had the great good fortune of being in Japan, and there doing vigorous tourism, for almost a fortnight. My plan is to deposit the photos I took somewhere in webland & I've just made a start:

prizewinningphotos.blogspot.com

I'm not sure if I'll be able to maintain the high level of captioning and selection. We'll see how we go.

something we've not seen

The Prime Minister of Mirth

This is George Robey, a music hall performer who was billed as the Prime Minister of Mirth. Robey wasn't his real surname. He took his stage-name from a Birmingham company called Roby. It got misprinted and he liked the mistake so much that he kept it.

Mornington Crescent

This tremendous photo was taken by my friend Asher; many thanks to him for letting me put it up. I was very fond of these high-rises when I used to live in London. What am I saying? I'm still very fond of them. I particularly like the fact that they are colour-coded in primary colours. Also, they're sufficiently tall that you can catch sight of them from all kinds of unlikely places. I like the pigeons too, even though they're being so sinister. And I'm a sucker for the red-brown glaze of the tube station, whose centenary you might like to celebrate on 22 June. But who is it a statue of? I ought to head along to londonstatuarylog.co.uk and find out ...

the day we ate Rousseau

It was, I think, Sunday 10th December. Last year.

morpho and Morph

The morpho butterfly, all the way from Brazil, wishing you a happy 24th December.

And, although passionate nostalgia for children's TV of yore needs no encouragement from unhemmed, I couldn't resist this grainy still of Morph:

Sonnet 130

I just found this whilst looking for something else. Great delivery! And quite a back catalogue. Be sure to check out Aelfric!

sometimes cardboard leaves you speechless