A Last Touch Of Autumn

Leftover photos from yesterday's walkabout in Norwich.
This is the mediæval Guildhall at the north end of the marketplace.
The little tree in front of it is gamely holding on to the last dregs of autumn while the Christmas market stalls to the right herald the start of a whole bunch of winter arse.


City Hall from yesterday's post now fulfills the function of the Guildhall, which has become a small museum and some tacky shops.


But hey, it's still beautiful, and as Phil pointed out in yesterday's comments, is contrasted nicely with City Hall itself, whose clock tower you can see peeking over the Guildhall roof.


I couldn't resist these little buggers, crapping all over the east window of Saint Peter Mancroft at the opposite end of the marketplace.

In Defence Of City Hall

Our lovely Joy, over at Norwich Daily Photo posted a photo of City Hall yesterday and used the words "ugly" and "square" when describing it (okay, Joy, so you did say the inside is a bit special, but I'm fishing around for a subject to post about here … you can slap me on Saturday over coffee).
One of her commenters even called it "architecturally moribund"!

This is City Hall earlier this morning with part of the Christmas Market in front of it.

As it cannot defend itself (and lamentably, the majority of Norwich residents hold equally philistine views on it) I am forced to leap, somewhat pedantically and boringly, to its defence.

Here's what I wrote in Joy's comment box yesterday (you can really tell I couldn't think of anything to post about today, can't you?):

"Oh, Joy. You really must go inside and explore. The place is an Art Deco masterpiece!

First up: Nikolaus Pevsner (THE MAN where architectural history is concerned) described this as “the foremost English public building between the wars”, and rightly so.

In an era of austerity it was proposed to build a “national monument” and after fierce competition between the country’s architects, Atkinson, James and Robert-Pierce won the commission and gave us this magnificent, almost brutal masterpiece, glaring across the marketplace at the splendid Norman castle on the opposite promontory.

It has the longest balcony in England (which was used to glorious effect at the recent Remembrance Day Service) and the bell (known as Great George) in the austere yet beautiful clock tower has the deepest tone of any in East Anglia.

On the down side, Hitler greatly admired it and intended it as a seat of government should the Nazis manage to invade.

But it is inside where the building truly shines.
Enter through the monumental bronze doors - depicting Norwich history - and you are in an art deco wonderland. Fabulous rooms with marble and bronze detailing and stunningly realised sculptures abound.

City Hall is a much maligned building in a Norwich obsessed with its - admittedly glorious - mediæval past, but is has its own serene beauty and I love it."

And I'm an Architect … so there!


Anyhoo … I was meandering about the city as it is such a lovely day and I found that the streets all around the centre and the mediæval marketplace have been transformed into a Christmas Market.

Very festive, but how come all the fruit doesn't roll down St. Peters' Hill? I couldn't figure that one.

And (sorry, Joy; I know you want to post this, too) Royal Arcade is all festive, too.
I don't know … I'm beginning to feel my grinch-gland itching. We may well have some sweary Scrooge-fest posts closer to the event.

Toilet Talk

Wandering around Blogville, peeking in people's doorways and listening at windows, one discovers all manner of weirdness. David Lynch has nothing on you guys.

For instance, fresh after the success of Tuna Noodle Casserole Week, our Robyn has embarked upon a week of toilet-themed blogging. Which goes to show that National Blog Posting Month can effect even the most outwardly sane of our little community.

Anyhoo … Young Robyn has set a competition which I, with my obvious encyclopædic knowledge of fæcal gallimaufry am forbidden to enter.
It's down to you lot.

As I am deprived of that joyous task I will don my pedant's hat and trump Robyn's earliest plumbed toilet reference by taking her back to 3,000 years BC and beyond, to the dusty plains of the Indus, fed from the Himalayan snows, and to the fair and non-smelly ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro.

The excavations there have so far revealed a remarkably advanced civilisation. A sizeable city, planned with a street layout aligned to allow the prevailing winds to cool the houses in the summer months; nice houses built around courtyards and - get this, Robyn - "water was piped to all but the poorest houses; bathrooms and latrines were connected to an efficient sewerage system; and the street drainage system was more advanced and complete than any known to ancient civilisations and to many modern ones".

Spiffy, huh?

They even had manhole covers so they could unblock all the crap.

Having lived there happily for several thousand years, the Indus then changed its course around 1700 BC and the happy, clean-bottomed folk of Mohenjo-Daro were fucked.
By the Aryans, who moved in from Northern Afghanistan and gave us our modern Indo-Aryan languages; everything from Sanskrit to English, but who couldn't flush a toilet to save their lives.

We didn't learn to flush toilets again until only a hundred and fifty years ago. Some people still don't seem to have developed the skill.

Draw from this what lessons you will.

Now wash your hands.

A Rich Black And Chocolate Flux With Spangles

Or "Why I Don't Use Babelfish For My Japanese Homework".

For anyone who missed it, Nathalie posted a lovely story yesterday.
The only problem for me was that she posted it in French and my French sucks. My feeble attempt at the language is more a strangled, gargling Franglais, unintelligible to anyone remotely garlicky.

So I ran her tale through Babelfish (which, as any fule kno, is the most incompetent translation software known to man) with hilarious results.
Pop over there - via the link above - and have a raucous chortle. It's in the comments box. Everybody needs a good laugh on a Tuesday.

Some of the highlights, translated from what is in fact a beautiful piece of poetic writing, are:
"To say what makes me vibrate.
I will take you along.
At the soft hour one will take the accommodation ladder, one will go up on the bridge to breathe the salt of the life.
You feel like the air of the night is made velvet?
Here it is my kingdom.
That where the hearts are untied, where the bodies open, where the large things are achieved.
A rich black and chocolate flux with spangles.
It is the paddle with the fingers of pink which will bring back for us Ground of fire, will-o'-the-wisp, cow's milk, pigs, brooded Which odors will accomodate us, frangipanier, dried fish, gas oil spices spruce?
We will go to the meeting of these funny of others.
There are all these hands which are tightened in this letter box.
The treasures hidden at the bottom of you, Distend then tighten themselves with the wire of time.
One will be able always to hoist the large fabric and to click on our hyperlinks".

Read that slowly and with emphasis and it takes on its own kind of epic poetic madness.

So anyhoo … I was lying in the bath this morning thinking about Jesus (I know; I'm a Marxist and an Atheist, but I'm just kinky that way) and the idea popped into my tiny brain to run The Beatitudes through Babelfish.
And so, moist and naked enough to put you off your breakfast, I duly typed into Babelfish the beautiful words which Jesus used to kick off the sermon on the mount and translated them into Japanese …
Then translated them back again …

Here then - in italics - is probably the reason Christianity is not the major religion in Japan:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
The pauper where mind is praised: These of for the sake of heaven that of the kingdom are.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Being praised, you sigh que: You are consoled, for the sake of remain.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
The gentleness which is praised: Those it receives the earth for the sake of and succeeds.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
And you were thirsty in justice and you praised this which pushing desires: That earth laid way of that.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Mercy it is deep, it was praised La: Way allowance is obtained, this.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Clean the center is praised: Their ranges being attached, it meets to God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
The signatory is praised: Way it is called the child of the God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
Which is persecuted because of justice of the cause that being praised: These of for the sake of heaven that of the kingdom are.

And that's the reason I do not use Babelfish for my Japanese homework.

Happy Tuesday.

Great Ideas I've Discovered Too Late: No.1

Before you read this, pop on over to Norwich Daily Photo and take a peek at the three guys pictured there.

Did you see ?
What a great idea!
All three of those guys are even balder than baldy old me, yet their portrait photographs have been cropped across their foreheads so nobody can tell that they don't have a luxurious head of hair.
Brilliant!

Why the hell didn't I think of that before I started posting photos of myself?
What a useless tit I am.

Right … Let's cure my baldness!
Camera in hand …
Click!

I apologise for the unshaven appearance of my fat and ugly face, but I'm on leave and some mornings I just can't be arsed to drag a razor across it.

Exhibit 1: Me sitting here blogging with my baldiness on full display.

Exhibit 2: Photo suitable cropped. Me with a full head of hair! Woohoo!

So much more elegant than a comb-over, don't you think?
Now all I have to do is find a cure for ugliness …

I Love It When Girls Go "EEK!"

This one stems from yesterday's comments box.

Lynn: it's waiting for you.


You know you want to.
Resistance is futile!
Hee hee hee hee hee

Advice For Elderly Musicians

I gave Vic some advice the other day:
"Never play pub gigs as a favour to old friends."

So where was I last night?
Yup; you guessed it …


I'll never learn.

What a pain in the butt pub gigs are.
The van picked me up at 5:30 in the afternoon and I didn't get home until 3:00AM,
Now I have a head full of stampeding cattle and my mouth tastes like the bottom of a zookeeper's boots.
I'm too old for this crap. My aches have aches.
This stuff is fucking heavy and has to be lugged up and down several flights of stairs.


For some reason Jann and SJ dressed as dominatrices. SJ had dyed her hair purple and got a bit carried away, and so arrived at the gig with purple ears and purple hands and finished the night with purple everything.


There was dog-vomiting.
There was binge drinking and girly-vomiting (this is North Norfolk).
There was fucking good fun and some great - if occasionally gloriously shambolic - music, but I can have both those things in the comfort of my own home.

And even worse, some twat video'd the debacle so there may be embarrassing YouTube links to follow.

Note to self: Follow your own good advice. It is there for a reason.
ONLY play studio sessions or big gigs where it is worth your while.
NEVER play pub gigs as a favour to old friends.

This has been a public service announcement.

Delightful Company

"I don't take a good photo." says Joy …

… Yeah, right!

People of Blogville, meet the face behind Norwich Daily Photo, Your Love Coach, and wonderful womens' website The Goddess In You.

Beautiful, devastatingly intelligent, funny, charming; the very lovely Joy.

Joy met Old Dive for coffee in the bookshop this morning.
We were supposed to be a foursome, but her husband quite reasonably refused to get out of bed at that unearthly hour and my brother Phil cried off as he is putting up a new fence (in this weather … Brrrr), so there were just the two of us.
But hey, if she'll excuse me saying so, having coffee with someone as smart and pretty as Joy is not exactly the most upsetting thing I have ever done.

Being a greedy pig I'd already had one breakfast, chatting away with Rugby Guy and munching the sweet sticky goodness of yet another festive mince tart and then Joy arrived and insisted (bless her) on paying for my second espresso.

Joy is instantly delightful company and we sat talking for an hour or so about all sorts of things (including you lot), then wandered across the city centre to Borders, remarking on the crap Christmas decorations we saw along the way.
When we left the coffee shop the cold slammed into us, the wind coming straight down from the arctic. Brrr!
By way of contrast Joy is going to spend the holidays in the Phillipines (where they do Christmas a lot better), among soft white sand and palm trees and warm blue skies, which kinda made me more than slightly jealous.

Norwich is a tiny city, so we'll probably do this again before long and maybe persuade Thom to get his ass out of bed one morning and Phil to finish his fence and come along, too. Photos will be posted.

Joy also has her own radio show on Future Radio, Norwich's community radio station, though their signal - like much else good in the world - doesn't reach out as far as my village, so I have a favour to ask you all.
Future Radio puts a lot of its shows out as podcasts, but not Joy's (at least not yet), so I ask the citizens of Blogville to help out Old Dive by emailing the radio station (their contact address is on the right hand side of the website on the link) and requesting that Joy's show (which is called "Usapang Pinoy") is added to their podcast list.
Do it now so you won't forget.
Cheers.

And thanks again to Joy for putting up with Old Dive.

Lazy Post

Well, it's that time of year again when all the American bloggers go missing. They're off stuffing their faces with turkey and crap and bickering with their families.
We don't do Thanksgiving over here, and my pictorial Thanksgiving post from last year says just about all I have to say on the subject.

I wonder if the surviving Native Americans celebrate "That's the last time we ever help anyone out again" day?

I have a lot to do today, and I really can't be bothered insulting Americans yet again, so rather than rant, I'll point you in the direction of one of the funniest things ever written: "Thanksgiving With The Dead (And A Chihuahua)" Sassy's strange day stuck in a David Lynch movie is still the best Thanksgiving story ever.
Enjoy.

And I suppose I'd better wish a Happy Thanksgiving to my Yankee blogpals.
Stuff yourselves silly, guys, then go steal some Native American land.

My Head Still Hurts

I stole this from Robyn's blog; she had stolen it from somewhere else.

It appears to be a book list written by an American in that there are very few Classics and a whole bunch of stuff I wouldn't be seen dead reading.
But I'll fill it in anyway because I am grouchy and have a headache and am in the mood to get annoyed with Americans.


The following bit is simply copied and pasted from Robyn's blog so please excuse the missing "u" in colour:

Copy this list and

• Bold those books you’ve read.
• Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish.
• Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
• Underline those on your To Be Read list.
• Color the title red if you've seen the movie.
• Color the title green if you've seen the movie more than once.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Crime and Punishment*
Catch-22*
One Hundred Years of Solitude*
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote*
Moby Dick*
Ulysses*
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities*
The Brothers Karamazov*
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace*
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations*
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales*
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World*
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath*
The Poisonwood Bible
1984*
Angels & Demons
Dante's Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles*
Oliver Twist*
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners*
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five*
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita*
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road*
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid*
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield*
The Three Musketeers

I would write out a proper list but like I say, I'm grouchy and I really can't be arsed.
Nor can I bring my aching head round to remembering which of them I've seen movies of. Except for David Lean's lovely black and white Great Expectations.

Sorry for being a grouch.

No … you're right … I'm not sorry at all.