Knitted Clanger

Title card from Juliet of the Spirits: I costumi e le tapperrerie del film sono stati realissati in Bri-Nylon.

So far, this is my favourite bit of Juliet of the Spirits, which is otherwise pretty unbearable.

I don't know about everywhere else, but it's been raining for a thousand years here. I can't recall a time before rain. Rain is our god now. Your tales of a time when it was merely overcast are heresy. We will burn you for your heresy, just as soon as it stops raining.

Making social arrangements with sisters-in-law:
Me: Can you make [supplies detailed list of all availability and locations between now and February]?
Them: Great! How about 17 April on Neptune? Meet you by the door to that place with nine doors.
Me: What time?
Them: Doesn’t matter, I’ll be late!

Brontes, ranked:
1) Anne
2) Branwell, because he had the decency not to write anything

Looks like she died by falling into a giant Viennetta.

A solitary sycamore leaf on a paving stone. The leaf is mottled gold, the stem is bright red.

I love the brilliant pinky-red stems of freshly fallen sycamore leaves. I have time to think about this today because I’m waiting for an earthworm to go away.

What's your favourite 'lost' line from The Waste Land? Phantasmal gnomes, burrowing in brick and stone and steel! Carrying/Away the little light dead people Something which we knew must be a dawn -A different darkness flowed above the clouds I should like to be in a crowd of beaks without words But it is terrible to be alone with another person My God man there's bears on it

Giving a lecture on the drafts of The Waste Land tomorrow and all the strange and haunting lines that Eliot and Pound decided to cut

Nikolaj Henriques, Tony Liu and Margaret Cookhorn taking a bow with their bassoons.

“Bassoons, Sah! Thousands of ‘em!” Well, three. Four if you count the contrabassoon. Packed house for a CBSO all-bassoon recital today. The players sway and dip with the music, cradling their bassoons as though they’re dancing with them.

It's #WorldBalletDay and I haven't done any yet. Might do a grand jeté into Aldi later when I pop in for some frozen peas.

Twenty minute scene an hour in where Bond just turns to the camera and explains the rules of Baccarat or how spread betting works.

Horrid Victorian food in the book I’m reading: toast water and calf’s foot jelly; vegetable marrow in white sauce; mock turtle soup. Currently on the side of the lady vampire who rips a live hen apart with her bare teeth. Reasonable in context.

Enjoyed the Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein but disappointed he cut the bit where they sing Putting on the Ritz.

Men finally do something hot and everyone starts scolding them.

War memorial in English Renaissance style. Limestone fluted pillars and slate plaques with the names of the dead. A Portland stone statue of St George and the dragon. On either side, modern metal silhouette statues of soldiers wear poppies.

Handsome Grade II war memorial in Lichfield, unusual for being in English Renaissance style. Birmingham architect Charles Bateman mostly worked in Arts & Crafts style (the Red Lion in Kings Heath is his) but the Staffordshire regiments served in Italy, so maybe a reference.

Lovely, though I think trees just do that when we're not looking.

And well done whoever stood little Rishi Sunak behind man-mountain Gavin Robinson.

BBC coverage of the Cenotaph this morning. There are only 20 survivors of WW2 marching today, the youngest is 98. Little films of them speaking with deeply repressed emotion of the sea being on fire and watching their friends die at 19.

Live broadcast in the cinema. It’s a double chorus, children, a horse and carriage, donkey and cart and a dancing bear. At the scene change the cameras go backstage and you get to watch burley men just wheel it all out of the wings with everyone already in place. Amazing.

First interval, and I’m pleased to report there’s a donkey called Wanda. That’s her stage name anyway, I don’t know the name of the donkey she’s playing.

Metropolitan Opera production of La Boheme. A chorus of around a hundred singers crowd Parisian streets to watch a military band.

Tonight it’s La Bohème from the Met Opera. If you ever wondered about how opera funding is doing in New York, please note their chorus of a million people.

Aston Church, a sandstone Victorian Gothic church with a spire on top of a square clock tower.

700 extra police in Brum tonight for the Villa v Maccabi match. Biggest local news so far, a policeman is up the spire of Aston Church. Whether this is for surveillance or spiritual reasons is currently unclear. Anyway, it's a nice spire.

Awake at 3:42 with a nosebleed. If this is my last post it’s because my phone doesn’t recognise me with tissues stuck up my nose. Also, if you want me to do a chore or help with something, I can’t hear you, I have tissues up my nose.

YouTube video by Royal Ballet and Opera La Fille mal gardée - The Clog Dance from Act I (The Royal Ballet)

Back from the Royal Ballet's La Fille mal gardée. It's the one with dancing chickens, a real pony (called Oscar, who had to go home at the interval, like the children in Ballet Shoes), and Lancashire clog dancing, which it turns out is very cheery.
youtu.be/BT9naCq0fdE?...

Suor Plautilla, Santa Caterina de'Ricci as St Catherine of Sienna, second half of the sixteenth century, Museo di San Marco, Florence. A woman in profile, dressed in a nun's habit and with stigmata on her hands, weeps over a crucifix.

The profile here can be mapped directly onto the profile of the Virgin above, with evidence of pouncing to transfer the image. This hints at the commercial scale on which she painted to support her convent, and Vasari claims her work was ubiquitous in wealthy Florentine homes.

Plautilla Nelli, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1550-60, Museo di San Marco. The women lift Christ from the foot of the cross. They are red-eyed from crying.

The women have red, swollen eyes from crying.

Detail of The Last Supper by Suor Plautilla c.1560s, Museo di Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Jesus cradles the neck of John the Baptist, who leans into him, his eyes closed.

Final Fra Angelico talk looked at his followers and I was particularly taken with Plautilla Nelli, or Suor Plautilla, a Dominican nun and self-taught artist, the first female Renaissance painter we know of in Florence. The wonderful tenderness of her painting.

Nov 5: A bad day all round for Catholics. Not just the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 but also the arrival of William of Orange in 1688 and the bombing of the Vatican in 1943. Anyway, I've made a cup of tea and gone back to bed, just to be on the safe side.

…and all perfumiers are advertising the concept of gazing mistily into the middle distance while speaking in incomplete sentences. Let me know if anyone advertises winceyette pyjamas, novelty hot water bottles and the Beano annual.

Having seen my first Christmas ads of the year, it appears John Lewis are advertising vinyl records, which they do not sell, Argos are advertising creepy doll-based kidnapping and threats of violence, which they might offer, I don’t know, I’ve never been there…

Ozzy Osbourne gallery busy with visitors.

Might be an outlier in my opinions. Easily the busiest and most popular gallery was this one.