Simon Pulleyn

Happy Birthday! And thank you. ❤️

I remember Brian Sewell hooting with derision at the Courtauld laying on a course called “Getting to Grips with Rembrandt.” Maybe the novel equivalents would be “Getting To Grips With Dickens” or “Resilience in the Face of Richardson” or “Resisting Rankin”.

You mean you didn’t before? 🙂

How to tell your friends you have fallen through a wormhole into the London of an alternative universe without saying explicitly that you have fallen through a wormhole into the London of an alternative universe:

I just saw Tallis’ Spem in Alium referred to “as featured in Fifty Shades of Grey”.

Gawdelpus. Surely this is the nadir of “relevance”.

Can’t it just be one of the most evocative pieces of sacred music ever written?

Does it need to be commended by reference to BDSM-lite?

So much for AI.

I mean, technically … yes. But … no.

I dread to think how AI would construe it if someone texted to say, “Sorry I can’t make it. My sister’s having a mare.”

Schofield’s department store was a Leeds institution from 1901. The incarnation I knew was demolished in 1996 and replaced by what I still think of as “that HORRID new building.” Now I see that’s being demolished in its turn. I shan’t miss it. But where did those 29 years go?

RIP Tony Harrison 😢

We went to the same school in Leeds. He, however, was a genius.

His poem “V” upset the usual suspects. His reaction was typically pithy and pointed:

Weird.

I read “… which would verify an individual’s right to live and work in the UK …”

So what does my passport do? I thought it was not just about crossing borders. I thought I only had one by virtue of my citizenship, which confers the right to live and work.

I just put out a bin fire on Oxford St with the help of the guys at a falafel stall who gave me a kettle full of cold water when I asked them and then a second. It had begun to take hold. But now no more bin fire. Hat tip to falafel men.

I went to the recent Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery half a dozen times. This is exactly what it was like. Quite dispiriting. Why can’t people just LOOK at the pictures?

The thing on the left is obviously from, and meant for, the US.

But I gather that those trans-flag crossings at the junction of Marchmont St and Tavistock Place in Camden WC1 (right) have provoked the indignation of religious objectors.

(Ppl in photo are NOT objectors. Two are friends of mine.)

Plainly this is US English. But were Americans using “blasted” in this sense at that period? Dunno. The piece is too unremarkable to bother faking. In this country, the usage took longer to take hold. I remember hearing it on the BBC and thinking they’d let their hair down.

ה״יד

YouTube video by Visegrad24 24 Hours in East London’s Muslim Area | Apostate Prophet

I came across this rather loaded little presentation by unhappy accident yesterday:

youtu.be/SwGEnVEijCA?...

This is an area of London I’ve known for 25 years. I do not experience it like this.

Does the presenter have local knowledge? He mistakes The City skyline for, er, Canary Wharf. Hmm.

I asked AI to explain this cartoon joke. I knew it would mess up. Predictably it did. Gave me an answer that even a Hebrew 101 student would know was wrong: “The author wrote”! I can see why it did, but also why it shouldn’t. AI not so hot as it pretends to be. Far too confident when wrong.

Congratulations to you both! 🎊🎉🎊

I read a Fred Vargas short story the other week involving a bloke who sat on the pavement opposite Commissaire Adamsberg’s window. But he sat not on the flagstones but in an armchair and under a standard lamp that he had also brought with him. He lacked only this tree. Yes, a thousand stories …

Goodness! Where had that been skulking all year?

King David and King Solomon
Had merry merry lives
With many many concubines
And many many wives;

But when old age came over them
With many many qualms
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.

One does like a witty badge. But an illiterate one? Not so much.

So, EDL/Reform types put the George Cross onto bollards and others cleverly turn them into Battenberg cakes.

I read this as “Demosthenes.” At least that would make some kind of sense.

I dropped into Tesco. I noted that they are doing all in their power to see that Christmas not sneak up on us unannounced.

The things that one is apt to see
While strolling next the River Lea

It has a long reach, doesn’t it? As you know, there are some old Holborn signs kicking about that part of London. But not many, alas.

I like the old county names, too … 😉