Squid Brains

I wish I were clever. But as a substitute for being clever, I can spend time looking at and enjoying other people being clever. So here, for your pleasure, I attach a link to my new favourite blog, a cheery introduction to cephalopod neuroscience.

Granada

I went to Granada to a not-very-interesting conference on literary translation (well, not really a conference, and that's one of the reasons why it wasn't very interesting, but enough of my troubles...). I had a free morning and went tramping around. Granada has: architecture (although, you know, if you've seen one Alhambra you've seen them all);





the extremely evocative and pretty Manuel de Falla museum ( a sort of Kettle's Yard for Spanish hypochondriac musicians: the photos show MdF's hat, his bedside table, including his nasal douche [his friends saved absolutely everything when everyone's favourite gaditano MdF went to Argentina in the late 1930s, hoping that he would come back and move back into his house, which means that most surfaces are covered with a variety of patent remedies of the early twentieth century]), and the entrance to this entrancing cármen (which was, I was assured, the Grenadino name for what I would naturally call a patio);



some advanced graffiti;



a man carrying a mirror, whom I was tempted to follow for longer than I did;

some bright Virginia creeper (?) and other plants(?);


and views, lots of lovely views.



It also, although I didn't dare take photos there, has a very good organic vegan take-away, round the corner from the lute-maker's, in case you need to know of a good place to eat.

Arsenic and Old Lipids: or, Wouldn't It Be Nice...

They're arguing with it now, but this story was a cheering one to read on a cold December morning.

Человек-Амфибия (Геннадий Казанский и Владмир Чеботарёв, 1961)

Current Favourite Sentence

I have never before seen something yucky on screen make an entire cinema audience suddenly hunch forward and bury their heads in their laps at the same time, as if in some secular mosque for wimps.

Compare and contrast...

The Polish poster for John Schlesinger's Far From the Madding Crowd (1967)

The Spanish poster for Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

American Black Bears

The Guardian has some more amazing photos (and it's a pretty amazing story to accompany them) here.

Current Favourite Sentences

"I guess if I could be beamed to India, spend a day there and then say, 'Thank you; I've done it now, get me back' I might, but ... nah. Not for no reason."

Baron Sugar of Clapton.

"I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day."

Philip Larkin.

Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)

Incorrigible Meerkat

We went to the Madrid Zoo-Aquarium last week. A meerkat pleasuring himself in a hole in the ground was one of the many highlights.