Lakhva

More information here.

Rambler Marlin

Ah, the romance of the open road… More information here.

On the Goodness of the Supreme Being

Orpheus, for so the Gentiles call'd thy name,
Israel's sweet Psalmist, who alone couldst wake
Th'inanimate to motion; who alone
The joyful hillocks, the applauding rocks,
And floods with musical persuasion drew;
Thou who to hail and snow gav'st voice and sound,
And mad'st the mute melodious! — greater yet
Was thy divinest skill, and rul'd o'er more
Than art or nature; for thy tuneful touch
Drove trembling Satan from the heart of Saul,
And quell'd the evil Angel: — in this breast
Some portion of thy genuine spirit breathe,
And lift me from myself, each thought impure
Banish; each low idea raise, refine,
Enlarge, and sanctify; — so shall the muse
Above the stars aspire, and aim to praise
Her God on earth, as he is prais'd in heaven. […]

For the rest, see here.

September is Etymology Month (14)

ЖАР [žar] 'heat'. 12th century жаръ 'fire, intense heat', from CSl. *gerъ/*žarъ. Cognate with гореть 'to burn', греть 'to heat', горячий 'hot', жаркий 'hot' (of climate), Gk. thermos 'hot'.

September is Etymology Month (11)

КАНИКУЛЫ [kaníkuly] 'holidays'. Late 18th century loan, possibly via Pol. kanikuła (also psianka, from pies 'dog') 'dog star, Cirius', from Lat. Canicula (dim. of canis 'dog') 'dog-star', also known as Canis or Sirius, regarded by the Romans as Orion's hunting dog, the most important star in the 20-star constellation Canis Major (lit. Great Dog, созвездие (Большого) Пса). In the Roman calendar the Sun was in the constellation Canis, and Sirius was in the ascendant, between 22 July and 23 August, the hottest period of the year, when all activities would be suspended. Каникулы appears in R. in 18th-/early 19th centuries as 'school, academic holidays' (lit. 'days of the constellation Canis'). Cf. English dog days, the hottest period of the year ('reckoned in antiquity from the helical rising of the dog-star'), Lat. dies caniculares, id., Fr. jours (also chaleurs) caniculaires, Ger. Hundestage, Pol. dni kanikularne or psie dni 'dog days'. In R. horoscopes the period 22 July to 23 August is associated with the constellation Leo (Лев), the ruby stone, the colour red, the symbol fire, and the Sun.

Àngels Santos Toroella (1911- )

Un mundo (1929). More information here.

Rosario de Velasco Belausteguigoitia (1904-1991)

Adán y Eva (1932). More information (in Catalan) here.

Keelung City, Taiwan

More information here.

Christmas in Cádiz

It was not the most Dickensian of Christmases, but it was extremely enjoyable nonetheless (my tolerance for prawns, shrimp, lobsters and all other kinds of dendrobranchiata is high, and my appreciation of sun and palm trees is lavish). This is the first photo I took with our new camera, passed on by my father. Wife and Elephant's Child under the tree.

L.S. Lowry (1887-1976)

Seascape (1960). More information here.

Unexpected Insertions

This certificate (a bit too big for my scanner, so offered here in two halves), awarded for achievement in Socialist Competition between working groups, and with a space for you to fill in your own name, was folded up into the front cover of Volume One (of thirteen) of the Complete Works of Mayakovsky. I've spent a dedicated morning unpacking the six boxes of books that arrived from Cambridge last week, and surprises keep on appearing.

Soviet Robots!

An illustration from Hello! I'm a Robot! (1989) by Stanislav Zigunenko. More pictures here. I can't find out much more about him, but this is enough to cheer us up for now.

John Brett (1831-1902)

The Stonebreaker (1858). One of Philip Larkin's favourite paintings. More information about Brett here.

John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)

More information here.

Alexander Cozens (1717-1786)

More information here.

Simón del desierto (Luis Buñuel, 1965)

Also wonderful, and by far the best forty-five minute film you'll ever see about a man standing on top of a pole in the desert. More information here.

Jean Lurçat (1892-1966)

Radical tapestry artist. More information here.

¡Teleférica!

Apologies for the exclamation marks in the post's title: that's just the sort of emotion these triumphs of technology rouse in me. Last Saturday we went to the Casa de Campo by cable car, starting close-ish to our house and heading out in the first group at midday. Obviously, it's not the only way to travel; it was very enjoyable. We crossed the Rio Manzanares, about which my boss said in one of our fraught and generally surreal meetings that once they get it sorted out and run it in canals across Madrid, it'll 'knock your Seine and your Thames through the bathroom window'. I think he thinks that's an idiom.


Madrid herself was sunk in smog: apparently, until the rains came a day or so after this trip, the air quality was at its lowest level of the whole year. That's the Catedral de la Almudena in rather hazy silhouette.

The most exciting thing to see from the cable car is, of course, other cable cars.



We had bought return tickets, but decided to walk back to the centre instead. On the way back we saw the Madrid Parque de Atracciones which is terrifying even shrouded in smog and through a number of digital filters.


There was a loud and belligerent blue-tit.

A publicly-funded duck house on a public lake (MPs in Spain: more honest, or more subtle than their UK counterparts?).

And, crossing it on foot, the Rio Manzanares has something about it that suggests my boss might not be entirely insane.

More Fog

I got the other fog photos developed. Most of them are like the first lot, but here's the view from my office.

Chinchón

As promised, photos of Chinchón. We were there on a bleak bleak January day with Laurie and Alex and Hazel, and ate steak and stroked donkeys. A few photos of Alex and Hazel and Laurie in what for the time being is their natural habitat to begin with, then donkeys and bleak bleak ploughed fields with little white boundary markers like graves.