September 19th - September 25th 2005
Sunday Canary Wharf 9/11/2005
Saturday Just a cigar
Friday Beastly
Thursday By George
Wednesday Myles Hildyard
Tuesday Westminster
Monday Fruitful
Sunday 25th September 2005
Canary Wharf 9/11/2005
Saturday 24th September 2005
I'm not one for sporting heroes, as a rule, but you have to tip a hat to the euphonious Freddie Flintoff who when asked, at the tail end of a hard night's post-Ashes partying, whether he'd had anything to eat, replied:
Friday 23rd September 2005
Just like the rest of the nation, I really have very little interest in the competition to lead the Conservative Party but I do wish the no doubt redoubtable Kenneth Clarke would heave his not inestimable cigar-chomping bulk out of my line of sight, soonest.
Why?
Because I'm haunted by the Daily Mail headline that heralded his decision to stand:
On balance, I'd really rather not.
Thursday 22nd September 2005
Last night DavidC, Jonathan and I put the pink in propinquity by making the minor effort to get to the George and Dragon at the ICA (as discussed).
Aesthetically speaking it was, to be frank, a pretty bland experience - though mildly intriguing to be given a chance to become part of an art work by swanning in, sitting down, ordering beer and proceeding to jabber away as per, whilst slightly bewildered and rather earnest gallery-goers wandering in and out spectating us.
(My battery ran out halfway across Hungerford Bridge; Jonathan has some subsequent pictures.)
Amongst the many things discussed was the possibility of going to see Volpone at Wilton's Music Hall. Somebody said, "I'd love to go to Wilton's but Volpone..is just a word to me", and somebody replied, "Ben Jonson. Contemporary of Shakespeare. Avant-garde production. Low comedy. Slapstick. Farting", which, I admit, I thought pretty good off the top of my head.
Jonson, it transpires, even has an epitaph for our evening:
There's a plumber laying pipes in my guts.
Wednesday 21st September 2005
Myles Thoroton Hildyard, the eldest of the three sons of a judge and the grandson of General Sir Henry Hildyard, was born in London on December 31 1914. He was educated at Eton and at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read Law.
After the war, Hildyard returned to Flintham Hall, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, an originally medieval and Jacobean manor house that had been in the family since 1789.
Braving the rigid mores of the post-war world, he ordered a statue of Michelangelo's David, dazzlingly white in his nakedness and almost life-size, to be placed at the head of the swimming-pool.
He never married, his life at Flintham being made congenial by the presence of two male companions. A collection of his engaging wartime letters, entitled It Is Bliss Here, will be published in the autumn.
Tuesday 20th September 2005
Open House (of God) Day
[being a short walk in Westminster,
with 34 photographs,
discursive text and sundry links]
Monday 19th September 2005
Although I like the concept of fruit - instant vitamin-enriched nutrition, free at the point of origin - in practise I'm rather lax. I certainly don't even begin to approach the state-sponsored five-a-day regime as nannyishly proposed by the Department of Health. (Does anyone?!)
Alongside the core shopping problem that any bachelor faces - you buy stuff, you turn around, it's rotted - I just can't face all the packaging that fruit involves. Tried to eat a pineapple lately? All that rind, all those spikes? And oranges - what's all that about? (Which reminds me of a riff we got into the other night when considering the concept of Foreign Office mandarins, but later for that.)
With predictable irony, the easier it is to eat a fruit, the less I seem to like it. Apples are (relatively) approachable, I suppose - core issues aside - but, nah.
And bananas...Don't get me started on bananas. Childishly easy to get at, of course, the original zipless fuck of the fruit world, but when you have flesh the texture of faeces and taste of a midwife's inner thigh, it pays to be easy, I find.
But lo, I have bright news in a darkling world: blueberries.
High in phytochemicals, super-strong on anti-oxidants, absurdly low on calories, cheap enough (but not too cheap) and readily available at Sainsburys, Waitrose and Tesco, blueberries are refreshingly - but by no means eye-wateringly - tangy when fresh, losing flavour but gaining sweetness as they mature. (I just polished off a carton I bought, and kept unrefrigerated, seven or eight days ago.)
Best of all, they're incredibly easy to eat. No mess, no fuss, just rip open the carton and stuff a random handful in your mouth, humming "I'm sooooo healthy" as you do so.
(Ooh, and look, they're so small, you can even eat them while you smoke.)
......previous week
