Curly's Capers

Following on from last week, here are two more 'Shauns' for your delight. King of the Carnival Bagpuss Shaun. The sculpture trail will end next Monday 31st August. It has been a wonderful idea, with money raised helping children in Bristol and London Hospitals. Most of the ' Shauns ' I spotted last week were near Bristol Harbour, which over the years has had a real 'make over ' with splendid quayside flats and numerous restaurants . It has become  leisure place to rest, eat and enjoy the water frontage. There are cruises to embark on and places to visit including the Aquatic Centre, and the moored S.S. Great Britain; Brunel's metal ship, now fully restored. Makes for a pleasant visit indeed. Finally, whilst on a  slow perambulate around the docks, ( near photo number two), I noticed  some stylish apartment blocks with a green sloping space and pleasing curved walkways. There were notices with various strictures upon th...

At heart Steve was a hippy, dreamer and sensualist . His hippy philosophy  caused him to believe he could make, for everyone a better and more interesting  world. He saw the ability to make and listen to music, to create photographs and film as the birthright of all. He was immensely  proud, after battles over legal issues, that he was able to bring the recordings of the Beatles to his iTunes roster. Why? Because he was a fan of the group and thus did not stop until he had them under contract. As a sensualist he admired form and shape.  He designed products with curves and an increasing minimal size, both in dimensions and volume. He reasoned, if it looked good and worked well with an intuitive operating system, people would take the goods in their homes, bringing, of course increasing sales to the company. Finally as a dreamer,  he called the computer 'the bicycle of the mind' and regularly rode on it into the sunset. So, as I said, in a recent tweet...

We Brits are a funny lot. We like to win; to see our  well backed horse flash first  past the lolly- stick ; to see our football team score an improbable victory and of course our cricketers  to  defeat  the Aussies in a Test Series. But, we don't like to win too easily. So here we are, with one week to go until the final test at the Oval and already we have regained the Ashes by the margin of three games to one. Furthermore the last  two back- to- back victories were concluded in three of the allotted five days. At Trent Bridge, the Australians were bowled out in their first innings for a mere sixty runs ( shame ) In achieving this,  Stuart Broad achieved his best ever figures of  eight wickets for fifteen runs. " Stu- pendous " went the headline ( wished I'd have thought of that pun) and in the their second innings new boy Ben Stokes skittled  six Australian wickets for thirty six runs; { Stoke up the Barbie perhaps? }. Now we learn t...

August, as far as the national newspapers are concerned is known as the 'Silly Season '  Government largely shuts down, Politicians go on holiday and little news creeps out. This year has been an exception, with the migrants at Calais, Cilla's last croak and Sir Edward Heath rising like a spectre to be charged with indecently poor behaviour. Nonetheless the 'papers loved the rise of Jeremy ' Jezza' Corbyn, the left wing candidate for the labour leadership. Backed down from 100/1,  he is now as low as 6/4 second favourite ( behind Andy Burnham) for the prize. Consider these facts; originally only 20 of Labour's 232 MP's nominated him and it was left to fifteen others to throw him a life-line. On his way to second favourite he has been called a Trotskyite, his photo has been ' airbrushed ' with a Che Guevara beret and he appears to have been supported by the Communist Party. The Red Revolution is on track, with backing from the main unions. ...

In a past blog, I mentioned  Mark Forsyth's  book "  The Elements Of Eloquence";  a study into rhetoric in the English Language, kindly given to me by my friend K. I am working my way through it and have reached ' Congeries. ' This is another word for lists. But these are rather special forms of lists.  Congeries  is Latin for a heap and they are a disorderly pile of nouns and adjectives; carefully put together to gain an effect. Consider this list from 1953 of words approved by the East Germany for describing the British: " Paralytic sycophants, effete betrayers of humanity, carrion-eating servile imitators, arch-cowards and collaborators, gang of woman-murderers, degenerate rabble, parasitic traditionalists, playboy soldiers, conceited dandies. "  P.  189 Pretty strong stuff. A splendid sentence with no verb. Do you recognise anybody ? CcccccccccccccS This is Monmouth gateway to Wales. We are crossing the R...