British films made immediately after the end of WWII are either all about the War or else ignore it completely. Case in point: The October Man (1947) an effective little thriller about a man recovering from a serious head injury who is falsely accused of murder. So how did he get that injury- bullet to the head? piece of flying shrapnel? Colliding ( Read more... )

A touch of vertigo this morning- not bad enough to be incapacitating but enough to keep me from going to Meeting. I could have sat quietly for an hour- no problem- but all the other things I do,  all the busy work and socialising- would have been a trial. Ailz came home with a couple of Friendly suggestions for vertigo-busting exercises (which I ( Read more... )

I dreamed the Quakers were meeting in a new venue- much smaller than our current Meeting House- and Keith (who died last year) was there. In the dream I was calling him Ken But I don't suppose names matter very much- if at all- on the other side. I knew he had been ill and told him how glad I was that he was better now. He'd regained weight, his ( Read more... )

Turtle soup is a great delicacy- and expensive. And so cooks faked up alternatives and called them mock turtle soup. The recipe varied but the ingredient most usually substituted for turtle meat was calf's head- not something you're likely to find in the modern kitchen ( Read more... )

Our next door neighbour is reminding me that the fence between our properties needs renewing.  I wish it didn't but I suppose it does ( Read more... )

The weather is mild, the sun is up, there's a veil of thin gauzy cloud across much of the sky. February isn't such an unkind month down here on the south coast. Every day I check the daffodils at the bottom of the garden; they're not far from blooming ( Read more... )

We Europeans like to mock Americans for their ignorance of Geography but I've got to admit that ahead of Sunday's talk I couldn't have placed Guatemala on a map except to say it was in the western hemisphere and somewhere south of the United States ( Read more... )

Picture Diary 80

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I dreamed ( Read more... )

I hold onto the odd fragment of the occasional dream- and when I look at what I've got- lay the pieces out on the counter- there's often nothing there that's worth keeping.  So into the bin with them. The essence of the dream has escaped me- because it's been a matter of feeling, of ambience, of emotion- and the images that remain convey little or ( Read more... )