art – Page 3 – don't confuse the narrator

roaring drunk

I spent an interesting morning on a private visit to Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, where I found the beast in the photo.

The young lady who showed us around told us that the word “plastered”, meaning “drunk”, derives from the habit of adding white wine to plaster to keep it malleable: the artisans who worked with the mix were exposed to the alcoholic fumes all day. What’s more, she said, they were allowed to keep and drink the wine that remained unused at the end of the day.

I’m really not convinced that a drunken artisan could produce the spectacular plasterwork of which the lordly lion was just a tiny motif. I note, though, that the decoration was in the room known as “the saloon”.

the next big thing: “hope street”

Lance Tooks drawing from Sketches from Spain

Fellow-writer Karin Bachmann has asked me to join in “The Next Big Thing”, an internet project where authors from different countries, different ways of life and different writing backgrounds answer the same ten questions about a work in progress.

For her own contribution, Karin talked about Mord in Switzerland, an anthology of crime stories from around Switzerland; you can read about it on her stories47277 blog in the post The Next Big Thing.

As part of the project, I, too, will invite five fellow-writers to write their own TNBT page and will link to them on this page below my own answers. As Karin put it: “It’s like a chain letter, only that no bad luck will come out of your not participating ;-)”

So, here are my answers about an up-coming poetry book:
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sunday afternoon

Looking through some old photos, I came across this:**

Tomb sculpture: Reclining lady and baby.

It seems a fairly appropriate picture to post on a Sunday afternoon, especially with some accompanying quotations. First from Susan Ertz:

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

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it’s a plane; it’s a bird…

Edward Burne-Jones Judgment Day stained glass window, Birmingham Cathedral

Actually, the figure in the sky that has caught the attention of this crowd is the Archangel Michael.

The scene is from one of the glorious stained-glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones for the Cathedral Church of St Philip, Birmingham, UK. Specifically, it’s from the window illustrating Judgement Day, so it seems a good picture for the last day in the Mayan long calendar.

If you’re still around to want more information about the windows, you’ll find that, and more about the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands, over at the Revolutionary Players website.

(Just in case the world really does end, this has been programmed to post automatically.)

tooth in advertising

Having suffered at the hands of the dentist yesterday – and I do suffer, with the only consolation that, as a writer, I may later find it useful to know what it feels like to have hysterics – I was glad to see that the old Especialidades Juanse tiles are still in place in Madrid’s Malasaña district.
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