I took this picture a couple of weeks ago and was looking for an excuse to post it to the blog. When I was checking what the flowers are – Fritillaria meleagris, the snakes-head fritillary – I discovered that tomorrow, April 27th, St Bartholomew’s Church in Ducklington is celebrating Fritillary Sunday. There will be “Morris dancing and musical interludes”, as well as cream teas and ploughman’s lunches in the village hall.
L.P. Hartley was wrong: the past is not a foreign country; it is where I was born and I’m feeling quite homesick.
The Ham Museum is a shrine
to swine: crimson haunches hang
in the swelter of strip lights; fat leaks
dripping into plastic cones while
an unobtrusive bustle of barstaff
serve the gathered worshippers.
With ritual gesturing, slim-bladed
knives skim iridescent curves.
Glasses are raised in veneration
of marbled flesh, and wafers
of translucent succulence dissolve
as devotees discuss the mysteries
of the world.
The (draft) poem is loosely based on a chain of bars in Spain, while the pig in the picture was photographed some time last year sitting on a table outside an English restaurant/wine bar/pub… Actually, I’m not sure what the Almanack should be classed as, but it’s worth a visit if you are in the area. It caters for a rather wider range of tastes than does the Museo del Jamón.
Two snippets from the news have caught my eye this week.
Firstly, I gather from this tweet from the Independent that I must have missed something about new government policies on euthanasia:I wonder how much warning they intend to give before carting us off to be processed into Soylent Green. Continue reading “news and views”
don't confuse the narrator 