"Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle,  or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow,  the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season."

From TS Eliot's Gerontion

"A strong smell of tobacco and tar rose from the interior,  but nothing was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully brushed and folded.  They had never been worn, my mother said.  Under that, the miscellany began - a quadrant,  a tin canikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells."
R.L. Stevenson, Treasure Island

Shortbread Stories have now got a Wordpress blog, and my short piece on Inspiration is featured.    Here's the link.

Bill Hicks BBC Interview

This is a good one. "Can I recommend some jugglers, that you might like?"
Sorely missed.

Collecting Thoughts in a Jar

That's what this is......
A freak show...
weird specimens...
butterflies struggling on pins.

Interesting recording re. RL Stevenson

Here's a link to the Robert Louis Stevenson website, and a recording of his step-daughter relating the circumstances of his death in Samoa, in 1894.

Bit morbid, but interesting all the same.

What a catalogue of work he produced. The one that lives especially vividly in my mind, is Treasure Island, which I read frequently as a child.
The Hispaniola, Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, Long John Silver, Ben Gunn.....Blind Pew, and the Black Spot...

I'm sure it's obvious to most people but I've only just thought that Golding's Lord of the Flies was Treasure Island gone mad really.

Quote of the day - from Coleridge's Frost at Midnight

...again...it is a lovely poem though.


"Or of the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in quiet icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon."

I Worn My Elbows by Ivor Cutler

Coleridge Binge, and the smell of second hand books

I tend to go through obsessive phases with writers and at the moment it's Coleridge.

I'm not new to Coleridge. I went through a Romantic Poet phase about twenty years ago, and read everything I could lay my hands on by Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth and outriders such as Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt. It all felt very fresh and real, and easy to relate to. Sometimes linear time doesn't seem to matter at all.

At university I studied Mary Wollstonecraft. It was an extremely interesting time for women, but they were limited by their biology in a way that men obviously weren't. Crude methods of contraception at best. Dropping like flies due to ghastly puerperal complications. Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth to her daughter, also called Mary, who of course grew up to write Frankenstein and have, I would say, a pretty grim time as Shelley's wife. Who knows what she might have achieved had she lived? She'd already visited Paris during the revolution, and written several books.

Frost at Midnight appeals to me especially, because I love the imagery of ice and frost and also because Coleridge set it at the fireside in his "cottage", which sounds not dissimilar to my own pretty draughty ramshackle and tiny mid-19thC. home.

Here is a link to Coleridge's cottage.

I really like my copy of Coleridge's poems. It's very small, circa 1900, published by Harrap, with a lovely illustration from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. You can stick it in your pocket quite easily. I bought it in a second hand bookshop years ago for three pounds. Where have all the second hand bookshops gone? Ruined by Ebay, that's where. It's not the same, shopping for old books online - you have to hold a book in your hands and SMELL IT to know if you want it or not.

Quote of the Day (2) Coleridge - a fragment from the life of dreams

'Call it a moment's work (and such it seems),
This tale's a fragment from the life of dreams;
But say, that years matured the silent strife,
And 'tis a record from the dream of life.'

S.T. Coleridge, Phantom or Fact (1830)

Petula Clark: La nuit n'en finit plus

'Pet' Clark is 79 years old today! Such a great voice.

An even better Scots wurd o' th' day

Still on page 143 and I've happened upon an even better wurd.

Drabloch, n. refuse, trash, applied to very small potatoes and bad butcher-meat.

Gosh!

When does one ever encounter bad butcher-meat in Scotland? I ask you.

Scots wurd(s) o' th' Day - "Dow'd fish"

Continuing the piscine theme, today's wurd(s) is DOW'D FISH.


Dow'd fish, n. fish that has been drying for a day or two.

Fancy!

From page 143 of Chambers's Scots Dictionary, 1959 reprint of the 1911 edition.

The Viviparous Blenny, or 'Dornicle'

Re. my earlier post featuring the Scots word 'dornicle'- I have now got round to Googling the definition given in Chambers's Scots Dictionary, viz. 'the viviparous blenny'.

It's a fish, basically, also known as the viviparous eelpout.
It is also the only fish which suckles its young. Who knew?

If you'd like to learn more, you can Google it yourself or look here.