More Catspaws

Painting of the moment:
Catspaws off the Land , 1885
by Henry Moore



According to the Tate Britain's wall panels the "catspaws of the title are the gentle breezes which move the fishing boats along."

Unpublished post...

"He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble."

The Mole encounters a river for the first time in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend (aka this year's summer) sharing the delights of the River Thames with a Russian friend who's visiting London. Kenneth Grahame's cheerful description of a river captures exactly how the Thames appeared, especially - and aptly - the section of river flowing past the River & Rowing Museum in Henley, which has exhibtions dedicated to both the river and The Wind and the Willows.

Sculptures.

 

Favourite sculptures as seen today in the art gallery of the world.

Paws for thought.

Are black cats lucky or unlucky? Does it make a difference if they cross in front of you? If one follows you for twenty minutes, sits outside your house mewing pitifully, then paces the windowsills - staring through the window panes with piercing eyes - is that luckier or unluckier than just a crossing cat? Or is said cat just hungry?

King's Parade, Cambridge

King's Parade, Cambridge
'Michaelmas Term'

From an original oil painting by Karen Pittaway

A cyclist and a Walker.

On a gentle Sunday afternoon cycle in the London summer drizzle today, I stumbled (so to speak) across a small-but-perfectly formed art allery in a local park. To one side of Pitzhanger-Manor House is the PM Gallery, and since yesterday this peaceful space has been home to the Hayward's touring exhibition entitled Walker Evans: Photographs 1935-36. "Walker Evans", states the exhibition guide, "endures as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. ... [He] had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past. ... His principal subject was the American vernacular, as found in roadside stalls, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and in small town main streets." Hung on four white walls, the black and white photos of churches, people, streets, roof-tops and the evidence of daily life speak simply, directly and honestly to the viewer. But at the same time this documentary style of photography - seemingly a simple recording of facts - is carried out with such artistic finesse that the images are imbued with an enigmatic quality making them quite mesmerising. A modern day Mona Lisa, suggests one of the information panels of the image lablled "Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama".

Double life.

"So what else do you apart from music?"
"Well, in my spare time...."

Tea.

According to an article I have just read, the French "have been perfecting tea since 1636 - it arrived in France 22 years before it got to England". This interesting little nugget of information once again set me off on a tea-based thought trail. I blame my fascination on not having drunk a single drop of the stuff until the age of 20. That's two whole decades without tea. Pretty much the same period of time that the good folk of seventeenth-century England were happily going about their business, unaware of the hedonistic tea-drinking practice being indulged in by their French counterparts. (Though I wouldn't feel too sorry for your ancestors, apparently hot chocolate was the drink du jour at that time. Surely a worthy second to tea.) It seems that across the Channel they eventually became rather carried away by the activity: "In Marie Antoinette's day, the diarist Sévigne wrote that the court princesses drank 12 cups a day." I once drank eleven cups in one day, and am hoping never to again (unless I once again find myself in a Cornish caravan park on a rainy day).

A friend of mine once experimented with the tantalizing idea that tea might be the elusive miracle hangover cure everyone else has missed. Let's be clear about this tea does not mean your usual morning cuppa. Tea means a large pot of tea before going to sleep, followed by a large pot of tea on getting up. I think the theory hinged on the possibility that the tannins in the tea might somehow neutralise the excessive blood in his alcohol stream. Funnily enough, it didn't.

I'm looking forward to the start of an expedition from Calcutta to London entitled "Tracing Tea". Several Cambridge University students will be travelling by tuk-tuk (otherwise known as autorickshaws) along a route designed to cover places integral to the history of tea, passing through India, Pakistan, China, Central Asia, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands before finishing up in the UK. From the expedition's smart-looking website it is possible to trace the group's route, as well as to get a flavour of the book and television series that they hope to produce. In addition, it appears that there are plans in the offing to incorporate some kind of community art project. One to watch.