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Tuesday 28 April 2009

Power of Three

Just been to see Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World (haunting, surreal, telling); now listening to Ravel's Piano Trio (fragile but strong) and reading Julia Leight's Disquiet (cool and mesmerising). All so different; all so brilliant.

Monday 27 April 2009

Chinese whispers

Wikipedia: stumped; Google: Stumped. I've found the question that cannot be answered. Why is the Chinese burn so-callled? The nearest I've got is this evasive answer from the normally helpful AQA Ask Any Question text service:

A Chinese burn is so called because its perpetrators want it to sound scary and mysterious at the same time. In the US it is called an Indian burn.

Scary and mysterious? Surely that isn't the only reason it's called a Chinese burn. I questioned some more...

There is no record of the first use of 'Chinese burn' as it was mainly said, not written. The perpetrators were just children teasing each other.

Can anyone help?

Friday 10 April 2009

Inside the Abbey



I stand on a green carpet, the grass soft beneath my feet. Above the stones loom in pointed arches. The Abbey roofs have long fallen in and the outside air is cool on my cheek. Underneath a bare sky, looking at the trees through glassless windows, it is easy to forget the tourists filling the adjacent car park, coach parties from Peterborough who will later fill the local tea shops with umbrellas and ceaseless chatter. Lives of quiet reflection and daily prayer were lived out between these walls for over 400 years; the Abbey has been abandoned for nearly the same time again. But could it still bear an imprint of such devotion? Do the stones still offer the ‘deep seclusion’ that Wordsworth sensed when he composed his lines above Tintern Abbey? I look up at the yawning sky and wonder.

Wednesday 8 April 2009

Tintern Abbey


FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. -- Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

Opening of Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth