Secondhand memories

Bookshop memories from George Orwell, or, why you wouldn't want to open a secondhand bookshop…

Blog log

Over the past year lots of friends have started blogs of all sorts – from photography and sketching to explanations and ponderings . I've also been sent or recommended, not to mention stumbled across, new blogs that I enjoy following. Here they all are in no particular order. The descriptions are by the blog's respective authors. Where none are forthcoming I have improvised. Amendments and additions welcome. Happy reading!

• Adventures in Lomography: 'Steph//// Camera: Diana F+ (and bits and pieces..)///very occasionally, the odd Canon IXUS 50 snap'

• D for Dalrymple: 'D for Dalrymple is written by Christina. Christina is a freelance human who lives in London and is consistently bemused by her tendency to describe herself in the third person.'

• Harmony beat: 'William Harvey's thoughts about cultural diplomacy, including diary entries from his job as Violin and Viola Teacher at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music'

• DrawingaDiagnosis: 'Feeling inspired by all the patients and amazing people I met out in South Africa, I set out to do a drawing a day of things I see in medicine.'

• Amandapondo: How things happen and why they do

• Somewhere Boy: Where a music graduate and librarian writes 'superficial analyses of things I like and regurgitate the opinions of others'

• The inner workings of...: 'I am an Aardman Story man, currently boarding on the next stop-mo feature - The Pirates!'

• Gareth Across States: Life across the pond

• um blogue azul: 'Vários aspectos das suas vidas se associavam à cor azul.' (No, I can't understand Portuguese. Those few lessons when I was in France didn't pay off! But the YouTube videos are good for all.)

• The Age of Uncertainty: 'This is supposed to be a blog about books, but something went wrong..'

• Human Planet: 'On location with this landmark BBC Earth production'

• People reading poems: Erm, exactly what it says on the tin

Just buy a Venue!

I'm completely gutted to hear Bristol's Venue magazine faces closure. If you're reading this anywhere in the city, please go and buy a Venue now! There's no other local magazine that can touch it for comprehensive arts and culture listings, witty and provocative writing and general good humour. That's not to mention the genius of the 'I saw you' and 'I'm sore at you' pages. Help save Venue magazine now and buy a copy!

Eddie Izzard – Learning French

I've just remembered how funny Eddie Izzard is. Enjoy this sketch, otherwise known as The Tale of the Monkey, the Cat and the Mouse…

Time for a new book

I've been in reading heaven since yesterday. I have discovered George Eliot. Victorian novelists are an arena I've only explored in patches: lots of Thomas Hardy, two of the three Brönte sisters, a little Charles Dickens, no Anthonny Trollope. Does a TV adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters count? And George Eliot, shallow though it seems, somehow those volumes always looked so doorstop-like…

The happy coincidence of a friend's recommendation (I was devastated to realise that I'll never have the chance to read Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda again for the first time,' she mused wistfully) and the lucky find of a secondhand bookstall in Greenwich market selling Deronda, plus the capacious minutes on the Bristol-London train, means that the last few hours I've been immersed in the so-deftly observed world of Gwendolen Harleth as conjured by Eliot. Those 700 odd pages have been transformed from doorstop to doorway…

The Secret in their Eyes

The Oscar-winning film The Secret in their Eyes is both a love story and a thriller, set in the now, then and the yet-to-be. I'm not sure the trailer does its compelling tale justice, which is better, I suppose, than all those trailers that give away the best bits of the film. Anyway, it's a great watch.

Human Planet

City dwellers, listen in. For an eye-opening taste of what life is like around the globe, just how different it can be, watch the BBC's stunning Human Planet series. Home can be many things – a boat in the Pacific, a dizzingly high treehouse, located in lands frozen by snow or dried out by sun. In this clip, one of the 'tree people' pops out for some honey. It's a bit more hair-raising than nipping to the corner shop…

Piano greats

Name your favourite pianist. Tough question, so I named five. They might change tomorrow, but hey, here are snippets of my current top keyboard wizards (in no particular order).

1. Martha Argerich


2. Alfred Brendel


3. Murray Perahia


4. Radu Lupu



5.Glenn Gould



Of course, the likes of Rachmaninov and Richter should be in this list, but there's something about having seen a pianist play live that, for me at least, makes them jump up the list over their long-gone counterparts. (Glenn Gould being the exception here.)

Daffodils

Daffodils are one of my favourite flowers. With their cheerful yellow, white and orange trumpets and stars, they herald the warmth of spring. I don't have any particular hankering to grow them, but, mooching around a fusty antique shop, I spotted a 50-year-old book all about how to cultivate daffodils. I wouldn't have bought it, except for the wonderful first sentence, and ensuing paragraph. Thanks MJ Jefferson-Brown.

To the paintings of Picasso, to orchids, and to daffodils no one can remain apathetic. The first, one may either like or dislike. With orchids one may perhaps feel like the atheist who went to the orchid show and came away convinced of the existence of the Devil. Like the spring they are part of, daffodils receive a universally warm welcome.

Views from the Square

There's a blonde woman with two golden retrievers. Harriet and Willow are their names. I know, because she shouts at them a lot. They, meanwhile, gamble around the grass, snuffling in people's barbecues, sniffing chocolate sauce and ice cream, playing, tugging, tumbling, rolling and cajoling until a lazy sunbather or amused student holds out a piece of charcoal encrusted sausage, which, more gratefully than any human recipient, Harriet, or is it Willow, gobbles up.

Glenn Gould and that Brahms Concerto…

It's not often that conductors feel it necessary to preface their performances with a disclaimer. But that's just what Leonard Bernstein did when conducting Brahms's First Piano Concerto in 1962, with the eccentric genius pianist Glenn Gould as soloist. Above is a taster of the slow, slow, slow tempos Gould chose. I've still got to hunt out a clip of a later section, which in Gould's hands seemed to turn from 19th-century turbulence turns into a 20th-century desolate wasteland.

In the meantime, here's that disclaimer:

Thought for the day

Le lecteur – je veux dire le vrai lecteur – est presque toujours un ami.
(The reader – I mean the real reader – is almost always a friend.)

Marcel Pagnol in La gloire de mon pere

Hungarians and Welsh

Even when you don't speak a language, it's often possible to pick up one or two words when abroad. At the very least, people often affect some sort of accent to indicate effort - who hasn't had a go at a mock Italian accent when ordering some 'bel-la pas-ta' or 'spa-ghet-ti bolo-gne-se'? Granted, tonal languages like Chinese and Japanese are going to prove more of a challenge, but in most European languages, being an English speaker means you should have at least a go at the basics of hallo-ing and goodbye-ing. Except there are a few languages that are guaranteed to flummox even the most dedicated of holiday linguists. Hungarian's one, but there's one even more close to home. Oh yes. Welsh.


Choice facts that I have learned: Welsh has two extra letters in the alphabet. But, sadly for all those Scrabble players, the high-scoring letters of j,k,q,v,x and z are taken out. Even more sadly, there are lots of double letters (which, 'Speak Welsh' helpfully advises are one single letter if you're doing a crossword. ch, dd, ff, ll, ng, ph, rh, th, Apparently it's a gendered language (masculine and feminine, which I hadn't known), and you pronounce everything that you see. Apart from when they're exceptions, which you just have to learn. But how on earth do you pronounce every letter in something as basic as 'I am' - 'Rydw i'?

But is it art? (2)

What would you say if your best friend spent 200,000 francs on a piece of art that looks, to you, like a blank white canvas? (No, he shouts, it's not white. It has pale diagonal stripes on it in pale grey. Besides, it's by a famous artist.) Playwright Yasmina Reza amusingly explores the dynamic of the three friends as they tussle over this expensive artwork. It's on now at the cosy Alma Tavern pub theatre (cosy in size, although the plastic seats are less deserving of this description).