Thought

There was a parchment moon last night, its yellow surface written on in ink. Ink that's now faded, gradually pushing the story it enshrined into silence.

Stars in stripes

All those stripey tops in the film Coco avant Chanel reminded me of a picture that always makes me smile - Le Pains de Picasso Enjoy.

At night

The students have gone. Outside sounds like a different place. For two weeks, ever since pens were laid down, the last words scribbled on exam papers and the final timed seconds written off, the nights have been filled with shouts and laughs, with whimsical discussions. The sounds of ‘I can’t believe it’s over’, and ‘it’ll never be the same again’ tinged the air like smoke. Now the students' innuendo-, in-joke-laden chatter has been replaced by the whispers of trees. Only the urban fox loiters in the square, there’s not even any need for the self-appointed square-keeper to rid the grass of wrappers, barbecue leftovers and rogue bottles. There is a natural quiet.

From Pole to Pole

Sibelius was once described as a composer with 'the spirit of a Polar explorer'; a theme from his preternaturally - or should that be naturally? - beautiful Violin Concerto as 'a polonaise for polar bears'. So it seems apt that a day that began listening to Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili's impassioned performance of this piece ended with the final instalment of On Thin Ice, the race by James Cracknell, Ben Fogle and Ed Coates to the South Pole. Not that there are really any other parallels between these two events, but sometimes it's just nice for there to be a relaxed symmetry to the day.

A poem for Simon Armitage

Simon, I work at Anglia Windows
and no-one there has heard of you,
you were not on the GCSE syllabus when we were at school.
That is why I am hiding bits of your poems around the office

like treasure hunt clues.
Now people find you in filing cabinets
couplets scribbled in the margins
of company reports
symbolism on spreadsheets
half rhymes in ring binders.

I quote lines of your best poems
when I’m replying to group emails
It makes it much less tedious,
I saw the girl I sit next to
appreciating a well crafted simile
I had set on her computer as a screensaver
when she had gone to the toilet.

I've even been outside
I chalked entire stanzas
out in the car park
I hope this does not infringe
on copyright.
I hacked into the Anglia Intranet
people from the Technical Department
now find samples of your new collection
where Installation Procedures used to be
Alan Medlicott is going to be furious.

And I know people here aren’t going to bleed Waterstones dry
of the works of Simon Armitage
but there might be something for someone to think about
when they’re at home, at night, making tomorrow’s sandwiches.

By poet John Osborne, who I heard speaking at Latitude Festival in Suffolk this weekend just gone. I didn't hear this poem - I wanted to post 'I think Pat Sharp is Lonely' but I can't find a copy of the version I heard. So I've gone with Simon Armitage instead. Enjoy.

Huh?

On a mission to find out how much poorer I'll be after parking in an NCP car park, I came across one of the oddest campaigns I've seen in a while. Are they serious? Take a look.

Classic walks

Classical music and fell walking collide in Tony Greenbank's Country Diary in The Guardian:

It was on the sharp, conical summit of Stickle Pike that I saw someone I thought I knew leaning against the cairn, with its incomparable view of Caw and Corney Fell. He was reading a book and eating a sandwich and seemed oblivious to my somewhat clumsy approach. "Now then, Martin," I said. "Getting ready for this month's Brewery concert?" But I realised when he glanced up through his wire-rimmed glasses that, rather than Martin Roscoe, who lives nearby, it was someone who looked similar. After my stuttered apologies, this fell walker said he was certainly not a concert pianist, nor even a classical music fan. Few climbers I have met like this particular kind of music, and I have always kept my taste for it to myself.

Harry Griffin, who wrote this column for 53 years, was not one of those who detested such music, however. Each time I visited his fellside flat in Kendal, he would address the keyboard of his upright piano and play a request - say, the Organ Grinder from Die Winterreise, or Haydn's Variations in F minor. Martin Roscoe, who arrived at fell walking relatively late in life, finding a new world to take him out from his universe of music, would have enjoyed his company.

I once clambered to the top of Stickle Pike with this favourite of the concert halls, and he mentioned an impressive list of Lakeland summits ticked, including scrambles on Jack's Rake, Lord's Rake and Sharp Edge, when mist once lured him down from the top of Blencathra on to its intimidating, slippery crest. Such an experience he would rather have done without, he said, admitting to being moderately cautious on mountains. Had a rock rolling down a fellside ever damaged his hand while he was reaching for a handhold? No, he said, nor were his hands at that time insured.

My life in verse

If you get a chance, watch Robert Webb's exploration of TS Eliot's poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Webb - of Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb fame - takes a tour round the poem, Eliot's story intertwined with Webb's own relationship with this wonderfully restless and evocative work. It's the wrong end of the day but here are the opening lines:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
Let us go and make our visit.

B is for...

Bristol's gone Banksy mad. Queues tumble down the hill that the city gallery is perched on; the enigmatic artist's unexpected exhibition has got write-ups in all the national paper; pubs and cafes are filled with chatter about our local celeb. I haven't been yet, but don't worry. Becca's Blog will be Banksy-ed.

The power of Facebook

On Wednesday I went to see A Hawk and a Hacksaw - that's a band not a pub. Hailing from New Mexico, they played Eastern-European-inspired folk on violin, accordion, tuba, guitar, and... one second... what is that? A violin? A trumpet? A horn? More penetrating in tone, coarser in sound, more intriguing in design than your regular violin with a wooden body, this odd instrument had everyone in the audience guessing. I put out a Facebook plea: does anyone know what you call a violin crossed with a trumpet? The replies came flooding in: a violet; a trumpolin. Then a YouTube link to a man playing one on a Belgian street. I was getting somewhere. Accounts of people seeing them in Venice and Paris followed. Then the genuine name: the stroh violin. And an offer to buy one and bring it back to Bristol. Watch this space. I might have a new hobby.

ps For the curious: the stroh violin was designed in 1889 by one Johannes Matthias Augustus Stroh. In place of the wooden body of the violin, which resonates to produce the sound,there's a metal resonator and amplifier - the trumpet or horn part of the violin - to do this job.

Behind closed doors...

The Easton Arts Trail offers a compelling mixture: art by local Bristol artists and a chance to nose around other people's houses. It's a natural human impulse, after all. Just what does go on behind the net curtains? Well, on the evidence of this trail, quite a lot. I saw hugely detailed line drawings of Bristol scenes, Eastern-inspired wood cuts, colourful pottery and characterful photo portraits. Creative could be Bristol's middle name. And there were suprises aplenty beyond the front door. The biggest wasn't the politically-motivated painting in which a cow had its patches turned into a map of the world, with Israel a blood-spattered bulletwound, nor the bleak stories by former drug addicts that accompanied a poignant set of black and white photos exhibited in the community centre. (Isn't Bristol a cheery place?) No, it was a coincidence that stopped me in my tracks. I've only been to Easton once before, for a French conversation evening that bordered on the surreal - anyone for a discussion of the pros and cons of post-capitalism in French?. As we sauntered down a road of terraced houses, I told my trailing friend about the odd evening and the people I'd met there.But even though I'd just been talking about it, I was taken aback to be faced with a larger-than-life portrait of one of the French post-capitalists in the very next front room we entered. It was as if my words had conjured him out of thin air and translated them into bold brush strokes. As if some unknown force had sussed out the fact I was looking in on other people's lives and turned it on its head. A forgotten fragment of my life enlarged and put on display.Not to get too philosophical, this odd little coincidence made me think of that often repeated question. Does art reflect life, or life reflect art?

You know you've made it when...

... your birthday is celebrated on Google, and seen by billions of Googlers the world over. So many happy returns Mr Igor Stravinsky. You may be long gone, but Google has done you proud. Three cheers for The Firebird and The Rite of Spring!