Shepherd & Dog

Highgate Pond.
Gules, three seaxes fessewise points to the sinister proper, pomels and hilts and in the centre chief point a Saxon crown.
Wankers!
Alder catkins.
! (?)

… More

Nazis im Weltraum

Steigen sie nicht auf den felsen deckwerke
Ich sprang von fels zu fels
Wie ein Weihnachtsbaum fee
Bis die dame aus dem tee hütte
Kam vorbei und beschuldigte mich,
Von der rückkehr nicht meine Tasse

Ein lokaler dummkopf
Setzen sie in seinen zwei Euro wert ist:
“Ich sah ihn werfen den becher in die
Deutsch Ozean.”
Wir werden natürlich alle Kosten bezahlen
Sagte meine Frau
Er ist unter großem druck gestanden
Und PD James zurückgekehrt sein manuskript
Ungelesen

(WC Kobold)

On Southwold Quay

Do not climb on the rock revetments
I leapt from rock to rock
Like a Tyrolean shepherd
Until the lady from the tea hut
Came over and accused me
Of not returning my mug

A coastguard officer
Joined in:
“I saw him throw the mug into the
River Blyth.”… More

Yesterday strolled out to Islington for mineral water and syllabub. Caught the very moment the digger on the opposite bank crunched through a lead lined grave.

“Geezer, come and look at this!” It was a blow up Queen Boudica. “I’ll be damned if she ain’t just where Wm Stukeley said she would be.”

I put away my monocular, zipped my little man back into my Paramo whose unique nikwax analogy fabric mimics mammal fur to keep me comfortable in all weathers and thought of  69 Things to do with a Dead Princess.… More

Enjoyed Julian Temple’s film about Ray Davies yesterday. Every shot was both illuminating of its subject and  a sort of hymn to North London. I kept thinking we could have filmed it ourselves – it was like our own biography (and of course n million others). We’ve got a couple of years on the Muswell Hillbilly boy though – that is if you take his claim to have been born in 1964  – the year You Really Got Me propelled the Kinks to the pop top table – seriously.… More

Another dull crime scene photo this week from Friday morning, the first day of the second cold snap. And not exactly what you would call a walk either unless you count the slither up to Tufnell Park station (and back from K-Town) after brief stops at Highgate and Archway libraries.

When I say crime scene I’m not talking about non-payment of library fines, no, Sir. Nor f*ing shunting accidents on Lady Somerset Road. I’m talking about the serial killer who dumped a stiffy here in the woods next to Highgate tube  – but not without being seen: middle-aged, tall, greying hair.… More

If it wasn’t so easy to post I would have given up this week. My mind is exploding in a hissy fit of petulance and self disgust. My pram is soiled and there are toys strewn everywhere. My office looks like Parliament Square or the inside of the Royal Daimler after a day of student protests or a night on the piss. I’ve started writing three books in the last * years (I’m too embarrassed to write the figure) and none of them so much as hint at being workable.… More

Another twighlight expedition on Wednesday. Travel chaos to the south and east but the London Overground was circling the icy abyss from the high ground and we made Richmond in half an hour from Gospel Oak. Surprised to find little in the way of snow but it was cold enough to put most sensible people off the Thames towpath which we had more or less to ourselves and a couple of cold-looking herons. Big congregation of rooks on the Old Deer Park and a long line of them at the tide’s edge foraging for the Christmas menu, a starter of mussels tout simple followed by worm-in-the-hole.… More

Submerged Forests

To Highgate library at the start of the cold snap on Wednesday to pick up Submerged Forests (1913) by Clement Reid, the Godfather of North Sea archaeology. (See last week’s blog.)

The weather was brighter than I was: an Edward Thomas kind of a day – clean and clear and sweet and cold – but I had just been to K-Town police station to report our car having been bashed. It was parked and the driver drove off without leaving his details but not without being seen by a witness who took down his reg details and left her phone number under the windscreen wiper.… More

This picture of sea holly (Eryngium maritimum) was taken on the dunes at Traeth Cymyran right by the perimeter fence of RAF Valley which was in the news the following day for reasons of no concern to this blog’s vegetable republic. The tuber roots of sea holly were once eaten (they’re now protected) regarded as an aphrodisiac and  mentioned by Falstaff  in Shakespeare’s romcom, The Merry Wives of Windsor. ‘Nuff said. To be fair my republican sympathies probably wouldn’t survive being stuck on an ice sheet up Snowdon or being swept out into Cymran Bay as the tide rips round Holy Island/Ynys Gybi  sending unwary grockles (and mardy bloggers) into the Irish Sea.… More

This week I have mostly been reading: From Russia With Love. I was not sure that I had read any Bond  so it was fascinating to go back to the original text for the world’s most famous spy bar none. Literary antecedents, Bulldog Drummond and John Buchan’s Richard Hannay,obviously, but also Graham Greene’s Third Man (which gets a name check) and Stamboul Train and Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. The train on which 007 fights for his life (and that of the free world) in an alpine tunnel is as much a literary salon as  a heritage transport experience.… More