Practical and Pithy the Quotes from the Posh

 

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"The people sensible enough to give good advice are usually sensible enough to give none."

  Eden Phillpotts

mOtHEr dIp IN ThE mOoDy mEMOrY pILE.

Texas Kitty

A friend sent me a cassette of Texas Kitty ripped from a Dutch LP some years ago. Recently found some new tracks on YOUTube including this great Spooktrein song. Not much found out about her on the interweb.................................................................................................................. Luckily a Dutch friend Jan managed to track down a short biography on a dutch website. Her real name was Kitty Prins. "She was born in Groningen, The Netherlands. She was not only a singer, but a professional painter as well. However her carreer in our country never really got from the ground. She was more succesfull in Vlaanderen (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium). She also had a fan-club in South Africa and she had contacts with the Country Music Assocation in the VS, where she perfromed in the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. After being seriously disappointed in The Netherland by people breaking contracts and so on, she decided to move to Vlaanderen permanently. Untill 1981 she presented a country show on Belgian radio. The last years of her life she spent painting. The website isn't clear about her birth and death date (1900-1900?)." Thanks for that Jan.

Poetry Book of the Year 2012 - 'Naked Clay' by Barry Hill

From concept to delivery this book of poems really excels. The idea of tackling a painter’s work and transposing those images as words may not be new but the honest, sometimes brutal, way that Barry Hill sets about portraying Lucian Freud’s work is nothing short of masterful. My relatively new introduction to poetry, Dylan Thomas and Basho to one side, has been further excited by this incredible body of work.

Unlike a novel which has a narrative that propels you along urging you to follow its course until you reach that final page, poetry, or so it strikes me, is far more contemplative. As I read one poem I found myself dwelling on it, ruminating over its marvellous rhythms, its meaning and the way the words cascaded.  This book has left me breathless. I return to it again and again.

Barry Hill not so much praises the art of Lucian Freud, although in circumspect fashion he does, as examines it. His take on the famed artists work, his portraits, is as honest an appraisal as it often is blunt and questioning. He really does ask of the art and the artist why? Did Freud ever consider the implications of painting his daughter naked whilst menstruating? It is the 'edgy' approach that elevates this set of poems above all else I have read this year.

Barry Hill is an Australian historian, poet, journalist and academic. He was born in Melbourne, Australia and studied at the University of Melbourne where he gained his Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Education (B Ed) and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and from there went to London where he gained his Master of Arts (MA) degree from the  University of London.

Hill has worked in both Melbourne and London. In London he worked for the Times Literary Supplement. Since 1975 Hill has been a full-time writer and is currently Poetry Editor of  The Australian newspaper.

 

 

HAPPY FESTIVITIES HOWEVER YOU CELEBRATE THEM

 

 

 

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Peter Hawkins

Another unsung hero who almost single handedly did all the voices of the childhood television characters I grew up with and loved like Billy Bean, The Flowerpot Men, Captain Pugwash and the Daleks to name but a few. I actually wrote him a fan letter once when I was at art school in the 60's and he sent me a very nice letter back which I treasure ( if only I could find it!).

Wikipedia says -

"Born in London and a native of Brixton, Hawkins' long association with British children's television began in 1952 when he voiced both Bill and Ben, the Flower Pot Men. In 1955–1956, He voiced Big Ears & Mr. Plod from The Adventures Of Noddy. He also provided all the voices for the animated series Captain Pugwash, The Family Ness, The Adventures of Sir Prancelot, The Adventures of Tintin, and Bleep and Booster, the latter of which was a regular feature of the long-running children's magazine series Blue Peter in the 1960s and early 70s. He was also the narrator for SuperTed. Peter Hawkins also narrated Jimbo and the Jet Set.
He voiced several characters on Doctor Who in the show's early years, most notably the Daleks and the Cybermen. He was also the original voice of Zippy on Rainbow during the first year of its run (1972). Coincidently his replacement on Rainbow, Roy Skelton, also went on to voice the Daleks. Hawkins and Skelton also voiced the Cybermen in The Tenth Planet. He voiced Penfold who had a Welsh accent & Mr. McNasty who had a Scottish accent on The Pilot Dangermouse episode, The Mystery of the Lost Chord in 1979.
Hawkins was the original voice for the character of Frankie Mouse in the fourth radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, originally broadcast in March 1978.
During the 1960s, 70s and 80s Hawkins was one of the most sought after voiceovers for television and radio, being a regular face and voice around the Soho based circuit of commercial production studios, and working regularly with the likes of Patrick Allen, Edward Judd, David Tate and David Jason amongst whom he was highly respected.
Hawkins was the owner of a fine art collection, including works by Monet, Pissarro & Alfred Sisley, owned a collection of Japanese sword guards and was very keen on Japanese delicacy.
Hawkins retired from the acting profession in 1992 due to illness, which also prevented him from contributing to any DVD release of Doctor Who outside of archive footage. He died in London, aged 82, on 8 July 2006, coincidentally the same day that the 2006 season finale of Doctor Who, "Doomsday", the first to feature Daleks and Cybermen confronting each other, was transmitted.
Nicholas Briggs, the current voice of the Daleks, paid tribute to him in Doctor Who Magazine, praising him as the best Dalek voice artist, saying "...all of us who've provided Dalek voices over the last 40 years owe him a massive debt. None of us have been as good as Peter, but he supplied our inspiration. He was truly the Emperor of the Daleks."

Quirky Quotes from Quirky Quoters

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"I'm glad he died before me, because I didn't want him to sing at my funeral."

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Spike Milligan on Harry Secombe's death

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aNOtHEr bAiL sTuMpeD ofF tHe WIckEt.

From Russia With Love

For anyone not yet fifty – I doubt you can fully imagine the thrill of a new Bond movie. There are now fifty films in the franchise, the latest being Skyfall (in case you didn’t notice the hype) and I can imagine that the first films might seem like museum pieces to youngsters today. But when I was a teenager the films were quite simply thrilling! And so were the books. 

The first Bond film I saw was From Russia With Love. It was the second film made and it starred Sean Connery. The story centres on a plot by SMERSH the Soviet counter-intelligence agency, to assassinate Bond in such a way as to discredit both him and British Intelligence. As bait for the plot, the Russians use a beautiful cipher clerk and the Spektor, a Soviet decoding machine. Much of the action takes place in Istanbul and on the Orient Express.

The film was released in 1963 and I was fifteen. I saw it with my best friend and his girlfriend, and a girl who wanted to be my girlfriend. But, as I remember it, I wasn’t very keen. It had been snowing and it was cold. I remember wearing my new coat. And I remember the intoxicating smell of the cavernous, art deco Odeon cinema. The film was exciting, moody and, with its seduction scene, quite sexy to a fifteen year old. Innovative too – with its MI5 gadgets. It had all the ingredients for future Bond films.

I loved the books too. From Russia With Love is probably still my favourite. It was the fifth in the series, published in 1957. I can’t remember if it was the first I read – nor if I read it before I saw the film or after. I do remember reading (or re-reading) the whole series when I should have been studying for my exams. Ian Fleming was a very good writer, with pace and an eye for detail.  And modern thriller writers would do well to study his technique.

Writing this has made me hanker to read the book and see the film again. And of course the reason I wrote this piece is that I’ve just seen Skyfall, one of the best Bond films I think, with its nod to its past. You probably had to be over fifty if, when, at the end of the film as the familiar Bond theme music was finally used, you found yourself wiping away a small tear from the corner of your eye.

. . . aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.

Pampered Punctuations from Punctilious Popinjays

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

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George Orwell

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aNOtHEr qUOtE fRoM ThE mAGpIEs.

It's Only A Word, Will!

Kyphotic.

Adj.

1.

kyphotic - characteristic of or suffering from kyphosis, an abnormality of the vertebral column crookback, crookbacked, gibbous, humpbacked, humped, hunchbacked unfit - not in good physical or mental condition; out of condition; "fat and very unfit"; "certified as unfit for army service"; "drunk and unfit for service"

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aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.

A Feast of Posters

 

 

A beautifully drawn picture from a poster of the last century. Created at a time when music hall artists were having a rough time of it. I like this period. I like the bawdy type hmour, the working class honesty of the shows but more than that the posters with which  they used to advertise all manner of things...

 

 

 

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aNOtHEr dIp INtO ThE mAGpIE mEMOrY pOOoL.