As Any Fule Kno ...

... or Hello Clouds - Hello Sky.

It Comes to us All

Yet another Curse of The Oldie (which of course is really statistics rather than anything genuinely supernatural) with the passing of Ronald Searle. Of course the TV news will illustrate the sad news with St. Trinian's in all its guises and ignore the great Masterpiece that is Molesworth. As the author of the piece linked behind the picture says, Molesworth is unfilmable - not least because any mention of Molesworth 2 would have most of the audience wondering when the first film came out. The Gerunds will be distraught tonight I imagine.

There is a more serious side to Ronald Searle in that he survived the worst that humans can throw at fellow humans. See this collection of drawings including some of his time as a POW on the Burma Railway.

Today is Brought to You by the Number π

Listening to On Air by June Tabor

Now is it TAY bor or TA bor or even T’ bor? Answers on a postcard to the usual address – probably with 8QT in the postcode.

Today feels very Pre-Raphaelite. I can smell basil everywhere – he really should get a shower. No seriously, I love the look of these almost-photos – they seem to capture something you would think is impossible to put down on paper in any form. You may think them kitsch but the technical ability along with the instant-story feel you get from the pictures is always something far more than romanticism. In their time, some of the pictures were extremely controversial – and in a way far exceeding the rumblings about how a small piece of blue-tack can be considered art. Art had always been criticised more because of the subject matter and what it tries to say than for it’s technical execution. It is easy to divide a lot of acts and beliefs into good and evil but most things occupy a grey area either for everybody or where something good for one person is bad for another – and all shades in between. Sorry – this sounds like trying to defend the Pre-Raphaelites. They need no defending in any way as far as I’m concerned. My idea of a great gallery is one with Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Medieval icons. I was going to put “how sad is that?” but I’m not – I’m out and proud to be a fan of the PR Brotherhood.

I’m not sure why today feels very Pre-Raphaelite – must be the light or something. Someone is eating their dinner (thank you Stuart Maconie for making me see the light over dinner being something eaten at dinner time) and it smells like school – some sort of undefined stew – not unappetising but coloured with all sorts of associations about the various places of education I attended. I can just see the varnished herringbone tiling and the scuffed walls. Which reminds me that Rachel North has linked to this page of Molesworth who I’m sure secretly liked Pre-Raphaelite paintings, if only for the nudes.