That's a lot of bottles of Krug

When the Queen Mother died in 2002, at the age of 101, the chatelaine of five royal residences and with a vast retinue of more than a hundred servants, the astonishing scale of her expenditure - on haute couture, millinery, jewellery, a stable of 12 racehorses, vintage champagne and lavish entertainment in the manner of a bygone era - had left behind debts of more than £7million, making her arguably the greatest royal spendthrift since the opulent Versailles heyday of Marie Antoinette.

The Queen Mum, saluting herself as CinC, Queen Mum's Own Highlanders

Marie Antoinette, barely distinguishable

The Empress of Extravagance: How the Queen Mother left behind more than £7m in debts | the Daily Mail

Incidentally, M-A was plagued throughout her life and into death by rumours and lies about what a spendthrift she was, among other calumnies. The parallels are more fitting than the disgraceful Daily Mail could know.

Posh classical dickhead

Media-friendly orchestra conductor Charles Hazlewood analyses pop songs he thinks are ever so classical in a BBC Four series.

We can't get that here, so The Guardian kindly offered some examples of Charleseses insights:

 

Dizzee Rascal - Paranoid

Best bit: The way Dizzee rhymes "East" with "beef".

Autopsy: "I was dropping my daughter off at nursery this morning and I was listening to this. What's interesting is it starts with the chorus ("Rinse me out, use me up, cast me down, fuck me up") and that there's this rolling bass line that underlines all the verses. That makes me think of Henry Purcell, one of our greatest composers from the 17th century who was part of a time when an awful lot of music was written over the top of what was called a ground bass. The idea was that one wrote music over one recurring bass line that's on a loop and here I am listening to Dizzee Rascal and thinking "blimey there's a ground bass."

Johnny Dee on the complexities of pop | Rock | Guardian Unlimited Music

 

Sour Grapes says: It clearly didn't occur to Charles that Blimey, here I am playing foul-mouthed pop smut to my three-year-old. Wake up, Dad!

Here's a picture of Chas doing that Sorry gesture when he's cut someone up on the school run because he was too distracted by the tonic-dominant dichotomies of The Gees of Bee.

Poet gunned down in 50-year-old vendetta

These things never happen to poets. Only in Sardinia. Amazing story. Try casting Philip Larkin in the role instead, or Wallace Stevens, just for fun. He was shot six times. That's more than Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson put together. 

The Sardinian poet Peppino Marotto did not seem a likely target for a cold-blooded assassination. The 82-year-old was well known and much loved on his native island for his poetic portrayal of peasants, shepherds and brigands, scrupulously written in Sardinian dialect.

But after he was shot repeatedly on Saturday, residents of his home town of Orgosolo, an isolated town tucked into the Sardinian hills, whispered that Marotto may have been the victim of a vendetta dating back half a century, part of a tradition of feuds and banditry that many believed had long since vanished from the Mediterranean island.

50-year-old vendetta suspected in killing of Sardinian poet, 82 | News | Guardian Unlimited Books

Sentence of the week

We'll get to the anal sex, horse masturbation and incest in a minute.

Released at last | Guardian Unlimited Books

Michael Faber nails how to open a book review. And the stunning sentences don't stop at the intro. Another example:

In one of the most lushly rendered sequences, "The Twister", 15-year-old Dorothy, convinced she will die as her house is buffeted by a tornado, decides that she can "do what the heck I liked", and frigs herself to a climax that's surreally mingled with the twister's impact.

And the goods just keep on coming [sic].

Poll: Most beautiful children's book

A Flemish paper is running a poll to find out the "most beautiful children's book of all time".

As well as Dutch and Flemish titles (only to be expected) the list already contains the likes of Charlotte's Web and The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are and The Snowman.

I take it their definition of "beautiful" is as wide as can be, since they include not only Sendak and Briggs, but also books like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which as far as a recall didn't have a lot of beautiful illustrations, if indeed it had any.

So let me throw the question open to readers: What do you think is the most beautiful children's book of all time?

Already noted:

Beatrix Potter all
The BFG
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Alice in Wonderland
Le petit prince
Tracy Beaker
Matilda
Narnia
Pippi Longstocking
Guess How Much I Feel Like Throwing Up Love You
Winnie the Pooh

Vote in comments, as often as you like.

From beyond the grave

I suppose I should speak to the circumstances of my death. It would be nice to believe that I died leading men in battle, preferably saving their lives at the cost of my own. More likely I was caught by a marksman or an IED. But if there is an afterlife, I'm telling anyone who asks that I went down surrounded by hundreds of insurgents defending a village composed solely of innocent women and children. It'll be our little secret, ok?

Obsidian Wings: Andy Olmsted

A posthumously posted message by Andy Olmsted, blogger and member of the US armed forces in Iraq, who died on January 3. He left his last post to be put up by a friend. It's a very humane message.

Found via Fabulously Jinxed

Short shameful confession

I have a hypersensitive gag reflex, which can be triggered by nothing more than holding a pencil in my mouth, for example. Brushing my teeth is an ordeal, and I've actually had to throw up because I was brushing a little too energetically. A visit to the dentist is a nightmare, because although she's aware of the situation -- it is a genuine condition, though "condition" is a little strong when there's nothing but one symptom -- there's not a damn thing she can do about it.

Still, it could be worse: I could have been born a woman or a gay man, KWIM.

Sorry this confession is not all that shameful. I resolve to do better in 2008.

Lots of lovely WiFi

Today I discovered a cafe where there's open, accessible free WiFi, not because the cafe is providing it, but because it's leaking in from someone who's working/living in the immediate area. So, ethics be damned, I sat there soaking up lots of lovely free WiFi for an hour or so. And I will of course do so again, next time I'm in the vicinity. However, I think if I had a computer it might be another matter.

I deal with these questions on a case by case basis.

New word: snarge

Snarge.

It's described by an expert as "what's left after a bird hits an airplane, goes through an engine. There are no feathers or any other kind of remains of the bird left except blood, guts."

Every time a tweety-bird goes into an Air Force jetplane's engines, the remains -- the snarge -- are sent off to the Smithsonian in Washingtonian where the bits are examined to find out what species was involved. That information helps to determine when it would be a good idea to keep the expensive jets from taking off and landing, because a single chaffinch could take down a whole plane at a cost of more than $1500, or possibly even higher.

Anyway, here's a video report from the Wall Street Journal on the subject of snarge, and who even knew the WSJ had video? Mine is just all made of paper.

Important news

The National Archives at Kew will be closed to the public from Monday 21 to Sunday 27 January 2008 inclusive.

We will reopen at 09:00 on Monday 28 January 2008

This is to enable us to carry out building works as part of the improvement programme we are implementing at Kew.

Find out more about the improvement works

News | The National Archives will be closed from 21 to 27 January 2008

Look, don't blame me, okay?

I'm just the messenger here.

Hoursh of innereshing reading

Welcome to Whiskipedia.org

This website has been set up to be the definitive online resource for all things Whisk(e)y.

Main Page - Whiskipedia

2008 begins for real

Today the holiday came to an effective end, despite the continuation of the comedy "terrorist alert" which the Belgian government saw fit to impose last week, presumably envious of the fact that London and Paris get theirs, so why not the Capital of Europe?

Today was the first day of the January sales, and this evening saw the first choir rehearsal for the new season. Which in turn brought me, since I don't have time to eat before going out, for my first assiette pita of the year. That's a dish of gyros lamb with a mountain of mixed salad and frites, as well as a piquant garlic sauce and rich meat jus. It's all served at the local snack-bar, which is what we call a place that sells Freedom Fries and sundries. There's nothing quite like it in the UK or US, especially since I have my assiette with a glass of dry white wine.

It's my guilty secret.

Tomorrow I shall go back to work, in a somewhat leisurely fashion, and this weekend for real. Then on Monday the children go back to school, Mme Grapes goes back to work and finally I'll have my daily life back.

Not that I want to see the back of them or anything, ahem, but this holiday period has been inordinately long. All because Christmas and New Year fell on a Tuesday, which meant everything stopped the Friday before, and can't resume until the Monday after.

Which is almost upon us. A happy 2008 to all my readers, especially those I haven't yet addressed in some other forum. To the Blog365 lot, courage and strength. To everyone else, luck.

Banished words of 2007

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A "surge" of overused words and phrases formed a "perfect storm" of "post-9/11" cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university's annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned.

Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics.

The contributors gave first prize to the phrase "a perfect storm," saying it was numbingly applied to virtually any notable coincidence.

Wordsmiths, avoid these words.. | Oddly Enough | Reuters

 

I can't say I've really come across that phrase all that much. The full list of banished words is here. Better candidates for top spot, in my view: organic and emotional. Random and sweet are teen slang, so they're not supposed to make sense to Lake Superior State University types. Decimate is as old as the Roman hills, and it's been misused for as long. And how often does anyone see authoring or wordsmithing? A pretty useless list, in all. Send your suggestions to make next year's list better, at this address.

My word of 2007

And the winner is ...

verklempt.

Join us again in 2009 for My word of 2008. Auf wiedersehen!

Fame at last

Look who's appearing in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm:


(click to biggerise)

I take it they're referring to this, written and directed by one Larry David. Oh well.