Sunday, February 14, 2010

The run, parade and recital.

The delayed podcast is live.

Some interesting thoughts from a 3BTer who commented the other day -- The Phantom Blogger talks here about negative words that creep in -- 'but' and 'even though' and 'rather than'.

It made me think about beautiful things which are disguised grumbles: "Even though the food was disgusting, the service was spot on." I'm going to see how it feels to not mention the dreadful food at all. I try really hard not to criticise on 3BT -- it's not a vehicle for complaints or anger.

Having said that, there is a special place for beautiful things which are only beautiful because of the unpleasantness that went before. And the barrel-scraping rule, which means that a thing can be beautiful because it's simply less dreadful than everything else that happened on a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day. Also, narrowly averted disasters.

Any thoughts?

1. Two children and a black dog race along the path across the valley. They look as if they could go on running all afternoon.

2. We join the Chinese New Year parade and follow the lanterns bobbing through town -- translucent paper glued over basketwork frames. A dragon, a tiger, a dolphin.

3. Nick says that his boss was impressed when he told her we were going to a recital this evening. She is thinking of moving to Tunbridge Wells, since it is the sort of place where a person can pop out to a recital.

Bud vase, tomato and the poem I needed to hear.

1. Among the faded cut daffodils that I'm putting on the compost heap there is one that will do for another day in a bud vase. 2. For th...