Bodega!

This isn't in Spain: it's in Sheffield in the cellar of someone's house - and as you can see they've converted it rather nicely into a Spanish bar.

I was going to show you other pictures of the house but for some reason I've only got shots of people watching dodgy satellite channels like Essex Girls.

Borderlands

Here we are just going through into France from Adinkerke - those clouds in the distance aren't tobacco.

As ever, click on the picture to make it bigger.

What do you Frink of this?

Another thing from last week - this is Dame Elisabeth Frink's Walking Madonna (it doesn't though) in front of Salisbury Cathedral.

This is the only female figure she sculpted and she used her own face as a model. Some (=I've just looked it up on the Net) say she is striding purposefully away from the Cathedral out into the world: others that she is careworn and therefore emblematic of maternal suffering.

Modern art - and I would contend much art - is not really about subject-matter but form and so I've done the photo as a kind of play between different spaces and substances. If I were the sculptor here, I'd have a bright blue crystal pyramid complementing rather than opposing the spire, which - at least on a summer's evening - looms like a Saturn V over the silent green spaces surrounding it.

Love the stinger but hate the sting

Over in OUSA, we've been talking about whether there is a distinction between sexual orientation (not sinful) and sexual acts (some of which are sinful).

As ever, only England knows the answer to this. This is a National Trust Garden last week. Here they show that they recognise apian orientation, but feel the need to warn against apian activity.

The end of a Forum

Today - roughly - is the last day the Forum Requests Forum will appear on our First Class desktops, where it has been dwelling since 1996. Here's some flowers to put on its beseeching grave, from the yellow bit of the garden.

Non-OU people won't know what I'm talking about. Basically, First Class is the conferencing system OUSA and the OU use and it's going to be replaced by Moodle. A few Forums might be temporarily pruned, such as Non-Cuddly Toys.

Most of the real action in First Class takes place on private mail. Most messages get given a kind of address label according to the following scheme.

NORMAL - it's quite rare to get this.

PERSONAL - this is usually a love letter of some kind.

URGENT - this is always a love letter of some kind.

PRIORITY HATE MAIL - this is common when you've dumped someone.

BULK - this is common if you have put someone in the family way, even if only virtually.

PRIVATE - this is some kind of Danish magazine sent to all OUSA activists.

Words of the week

I bet I don't stick to this.

Word of the week in English:

peculation=embezzlement "The peculations of small Italian businessmen lack charm" (A. Lurie)

Word of the week in French:

occire (pronounced ox-ear)=to slay (says it's either obsolete or humorous - I can identify with that): "Mais pourquoi qu' t' as occis le mataf?' (Genet - yes, that one) - "Why did you slay the sailor-guy?'

Classical stuff

OUSA is talking about triumvirates (nothing to do with Vera Duckworth, I think) and also about how great old courses were.

I agree - A209 - a course on ancient Athens - was great. I also think someone should start up a TV Channel or maybe even a mock university called OU Gold - you could study old courses but not get any credit as the research etc. would be out-of-date. Although that doesn't matter so much in the Arts. You used to be able to get A209 from www.ouw.co.uk but now it's all study packs and increased prices. Even this place http://www.universitybooksearch.co.uk/index.asp doesn't stock it anymore.

This is Cicero (if I remember rightly), lurking in the foyer of the Palais de Justice in Brussels. The picture is mine but this site has a load of Brussels stuff http://www.ordet.it/foto/2008/b/brussel/index_en.htm taken in similar straightforward vein. It makes Brussels look grey and cold, but it's a little known fact that all the statues come to life at night.

Rain rain rain

Last night we went to an Indonesian restaurant - I got loads of photos of rain ('cos that was what was happening) but let's face it - everyone knows what rain looks like. So here (on the left) is the person who took me out for dinner to celebrate my recent birthday and various other things. The photo is a bit weird as it's actually a transfer on a shopping bag, so I shot the bag, as well as bagging the shot.

Here's a poem about rain - my poetry group gave it a mixed reaction, which is all for the best I reckon.

RAIN

If it were a person, it'd be working for the Planning Office, or maybe Woolworths just before closedown, whatever, each rain is different. It always make you sweat
as if Nature, promising you'll be buried in the bliss of summer, has said,
'Hey now - here are my real prizes you soldier - big grey sensible drops of water

- these are my real signature - isn't it time you had one of your own?'

It makes you pensive. You stuff yourself with passion - a really tiresome business

-and like a junior exec. swivelling on a plastic chair your brain
quickens and tries to shove the rain in its soul, tries to put out the images
of hot-headed lovers, or gloss-lipped devils, those little Kodak slides
that flicker in time to the rain, tap-dancing on the stones outside.

After a lifetime, maybe rain gets bloated, kind of worn out, as if it wants
to go down to the coast, sit in a home and say, 'Well, it was all for nothing,
but maybe if I take a brief look back, like Kronos just before Tartarus,
or like that seal I saw in the zoo pausing before it jumped into the pool,
the smell of this life won't be as sour as I think.'

Amazing stuff, rain. Look how it thuds to the ground, rises up
again, softens all, almost vehemently, almost laboriously,
wistfully hinting at Eden and machine-guns
a hat of silver framing your hair.

Bear the pain!

On being told that he might have to co-Mod OUSA Cuddly Toys after all, and that it would definitely involve loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of work with the E C and just about everyone else coming out as a secret cuddly toy fiend, OUSA Belgium's least convincing member held his rapidly emptying head with a mixture of remorse and mousse.

European Identities on ice

Here in OUSA Belgium we believe in wooing possible converts to our cause at every opportunity. Here though a delegate from the Netherlands remains unimpressed by one of our traditional tactics known as 'Operation Sorbet' (pear on the left, strawberry on the right).

At the arms of Brussels

It's a good place - you can eat really well for 40 euros or so - in my case chicory soup, North Seafood gratin, fattened chicken, chocolate mousse, five hundred litres of house wine - and our waiter Patrick (who is not the guy on the left) was brilliant. I lost weight again - not sure why.

As this is a serious academic and political blog I should point out that the image on the left clearly highlights the enlightened tripartite identity of militarism, Catholicism and gastronomy that is hegemonic pursuant to the recent European elections. If only OUSA were as diverse, I can hear you sadly mutter.

Celebration

Here in OUSA Belgium we believe that success should be rewarded. Here we have baked a cake to present to the fifth student in the UK who has agreed with one of our motions over the last twenty years.

That shadow in the background is not a spooky lifeform from another planet about to take over Belgium but a manky old ficus - that's not an old German insult, but some kind of fig tree about which we care a lot.

Rejection

Here in OUSA Belgium we believe in democracy as much as the next unit. Here, our most important member shows us what she thinks of a meaty proposal to introduce dog representation at all levels within the organisation. And it's all done online!

An official commemoration

EQUALITY 2009

I uphold equality: although
it hasn't held up that much stuff for me.

I think back to applying for a gay marriage.
A dark desk in a Sixties town hall.
Files building up like mediaeval remains.
The grey people in charge were charming
and I think we - the rainbow couple -
fizzed back in the usual way.
Smiles and laughs and relief
and hands held under the table.

It started raining. Something in their
faces began to crack. A passing sense
of having stretched things too far.
A growing back of the old god power
of the grey race.

We shouldn't follow them if we can help it.
These pale skins, these pious types,
these family guys, these slave-drivers
may be temptingly attractive...

'If only I could be like him,'
you whispered to me on the way out.
I squeezed your hand and held out for the best.

Nights nights

It was a good Bank Holiday weekend as we went out three nights in a row: first night was to the centre of town (hint: don't sit at a table unofficially reserved for escorts, you'll get dirty looks and won't earn any money); second night was a birthday party in an underground cellar (hint: when people under 30 say, 'Would you like me to fetch you a Desperados?' don't take it personally); third night was a barbecue where we ended up playing with someone's Wii (hint: when people tell you to press the B button, don't say 'Why is it hidden on the back?').

This night-scene is our local park. It's built on an old cemetery and what they've done is used some of the old gravestones to make the paths. Click on the photo for the full spook effect.

Our poetry group had a session on night poetry. My effort is below (I did another more experimental poem that I'll have to come back to: anyway, this one owes a lot to a colleague code-word Oldtimer).

NIGHT TIME
The moon mops up. We step back inside
to rest our lives on the mattress upstairs.

We have left the shades outside
a necessary quietus...
since the tactics of light against dark
are studied and perfect.

Listen, how the lowered volume
of our house feels like a soft slide
into a succession of freedoms.

The moon breaks in without comment,
hushing the breaths from the cot.