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.

Narcissism

As a kind of brief follow-up to the excursion into surrealism - went to this exhibition about shop windows http://www.fondationpourlarchitecture.be/docs/pdf/2008/boutique_presse_en.pdf and included in it was a brief bit about surrealism's interest in reflections, and all that. So here's a Narcissus. Not for sale as it has been dead-headed.

The lady on the bike

Last night I was on the phone to someone (famous landlady) and there was a knock at the door. My landlady friend then said 'Oh - it's a young lady on a bike'. The young lady on a bike then said that she'd come round to watch a video and she wasn't young. Then she asked the famous landlady why the lights had all been switched off. I ended the call then.

We have just been to the garden centre and got a lychnis for Liz that should turn orange (here's another orange flower to tide you over ). Also today we are off out tonight in Brussels downtown. I have just read an interesting OU text about High Albania in the Edwardian era - you can also trace the background in the Times (one of the perks of the OU Library - I'm only in it twice though I think).

It shouldn't be here!

This is a forget-me-not that really is not supposed to be in our garden, but I like it.

Spookily enough, our poetry group was delving into the past today. There was a great poem about the remains of a Tudor banquet, another one about the ghost of Jacqueline du Pré and I came up with this poem about borders.

ON FIRST CROSSING THE IRON CURTAIN

One eighties morning, we and our coachload
went through the few metres of road and,
feeling young and tanked up on Weissbier,
decided to wave to the guard, just before
she boarded the coach, and looked at
our faces and passes and lives.

Having processed that look, now, some
thirty years later, much closer to
that town next door called death, the place
where we'll be picked up by the thing
we're trying to fence out and fleece,
our bounded humanity,

I want to set off along a line, stroll
along the cheeks and the eyes and
the tomato-rouged lips of Frau Whatever,
all of a sudden smiling and then
darkening as the alsations barked.

Memories: strange-toned streetlamps
beside a moving walkway, where
distance is hard to judge and
we half-panic as we turn the bend.