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).