Sunnier

That same tree on the Rye, same time of day, two weeks later...

Interesting

I learnt two things from Radio 4 this morning:
1) Iceland has no railways, and
2) There is a book called "Harry Potter and the Tagine of Stoke."

Poem of the Week

Spring
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Nunhead Spring

And so it was a lovely Summer Spring Sunday in Nunhead, which meant a bacons sandwich in Bambuni's.  Grin.

And a brief stroll around the Green.

Magnolia in bloom...

And Japanese cherry...

 And the chinese willow is just beginning...

Bumblebee?

Pizza Stopping

For reasons that will become clear in time, on Saturday evening we sampled the delights of the Buxton branch of Pizza Express.  The serving staff were very helpful, and the food was OK to nice.  But the garlic bread was too small, there were too few waiters and the kitchen staff were very slow. 

So Pizza Express wasn't. 

Clear Blue Rye

What a contrast with last Monday!  A beautiful clear blue sky stretching across the Rye.  Bit chilly, 'tho!

Poem of the Week

Radio Poem
Bertolt Brecht

You little box, held to me escaping
So that your valves should not break
Carried from house to house to ship from sail to train,
So that my enemies might go on talking to me,
Near my bed, to my pain
The last thing at night, the first thing in the morning,
Of their victories and of my cares,
Promise me not to go silent all of a sudden.

Glorious Planets

Yesterday evening and this evening. 
Glorious and brilliant - Jupiter and Venus together in the WNW. 
Look and see at around 7pm. 
Wonderful...

Fog on the...

Fog on the Rye this morning (and across most of S London, it seemed....)

Media star

For those who missed it, the visit of the Trees Around Nunhead to Lewis Schaffer's show on Resonance.FM is now online. 
This was a strange experience for me, and I was nervous throughout.The studio is tiny, down a side passage just of Borough High Street.  Full of equipment that Chris was in charge of, and the rest of us sat in a kind of horseshoe shape around his desk. 
Lewis, Lisa and Chris were very welcoming, and there was little time for preparation before we just dived in.  The only rule seemed to be 'no swearing'. If you ever get a chance to do this, I strongly recommend it just for the experience.
I have to admit I was drained by the end, but also on a high and in need of a drink. 
On Borough High St at 11pm on a Monday evening. 
I strangely ended up in a karaoke at the Blue-Eyed Maid, that seemed to be entirely populated by (i) very young-looking students and (ii) elderly West Indian gentlemen. 
Perhaps by that stage I was hallucinating...

Spawn of Nunhead

It is that time of year again.
Time for sex in the garden.
For the frogs at least - we now have a pond full of spawn...

Immediately Post-Crikey

... well that was quite an experience.  Rather fun, really... (more when I've managed to digest it...)

Crikey

We appeared to be featured on Resonance FM at 10:30 this evening. Goodness only knows how this will turn out...

Nunhead Sunset

Fantastic chiaruscuro sunset over Nunhead rooftops this evening.

Pi

Wonderful reaction to the (at last!) launch of Raspberry Pi yesterday.  Two long mentions on the Today Programme on Radio 4.  And then a news item about the launch being so well attended to that both Web sites had crashed.

And then today (Mar 1st) you could read a news item and (thoughtful, conservative), editorial in the Grauniad.  We can only assume it will appear in an Arucaria puzzle soon.

We can merely speculate, and I suspect the numbers are still a little low, but is this the new beginning of a backlash against overly commoditised, instrumentalist, mercantilised - just too damn bland - notion of what software is?