Pygmies in Yorkshire - a Christmas Story

At this time of year one tends to talk about family. The other day my sister said "Granny was a great storyteller." She was. Her name was Majorie and the Christmas before she died she told me an amazing story.

In the first decade of the 20th Century there was a small group of Pygmies from Central Africa living in the grounds of an estate in Yorkshire. My Grandmother was one of six children (as I am). Her family was invited to meet the Pygmies.My Grandmother  told me that the Pygmies were living just as they did in the Congo - in mud huts, dressed in grass skirts.

Vicky Soto

The raw brutality of the World
is best met with the wordless gesture of symbol.

This morning I light a candle for the Soul of a stranger.
Myself grief-weary in the dark days of the year:
its brief flame bold and steady
as she was as she awaited Death
in the Springtime of her life.

Poplar Coroner's Court

An early start so we drove east into the sunrise.

The building is cute, in Arts & Crafts style with panelling and green glazed tiles. There are archaic features here and there. A sign outside the toilet warning that the penalty for spitting is 40/- (that's forty shillings or two pounds, a large sum when the sign was originally erected, perhaps a week's wages or more). Boxes of paper tissues are everywhere.

The Coroner, very dignified, but also kind and humane.

While we were waiting for a cab afterwards we saw this little boy in his buggy. He made us all feel better.

Two minutes silence

Smiley eye contact with two year old Daniel during the Two Minute Silence yesterday (that's his Dad in uniform).

Blender - work in progress

UPDATE: A bit more below the fold.

Richard Hamilton at The National Gallery

The show of Richard Hamilton's last paintings is delightfully dislocating. The works are not all that large but they create a dizzy sense of space. A maid vacuums a hotel lobby (she's naked as it happens) behind her hangs a painting of another hotel lobby, the same painting is hanging in the exhibition room.
The games with space make the sense of illusion extremely vivid. The palette in Portrait of Woman as an Artist (shown here) seems so real that I would not have felt much in the way of shock if the woman had come to life and handed it to me through the frame.

Khamel fixed my sister's computer

The hard drive on my sister's Mac went crunch. She keeps no back-up. I took it to my nearest internet cafe and Khamel saved the data and found a new hard drive.