poliphilo

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A £50 note came into our possession yesterday. Ailz is going to pay it into the bank because, she says, there are so many forgeries out there the shops won't accept them.

I'm not sure I've ever handled a £50 note before- at least not one of the modern plastic ones.

The verso has a portrait of Alan Turing with the prophetic message, "This is only a foretaste of what is to come and only the shadow of what is to be."

It turns out our friendly neighbourhood herring gull has a mate and a baby. The baby put in a first appearance a couple of days ago. It's more or less the same size as its parent, has speckledy plumage and goes "peep. peep. peep". We know they're related because the adult gull allows it to eat alongside it.

Where's the nest? I think its on the flat roof of the dormer window in the attic- a site that one could only overlook with a drone. I've seen the baby poking its beak over the edge

I guess they'll be taking off soon, heading out to sea or- in the case of the baby- some inland nursery like the lake in Princes Park....

Summer is coming to an end. The light- when the sun is shining- has a richer, fuller, deeper quality than the light of high summer. It rained in the night and now a grey mist is hiding the hills....

Five more pictures:

1. The Fall of Rome

2. The Squire and his Relations

3. The Chosen One

$. First Prize in the County Show, Sir, Two Years Running....

1. In Xanadu Did Kubla Khan....

"What the fuck do you want me to do with that?" asked Jean Vigo when his producer presented him with the screenplay for L'Atalante.

He made it anyway- on condition he be allowed to rejig the story and use it as a skeleton on which to hang his own obsessions.

A young couple take their honeymoon on the barge that he captains. They have their ups and downs. That's just about all there is to it. But it's all that's needed.

"It's a nice little film." I thought when I'd finished watching it, "but does it really deserve to keep turning up on lists of the greatest movies ever?"

But I've not been able to shake it.

And I've put off watching other movies because I need time for my impressions to settle down,

It has the qualities of one of those haunting dreams that one can't quite fathom. Which is a roundabout way of calling it "deep".

And yet it never quite ceases to be an exercise in realism. "Poetic realism" is the category it gets slotted into. It's visually beautiful and there are moments of magic and surreality. One might be tempted to call it Felliniesque if Vigo hadn't come first- by something like 20 years.

There are three principal roles. Dita Parlo and Jean Dastre are engaging- but never soppy- as the young couple and Michel Simon- as the barge's mate- gives an a performance that- like the movie itself- expands in the memory. Simon was a very odd human being. I'd thought of comparing him to Peter Sellers or calling him Falstaffian- but comparisons sell him short and basically he's one of a kind. Vigo realised that he was best ridden on a very loose rein and let him improvise.

Vigo was consumptive. He made L'Atalante on the Seine in winter, the cold and damp exacerbated his condition and he was dead within weeks of completing it....

A battery operated toy in the front room turned itself on and played a little tune: "This old man, he played one, he played knick-knack on my thumb." I went and took a look at it and couldn't see any explanation that wasn't paranormal.

Then it did it again....

Here's something I came across the other day on a podcast. I don't know its ultimate source. The guys were talking about DMT and other dimensions and one of them said, acknowledging it as a quote- " What we call normality is just a hallucination limited by the senses."

I remember two dreams from last night. In one I was sorting through piles of stuff I'd been storing in my mother's garage- some of which was compromising, much of which was junk and in the other I was trying to persuade a singer who looked remarkably like Charles Aznavour that he ought to be working as a Charles Aznavour tribute act. I understand the first one; the second will take some thinking about.

Yesterday afternoon the RAF Tornado scared a pigeon though the open patio door into our bookroom. My exclamation caused Ailz- who was in the kitchen- to wonder whether the plane itself had crashed. What a flutterment! A frightened pigeon takes up a lot of space both actual and psychic. Having reached the barrier of the back wall it dropped down behind a chair in the corner, settled, recovered its senses and left the way it came....

Some more Pictures

1. Thank you, Sir, the maid will show you out....

2 Harlequinade

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3. Long trousers at last!

4. Organised religion

5. David's early morning cuppa

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Just round the corner from here is a little street we go down on our way back from the big Tesco. It's name- Ecmod Rd- has been baffling us, because Ecmod isn't a name or a word in any language.

Must be an acronym, we thought.

So this morning we were trying to work it out. Our best guess was Eastbourne Council Modern Overspill Development- which would fit the area..

Not too shabby, but wrong.

Ailz did a search on line and found that the street had been built over the yard where they used to park the buses a hundred years back- and ECMOD stands for Eastbourne Corporation Municipal Omnibus Depot.

"Pity they don't have volume control on those things," said Ailz, as Airbourne- the Eastbourne air show- entered its second day. "Is it the Red Arrows again?"

I went out into the garden and caught a distant glimpse of a silver machine stood on its nose as it dived towards the sea. "Just a single plane," I said.

Ailz consulted the online programme. "It's an RAF Tornado" she said.

"What?" I said. "Can't hear you for the noise".

The soundwaves coming off that thing were almost palpable. A real tornado could hardly have been louder....

The reason it wasn't the Arrows is that it costs £20,000 a day to hire them- and Eastbourne is a bit strapped for cash these days- with half its income from the Council Tax going on housing homeless people and refugeees.

I'm all for housing people, but shouldn't the money for it be coming from some sort of central fund?

And I think back to a conversation we had earlier this summer with a gardener who was putting bedding plants in the long flower beds down by the pier. "Could be the last year we'll be doing this," he said. "Shortage of funds."

The movie, Lawrence of Arabia is a pack of lies, but then the book on which it is based, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is a pack of lies too- so why not?

I had always thought that John Buchan's Greenmantle- the story of a young Englishman posing as a Arab prophet and leading a revolt agaisnt the Ottoman Empire was a response to the Lawrence mythos, but I find that Greenmantle (published in 1916) actually comes first. Buchan designed the robes into which Lawrence obliging stepped.

What did his friends call him? It seems they may have simply called him "T.E." His given names were Thomas Edward, but I can find no record of anyone ever calling him Tom, though it seems his brothers may have called him Ned.

Bernard Shaw, who was a friend, said of him that he wasn't a liar but an actor. Someone else said he had the gift of "backing into the limelight".

David Fromkin in an incisive article for The New Criterion compares him to James Dean- an actual actor- and like Lawrence a masochist; both of them loved speed- and it killed them. He is the quintessential 20th century icon, says Fromkin- rootless, forever young, a creation of his own genius for publicity- supplemented and egged on by the hero-worship of others- which he alterately welcomed and repulsed. By a wonderful irony his guerrilla exploits and philosophy- developed in the service of Empire- became a study text for the anti-Imperialist heroes of a later generation- Che Guevara, Mao-Tse-Tung....

One quality he certainly possessed was charisma. He razzle-dazzled most of those who came within his orbit, though a society hostess (as recorded by Henry Williamson) found him boorish and a bore.

Lawrence was an assumed name, inherited from his parents who lived out of wedlock. He later tried out other ones, first Ross and then Shaw. Neither stuck. Henry Williamson called him Everest....

He didn't look much like Peter O'Toole. He had a big head and was only five foot four. If they were looking for a lookalike to play him in the movies they could have done worse than hire Stan Laurel.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a tremendous book, but its central figure never comes into focus. Is it history? Not really. Is it a novel? Not quite. What's it about? That's never entirely clear, but the descriptions of people and places are magnificent. I decided at early stage to stop trying to understand what was going on and simply enjoy the ride.....

I was a bit staggery yesterday morning, it had worn off by the afternoon, but I thought I'd take a walking stick with me this morning, not because I needed it but in order to get used to carrying one in case I need it in future.

We have a fine collection of sticks. I opted for a black malacca cane of my father's because it was the right height. It's a superior cane- as most things of my father's were- a little battered but with a silver band round the ferule. Proper hallmarked silver too. Before I take it out again I must give the band a polish....

The annual air show opened this afternoon and town was busy. The Red Arrows flew over. I sat in the Meeting House and listened to them roar. A girl with two minders (how old was she? 20 perhaps) was sat on the bus having a very noisy panic attack. "This is a bad place! I need to feel safe!" The older, senior minder talked her down- calm, reassuring and firm- the voice of authority. It's always good to witness someone being good at their job.

Walking back from the bus stop, rapping the pavement with the unnecessary stick, I felt even more than I usually do that I was an actor playing the role of an old man....

We bought this house with the proceeds from the sale of my mother's farm and our own savings. She owned 90% of it and we owned 10%. My mother died in '22 and the lawyers have been at work (slowly, slowly) and Ailz and I now own the whole of it in equal shares.

Is good.

Woke up this morning...

And it's always something sorrowful that comes next because it's the blues, innit.

In my case it was a simple case of feeling a bit ropey so I'm taking it easy today (yesterday we were out to lunch and I ate mac and cheese and that could have had something to do with it because I'm lactose intolerant ) and went back to bed for an hour and then watched a movie.

The movie was Zero de Conduite- the made-on-a-shoestring very early talkie that proves you don't have to have the resources that David Lean had to make a deathless classic. It's almost plotless, it throws a handful of gravel at the proprieties (just about all of them) and it annoyed the French authorities enough for them to ban it for twelve years. It has been inspiring other film makers ever since. It is irreverent, anarchistic and fundamentally good-natured. I didn't get it when I saw it in my early twenties but I'm so very much younger now.....

In waking life there's no-one I like less than Rock Star politico Tony Blair but in a dream last night I was very fond of him and hugging him and congratulating him on some fix he'd pulled off which involved daleks. The negotiations had been long and exhausting and he was so tired- poor thing....

I'm reading T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom at the rate of a chapter a night. As in the movie he spends a great deal of time schlepping through the desert, only the topography is very much more varied than the movie would have you believe and there's more vegetation. He describes it all very well. I admire the movie but it simplifies and sensationalises everything. That iconic scene with Omar Sharif trotting out of the heat haze to shoot Lawrence's guide? Didn't happen. In fact the character Omar plays didn't happen either- or is charitably to be regarded as an amalgam of many different people.

I'm also reading Nijinsky's Diary. Nijinsky and Lawrence were contemporaries and while I'm not quite mixing them up I'm finding they sort of intertwine. They were the rock stars of their era and ran with the same crowd- and both were friends of Ottoline Morrelll....

The Meeting House is on a side street with little foot passage and we think it safe to leave the doors open and things lying around- only it isn't. Our Friend Maggs had her purse stolen from the lobby yesterday, She and Helen were in the building but engaged alsewhere. We need to issue a warning.

I gave Ministry about how we've neglected the requirement to read snippets from Advices and Queries (or the little red book as I'm told I shouldn't be calling it) during Meeting for worship. When Keith was unofficially running things- in the lean days after covid- he was punctilious about doing so, but he has withdrawn from leadership- a natural process because his health is failing- and no-one has taken up the baton. This isn't something I feel strongly about (in fact I'm very happy to neglect the little red book) but felt prompted to say something because others do (by which I mean Ailz gave me a dig in the ribs as the Meeting was starting. I was aware as I was speaking that raising matters like this is what an elder is supposed to do. I would like to be an elder, though "like" is not quite the right word; it's rather that I think I'm a goodish fit for the job and though we have two elders their attendance is erratic- and I'm almost always around.

A while back we gave Elisa a couple of paintings. She wanted to pay us so we said she could buy us a dinner for each picture- and yesterday she took us out for the second time. I picked a place almost at random- The Grumpy Chef in Seaford- and it turned out to care about what it does. I had a view of the kitchen from where I was sitting and could see the young men working under direction- and very able and purposeful they all looked. Best meal I've had in ages...

I don't do superheroes.

Because, well, I just don't.

But I keep a weather eye on what Marvel and Disney are coming out with because- though I'm not interested in all the whizzing around and biffing people on the chin- they're dealing with the spooky things I've always been passionately interested in- but the Enlightenment dismissed- and are helping move them out of the category of fun but loopy into the category of just the way things are.

Want to keep abreast of the most advanced thinking about the Nature of Reality? Don't bother with academia or the mass media- go straight to the entertainers. They're the ones with the skinny.

And what they're telling us is sinking in. Twenty years ago people would have looked blank if you'd started talking about the Multiverse but now- no problem- they've seen Benedict Cumberbatch travelling through it.

So as like as not when the President finally steps up onto a podium and releases the truth about Roswell we'll all go, "Yeah, boring! Now tell us something we didn't already know...."

I'm weeding in the front garden and I find the discarded capsule from a Kinder Surprise. I hold it to my ear and it rattles. The toy is still inside. How exciting!

So what is it?

It's a donkey.

I don't think anything like this ever happens by accident. So what does it mean?

My mother loved donkeys. Used to support a donkey sanctuary. Perhaps it's a communication from her. Like, "I'm still around. Carry on. You're doing fine...."

Ailz sometimes calls me Donkey. First time she did it I thought it was because I was so well hung. "No" she said, "It's because you eat so much". Maybe this is affirming donkey as my spirit animal. I used to think it was otter but donkey may fit me better. Especially as I get older- and slower. No problem. Donkeys are patient, gentle. long suffering. Yes, I'll have some of that

Whatever...

I dig my donkey.

I've put it on display.....

A friend has put himself on a meat diet- nothing but meat- morning noon and night- and now he has soooo much more energy.

Yeah, right....

But, well, er....

I'm not going to say meat would choke me. I could force some down if I had to.

What it does is make me sad. I can't see meat and not think, "But that was once a delighful woolly lamb or a wise old pig or an ever so gentle and loving cow....."

I do eat fish. But not a lot of it. Fish are less endearing, less like us. I know I don't really have an excuse.

One of the channeled Entities I follow was recommending a plant-based diet- it could have been Kryon, it could have been Bashar- and someone in the audience protested, "But Jesus ate fish!" and the Entity replied, "Who said Jesus was perfect?"

It's raining. I'm happy that it's raining.

The last two issues of The Friend (the Quaker weekly) are largely taken up with reports on the Society of Friends' Yearly General Meeting. I think it's called that, but maybe I'm wrong. (Friends tend to be a bit touchy about their system of govrnance.) As it happens, the system of governance at the highest level was what was mainly being discussed- and I'm too new a Friend to understand or (I'm afraid) care very much about it. There is a thing called the Meeting for Sufferings (lovely 17th century English) which will be replaced by an ongoing General Meeting- which means those who like meetings will be meeting more often. I have no idea why this change is coming about or what the advantages or disadvantages may be- but there are people who feel strongly about it.

Another item on the agenda was the welcome- or lack of it- that our Meetings extend to trans people. Seems obvious to me. We call ourselves Friends and that's what we should be to anyone who comes through our doors.

An open letter came my way, written by a Friend called Frankie, deploring the angry and violent slogans being displayed and shouted by some of the anti-fascist demonstrators over the past few days. You don't promote peace and love by chanting "Throw the fascists in the sea". These are my feelings exactly. Anger begets anger, insult brings on insult. We want to break the chain not keep adding to it.

By the way, I see that the anti-immigrant people (I won't call them rioters unless they actually riot and they don't always get the chance or indeed want to) have been deterred from doing their thing in certain towns and cities by a massive turn-out of ordinary citizens prepared to stand in front of mosques and other possible targets and defend them by just being there.. Isn't this great? Among the places where this happened are Brighton (next door) and Oldham (our former home.)

Contrary to what people believe mad people don't make great art.

"Great wit to madness, sure, is close allied." That's something Pope tossed off. Probably without thinking it through.

The creation of great art demands mental discipline and concentration. You may be having astonishing visions but giving them artistic form is hard work.

Was Dali mad? Of course not. Eccentric, wilful, perverted, fearless, but he knew exactly what he was doing.

Madness shuts down genius. When an artist goes mad it kills their ability to make art.

I don't think Van Gogh was mad either.

Nijinsky wrote his diary as he was going mad. It isn't great art but it is the work of a great artist- and that makes it interesting. The mind wanders. The profound and the trivial sit side by side. The writing is choppy. Short sharp sentences. Non-sequiturs. He'll say a thing. And then in the next sentence say something that contradicts it. He says he's a beast. He says he's God. He doesn't censor himself

Nietsche thought he was God too. The book he wrote on the cusp is also "interesting" By a weird coincidence both Nietzsche and Nijinsky- at an interval of something like 40 years- employed the same guy to come in and make up the fires in their Swiss appartments.

I don't think mad people lose their hold on "reality". I think their mental defences get trodden down and the immensity of Reality sweeps in and overwhelms them.

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poliphilo

March 2026

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Fifty Nicker

Summer's End

Picture Diary 51

L'Atalante

A Hallucination Limited By The Senses

Flutterment

Picture Diary 50

ECMOD

As Loud As A Real Tornado

A Propos T.E. Lawrence

I Walk With A Stick

Is Good

Zero De Conduite

Rock Stars

More Like A Diary Entry Than Most Of My Posts

Marvellous

Kinder Surprise

Meat And Fish

Lets Be Friendly

Art And Madness

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