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Fiat S76 Record (1910) Engine 28,353cc S4
Production 2
FIAT SET
www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623665060711...
The Fiat S76 Record was built by Fiat in an attempt to take the World Land Speed Record then held by the Blitzen Benz. Powered by a 28,353cc four cylinder engine, producing 290bhp compressed air starting with 3 spark plugs per cylinder, ignition with low voltage magneto, water cooling, transmission with chain, axle suspension rigid with front and rear leaf springs (rear longitudinal struts), 4-speed gearbox plus reverse gear.
The first car constructed was retained by Fiat and was tested by Felice Nazzaro who declared the car uncontrollable.
The second S76 was sold by Fiat to Russian Prince Boris Soukhanov, in 1911. Soukhanov originally hired Pietro Bordino to drive the car on the Brooklands motor racing circuit in Weybridge, Surrey, England. Bordino refused to drive the car faster than 90 mph. It was later driven at the Saltburn Sands beach near Redcar & Cleveland where it reached 116mph. Soukhanov then hired American driver Arthur Duray in a December 1913 land speed record attempt at Ostende, Belgium. Duray managed a one-way speed of 132.27 mph (213 km/h), but was unable to complete a return run within the hour allotted. The Beast of Turin was granted an unofficial title of world's fastest car due to this speed, but not made official due to being unable to complete the run within the time limit.
Following the end WW1 the first S76 built was dismantled by Fiat at the end of 1919. Soukhanov's S76, missing its engine, ended up in Australia, where it was rebuilt and re-powered with a Stutz engine. The S76's career ended when it was crashed at Armadale in the early 1920s while practicing for a race to the coast. In the 1950s, it ended up with early collector Stuart Middlehurst. Middlehurst took the S76's Rudge wheels and hubs to restore one of his Hispano-Suizas. Middlehurst then gave the chassis to Neville Roberts. The chassis was later purchased by Brian Arundale in the 1980s, who identified it as the S76, but no major restoration work was made.
Duncan Pittaway obtained the chassis of Soukhanov's S76 in 2003 and had it shipped to the UK. After the discovery of the surviving S76 engine from the sister car, Pittaway started the rebuild of the S76. Three major parts of the car needed to be recreated from scratch including: The double chain-drive gearbox, the body, and the radiator. All were created by referencing original Fiat drawings, and period photographs. In November 2014, Pittaway and a team of motorists managed to return the S76's engine to working order, although more work was needed before the car was fully operational again. This was completed in 2015 and the "Beast of Turin" was displayed and driven for the first time in almost a century at the Goodwood Festival of Speed between 23 – 26 June 2015. followed just two weeks later by its apearance and timed assault of the Chateau Impney Hillclimb
Many thanks for a fantabulous
47,933,972 views
Shot at the NEC Classic Car Show 13:11:2015 Ref. 112-193
This marcher began sobbing uncontrollably after hearing a woman read the names of those who have died in ICE custody. "They're killing our babies," I heard her say through her tears.
Another woman immediately rushed forward to comfort her and stayed with her the entire time until she regained her composure then helped her get back on her feet.
It was heartbreaking to see this but despite my own tears, I felt happy and fortunate to witness this natural act of human kindness at it's absolute best.
Have I mentioned I became a role model? Yeah, at least for the rescues. When you think I was once so insecure and uncontrollable and now I show the rescues how to be good dogs, this is quite an achievement! After our morning stroll, for some reason my mum took longer than usual to head inside, so I stood there with Maggie, the abused Cavalier, and Bonnie, found in the streets severely matted, skinny and with a punctured eye, showing them how to enjoy the good stuff in life.
This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.
The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.
As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.
The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.
Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.
Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.
Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.
In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.
However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.
Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.
With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.
In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.
Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.
As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.
In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.
Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.
I made a firefly.
I want to believe the red kohrok shield is a prototype, but I have no proof that it is. It may just be a knockoff. But it's neat!
Features:
Openable wings
Head tilts up and down
Legs wiggle back and forth uncontrollably and look bad
Yeah I suck at taking photos these angles are all awful
Jan. 14 - Feb 5th, 2011 at Roq La Rue Gallery. www.roqlarue.com.
About “Honey and Lightening”
“Honey and Lightening” is a show of installation chambers, sculptures of talismanic birds and a series of staged photographs all revolving around examining the mercurial nature of human desire. The substances honey and lightening both have literary, mythical and archetypal references to the occurrence and evolution of desire and it’s fading. I see one as the slow ooze of pleasure and the other as the dangerous, uncontrollable and inexplicably instant occurrence of magnetism between two bodies.
Two installation chambers create full body experiences of these ephemeral phenomena and crystallize them in tangible form as a way to signify the human longing for a perfect stasis of experience – which is impossible as emotion begins to degrade, evolve, fold in upon itself after the initial strike.
The Honey Moon chamber is a 10 foot tall mirrored jewelry box spanning 12 feet, enclosing a giant engorged golden chandelier formation encrusted with tens of thousands of gold-colored trinkets – the cheapest of the trashiest materials but representing the purest element from the bowels of the earth that has induced lust to the point of violence since pre-history. This giant mass of gold, as well as the body of the viewer, is reflected infinitely in 35 mirrored panels that create a simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive encounter that memorializes a temporary event. The mythology of honey, a bodily fluid produced from flowers, has long been associated with the ooze of erotic perfection. An ambrosial month of drinking honey-wine has followed the wedding ceremony since the Pharaohs. But locked up in the folklore of this transitional period is that the delirium ends and the state of bliss is forever sought after.
The Cherry Tree Root chamber is, in a way, a reverence to my own experience with Colpo di fulmine — “love at first sight” in Italian, which literally translate to “lightning strike”, and a craving to re-experience a place and time that no longer exists. Recently digging a 16 foot deep foundation hole, my husband and I removed 72 tons of dirt from our property to build a studio, exposing deep and gnarled roots that seems like frozen solidified lightening, long forgotten, dug up by us to lay the foundation for the rooms we hope we’ll die in. The root chamber is like entering this underground world hidden from view of long- ago electric ephemeral desires that have now turned into strong and sturdy roots- not as flashy as lightening but quietly enduring and growing. The roots are battered beautiful twisting accumulations of crocheted scraps of fabric I’ve saved for years, old ropes and remnants of past installations, hand-spun hair, rabbit fur and old clothes, all coated in the dirt from below my family’s foundation.
Creating a chamber to recede into is an homage to Jeffry Michell’s 2001 installation “Hanabuki”, the site of our own lightening strike, a catalytic phenomenon that lasted a millisecond. Like life itself beginning with lightening striking the primordial soup, the mythology of celestial fire recognizes its ability to create fast irreversible transformation. Despite the impossibility of it, I made my chamber as a way to revisit and remember the secret place Jeffry made, the fur-lined hut that was a pleasure palace where I fell in love, presided over by little dancing gods spreading the joys of the pleasure in all bodies, a beginning of something that seemed temporary and ill-fated but really turned out to be deep-rooted like an ancient tree.
The installation also includes a gathering of talismanic birds made of leather and more than a thousand individually cut and sewn silk and satin feathers, representing my imminent needs but using imagery used by a variety of ancient peoples and cultures — a desire for protection, for a guide, and harbingers of happiness in the form of a raptors. In photographs, close friends and my husband play out roles that tie into the everyday events of their lives, but represented as re-interpreted gods and goddesses such as Hecate, Demeter and the Green Man. The photos speak to themes of cross-roads, the double pull of isolation vs. community, a power buried in the beginnings of motherhood and the visceral erotic pull of the earth, volatile but buried like a dormant volcano.
Sponsored in part by by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs CityArtist Grant and 4Culture/King County Lodging Tax Revenue.
you see what you want to ....A phone: numbers, connections, people... LOL...or The Enneagram triad of connection to the basic triad (Heart, body and mind)! 741: too little, 852 too much, 963 confused, seeks it in the surroundings ...
Triades of controllability (comes from: inside,both, social): 789: uncontrollable, 456: restricted, 123: controlled by expectation.
None of the above is traditional description within The Enneagram! My own interpretation.
Many thanks to all, who takes the time to view, comment and fave my pictures.
Come one, come all, please take your seat!
Prepare yourselves for a very special treat!
Now feast your eyes on the center ring
There you'll see a most horrible thing!
==================================================
I hear the murmur of the crowd as the announcer finishes his array
of cliff-hangers. The house is almost full.
The natural instinct to shield my eyes from the jeers and stares is almost
uncontrollable, but I try to resist. This is my destiny after all... my bread
and butter.
My parents told me that God had a special purpose for me.
I think that God has forgotten what my purpose is.
Someone in the crowd once told me that we are the forgotten
ones, Gods mistakes. That's okay, we all make mistakes.
==================================================
Is it a woman? Or an ogre? Or a "thing"?
Why, It's the worst of the worst you've ever seen!
Cry not for the monster,
For she’s been evil since birth!
Ladies and gentlemen,
WE GIVE YOU THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!
******
(My tribute to the 'other' greatest show on earth, HBO's Carnivale.
I've been watching the DVD collection of episodes and I just cant
get enough. Do yourself a favor and rent it!)
Made Flickrs interestingness pages for June 1st 07'
Jan. 14 - Feb 5th, 2011 at Roq La Rue Gallery. www.roqlarue.com.
About “Honey and Lightening”
“Honey and Lightening” is a show of installation chambers, sculptures of talismanic birds and a series of staged photographs all revolving around examining the mercurial nature of human desire. The substances honey and lightening both have literary, mythical and archetypal references to the occurrence and evolution of desire and it’s fading. I see one as the slow ooze of pleasure and the other as the dangerous, uncontrollable and inexplicably instant occurrence of magnetism between two bodies.
Two installation chambers create full body experiences of these ephemeral phenomena and crystallize them in tangible form as a way to signify the human longing for a perfect stasis of experience – which is impossible as emotion begins to degrade, evolve, fold in upon itself after the initial strike.
The Honey Moon chamber is a 10 foot tall mirrored jewelry box spanning 12 feet, enclosing a giant engorged golden chandelier formation encrusted with tens of thousands of gold-colored trinkets – the cheapest of the trashiest materials but representing the purest element from the bowels of the earth that has induced lust to the point of violence since pre-history. This giant mass of gold, as well as the body of the viewer, is reflected infinitely in 35 mirrored panels that create a simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive encounter that memorializes a temporary event. The mythology of honey, a bodily fluid produced from flowers, has long been associated with the ooze of erotic perfection. An ambrosial month of drinking honey-wine has followed the wedding ceremony since the Pharaohs. But locked up in the folklore of this transitional period is that the delirium ends and the state of bliss is forever sought after.
The Cherry Tree Root chamber is, in a way, a reverence to my own experience with Colpo di fulmine — “love at first sight” in Italian, which literally translate to “lightning strike”, and a craving to re-experience a place and time that no longer exists. Recently digging a 16 foot deep foundation hole, my husband and I removed 72 tons of dirt from our property to build a studio, exposing deep and gnarled roots that seems like frozen solidified lightening, long forgotten, dug up by us to lay the foundation for the rooms we hope we’ll die in. The root chamber is like entering this underground world hidden from view of long- ago electric ephemeral desires that have now turned into strong and sturdy roots- not as flashy as lightening but quietly enduring and growing. The roots are battered beautiful twisting accumulations of crocheted scraps of fabric I’ve saved for years, old ropes and remnants of past installations, hand-spun hair, rabbit fur and old clothes, all coated in the dirt from below my family’s foundation.
Creating a chamber to recede into is an homage to Jeffry Michell’s 2001 installation “Hanabuki”, the site of our own lightening strike, a catalytic phenomenon that lasted a millisecond. Like life itself beginning with lightening striking the primordial soup, the mythology of celestial fire recognizes its ability to create fast irreversible transformation. Despite the impossibility of it, I made my chamber as a way to revisit and remember the secret place Jeffry made, the fur-lined hut that was a pleasure palace where I fell in love, presided over by little dancing gods spreading the joys of the pleasure in all bodies, a beginning of something that seemed temporary and ill-fated but really turned out to be deep-rooted like an ancient tree.
The installation also includes a gathering of talismanic birds made of leather and more than a thousand individually cut and sewn silk and satin feathers, representing my imminent needs but using imagery used by a variety of ancient peoples and cultures — a desire for protection, for a guide, and harbingers of happiness in the form of a raptors. In photographs, close friends and my husband play out roles that tie into the everyday events of their lives, but represented as re-interpreted gods and goddesses such as Hecate, Demeter and the Green Man. The photos speak to themes of cross-roads, the double pull of isolation vs. community, a power buried in the beginnings of motherhood and the visceral erotic pull of the earth, volatile but buried like a dormant volcano.
Sponsored in part by by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs CityArtist Grant and 4Culture/King County Lodging Tax Revenue.
Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. AX 6605.
On 16 April 2020, French Chanson singer and composer Christophe (1945) a.k.a. Daniel Bevilacqua has passed away. Christophe became famous in the early 1960s with his hits 'Aline' and 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. He died of complications by the Coronavirus at the age of 74.
Christophe was born Daniel Georges Jacques Bevilacqua in the Paris suburb of Juvisy-sur-Orge, in 1945. His father was an Italian-born building contractor. Daniel grew up to be an uncontrollable rebel. He hated school with a vengeance, complaining that his studies bored him to death, and by the age of 16 the young rebel had managed to get expelled from a dozen French boarding schools and 'lycées'. Like many other young teenagers in France, Daniel was bitten by the rock & roll bug in the late 1950s. he dreamed of launching his own music career and he devoted all his spare time to practicing guitar and teaching himself to play the harmonica. Daniel went on to form his first group in 1961, becoming the lead singer and guitarist of Les Hooligans. Danny Baby et Les Hooligans performed widely on the local bar and club circuit, playing covers of Gene Vincent songs and rock & roll classics such as 'Heartbreak Hotel'. In 1965, he changed his name to Christophe and had a massive hit with 'Aline'. This slow, romantic ballad proved phenomenally successful with the French public and went on to sell over 1 million copies. It was the smash hit of the summer of 1965. Following the phenomenal success of 'Aline', Christophe went on to record a whole string of hits such as 'Marionnettes' (1965), 'J'ai entendu la mer' (1966) and 'Excusez-moi Monsieur le Professeur' (1967). Another hit was the song 'Oh!... Mon Amour' which he sang in French and Italian. Christophe wasted no time in acquiring a rock & roll lifestyle to go with his new status as leading 60's pop star. The singer soon developed a real passion for sports cars, and he was often to be seen cruising around Paris in his collection of shining new Lamborghinis. Christophe eventually became so obsessed with fast cars and powerful engines that he ended up taking part in a Formula 1 race in 1968. He composed a part of the soundtrack of the film La route de Salina/Road to Salina (Georges Lautner, 1970). The song 'Sunny Road to Salina' returned years later on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004).
After a small break, Christophe returned in 1971, with Francis Dreyfus launching the record company Disques Motor and becoming the producer of Christophe records. The results were the albums 'Les Paradis perdus' (Lost Paradises, 1973) and 'Les mots bleus' (Blue Wordsd, 1974) with lyrics by Jean-Michel Jarre). They marked a turning-point in Christophe's musical style, and also heralded a radical change of image. Christophe left his squeaky clean 'Boy Next Door' look behind, re-inventing himself as a decadent and flamboyant dandy. Christophe's singing style had also changed - gone were the days of pop idol seriousness, Christophe now sang in a detached, faintly ironic way, crooning his way almost sarcastically through his new hit 'Señorita'. This new-style Christophe appeared to go down extremely well with his fans. Indeed, when the singer performed at the prestigious Olympia concert-hall in Paris in November 1974, his show was greeted with rapturous applause and hysterical cries of 'encore'. Suffering from a bout of nervous exhaustion and depression, the singer soon acquired a destructive drug habit. In 1978, he came back with 'Le Beau Bizarre'. Christophe's career appeared to be heading into a downward spiral when his wife, Véronique, encouraged him to re-release his very first hit single 'Aline'. Véronique's suggestion proved to be a brilliant idea - in 1980 'Aline' catapulted Christophe back to the top of the French charts, and sold 3.5 million copies. In 1983, Christophe released the single, 'Succès fou' (Crazy Success), followed by the album 'Clichés d'amour' (1984) on which he sang 1940s and 1950s classics such as 'Arrivederci Roma' and 'Dernier baiser', a French version of the Mexican classic 'Besame mucho'. In 1985, he wrote 'Ne raccroche pas' a song which is believed to be about the Princess Stephanie of Monaco. The following year, he wrote the song 'Boule de flipper' for Corynne Charby. In 1996, after a break, he returned with his album 'Bevilacqua'. It marked the beginning of a major Christophe comeback. For the very first time in his career, the singer wrote all of the songs on his new album, which revealed a more sympathetic, personal side to the public. Christophe, who had developed a passionate interest in synthesisers and techno, also explored the new possibilities offered by computers and he spent several months locked away in his home studio sampling voices and electronic sounds for 'Bevilacqua'. In 2001, he released another album 'Comm' si la terre penchait' (As If the Earth was Leaning At An Angle). This album confirmed Christophe's remarkable comeback and also proved his talent as an acute social observer and his ability to take new musical influences on board and weave them into imaginative new fusion styles. In February 2002, Christophe performed, in Clermont-Ferrand, his first live concert in more than two decades, followed by two appearances at the Olympia in March 2002. In 2011, Christophe took part in a tribute album for Alain Bashung two years after the latter's death. He sang 'Alcaline', a song written by Bashung in 1989 for his album Novice. Christophe released 14 studio albums in all, the most recent, 'Les Vestiges du Chaos', in 2016. In the 1960s Christophe was in a relationship with singer Michelle Torr. As an actor, Christophe could be seen in Quand j’étais chanteur/The Singer (Xavier Giannoli, 2006) with Gérard Depardieu, Jeanne/Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont, 2019) and a few short films. He played an angel in the yet unreleased film Sol y sombra (Dominique Abel, 2020) with Jacqueline Bisset. Christophe died of emphysema after being in critical condition due to COVID-19 associated with a previous comorbidity (COPD) on 16 April 2020. In the 1960s, Christophe was in a relationship with singer Michelle Torr. In 1971, he married his girlfriend Véronique Kan and they had a daughter, Lucie.
Sources: RFI Musique, Les Gens du Cinema (French). Wikipedia and IMDb.
A friend at work loaned me her dvd of "The Notebook" this evening... surprisingly, as many movies as I go to. This is one that escaped me. I had heard how sad it was... but as I was watching it. I kept thinking "this aint so sad". It was a very sweet, enjoyable romantic movie, and the opening scene did tug at my heart... but no tears... then it got to the last 5 minutes, and I was crying uncontrollably. OMG, that had to be one of the most romantic endings I have ever seen... Jesus Christ.
French postcard, no. 530. Photo: C.F.C.
Character actor Raymond Aimos (1891–1944) or simply Aimos was one of the familiar faces of the French cinema of the 1930s and early 1940s. During this golden age of poetic realism, he was the quintessential 'Titi Parisien' (Parisian kid) in at least 105 films. His film characters generally corresponded with himself: humble, poor, colourful, cheeky but with a heart of gold.
Raymond Aimos was born as Raymond Arthur Coudurier in La Fère in the North of France in 1891 (1889 (sic) according to IMDb and other sources). He was the son of a watchmaker-jeweler and was expected to work in the family business but young Raymond was uncontrollably attracted to show business. He managed to become an opera singer under the stage name Aimos. According to urban legends, retold by different sources, he made his first film appearance as a kid either in the Lumière brothers’ L’arroseur arose/The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895, Louis Lumière) or in a film by another legendary film pioneer, Georges Méliès. (In the first film, the naughty boy was Benoît Duval). However, officially Aimos made his cinema debut in the short silent western Pendaison à Jefferson City/Hanging at Jefferson City (1910, Jean Durand) with Joë Hamman and Gaston Modot. He appeared in more early silent shorts, like the Onesime comedies Onésime et le nourrisson de la nourrice indigne/ Onesimus and the infant unworthy of the nurse (1912, Jean Durand), Onésime a un duel à l'américaine/Onesime has an American-style duel (1912, Jean Durand) and Onésime horloger/Onesime, Clockmaker (1912, Jean Durand), all starring Ernest Bourbon aka Onésime. A decade later, Aimos appeared in the Three Musketeers-sequel Vingt Ans après/Five Years Later (1922, Henri Diamant-Berger), based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas père. These film parts had all been modest, but Aimos’ lucky strike would be the coming of sound.
Aimos' physical appearance, his popular roots and mostly his gift of gab were in perfect harmony with the sound cinema of the 1930s. He was wonderful as a humble man of the people in two masterpieces by René Clair, Sous les toits de Paris/Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) starring Albert Préjean, and Quatorze juillet/July 14 (1933) with Annabella. It lead to more work for important directors. He appeared for Raymond Bernard as a soldier in the war drama Les croix de bois/Wooden Crosses (1932) with Pierre Blanchar, and a clochard in Amants et voleurs/Lovers and Thieves (1935) with Arletty, for Sacha Guitry as another clochard in Ils étaient neuf célibataires/Nine Bachelors (1939), for Marcel Carné as Quart-Vittel, the wreck in Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (1938), and for Jean Grémillon in Lumière d'été/Summer Light (1943) starring Madeleine Renaud. His most memorable roles were in the films by Julien Duvivier, such as Mulot, the legionary friend of Jean Gabin in La Bandera, and Tintin, one of the five friends who build a riverside café after winning the jackpot in the lottery in La Belle Équipe with Jean Gabin and Charles Vanel. He also appeared in Duvivier’s Paquebot Tenacity and L’homme du jour. At IMDb, Guy Bellinger writes: “But even when he worked for less distinctive directors his presence was an asset for the film.” Some of these films now belong to the highlights of the Poetic realism, a French genre of the 1930s of lyrical, stylized and studio-bound films which offered a fatalistic view of life with their characters living on the margins of society, either as unemployed members of the working class or as criminals. Raymond Aimos was a courageous man in life. In August 1944, he decided to take part in the uprising against the Nazis which would lead to the Liberation of Paris. He was unfortunately hit by a stray bullet in the 10th Arrondissement. The exact circumstances of his death remain unclear and undetermined. He was only 53. Raymond Aimos never married and had no children. But he left an impressive film legacy, according to some sources he even appeared in nearly 450 films (IMDb only mentions 105 films)!
Sources: Simon Benattar-Bourgeay (Ciné-Artistes), Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Les Légendes du Cinéma (French), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
cure-for-mrsa.plus101.com What Is Mrsa, Mrsa Cured, What Is Mrsa Infection, Mrsa Bacteremia, Mrsa Infection Treatment . What Is MRSA? Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an infection caused by a type of Staphylococcus, or staph, bacteria that’s resistant to many different antibiotics. These bacteria naturally live in the nose and on the skin and generally don’t cause any harm. However, when they begin to multiply uncontrollably, a MRSA infection can occur. These infections typically occur when there’s a cut or break in your skin.
MRSA is very contagious and can be spread through direct contact with an infected person. It can also be contracted by coming into contact with an object or surface that an infected person has touched. Though a MRSA infection can be serious, it may be treated effectively with antibiotics
Who Is at Risk for Developing MRSA?
Risk factors vary depending on the type of MRSA infection.
You’re at an increased risk for HA-MRSA if you:
were hospitalized within the past three months
regularly undergo hemodialysis
have a weakened immune system due to another medical condition
live in a nursing home
You’re at an increased risk for CA-MRSA if you:
are a man who has sex with other men
share exercise equipment, towels, or razors with other people
participate in contact sports
work at a day care facility
live in crowded or unsanitary conditions
What are the signs and symptoms of a MRSA infection?
The incubation period (time between infection and start of symptoms) is variable and may depend on the particular strain of MRSA and the person's immunity. Most MRSA infections are skin infections that produce the following signs and symptoms:
Cellulitis, an infection of the skin or the fat and tissues under the skin, usually starting as small red bumps in the skin. It includes redness, swelling of the tissues, warmth, and tenderness.
Boils (pus-filled infections of hair follicles)
Abscesses (collections of pus in or under the skin)
Sty (an infection of an oil gland of the eyelid)
Carbuncles (infections larger than an abscess, usually with several openings to the skin)
Impetigo (a skin infection with pus-filled blisters)
Rash or skin redness (skin appears to be reddish or have red-colored areas)
All of these skin infections are painful.
A major problem with MRSA (and occasionally other staph infections) is that occasionally the skin infection can spread to almost any other organ in the body. When this happens, it is a deep or invasive infection that can spread to the blood and infect internal organs.
MRSA Secrets Revealed: Safe Effective Methods for Handling Staph and MRSA Your Doctor Isn't Telling You
click here: cure-for-mrsa.plus101.com
55thst and 5th avenue
Hands filthy black, malodorous, staring downward, almost immobile, reeking of cheap whiskey and urine, stopped dead in his tracks on a street corner where a church feeds homeless.
His head hangs low,
he looks as if he is foreign even to himself.
He says nothing.
He stares at the cracks on the pavement.
His hair is matted in some areas.
He came to America to win in life. He ended up losing, sleeping on its filthy pissed filled pavements and subway vents. He never had many friends. He was his worst enemy.
There was a girl in his small town who once and only once kissed him on the cheek.
This was 30 or 40 years ago. She ran away embarrassed.
He wanted that moment to last forever. He never ever ever forgot that moment. He still thinks about it as if it was yesterday. He memorized her face, her thin body her childish way. He thinks about her too much. He knows it. He cant STOP thinking about it. He cries sometimes about it. Sometimes its uncontrollable. He screams in a foreign language but its pain in any language. He puts his dirty filthy hands on his ears to deaden the sounds. He sees her. He sees her coming. He awaits. She never comes. Whiskey takes his pain away. He thinks he loves her. He thinks he does. He cant erase her from his mind. At night when he finds a cigarette on the pavement and he sits in a store front she talks to him. He then yells and curses himself for the life he's led. This scares passersby and once got him in trouble with the police.
As he stands on the corner of 55th street and 5th ave all he thinks about, all he yearns for is another kiss from her....... just one, only one more kiss on his cheek.................
as tears stream from his eyes.
Man Hat Tan
Photography’s new conscience
Algorithmic Drive and The Iterative Roundabout from the Manœuvres series | Conduite algorithmique et Le Rond-point itératif de la série Manœuvres
No, this is not watercolor. But I have had an image of a painting in my head for over a week that I am not certain that I could achieve the result with watercolor. So I decide to give alcohol ink a try after I see many gorgeous work on the internet.
I am excited about this medium but not sure I love it as much as watercolor yet. A non-porous paper (in this case it is Yupo paper) is required. It's quite uncontrollable. Definitely need a mask and a good ventilation. An embossing heat gun makes life much easier.
I just have to ask if anyone else fisheye lens attracts dust on a factor of 100x like mine does. I am pretty diligent about keeping my equipment clean but even still dust makes it on most of my lenses as I shoot through the day, but never anything that is a pain to fix in post. My fisheye however went from perfectly clean to an uncontrollable amount of dust in my shots in less than 2 hours of shooting. I actually completely pulled back the sky in this one because it was basically a field of dust spots. Just wondering if anyone else has this issue and how they combat it.
The Lewis Chessmen were discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis. 78 were found in total, representing one of the few complete medieval chess sets still around today. These figures hail from Norway (as the Norse ruled over the Isle of Lewis in the Middle Ages) and are carved from walrus ivory.
This photo is a composite of two photos taken at the National Museum of Scotland. The figure on the left is a bishop, the right is modeled after a berserker (known for fighting in an uncontrollable trance) that served as a rook for the purpose of the game.
I think these guys are awesome, and if I played chess I would already have a set of them. I was pleased when I saw the complete set in the British Museum a week later.
I think all 19th century tourists to Japan had the uncontrollable urge to dress in Japanese attire.
Completely understandable if you look at the uncomfortable European fashion of the 19th century.
Note on the backside:"Erinnerung auf deine (sic.) Freund Bobinec"
Dedicated to Mike Jones who just can't get enough of these pics.
Only in America and mainly in Florida will someone pay big bucks for a pair of jeans which advertises the company. Only in Miami will someone wear a pair of bright orange jeans (the same color of prison uniforms) with the word "Juicy" planted on their butt cheek.
And thanks to the Apple iPhone, I've captured the moment to bring it to my Flickr friends from around the globe.
Enjoy it Jones!!!
Screenshot from the video game " Zombie Army Trilogy ".
In this picture from left to right you have a Soviet soldier, German officer and a member of the French resistance.
This is right after the second world war, as one situation ends only for another horrible one to begin.
Former enemies have now become allies, as they struggle to survive during a zombie apocalypse.
Which was brought on by a defeated and desperate Hitler, who unleashed an evil supernatural force on the world.
One that reanimated his dead soldiers and created an uncontrollable army of the undead.
Pan
Goats: Given his part-goat appearance, goats are naturally associated with Pan, symbolizing fertility and the untamed aspects of nature.
*
One story involving Pan is the tale of war, in which Pan helps his friend survive a vicious struggle by letting out an immense cry that frightened the enemy and caused him to run away. From this story, we get the word “panic,” the sudden, uncontrollable fear that leads people into irrational behavior.
*
Pan, ruled over nature and pasturelands. He is frequently depicted in literature and artworks.
*
the the half man half ram has been seen as
*faun, in Roman mythology, a creature that is part human and part goat, akin to a Greek satyr
*The satanic "horned god" symbol known as the baphomet is based on an Egyptian ram deity that was worshipped in Mendes, called Banebdjed (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of Osiris.
*The earliest known suggested depiction of Satan is in a sixth-century mosaic, in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. The image "shows the devil as an ethereal blue angel, [but this was] ultimately shed in favor of a more demonic appearance with animalistic traits," Montesano said
*
so probably best to know your demons from your deities when venturing out into the wilds:P
*
AI/PIXLR/GIMP
Grotesque aRT
'Kariobangi' hit maker dies coinless aged 102
By George Orido
"Kila siku Kariobangi
Mwenye pombe anakuuzia
Lakiani anakuonya
Na wewe umelipia
Na polisi akitokea
Unamwaga pompe
Unatoroka ukitoa jasho
Kila mtu chonjo chonjo, Kariobangi"
You mostly likely have heard this once popular song being played on one of our many radio stations. The song, ‘Kariobangi’, became an instant hit when it was released in the 1970s, hurling Mbwaya Abene Atieli, its singer, to instant celebrity status. The song went on to top the charts for a decade. As a result, Mr Mbwaya became a common feature in social places where with his musical instrument, the Litungu, he belted out the song, narrating the tribulations that men in the sprawling slum of Kariobangi went through after imbibing chang’aa.
In the song, Mbwaya warns men against going to Karibangi to drink the killer brew. In a powerful voice, backed by the shrill Litungu, the musician warns: “Beware of the chang’aa peddler who sells the drink to you, but warns you warns you (to drink it quickly) and yet you have paid for the drink with your hard-earned money.”
Powerful Voice Sadly, the man who sang this popular song that caught the imagination of Kenyans in the 1970s and that still has relevance to date given the havoc that chang’aa and other such brews continues to wreak in our midst, is no more. The cruel hand of death silenced his powerful voice on Saturday evening. But the man who mentored the famed Jabali Afrika music group, which is currently based in the US, will remain in the hearts and minds of many a Kenyan, immortalised by his timeless music.
Mbwaya died at the age of 102 in his modest rural home of Itabalia in East Bunyore in Emuhaya, Vihiga County. “I composed Kariobangi as way of stopping the consumption of illicit brews that in my view not only turned people into zombies but also deprived the family of all earnings from the man,” he told a KTN reporter 12 years ago.
Other than the Kariobangi hit, Mbwaya also recorded ‘Omurembo Akulwa Ling’ondo’ (A beautiful lady has to be bought with money), ‘Abashiele Bamanya Okhupima’ (Old women know better), ‘Nakula Ingubho Sotsia Ebuhwe’ (One cannot go where he is married) and ‘Orakula Skuta’ (Start a Scooter). In his heyday, he sang alongside such greats as Fundi Konde and Fadhili Williams. But at some point, the Government found his music to be too toxic and he was banned from performing for nearly eight years. “They said my music was inciting people against higher authorities,” he told KTN in an interview in 2004.
Mbwaya, like many other musicians, died a pauper, thanks to music pirates who continue to feed on musicians’ blood like leaches.
“He died crying out loud that his birthright was stolen from him with people playing his music on the internet and selling his CD without paying him,” said Patlas Mankale who played music with the old man before forming his own band, Kaluoto Original.
After Kenyans failed to reward his artistic flair, Mbaya, who rose to stardom when he met a British producer, a Dr Johnson decades ago, settled on weaving baskets to earn his daily bread. Following his death business came to a standstill at Itabalia village. “We are so saddened by my grandfather’s demise. I pray that God almighty rest his soul in peace,” said Jackton Serenje, his grandson.
Women wailed uncontrollably and men chanted on receiving the news of the elderly man’s demise. “He used to play for us the Litungu as he sang his songs, which were full of metaphors and proverbs,” said granddaughter Alice Kwando as she prepared seats for elders to start funeral arrangement meetings yesterday evening.
The director of the Nairobi Chambers Chorus, which performed for Queen Elizabeth at Windsor two years ago, praised the musician, terming him a pioneer of African and Kenyan music. “He is one of the people who brought Kenyan creativity to the limelight and should be acknowledged for his commitment and achievement as a statesman,’ he said. Rare Talent Benson Abwao, who heads the Kenya Music Festival and also comes from Bunyore, termed the fallen hero a man with a rare artistic talent. “He led by example. He was meticulous and enjoyed merging his lyrics with the instruments and I can’t recall anyone who has done it so well with the Litungu.
Head of Kenya Schools, Colleges and universities Drama Festival Sirengo Khaemba termed Mbwaya a thrifty cultural entrepreneur who did so much with very little resources. “Rest in Peace Atieli chonjo Chonjo, you made a mark, Bunyore’s finest,” Jabali Afrika’s Joseck Asikoye said. Standard Group Online Editor David Ohito, who met the fallen giant in 2002, said the man had a unique talent. “It is unfortunate that his work is all over the place - on internet and media houses here and abroad - but I doubt he got paid for it,” he said, adding that when he visited him, the man was living in abject poverty.
Read more at: www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000191013&story_t...
The moment that brought be to uncontrollable tears!
What's a mom to do standing on the ground watching this---helplessly; realizing that she is almost at the top and THEN WHAT???
She has to come BACK DOWN!!! That's what!!!
Robert Devlin - Bitch on Wheels
Chariot Books 156, 1960
Cover photo uncredited
"Darlene used her wild, uncontrollable passions to jump from a Texas shack to the plush lined beds of big city vice..."
When hate takes over,
I find a darkness in me.
I'm blinded by you,
And now I can't see.
When hate takes over,
I'm no longer free.
My rage builds inside,
As I'm sure you'll soon see.
best viewed large
These tiny butterfly-like drones are the result of an experimental project to create and observe simple self-replicating biomechanical organisms.
Unfortunately, following a breach at the facility where they were created, these 'iron monarch drones' escaped into the wild and began reproducing in huge, uncontrollable numbers.
Efforts to cull the population have so far been unsuccessful, and the drones have become a common sight all over the globe.
I think that some of my past abandonment issues along with other problems with opening up to people really stemmed from my parents and their toxic relationship. There was a messy divorce when I was 5 years old, they fought a lot even afterward and that definitely hurt more than it helped us kids. My dad eventually married again and had another family, and although my dad kept in contact through email (early 2000’s) and an occasional phone call our visits grew far and few between. I always wanted to be the light of my dads life, always getting good grades and trying to be the best well mannered kid that ate all of her vegetables and impressed all of the adults. I held out hope that my parents would get back together and I blamed my moms resentful demeanor towards him as the reason why I would never belong to a happy and whole family. In my adolescence though I grew more and more angry at how HE handled things and understood more why she had her outbursts and nights crying in her room. When I finally stood up to him about how he essentially disowned my little sister he cut off contact. I not only grew up thinking I wasn’t worthy of love after my father left but also had no idea of what love looked like. I’ve looked back on a lot of my adult relationships and realized I self sabotage when things start to get really real. I push people away to see if they really care about me.
7 years ago I started dating a guy who I was so overwhelmingly into, he was from a good family, he just got out of the Army, and we had a matching sense of humor. Great right?! But I was the one texting/calling him and trying to make plans, only recently did I realize that I was simply seeking his approval (just like I had with my father) and wondering why I wasn’t good enough to be thought of first. We started dating which I was over the moon about because OH MY GOD HE PICKED ME but soon after I noticed he had bouts of rage but I chocked it up to PTSD from Afghanistan. I stuck through it and I got pregnant after the holidays in 2015.
I got the news and told him the same day but he was less than thrilled and it actually looked like the blood drained from his face. Thats when the switch flipped. He told me he wanted me to get an abortion and that he didn’t want to have a kid with me or anyone. He was cold and heartless for the whole month before I went to the abortion clinic. The day of my appointment, I was sad. I remember my mom texted me that morning telling me she loved me and I wore my late grandmothers comfy sweater so I would feel like I had some support. My ride had to cancel because it snowed so HE had to drive me. He sat with me in the waiting room but I felt utterly alone, he was even joking with his friend via text saying that he was “at the clinic, where miracles go to die” and showed me it thinking I would laugh. I didn’t, I took the phone and threw it across the room. They have you speak with a psychiatrist before you go in and ask you questions like “are you being pressured into this?” Then I was asked “Why are you doing this?” To which I replied “Because I feel like I have nothing to offer a child” and the response that I got was one I’ll never forget and still brings tears to my eyes “you have yourself to offer”. But to me I wasn’t good enough, or so that’s what I had thought all my life. So, I went into the back room, and I got put under during the procedure. I woke up groggy and already sobbing uncontrollably. I was comforted by the nurses briefly and then carted into a room to “recover” for 30 minutes before I could leave. We drove home and even though it was late in the afternoon I went straight to bed and slept.
Two weeks later I found out I had been cheated on for almost my entire relationship. I found out I was pregnant again. I wasn’t sure what to do about my newly ended relationship but I knew I wasn’t going to give up my invitation to motherhood like before. I wasn’t going to let anyone sway my decision, even if that meant raising my child alone. For the whole first trimester of my pregnancy he told me he hoped I had a miscarriage, asked me “if it was still alive” and told me to have another abortion. I didn’t even live with him and he was relentless. I couldn’t sleep, I ate only because I knew I had to, and spent most of my days in my bedroom binging shows or going to the gym. I was depressed and I don’t use that term lightly. I couldn’t keep a job and felt like my world was imploding, I didn’t know what was next but I knew I had hope as long as my child was healthy and I could take care of him.
When we found out it was a boy it’s almost like the switch flipped on again and he was excited for his son to be born. I ended up moving back in with my sons father and for the next 4 years I was treated as a guest in his home and told that I was worthless and to kill myself. I tried to seek help and talk about it with his family but the blind eye kept being turned. I felt that because he was so narcissistic that no one bothered to speak up to him. His mother did, with the first pregnancy, and I’ll always be thankful for that. But the years of emotional and verbal abuse afterward took a huge chunk out of me as an individual. My mother spoke up when I told her that he said to kill myself for about the 8th time but that didn’t stop him from getting in my face from time to time and yelling at me to get the fuck out of his house and to leave our son there. He had a heavy drinking problem and one night pissed on the floor in the bathroom because he couldn’t stand straight, as I stood there in disbelief my son who was 3 years old at the time asked me “why is daddy doing that?” And I decided then that we needed to move out.
After a while I ended up getting my own place a few towns away and he had already been talking to a woman he met online. That was difficult for me only because she has a son almost the same age as mine and not only had I felt instantly replaced but my son was confused as well, and it didn’t make matters easier when he had them move in a few months later. I was out of control with my anger and resentment and started to see a pattern I had seen in my childhood. I would blow up over the phone, name call, and I tried to control the situation any way I knew how.
It wasn’t until mid March of 2020 that I decided I needed to seek real help. I went to my doctor because I had been crying so much and felt like every day was just a blur into the next. I knew that my son deserved better than to see me like that and immediately started therapy and Serotonin inhibitors. My healing process hasn’t been ideal or easy but I guess when you have a major life shift there’s a lot of soul work that needs to be done. I kept up with my therapist and my meds and did a ton of self care. The best advice I can give to anyone is do whatever is self care for you. Take a shower, shave your legs, paint your nails, play with your dog, visit or call friends or family you know love you, sit on the couch and read/write, paint, just do anything that makes you feel even the slightest bit alive because those are the things that kept me going on the hard days. It was really crucial for me that I had a support system, and even when I felt like I didn’t want to talk about something with a loved one I went straight to my therapist or wrote in my journal.
I really wanted to share my experiences to help another person who may have gone through something similar. I feel that sharing our downfalls and our failures brings people together more than pretending our lives are hunky-dory. But even if no one gets any insight or clarity from this, it has helped me IMMENSELY to write it down and let that shit go. I still have a long way to go in realizing what is healthy in a relationship, I recently I lost someone who I truly believed to be the love of my life because of my own toxic behavior. It’s all about coming back to yourself and not expecting anyone else to do the work for you. It’s an uphill climb coming out of a dark hole and remembering who YOU are and what YOU love and where YOU came from but as the pieces come back it’s the most beautiful and grounding thing. We’re learning (and unlearning!) as we go and everyone has their own set of traumas and difficulties, but make sure that you’re not building your wall so high that you’re keeping out the good people too. Love and light to anyone whose read this.
Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.
~Well that is my message for the day. I am so busy lately. I will continue to be busy through the summer. I want to stay up on your streams because they are great inspiration to me. I may have to play catch up at 2 AM but I will get it done.
I think that some of my past abandonment issues along with other problems with opening up to people really stemmed from my parents and their toxic relationship. There was a messy divorce when I was 5 years old, they fought a lot even afterward and that definitely hurt more than it helped us kids. My dad eventually married again and had another family, and although my dad kept in contact through email (early 2000’s) and an occasional phone call our visits grew far and few between. I always wanted to be the light of my dads life, always getting good grades and trying to be the best well mannered kid that ate all of her vegetables and impressed all of the adults. I held out hope that my parents would get back together and I blamed my moms resentful demeanor towards him as the reason why I would never belong to a happy and whole family. In my adolescence though I grew more and more angry at how HE handled things and understood more why she had her outbursts and nights crying in her room. When I finally stood up to him about how he essentially disowned my little sister he cut off contact. I not only grew up thinking I wasn’t worthy of love after my father left but also had no idea of what love looked like. I’ve looked back on a lot of my adult relationships and realized I self sabotage when things start to get really real. I push people away to see if they really care about me.
7 years ago I started dating a guy who I was so overwhelmingly into, he was from a good family, he just got out of the Army, and we had a matching sense of humor. Great right?! But I was the one texting/calling him and trying to make plans, only recently did I realize that I was simply seeking his approval (just like I had with my father) and wondering why I wasn’t good enough to be thought of first. We started dating which I was over the moon about because OH MY GOD HE PICKED ME but soon after I noticed he had bouts of rage but I chocked it up to PTSD from Afghanistan. I stuck through it and I got pregnant after the holidays in 2015.
I got the news and told him the same day but he was less than thrilled and it actually looked like the blood drained from his face. Thats when the switch flipped. He told me he wanted me to get an abortion and that he didn’t want to have a kid with me or anyone. He was cold and heartless for the whole month before I went to the abortion clinic. The day of my appointment, I was sad. I remember my mom texted me that morning telling me she loved me and I wore my late grandmothers comfy sweater so I would feel like I had some support. My ride had to cancel because it snowed so HE had to drive me. He sat with me in the waiting room but I felt utterly alone, he was even joking with his friend via text saying that he was “at the clinic, where miracles go to die” and showed me it thinking I would laugh. I didn’t, I took the phone and threw it across the room. They have you speak with a psychiatrist before you go in and ask you questions like “are you being pressured into this?” Then I was asked “Why are you doing this?” To which I replied “Because I feel like I have nothing to offer a child” and the response that I got was one I’ll never forget and still brings tears to my eyes “you have yourself to offer”. But to me I wasn’t good enough, or so that’s what I had thought all my life. So, I went into the back room, and I got put under during the procedure. I woke up groggy and already sobbing uncontrollably. I was comforted by the nurses briefly and then carted into a room to “recover” for 30 minutes before I could leave. We drove home and even though it was late in the afternoon I went straight to bed and slept.
Two weeks later I found out I had been cheated on for almost my entire relationship. I found out I was pregnant again. I wasn’t sure what to do about my newly ended relationship but I knew I wasn’t going to give up my invitation to motherhood like before. I wasn’t going to let anyone sway my decision, even if that meant raising my child alone. For the whole first trimester of my pregnancy he told me he hoped I had a miscarriage, asked me “if it was still alive” and told me to have another abortion. I didn’t even live with him and he was relentless. I couldn’t sleep, I ate only because I knew I had to, and spent most of my days in my bedroom binging shows or going to the gym. I was depressed and I don’t use that term lightly. I couldn’t keep a job and felt like my world was imploding, I didn’t know what was next but I knew I had hope as long as my child was healthy and I could take care of him.
When we found out it was a boy it’s almost like the switch flipped on again and he was excited for his son to be born. I ended up moving back in with my sons father and for the next 4 years I was treated as a guest in his home and told that I was worthless and to kill myself. I tried to seek help and talk about it with his family but the blind eye kept being turned. I felt that because he was so narcissistic that no one bothered to speak up to him. His mother did, with the first pregnancy, and I’ll always be thankful for that. But the years of emotional and verbal abuse afterward took a huge chunk out of me as an individual. My mother spoke up when I told her that he said to kill myself for about the 8th time but that didn’t stop him from getting in my face from time to time and yelling at me to get the fuck out of his house and to leave our son there. He had a heavy drinking problem and one night pissed on the floor in the bathroom because he couldn’t stand straight, as I stood there in disbelief my son who was 3 years old at the time asked me “why is daddy doing that?” And I decided then that we needed to move out.
After a while I ended up getting my own place a few towns away and he had already been talking to a woman he met online. That was difficult for me only because she has a son almost the same age as mine and not only had I felt instantly replaced but my son was confused as well, and it didn’t make matters easier when he had them move in a few months later. I was out of control with my anger and resentment and started to see a pattern I had seen in my childhood. I would blow up over the phone, name call, and I tried to control the situation any way I knew how.
It wasn’t until mid March of 2020 that I decided I needed to seek real help. I went to my doctor because I had been crying so much and felt like every day was just a blur into the next. I knew that my son deserved better than to see me like that and immediately started therapy and Serotonin inhibitors. My healing process hasn’t been ideal or easy but I guess when you have a major life shift there’s a lot of soul work that needs to be done. I kept up with my therapist and my meds and did a ton of self care. The best advice I can give to anyone is do whatever is self care for you. Take a shower, shave your legs, paint your nails, play with your dog, visit or call friends or family you know love you, sit on the couch and read/write, paint, just do anything that makes you feel even the slightest bit alive because those are the things that kept me going on the hard days. It was really crucial for me that I had a support system, and even when I felt like I didn’t want to talk about something with a loved one I went straight to my therapist or wrote in my journal.
I really wanted to share my experiences to help another person who may have gone through something similar. I feel that sharing our downfalls and our failures brings people together more than pretending our lives are hunky-dory. But even if no one gets any insight or clarity from this, it has helped me IMMENSELY to write it down and let that shit go. I still have a long way to go in realizing what is healthy in a relationship, I recently I lost someone who I truly believed to be the love of my life because of my own toxic behavior. It’s all about coming back to yourself and not expecting anyone else to do the work for you. It’s an uphill climb coming out of a dark hole and remembering who YOU are and what YOU love and where YOU came from but as the pieces come back it’s the most beautiful and grounding thing. We’re learning (and unlearning!) as we go and everyone has their own set of traumas and difficulties, but make sure that you’re not building your wall so high that you’re keeping out the good people too. Love and light to anyone whose read this.
Pataphysical Studios was bursting with art, poetry, music and dance on this first sunny day of the season. The good doctors spent an enchanted afternoon playing together, diving fearlessly into wondrous new dimensions.
This week, we had two new visitors: Dr. Rafe and his son Dr. Leo, who picked up the vibe right away and seemed to enjoy this next-to-last demo of the ‘Pataphysical Slot Machine, before its move to the Figurines Ranch. We also held an initiation ceremony for Dr. Jardin, who received her own purple lab coat from Dr. Rindbrain, to the ritual chant of ‘Gooble gobble, we accept her, one of us’.
We then discovered another important new ritual: dance breaks! As ‘Johnny Be Good’ started playing, we all started shaking our buns uncontrollably -- and kept on rockin’ through many more tracks from the past. … Judging from the grins on everyone’s faces, this is likely to become a mandatory ritual from now on (albeit a hard one to shoot in low-light, pardon the blurs).
In other news, Drs. Igor and Rindbrain taught calligraphy to Drs. Canard and Figurine, so they may make many more words beautiful. Dr. Skidz concocted mysterious plans to paint an art virus on canvas. Dr. Canard whistled to the Golden-Crowned Sparrow, who just flew back in our neck of the woods. Dr. Figurine added a new infinity snake symbol from Dr. Rindbrain to her coat. Dr. Fabio got the sounds working for the Bali Cuckoo Clock and Time Flies wonderboxes. Dr. Igor got all other boxes to play sounds, except one: Mother of Yes — which we will tame next week, just in time for our move. :)
Spring is back in the inspiration island. Time for all art makers to come out and play … Follow your bliss!
View more 'Pataphysical photos: www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/albums/72157623637793277
Watch 'Pataphysical videos: vimeo.com/album/3051039
Learn more about Pataphysical Studios: pataphysics.us/
A Cast of Characters.
Ruin: I am starting again, this time with the Silverfish, re-writing yet again, I mean.
At home, they do seem to have hugely diminished in number, like we have degraded their living space somehow, with plastics, Pfas, hormone disruptors, or whatever.
We have no way of knowing. It seems all we can do is record diminishing populations.
Rock: So, why are you starting with the humble silverfish, Ruin?
Ruin: Because they are ‘everything else’, the overlooked, an expression of the ‘Life Force’ easy to ignore, to consider a nuisance, to eradicate. They are that 'not us' we call a nuisance.
The central idea here is the universal equality of all and everything, that there is no hierarchy, no pyramidal structure with God at the apex, and man below, given dominion over everything else it pontificates over. This also negates the idea of deity-ordained royalty and aristocracy at the apex of a human pyramid, down to the lowest of the low, the ‘unclean’, the undeserving.
Infinity manifests no preference in a world I want to describe into being. Dinosaurs, man and smaller/larger mammals, or the cockroach even, each in turn perhaps seeming to manifest a type of dominion, until they are eradicated, or they remove themselves even, subject to happenstance or stupidity, both uncontrollable, disregarding what are called ‘choices’. The host overrunning the body it infects would appear to be the ‘natural order'. It shows us that “red in tooth and claw” indifference of it all, described by Tennyson. I have decided to call this ‘beautiful’, a ‘terrible beauty” even, as that other Irish poet would have it.
Rock: Slow down, but why specifically a silverfish? Yeats, Tennyson, Shaw, Shakespeare (I see him coming), that, at the same time, sounds like another type of hierarchy to me.
Ruin: Just by dint of proximity, those silverfish, Rock. Because they are in my immediate environs, they have impressed themselves on me. I have watched them do their ‘possum’ thing, watched them panic and try to survive, when threatened by being exposed. I love that instinct, described by the character Falstaff (you are right, you know me too well), when he played possum on the battlefield.
"Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit: to die is to be counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man, who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed."
First Part of Henry IV. Act V / Sc. IV. . Shakespeare
So, there they are, those silverfish manifesting “the true and perfect image of life indeed” by playing possum.
The Giant Silverfish is my Falstaff, see his image above (and below). He could be any lifeform or gender, but he coaxed his way into being by intruding on my library. It would seem that you have to start with your own experience, you describe from your surroundings, from what impresses itself on you. I had no Agincourt, so my Falstaff fell out of a stack of books, playing possum.
Though it does appear that there might be still time left for contemporary 'Agincourts', those potential killing fields promoting dominion rights.
Yes, you are right, there would seem to be a hierarchy there, unless you consider Plato, the silverfish, and Buster Keaton, the silverfish, and my favourite of course, Falstaff the silverfish, chewing over a good book together. I am afraid that I do, consider this I mean.
Rock: I fear that there is no hope for you. So, convince me, show me that world, and we can proceed from there.
Ruin: Maybe I will start here. Rock, meet Falstaff, the last remaining giant silverfish. You both have remarkable histories.
Norio (on the couch) and Yuba (on the floor) are all who remain of the seven cats we brought with us to Japan in 2016. As we have fewer cats, we spoil them more...
We are currently trying to figure out the best way to wash the large, tan mat - it has many stains from Bonkers splashing water as he drank (he was a very messy drinker) and from unfortunately and uncontrollable accidents by not only Bonkers (who at least wore a diaper most of the time) but Tigger (and to a lesser extent, Argent) as well as their diseases progressed. So, it's time to wash the mat...
at the edge of the ocean
on the big island,
in the shadow of Kīlauea,
god and the buddhas are
standing upon a gigantic outcrop
of black volcanic rock
barren,
grotesque,
misshapen
yearning for the sea
frozen in time where,
millions of years ago it ...
... what ? what’s that? i’m sorry,
what? 1978? okay, fine, i mean
can’t a guy get a little poetic license around here?
anyway, where was i? let’s see ... oh yeah ...
where thirty years ago
it spewed into the sea.
the drenched buddhas
counting waves like breaths
laugh uncontrollably
as thundering, mammoth,
successive waves
hurl themselves
into the cooled lava;
the briny waters,
cold,
foamy
spray high up in to the air.
with a wet lucky strike
hanging from his lips,
and a styrofoam cup
of cold kona coffee in hand,
god laughs, a belly laugh
as if on the verge of forgetting Himself.
while waiting for the seventh wave,
the second and third buddhas whisper &
nudge the first buddha closer to god.
sheepishly, the first buddha asks,
“uh, boss, me and the boys
was wondering, ah, was wondering,
well we was wondering if you’d
be lonely, you know, without us?”
god looks down upon
the first buddha
and pauses
for what seems like an eternity;
suddenly, He proclaims:
“look! there it is! the moon wave!”
His voice thundering
above the roaring surf.
“where?” asks the first buddha,
looking up the shoreline.
“a wave?” says the second buddha,
looking up at god.
“someone’s here?” asks the third buddha,
looking back towards the parking lot.
confused,
the buddhas still themselves.
“la ola lunar de un océano recién creado,”
god continues,
“sobre litorales y tierras angustiosamente desiertas”
“the lunar wave of an ocean recently created,”
god repeats,
“over shores and lands deserted in anguish.”
“pretty good poem,” god explains.
“Neruda understood creation. Picasso too,
but Picasso was a pain in the ass.
it is as if Neruda
was there, at the moment
when it all took form.”
a huge wave crashes into the rocks
sending seawater heavenward,
soaking the buddhas again,
yet they remain silent.
god continues, “Neruda
had buddha nature. he understood,
better than moses, what it means
to be foresaken, abandoned, to be alive.”
another violent wave smashes into
the trembling rocks,
resonating in the spines of the buddhas.
a few hundred yards away,
the ‘57 bel-air nomad sits
idling in the parking lot,
faint riffs of mr. tambourine man
escaping its confines &
a green christmas tree air freshener
hanging from the rear view mirror.
***
qué esperanza considerar,
qué presagio puro,
qué definitivo beso enterrar en el corazón,
someter en los orígenes del desamparo y la inteligencia,
suave y seguro sobre las aguas eternamente turbadas?
qué vitales, rápidas alas de un nuevo ángel de sueños
instalar en mis hombros dormidos para seguridad perpetua,
de tal manera que el camino entre las estrellas de la muerte
sea un violento vuelo
comenzado desde hace muchos días y meses y siglos?
tal vez la debilidad natural de los seres recelosos y ansiosos
busca de súbito permanencia en el tiempo y límites en la tierra,
tal vez las fatigas y las edades acumuladas implacablemente se extienden
como la ola lunar de un océano recién creado
sobre litorales y tierras angustiosamente desiertas.
ay, que lo que soy siga existiendo y cesando de existir,
y que mi obediencia se ordene
con tales condiciones de hierro que el temblor de las muertes
y de los nacimientos no conmueva
el profundo sitio que quiero reservar para mí eternamente.
sea, pues, lo que soy, en alguna parte y en todo tiempo,
establecido y asegurado y ardiente testigo
cuidadosamente destruyéndose
y preservándos incesantemente,
evidentemente empeñado en su deber original.
“significa sombras,”
por pablo neruda
the big island
november 2008
holga
red filter, hand-held
fuji acros 100
pushed one stop
as their first donor!
Craig Venter was one of our guests at the VETS Gala last night. I have worked with him for almost a decade, but connected at a new level last night I had read in his autobiography that he had tried to commit suicide in Vietnam, but I had never really asked him about it before. He was a front-line trauma medic for fallen comrades. He turned 21 doing this on the field of war. Just a child. It was a very powerful and poignant memory, evoking uncontrollable emotion in the retelling.
36 photos revealing the many faces of my husband, Chris.
Please name a face or a few with a note or comment. Have fun!
Those who the Super Police need to catch. From (your) left to right:
-Savage Cannon: He has uncontrollable superstrength which causes him to be in constant rage. He can calm himself by releasing energy blasts through his shoulder-cannons.
-Shadow Shield: He's an ex-cop who uses a reflector shield with which he blinds his enemy while shooting at them from behind it.
-Speed Demon: a superfast criminal. He managed to unite the criminals of the city and became their leader.
-Bullet man: A ninja who uses his abilities for theft.
-The Guard: A misterious being. It seems to be a statue possesd by a flame spirit with a lava axe. It's very quiet but quite deadly. It may be controlled by something else...
Too bad the police have found their hide out.
Character Publication History
Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in the comic book The Uncanny X-Men #4 (March 1964) and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The character has since starred in two self-titled limited series and has historically been depicted as a regular team member in the superhero title The Avengers.
Quicksilver has the superhuman ability to move at great speeds. In most depictions, he is a mutant, a human born with innate superhuman powers. In comic book stories beginning in 2015, he is the product of genetic experimentation by the High Evolutionary.
Quicksilver most commonly appears in fiction associated with the X-Men, having been introduced as an adversary for the superhero team. In later stories, he became a superhero himself. He is the twin brother of the Scarlet Witch and, in most depictions, the son of Magneto and a Sinti woman Magda, and the older half-brother of Polaris.
Debuting in the Silver Age of comic books, Quicksilver has featured in several decades of Marvel continuity, starring in the self-titled series Quicksilver and as a regular team member in superhero title the Avengers.
The character has also appeared in a range of movie, television, and video game adaptations. Two separate live-action versions of Quicksilver have been adapted by two different film studios: Aaron Taylor-Johnson portrayed the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchise, appearing in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) as a cameo and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) while Evan Peters portrayed him in the 20th Century Fox films X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and Dark Phoenix (2019), as well as a cameo in Deadpool 2 (2018). Peters later appeared as an imposter Pietro in the MCU television series WandaVision (2021), as a nod to his past role.
Publication history
Quicksilver first appears in X-Men #4 (March 1964) and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby. The character initially appears as an antagonist to the X-Men, although before long he becomes a member of the Avengers and appears as a regular character in that title beginning with The Avengers #16 in May 1965.
He has made numerous other appearances in that title, and other related titles, sometimes as a member of the team, sometimes as an ally, and sometimes as an antagonist.
From 1991 to 1993 Quicksilver was a regular character in the first volume of X-Factor. The series emphasized the character's irritability and arrogance, which writer Peter David felt were a natural consequence of his powers, explaining:
Have you ever stood in the post office behind a woman with 20 packages who wants to know every single way she can send them to Africa? It drives you nuts! You think to yourself, "Why do I have to put up with this? These people are so slow, they're costing me time, and it's so irritating. I wish I didn't have to put up with this."
Now—imagine that the entire world was like that... except for you. ... to Quicksilver, as he said in an issue of Amazing Spider-Man many, many moons ago, the rest of the world is moving in slow motion. That must really, really get on your nerves.
Quicksilver lives in a world filled with people who don't know how to use cash machines, and want to know all the ways to send packages to Africa, and can never get your order right in a Burger King unless you repeat it several times. That would tend to make you feel very superior to everyone and very impatient with everyone.
Quicksilver also starred in Quicksilver, a regular ongoing eponymous series that began in November 1997 and ran for 13 issues.
The character also played a pivotal role in the House of M and Avengers: The Children's Crusade.
Quicksilver appeared as a supporting character in Avengers Academy from issue #1 (August 2010) through its final issue #39 (January 2013).
He appears as one of the members of All-New X-Factor, which was launched in 2014 as part of the second Marvel NOW! wave. Writer Peter David's handling of the character in that book earned the character a 2014 @ssie award from Ain't It Cool News. AICN's Matt Adler commented that David writes the character best and that the "arrogant, impatient speedster" made the title worth following.
Fictional Character Biography and Major Story Arcs
Origin
Pietro and his twin sister Wanda (Scarlet Witch)* always assumed that they were the children of the gypsy couple that raised them, Django and Marya Maximoff. They did not know that they had been adopted. In fact, they were born on Wundagore Mountain to a woman only known as Magda, a woman on the run from her husband who had "become a monster".
She appeared at the house of Bova, the midwife to the High Evolutionary, heavily pregnant and stayed for a few weeks until she gave birth. She then immediately fled into a raging blizzard and was never seen or heard from again. Given her weakened state following delivery, it is assumed that she perished. Whilst at Wundagore Mountain, they were also offered for adoption to the Whizzer when his wife died. He did not accept them, but thought that they were his children.
Poor but loved, the twins enjoyed a relatively happy childhood until their family was killed by local villagers angered at Django for stealing food. Using his new found powers, Pietro was able to rescue Wanda. Orphaned, the twins wandered Eastern Europe, constantly on the move as Wanda’s uncontrollable hex powers would draw suspicion from the people around them. One day Wanda accidentally set a house on fire, spurring the locals to attack the twins. Despite his best efforts, Wanda and Pietro were trapped until rescued by Magneto.
Feeling that they owed him a debt, they reluctantly joined the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants. Magneto played on their fear of outsiders and Wanda’s gratitude, but neither twin was comfortable as a terrorist. Pietro always made his disapproval known and repeatedly stated that he stayed only for his sister’s sake. Wanda was more compliant, feeling indebted to Magneto, but was deeply unhappy and often shocked by Magneto’s callous behavior.
Whilst in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, both Toad and Mastermind would often play for Scarlet Witch's feelings, and so Quicksilver would stand between her and them. Unconsciously however, both twins absorbed Magneto’s attitude of mutant superiority, which would occasionally surface form time to time in their lives. When Magneto was taken from Earth by the Stranger, Pietro and Wanda ended their association with the Brotherhood and returned to Europe.
New Beginnings
When they heard that the Avengers were accepting applicants, they rushed to join, wanting to atone for their past crimes. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch served honorably with the Avengers for years, though Pietro’s arrogant and distrusting demeanor often made him an outsider in the group, and he would often clash with Hawkeye over which one of them should replace Captain America as a leader.
Return to Wundagore Mountain
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch had to leave the Avengers when they lost their powers for a short while, and return to their birthplace. Whilst at Wundagore Mountain, they were telepathically asked by Professor X to join the X-Men so that they could help fight against Factor Three, but the two mutants declared that should they return to America, it would be as Avengers. Upon their return, Quicksilver's powers had somehow increased, as he could now fly for short distances by vibrating his feet at high speeds.
Shortly after their return, Quicksilver willingly joined the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants after Scarlet Witch was hit by a bullet, shot by a "mere human". Unknown to Pietro and Wanda, the bullet was being controlled by Magneto. Eventually he calmed down and left the Brotherhood, but instead of rejoining the Avengers he, Wanda and Toad became traveling companions for a while.
Since the bullet had erased Wanda's power somehow, the three companions went to Europe, and found a book of spells which they believed could restore Wanda's powers. Instead, the spell summoned Arkon, who wished for Wanda to be his bride. With the help of the Avengers, Wanda was saved, and as her powers had been restored by the dimensional jump between Earth and Arkon's planet, the twins rejoined the Avengers. During this stint with the Avengers, Pietro played a role in the Kree/ Skrull War, and help against Ares. When Wanda fell in love with the android Vision, Pietro protested loudly, refusing to attend their wedding.
In the interim, Pietro persued a romantic relationship of his own. After battling Sentinels, Quicksilver was gravely wounded. He was nursed back to health by Crystal, one of the Inhumans. He fell deeply in love with her and the two were married.
Korvac Saga
During the Korvac saga, Pietro still protested against Wanda's marriage until Moondragon telepathically erased Pietro's prejudice against the android that he accepted the relationship. In an encounter with Django Maximoff, he revealed that Pietro and Wanda were adopted. They traveled to Wundagore Mountain to search for their roots. To their surprise they found Bova, who told them about their birth mother. Their father’s identity, however, remained a mystery, for though Magda was obviously terrified of him, she had never spoken his name.
Pietro left the Avengers to live with his wife’s family on the moon in the Inhuman city of Attilan. He served as an officer in their militia. Crystal and Pietro soon had a daughter, Luna, who turned out to be a normal human child. While the Scarlet Witch and the Vision were visiting the happy family on Attilan shortly after Luna’s birth, Magneto arrived.
Turned from his path of terrorism, he too had been on a quest to his past trying to retrace the last steps of his missing wife. Thinking him nothing more than an innocent traveler, Bova had also told Magneto Magda’s story and unwittingly informed him that he was the father of the very youths he had manipulated and browbeaten in the Brotherhood. He had immediately rushed to Attilan to inform the twins who were shocked. While Wanda was confused and unsure, Pietro was appalled. He rejected Magneto outright. While Magneto was in his reform period, he earned Pietro’s tentative respect, but not his acceptance. When Magneto returned to terrorism, Pietro hated him all the more.
The First Fall
Naturally arrogant, impatient, and of a jealous temperament, Pietro left Attilan when he discovered that Crystal had had an affair. He soon began behaving very irrationally, going insane to the point he tried to frame the Avengers for treason and proclaimed himself King of all the Mutants. When X-Factor finally captured him and returned him to Attilan, it was discovered that Pietro’s insanity had been caused by the Inhuman Maximus The Mad.
When Magneto attempted to manipulate the Scarlet Witch in her grief over the loss of her husband, Pietro was able to use this period of insanity as a cover to stay close by his sister’s side. After helping to rescue her from both Magneto and Immortus, Pietro remained on earth.
Hero Once Again and X-Factor
Quicksilver would spend time working with the government sponsored mutant group X-Factor. Luna was kidnapped by Fabian Cortez, who wanted to use Luna as a symbol of Magneto’s sovereignty and as a human shield. Rushing to her rescue, Pietro encountered Crystal and the Avengers. They were successful in rescuing their daughter, though Pietro almost sacrificed his life in a fight with Exodus in the process.
Pietro left X-Factor and remained in close contact with the Avengers, though he refused to officially join until his romantic rival for Crystal’s affection, The Black Knight, left. Pietro strove to reconcile with Crystal and the two were beginning to create a family again when Crystal was lost with many other heroes in a pocket universe in the events of Onslaught. Pietro remained in loose association with the X-Men for a time, his main concern to care for his daughter.
Upon hearing that Exodus and the Acolytes were planning an assault on the High Evolutionary’s citadel, Pietro joined the Knights of Wundagore and he and Luna lived there for a time. While he was there, Pietro was exposed to Isotope E, a material with enhanced his powers of speed to a great degree.
Genosha
Sending Luna to Crystal, Pietro joined Magneto’s cabinet when the U.N. granted him rule over Genosha following the events of the Magneto War. Pietro still resented and distrusted Magneto a great deal, but felt he had to stay in order to ensure Magneto’s policies did not become too tyrannical. Eventually, he rebelled and Magneto threw him out of the country. He snuck back in with Polaris to help the human underground, but was eventually caught and deported again.
House of M
Pietro was vacationing, “reading a book”, when the Scarlet Witch went insane and attacked the Avengers, killing three of them including her husband. While the Avengers and X-Men met with Professor X and Doctor Strange to discuss Wanda’s fate. Pietro became convinced that the assembled group was going to kill her and rushed to Genosha and begged for Magneto’s aid. Defeated and out of options, Magneto could not think of what to do.
Pietro then convinced the Scarlet Witch to remake the world into the House of M reality in which everyone had their fondest wishes granted. Most importantly their father, who received the global power he had long desired over a world in which the mutant population was the ascending majority. Pietro served his father as a loyal prince. When the deception was revealed, Magneto went into a terrible rage, beating Pietro to death. Wanda restored her brother to life, but then took his power away with 99% of the mutant population when she uttered the fatal phrase “No more mutants.”
Son of M and X-Factor
Depowered and suicidal, Crystal brought Pietro to Attilan to recover. After he did, Pietro snuck into the Terrigen Mists chamber to regain his powers. Instead, he received the ability to travel in time. He stole pieces of the Terrigen crystals and he exposed Luna to them repeatedly, granting her empathic abilities. He then proclaimed himself a “Savior” of mutant kind, setting up shop in Mutant Town and promising to restore the powers of the mutants who had lost theirs on M-Day.
What he did not inform his clients however, was that the crystals did not restore mutant powers safely and many people died as a result of Pietro’s “treatments”. The Inhumans visited Quicksilver in order to reclaim the crystals, but Pietro revealed that he had worked with the crystals so much, they became embedded in his skin.
At that time, Crystal told Quicksilver that their marriage was annulled. After several deaths, Rictor used his temporarily restored powers to eject the crystals from Pietro body, depowering him once again. Pietro later saved Layla Miller from drowning, because he planned on killing her himself, for being the cause of the their downfall in the House of M. Layla later escaped when Pietro became hesitant about killing her.
After his fight with Layla Miller, Pietro was found unconscious in Central Park. Not knowing who he was, the police threw Pietro in general lock up where he experienced a series of hallucinations: His sister, his father, his wife and child, and Layla Miller who explained that Pietro had hit rock bottom and hinted that he was still a mutant.
From the windows of the prison Pietro observed a woman in the process of being pushed off a roof by her boyfriend. Using his super speed, broke out of prison and saved her, coming to terms with the his past villainous acts and looking forward to a better future.
The Rise of Chthon
After being taken prisoner by Modred the Mystic, Quicksilver's body was offered up as a vessel to the demonic Elder God Chthon and was completely overtaken by him. Thanks to the Scarlet Witch who was really Loki in disguise, and Hank Pym's Mighty Avengers, Chthon was exorcised from Quicksilver's body.
Once An Avenger
After aiding Hank Pym's Avengers in taking down Chthon, he helped them with a number of threats including Swarm and Titan. Pietro proceeded to write off all his recent crimes as having been committed by a Skrull impostor and officially join the team, with the ulterior motive of reuniting with his sister.
After helping Pym with his personal war against Reed Richards, the Mighty Avengers came into conflict with the ancient Inhuman emperor, The Unspoken. With the aid of all active avengers, they managed to put an end to the fallen king's mad scheme. Pietro used this as an opportunity to reunite with his ex-wife Crystal and his daughter, Luna, and the Inhumans officially pardon him of any crimes against their race. Unfortunately, Luna is aware that he was not, in fact replaced by a Skrull. She promises, out of love for her father, not to tell anyone, but lets him know that she can never respect him again.
Avengers Academy
After Norman Osborn’s “Dark Reign” was ended, Hank Pym founded the Avengers Academy to continue training young superhumans that Osborn had recruited under false pretenses. Quicksilver was hired as one of the mentors, since Magneto tried to mold him the same way Osborn tried to mold the Academy’s cadets. In addition to empathizing with their story, Pietro would be passing off the training he got from Captain America. Unfortunately, one of the cadets, Finesse, was able to determine that Pietro was lying about his Skrull double. She used that information to blackmail him into teaching her Magento’s training in addition to Captain America’s.
Children’s Crusade
After seeing Wiccan make a public spectacle of himself while fighting the Sons of the Serpent, Quicksilver believed Magneto would seek out the Young Avengers to aid him in locating Wanda. He fled to Transia, believing that to be their first step, and he was right. When Pietro attempted to fight his father and rescue the young heroes, they uncovered a Doombot made in Wanda’s likeness and assumed she was a prisoner of Doctor. Doom.
Pietro would reluctantly fall in with their plan to sneak into Latveria on a rescue mission, in part, to protect the kids from his father. However, when the Avengers tracked them down, Pietro immediately switched teams. Pietro and the Avengers were unable to stop the Young Avengers from teleporting away with the amnesiac Wanda and helping her get her memories and powers back. Happy to have his sister back, Pietro started to defend her against M-Day allegations after Doom admitted to manipulating her.
Serval Industries
After his half sister, Polaris, started acting out, Pietro kept a close eye on her. When she got a job with Serval Industries running the new X-Factor, Pietro volunteered to join the team, pretending to have a falling out with the Avengers. He was secretly keeping a close eye on her under orders from Havok, Polaris’ ex-boyfriend, who was currently leading the Avengers Unity Squad.
Their first mission was to save Fatale, Abyss, and Reaper from a scientist experimenting on them. They had previously been poisoned with terrigen mists by Quicksilver trying to reactivate their mutant abilities. They were not happy to see him, and Fatale later confronted him during a press conference. This inspired Pietro to admit that he lied about being impersonated by a Skrull and took responsibility for his previous actions. His daughter, Luna, was proud of him and began to rebuild their relationship.
Pietro’s reports back to the Avengers satisfied Havok. Believing Polaris was finally in a good head space, he invited Pietro back to the Avengers, but Pietro had found the team for him. He wanted to be there for Lorna in a way he failed for Wanda. Unfortunately, Polaris eventually found out that Pietro was originally spying on her. Their relationship never found solid ground after that and Pietro eventually left for the good of the team.
True Parentage
After a moral compass inversion spell was attempted on the Red Skull, it backfired and affected a number of Avengers, including Scarlet Witch. With Wanda acting out, Pietro reluctantly worked with Magneto to protect her until they could free her from this possession. This required them to enter Latveria where she sought vengeance on Dr. Doom.
Seeing her own family protect Doom, Wanda lashes out, casting a spell that targets members of her bloodline. Pietro is nearly killed, but Magneto is unscatched, proving that he had no blood relation to the Maximoff twins. His parentage was a lie, one even Magneto fell for. Soon after, the ghost of Daniel Drumm possessed Wanda to reverse the inversion spell, changing almost everyone back to normal.
Together, the twins visited Wundagore Mountain in search of the truth of their parentage. They used a portal to Counter-Earth, where they fell in with The Low Evolutionary, the leader of a rebellion against the High Evolutionary. While fighting alongside him, the twins were eventually brought in front of the High Evolutionary. He explained they were the true offspring of Django and Marya Maximoff, but they were not mutants. They were experimented on by The High Evolutionary, granting them their abilities.
They were eventually joined an Avengers Unity Squad that was sent to rescue them.
Avengers Unity Squad
In the wake of Black Bolt’s terrigen bomb, causing people worldwide with the inhuman gene to suddenly develop superpowers, Captain America rebranded the Avengers Unity Squad to be an Avenger, X-Men, and Inhuman cooperative. Quicksilver stuck with the team after returning from Counter-Earth. He aided them in fights against The Shredded Man, a Hand brainwashed Hulk, and Hank Pym, who was now bonded to Ultron.
Their main goal was still to hunt down Red Skull and stop him from using the telepathic abilities he stole from Pr. X's corpse. Unbeknownst to Pietro, he had a run in with Red Skull while responding to an alarm at the old Avengers Mansion. Using his telepathy, Red Skull clouded Pietro's mind from remembering him and left a mental trigger in Pietro's psyche.
Using that trigger, he forced Pietro to kidnap his teammates and bring them to him, so Skull could mentally control all of them. Skull forced the Squad to attack New York City. Fortunately, Pietro's teammate, Deadpool, was generally immune to telepathy. After shaking Skull's influence, he stole one of Magneto's psychic blocking helmets and put it on Rogue so that she was freed to fight Skull, saving Pietro and the rest of the Squad.
No Surrender
When Earth is stolen to be used as a game board by The Challenger and The Grandmaster, the most prominent Avengers are frozen in stasis so as not to interfere. All available Avengers are activated, including Pietro. While Wanda and Doctor Voodoo experimented with magic to release the other heroes from stasis, the release of one caused the stasis to switch to Pietro, thus keeping the same amount of heroes frozen at all times. In this new vulnerable position, Pietro was injured and forced to recover at an auxiliary Avengers HQ.
While recovering, Pietro noticed a small ball of light moving so fast that it was imperceptible to anyone without super-speed. Pietro attempted to catch one but failed. He convinced Wanda and Synapse to combine their powers to increase his speed. This finally allowed him to capture the ball of light which freed some of the frozen heroes when Pietro destroyed it. Unfortunately, Pietro was stuck at his advanced speed.
Pietro was now isolated in a gray area where time had seemingly stopped. He starts to encounter strange electrical creatures that take on his appearance and start targeting his allies. He defends his friends from these beings but comes to the realization that they were feeding off his running wild emotions. He starts to calm himself, causing most of the double to disappear. However, a final more intelligent double starts to argue and confront Pietro, but Pietro was able to defeat simply by consoling him. This also allowed him to slow down enough to reunite with the Avengers.
Empyre
When the Cotati, the plant people living on the Moon, decided to target both the Earth and the newly united Kree/Skrull Alliance, Skrull separatists decided to take out the Cotati by blowing up the Earth’s sun and destroying the entire solar system. They would do so using the Pyre, a bomb traditionally used to test the mettle of a new king, which the Kree/Skrull Alliance had in Hulkling. While the Avengers and Fantastic Four did their best to fight the various alien threats, reservists, like Pietro, were called in to deal with incidents on Earth.
Pietro was sent to Mexico with Wonder Man and Mockingbird where a platoon of Skrulls and Kree were fighting Cotati soldiers. They attempted to convince them all to put down their weapons and stop fighting in general. When their words didn't work, they forcibly disarmed them and destroyed their weapons.
Fall of X
Although Krakoa was no home to Pietro following the revelation that he wasn't actually a mutant nor the son of Magneto, he still came to their defense when Captain America reassembled the Avengers Unity Squad. Working out of the old Morlock Tunnels, the team would try defending the world from false flag attacks that Orchis was using to turn opinion against mutantkind, especially a new Mutant Liberation Front, being led by a mysterious villain posing as Captain Krakoa.
This new MLF had stolen nuclear weapons, putting the whole world on edge. After tracking the MLF to Camp Lehigh, Cap guessed that the new Captain Krakoa was his Hydra-raised clone, who was now answering to Grant. In addition to the nuke, the clone was gunning for Ben Urich who had witness testimony against Orchis from a non-mutant, Kingpin.
Pietro stayed with Rogue looking for the nuclear warhead at Empire State University, while Cap and the others went to protect Urich from Grant. Cap and the others bested Grant and took him into custody, but the warhead was activated. Cap ordered Rogue to get rid of it in orbit, but the ISS was due to pass by New York. Instead, she flew it out to Area 51 to blow it up in the desert, while Quicksilver ran Deadpool to her as fast as he could so she could absorb his healing factor and survive.
Blood Hunt
When the vampire cult, The Structure, cast a spell that fills the sky with darkforce energy, Pietro is recruited to a backup Avengers squad under Captain America. While the active Avengers deal with the vampire supersoliders, the Bloodcoven, Pietro and the others help on the ground against multiple vampire attacks. There, his new team are abducted by Baron Blood and his vampire Nazis.
On Blood's helicarrier base, Cap takes on Baron Blood one on one luring him deeper into the helicarrier while he secretly makes his way to the control room. While he does this, he orders his new Avengers to get any prisoners to the escape pods. Unfortunately, there are more prisoners than escape pods, so these Avengers were forced to continue fighting the vampires. Luckily, Cap made it to the control room and raised the helicarrier above the darkforce and into the sunlight, killing Baron's troops. With the Avengers regrouped by Cap's side, Baron jumps from the ship.
The Lesser Twin
Wanda and Pietro's relationship is tested when Wanda withholds a final message from Magneto and The Wizard starts manipulating them with the help of his magically enhanced army of drones, the Frightful Four Hundred. The Wizard was sent by The Griever at the End of All Things, which has taken special interest in Wanda. She wanted to separate Wanda from her "lesser twin" who grants her strength.
After Wanda's seeming demise, Darcy Lewis, Wanda's friend, walks through The Last Door, a magic portal of Wanda's that brings lost people in need of help. It teleports Darcy to Pietro, so that she can ask his help protecting their local community from The Griever. With some help from his "sister," Polaris, and current girlfriend, M, Pietro fights The Griever to avenge Wanda.
Powers and Abilities
Quicksilver was at first able to reach the speed of sound, which is about 770 mph, but exposure to the High Evolutionary's Isotope E made it possible for him to run at supersonic speeds of up to Mach 5, about 3805 mph,he once traveled 347 miles in 3.7 seconds (which is MACH 438).
Using his super speed, Pietro was able to achieve various effects such as "out running gravity" for short periods, such as running across water or up walls. By running in circles, he could creates whirlwind vortexes of great intensity. He could vibrate his muscles extremely fast, creating destructive effects on anything he touched.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: Pietro Django Maximoff
Publisher: Marvel
First Appearance: The X-Men #4 (March 1964)
Created by: Stan Lee (writer)
Jack Kirby (artist)
* Scarlet Witch profiled in BP 2024 Day 348!
Thessaloniki (Greek: Θεσσαλονίκη, often referred to internationally as Thessalonica or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the Greek region of Macedonia, the administrative region of Central Macedonia and the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace.[3][4] Its honorific title is Συμπρωτεύουσα (Symprotévousa), literally "co-capital",[5] and stands as a reference to its historical status as the Συμβασιλεύουσα (Symvasilévousa) or "co-reigning" city of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, alongside Constantinople.[6]
According to the preliminary results of the 2011 census, the municipality of Thessaloniki today has a population of 322,240,[1] while the Thessaloniki Urban Area (the contiguous built up area forming the "City of Thessaloniki") has a population of 790,824.[1] Furthermore, the Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area extends over an area of 1,455.62 km2 (562.02 sq mi) and its population in 2011 reached a total of 1,104,460 inhabitants.[1]
Thessaloniki is Greece's second major economic, industrial, commercial and political centre, and a major transportation hub for the rest of southeastern Europe;[7] its commercial port is also of great importance for Greece and the southeastern European hinterland.[7] The city is renowned for its festivals, events and vibrant cultural life in general,[8] and is considered to be Greece's cultural capital.[8] Events such as the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival are held annually, while the city also hosts the largest bi-annual meeting of the Greek diaspora.[9] Thessaloniki is the 2014 European Youth Capital.[10]
Founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon, Thessaloniki's history spans some 2,300 years. An important metropolis by the Roman period, Thessaloniki was the second largest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire. Thessaloniki is home to numerous notable Byzantine monuments, including the Paleochristian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as several Roman, Ottoman and Sephardic Jewish structures. The city's main university, Aristotle University, is the largest in Greece and the Balkans.[11]
Thessaloniki is a popular tourist destination in Greece. In 2010, Lonely Planet ranked Thessaloniki as the world's fifth-best party city worldwide, comparable to other cities such as Dubai and Montreal.[12] For 2013 National Geographic Magazine included Thessaloniki in its top tourist destinations worldwide,[13] while in 2014 Financial Times FDI magazine (Foreign Direct Investments) declared Thessaloniki as the best mid-sized European city of the future for human capital and lifestyle.
Etymology
All variations of the city's name derive from the original (and current) appellation in Greek: Θεσσαλονίκη (from Θεσσαλός, Thessalos, and Νίκη, Nike), literally translating to "Thessalian Victory". The name of the city came from the name of a princess, Thessalonike of Macedon, half sister of Alexander the Great, so named because of her birth on the day of the Macedonian victory at the Battle of Crocus Field (353/352 BCE).[16]
The alternative name Salonica (or Salonika) derives from the variant form Σαλονίκη (Saloníki) in popular Greek speech, and has given rise to the form of the city's name in several languages. Names in other languages prominent in the city's history include Солѹнь (Solun) in Old Church Slavonic, סלוניקה (Salonika) in Ladino, Selanik (also Selânik) in Turkish (سلانیك in Ottoman Turkish), Solun (also written as Солун) in the local and neighboring South Slavic languages, Салоники (Saloníki) in Russian, and Sãrunã in Aromanian. In local speech, the city's name is typically pronounced with a dark and deep L characteristic of Macedonian Greek accent.[17][18]
The name often appears in writing in the abbreviated form Θεσ/νίκη
History
From antiquity to the Roman Empire
The city was founded around 315 BC by the King Cassander of Macedon, on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and 26 other local villages.[20] He named it after his wife Thessalonike,[21] a half-sister of Alexander the Great and princess of Macedon as daughter of Philip II. Under the kingdom of Macedon the city retained its own autonomy and parliament[22] and evolved to become the most important city in Macedon.[21]
After the fall of the kingdom of Macedon in 168 BC, Thessalonica became a free city of the Roman Republic under Mark Antony in 41 BC.[21][23] It grew to be an important trade-hub located on the Via Egnatia,[24] the road connecting Dyrrhachium with Byzantium,[25] which facilitated trade between Thessaloniki and great centers of commerce such as Rome and Byzantium.[26] Thessaloniki also lay at the southern end of the main north-south route through the Balkans along the valleys of the Morava and Axios river valleys, thereby linking the Balkans with the rest of Greece.[27] The city later became the capital of one of the four Roman districts of Macedonia.[24] Later it became the capital of all the Greek provinces of the Roman Empire due to the city's importance in the Balkan peninsula. When the Roman Empire was divided into the tetrarchy, Thessaloniki became the administrative capital of one of the four portions of the Empire under Galerius Maximianus Caesar,[28][29] where Galerius commissioned an imperial palace, a new hippodrome, a triumphal arch and a mausoleum among others.[29][30][31]
In 379 when the Roman Prefecture of Illyricum was divided between the East and West Roman Empires, Thessaloniki became the capital of the new Prefecture of Illyricum.[24] In 390 Gothic troops under the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, led a massacre against the inhabitants of Thessalonica, who had risen in revolt against the Germanic soldiers. With the Fall of Rome in 476, Thessaloniki became the second-largest city of the Eastern Roman Empire.[26] Around the time of the Roman Empire Thessaloniki was also an important center for the spread of Christianity; some scholars hold that the First Epistle to the Thessalonians written by Paul the Apostle is the first written book of the New Testament.
Byzantine era and Middle Ages
From the first years of the Byzantine Empire, Thessaloniki was considered the second city in the Empire after Constantinople,[33][34][35] both in terms of wealth and size.[33] with an population of 150,000 in the mid 1100s.[36] The city held this status until it was transferred to Venice in 1423. In the 14th century the city's population exceeded 100,000 to 150,000,[37][38][39] making it larger than London at the time.[40]
During the 6th and 7th centuries the area around Thessaloniki was invaded by Avars and Slavs, who unsuccessfully laid siege to the city several times.[41] Traditional historiography stipulates that many Slavs settled in the hinterland of Thessaloniki,[42] however, this migration was allegedly on a much smaller scale than previously thought.[42][42][43] In the 9th century, the Byzantine Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius, both natives of the city, created the first literary language of the Slavs, the Glagolic alphabet, most likely based on the Slavic dialect used in the hinterland of their hometown.[44][45][46][47][48]
An Arab naval attack in 904 resulted in the sack of the city.[49] The economic expansion of the city continued through the 12th century as the rule of the Komnenoi emperors expanded Byzantine control to the north. Thessaloniki passed out of Byzantine hands in 1204,[50] when Constantinople was captured by the forces of the Fourth Crusade and incorporated the city and its surrounding territories in the Kingdom of Thessalonica[51] — which then became the largest vassal of the Latin Empire. In 1224, the Kingdom of Thessalonica was overrun by the Despotate of Epirus, a remnant of the former Byzantine Empire, under Theodore Komnenos Doukas who crowned himself Emperor,[52] and the city became the Despotat's capital.[52][53] This era of the Despotate of Epirus is also known as the Empire of Thessalonica.[52][54][55] Following his defeat at Klokotnitsa however in 1230,[52][54] the Empire of Thessalonica became a vassal state of the Second Bulgarian Empire until it was recovered again in 1246, this time by the Nicaean Empire.[52] In 1342,[56] the city saw the rise of the Commune of the Zealots, an anti-aristocratic party formed of sailors and the poor,[57] which is nowadays described as social-revolutionary.[56] The city was practically independent of the rest of the Empire,[56][57][58] as it had its own government, a form of republic.[56] The zealot movement was overthrown in 1350 and the city was reunited with the rest of the Empire.[56]
In 1423, Despot Andronicus, who was in charge of the city, ceded it to the Republic of Venice with the hope that it could be protected from the Ottomans who were besieging the city (there is no evidence to support the oft-repeated story that he sold the city to them). The Venetians held Thessaloniki until it was captured by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II on 29 March 1430.
Ottoman period
When Sultan Murad II captured Thessaloniki and sacked it in 1430, contemporary reports estimated that about one-fifth of the city's population was enslaved.[60] Upon the conquest of Thessaloniki, some of its inhabitants escaped,[61] including intellectuals such as Theodorus Gaza "Thessalonicensis" and Andronicus Callistus.[62] However, the change of sovereignty from the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman one did not affect the city's prestige as a major imperial city and trading hub.[63][64] Thessaloniki and Smyrna, although smaller in size than Constantinople, were the Ottoman Empire's most important trading hubs.[63] Thessaloniki's importance was mostly in the field of shipping,[63] but also in manufacturing,[64] while most of the city's trade was controlled by ethnic Greeks.[63]
During the Ottoman period, the city's population of mainly Greek Jews and Ottoman Muslims (including those of Turkish and Albanian, as well as Bulgarian Muslim and Greek Muslim convert origin) grew substantially. By 1478 Selânik (سلانیك), as the city came to be known in Ottoman Turkish, had a population of 4,320 Muslims, 6,094 Greek Orthodox and some Catholics, but no Jews. Soon after the turn of the 15th to 16th century, nearly 20,000 Sephardic Jews had immigrated to Greece from Spain following their expulsion by the 1492 Alhambra Decree.[65] By c. 1500, the numbers had grown to 7,986 Greeks, 8,575 Muslims, and 3,770 Jews. By 1519, Sephardic Jews numbered 15,715, 54% of the city's population. Some historians consider the Ottoman regime's invitation to Jewish settlement was a strategy to prevent the ethnic Greek population (Eastern Orthodox Christians) from dominating the city.[38]
Thessaloniki was the capital of the Sanjak of Selanik within the wider Rumeli Eyalet (Balkans)[66] until 1826, and subsequently the capital of Selanik Eyalet (after 1867, the Selanik Vilayet).[67][68] This consisted of the sanjaks of Selanik, Serres and Drama between 1826 and 1912.[69] Thessaloniki was also a Janissary stronghold where novice Janissaries were trained. In June 1826, regular Ottoman soldiers attacked and destroyed the Janissary base in Thessaloniki while also killing over 10,000 Janissaries, an event known as The Auspicious Incident in Ottoman history.[70] From 1870, driven by economic growth, the city's population expanded by 70%, reaching 135,000 in 1917.[71]
The last few decades of Ottoman control over the city were an era of revival, particularly in terms of the city's infrastructure. It was at that time that the Ottoman administration of the city acquired an "official" face with the creation of the Command Post[72] while a number of new public buildings were built in the eclectic style in order to project the European face both of Thessaloniki and the Ottoman Empire.[72][73] The city walls were torn down between 1869 and 1889,[74] efforts for a planned expansion of the city are evident as early as 1879,[75] the first tram service started in 1888[76] and the city streets were illuminated with electric lamp posts in 1908.[77] In 1888 Thessaloniki was connected to Central Europe via rail through Belgrade, Monastir in 1893 and Constantinople in 1896.
Since the 20th century
In the early 20th century, Thessaloniki was in the center of radical activities by various groups; the Bulgarian Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, founded in 1897,[78] and the Greek Macedonian Committee, founded in 1903.[79] In 1903 an anarchist group known as the Boatmen of Thessaloniki planted bombs in several buildings in Thessaloniki, including the Ottoman Bank, with some assistance from the IMRO. The Greek consulate in Ottoman Thessaloniki (now the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle) served as the center of operations for the Greek guerillas. In 1908 the Young Turks movement broke out in the city, sparking the Young Turk Revolution.[80]
The Ottoman Feth-i Bülend being sunk in Thessaloniki in 1912 by a Greek ship during the First Balkan War.
Constantine I of Greece with George I of Greece and the Greek army enter the city.
As the First Balkan War broke out, Greece declared war on the Ottoman Empire and expanded its borders. When Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister at the time, was asked if the Greek army should move towards Thessaloniki or Monastir (now Bitola, Republic of Macedonia), Venizelos replied "Salonique à tout prix!" (Thessaloniki, at all costs!).[81] As both Greece and Bulgaria wanted Thessaloniki, the Ottoman garrison of the city entered negotiations with both armies.[82] On 8 November 1912 (26 October Old Style), the feast day of the city's patron saint, Saint Demetrius, the Greek Army accepted the surrender of the Ottoman garrison at Thessaloniki.[83] The Bulgarian army arrived one day after the surrender of the city to Greece and Tahsin Pasha, ruler of the city, told the Bulgarian officials that "I have only one Thessaloniki, which I have surrendered".[82] After the Second Balkan War, Thessaloniki and the rest of the Greek portion of Macedonia were officially annexed to Greece by the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913.[84] On 18 March 1913 George I of Greece was assassinated in the city by Alexandros Schinas.[85]
In 1915, during World War I, a large Allied expeditionary force established a base at Thessaloniki for operations against pro-German Bulgaria.[86] This culminated in the establishment of the Macedonian Front, also known as the Salonika Front.[87][88] In 1916, pro-Venizelist Greek army officers and civilians, with the support of the Allies, launched an uprising,[89] creating a pro-Allied[90] temporary government by the name of the "Provisional Government of National Defence"[89][91] that controlled the "New Lands" (lands that were gained by Greece in the Balkan Wars, most of Northern Greece including Greek Macedonia, the North Aegean as well as the island of Crete);[89][91] the official government of the King in Athens, the "State of Athens",[89] controlled "Old Greece"[89][91] which were traditionally monarchist. The State of Thessaloniki was disestablished with the unification of the two opposing Greek governments under Venizelos, following the abdication of King Constantine in 1917.[86][91]
The 1st Battalion of the National Defence army marches on its way to the front.
Aerial picture of the Great Fire of 1917.
Most of the old center of the city was destroyed by the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917, which started accidentally by an unattended kitchen fire on 18 August 1917.[92] The fire swept through the centre of the city, leaving 72,000 people homeless; according to the Pallis Report, most of them were Jewish (50,000). Many businesses were destroyed, as a result, 70% of the population were unemployed.[92] Also a number of religious structures of the three major faiths were lost. Nearly one-quarter of the total population of approximately 271,157 became homeless.[92] Following the fire the government prohibited quick rebuilding, so it could implement the new redesign of the city according to the European-style urban plan[6] prepared by a group of architects, including the Briton Thomas Mawson, and headed by French architect Ernest Hébrard.[92] Property values fell from 6.5 million Greek drachmas to 750,000.[93]
After the defeat of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War and during the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, a population exchange took place between Greece and Turkey.[90] Over 160,000 ethnic Greeks deported from the former Ottoman Empire were resettled in the city,[90] changing its demographics. Additionally many of the city's Muslims were deported to Turkey, ranging at about 20,000 people.[94]
During World War II Thessaloniki was heavily bombarded by Fascist Italy (with 232 people dead, 871 wounded and over 800 buildings damaged or destroyed in November 1940 alone),[95] and, the Italians having failed to succeed in their invasion of Greece, it fell to the forces of Nazi Germany on 8 April 1941[96] and remained under German occupation until 30 October 1944 when it was liberated by the Greek People's Liberation Army.[97] The Nazis soon forced the Jewish residents into a ghetto near the railroads and on 15 March 1943 began the deportation process of the city's 56,000 Jews to its concentration camps.[98][99] They deported over 43,000 of the city's Jews in concentration camps,[98] where most were killed in the gas chambers. The Germans also deported 11,000 Jews to forced labor camps, where most perished.[100] Only 1,200 Jews live in the city today.
Part of Eleftherias Square during the Axis occupation.
The importance of Thessaloniki to Nazi Germany can be demonstrated by the fact that, initially, Hitler had planned to incorporate it directly in the Third Reich[101] (that is, make it part of Germany) and not have it controlled by a puppet state such as the Hellenic State or an ally of Germany (Thessaloniki had been promised to Yugoslavia as a reward for joining the Axis on 25 March 1941).[102] Having been the first major city in Greece to fall to the occupying forces just two days after the German invasion, it was in Thessaloniki that the first Greek resistance group was formed (under the name «Ελευθερία», Eleftheria, "Freedom")[103] as well as the first anti-Nazi newspaper in an occupied territory anywhere in Europe,[104] also by the name Eleftheria. Thessaloniki was also home to a military camp-converted-concentration camp, known in German as "Konzentrationslager Pavlo Mela" (Pavlos Melas Concentration Camp),[105] where members of the resistance and other non-favourable people towards the German occupation from all over Greece[105] were held either to be killed or sent to concentration camps elsewhere in Europe.[105] In the 1946 monarchy referendum, the majority of the locals voted in favour of a republic, contrary to the rest of Greece.[106]
After the war, Thessaloniki was rebuilt with large-scale development of new infrastructure and industry throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Many of its architectural treasures still remain, adding value to the city as a tourist destination, while several early Christian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988.[107] In 1997, Thessaloniki was celebrated as the European Capital of Culture,[108] sponsoring events across the city and the region. Agency established to oversee the cultural activities of that year 1997 was still in existence by 2010.[109] In 2004 the city hosted a number of the football events as part of the 2004 Summer Olympics.[110]
Today Thessaloniki has become one of the most important trade and business hubs in Southeastern Europe, with its port, the Port of Thessaloniki being one of the largest in the Aegean and facilitating trade throughout the Balkan hinterland.[7] On 26 October 2012 the city celebrated its centennial since its incorporation into Greece.[111] The city also forms one of the largest student centres in Southeastern Europe, is host to the largest student population in Greece and will be the European Youth Capital in 2014
Geography
Geology
Thessaloniki lies on the northern fringe of the Thermaic Gulf on its eastern coast and is bound by Mount Chortiatis on its southeast. Its proximity to imposing mountain ranges, hills and fault lines, especially towards its southeast have historically made the city prone to geological changes.
Since medieval times, Thessaloniki was hit by strong earthquakes, notably in 1759, 1902, 1978 and 1995.[113] On 19–20 June 1978, the city suffered a series of powerful earthquakes, registering 5.5 and 6.5 on the Richter scale.[114][115] The tremors caused considerable damage to a number of buildings and ancient monuments,[114] but the city withstood the catastrophe without any major problems.[115] One apartment building in central Thessaloniki collapsed during the second earthquake, killing many, raising the final death toll to 51.[114][115]
Climate
Thessaloniki's climate is directly affected by the sea it is situated on.[116] The city lies in a transitional climatic zone, so its climate displays characteristics of several climates. According to the Köppen climate classification, it is a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) that borders on a semi-arid climate (BSk), with annual average precipitation of 450 millimetres (18 in) due to the Pindus rain shadow drying the westerly winds. However, the city has a summer precipitation between 20 to 30 millimetres (0.79 to 1.18 in), which borders it close to a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa).
Winters are relatively dry, with common morning frost. Snowfalls are sporadic, but οccur more or less every winter, but the snow cover does not last for more than a few days. Fog is common, with an average of 193 foggy days in a year.[117] During the coldest winters, temperatures can drop to −10 °C (14 °F).[117] The record minimum temperature in Thessaloniki was −14 °C (7 °F).[118] On average, Thessaloniki experiences frost (sub-zero temperature) 32 days a year.[117] The coldest month of the year in the city is January, with an average 24-hour temperature of 6 °C (43 °F).[119] Wind is also usual in the winter months, with December and January having an average wind speed of 26 km/h (16 mph).[117]
Thessaloniki's summers are hot with rather humid nights.[117] Maximum temperatures usually rise above 30 °C (86 °F),[117] but rarely go over 40 °C (104 °F);[117] the average number of days the temperature is above 32 °C (90 °F) is 32.[117] The maximum recorded temperature in the city was 42 °C (108 °F).[117][118] Rain seldom falls in summer, mainly during thunderstorms. In the summer months Thessaloniki also experiences strong heat waves.[120] The hottest month of the year in the city is July, with an average 24-hour temperature of 26 °C (79 °F).[119] The average wind speed for June and July in Thessaloniki is 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph)
Government
According to the Kallikratis reform, as of 1 January 2011 the Thessaloniki Urban Area (Greek: Πολεοδομικό Συγκρότημα Θεσσαλονίκης) which makes up the "City of Thessaloniki", is made up of six self-governing municipalities (Greek: Δήμοι) and one municipal unit (Greek: Δημοτική ενότητα). The municipalities that are included in the Thessaloniki Urban Area are those of Thessaloniki (the city center and largest in population size), Kalamaria, Neapoli-Sykies, Pavlos Melas, Kordelio-Evosmos, Ampelokipoi-Menemeni, and the municipal unit of Pylaia, part of the municipality of Pylaia-Chortiatis. Prior to the Kallikratis reform, the Thessaloniki Urban Area was made up of twice as many municipalities, considerably smaller in size, which created bureaucratic problems.[123]
Thessaloniki Municipality
The municipality of Thessaloniki (Greek: Δήμος Θεσαλονίκης) is the second most populous in Greece, after Athens, with a population of 322,240[1] people (in 2011) and an area of 17.832 km2 (7 sq mi). The municipality forms the core of the Thessaloniki Urban Area, with its central district (the city center), referred to as the Kentro, meaning 'center' or 'downtown'.
The institution of mayor of Thessaloniki was inaugurated under the Ottoman Empire, in 1912. The first mayor of Thessaloniki was Osman Sait Bey, while the current mayor of the municipality of Thessaloniki is Yiannis Boutaris. In 2011, the municipality of Thessaloniki had a budget of €464.33 million[124] while the budget of 2012 stands at €409.00 million.[125]
According to an article in The New York Times, the way in which the present mayor of Thessaloniki is treating the city's debt and oversized administration problems could be used as an example by Greece's central government for a successful strategy in dealing with these problems.[126]
Other
Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece. It is an influential city for the northern parts of the country and is the capital of the region of Central Macedonia and the Thessaloniki regional unit. The Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace is also based in Thessaloniki, being that the city is the de facto capital of the Greek region of Macedonia.
It is customary every year for the Prime Minister of Greece to announce his administration's policies on a number of issues, such as the economy, at the opening night of the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair. In 2010, during the first months of the 2010 Greek debt crisis, the entire cabinet of Greece met in Thessaloniki to discuss the country's future.[127]
In the Hellenic Parliament, the Thessaloniki urban area constitutes a 16-seat constituency. As of the national elections of 17 June 2012 the largest party in Thessaloniki is New Democracy with 27.8%, followed by the Coalition of the Radical Left (27.0%) and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (10.2%).[128] The table below summarizes the results of the latest elections.
Cityscape
Architecture
Architecture in Thessaloniki is the direct result of the city's position at the centre of all historical developments in the Balkans. Aside from its commercial importance, Thessaloniki was also for many centuries the military and administrative hub of the region, and beyond this the transportation link between Europe and the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel / Palestine). Merchants, traders and refugees from all over Europe settled in the city. The need for commercial and public buildings in this new era of prosperity led to the construction of large edifices in the city center. During this time, the city saw the building of banks, large hotels, theatres, warehouses, and factories. Architects who designed some of the most notable buildings of the city, in the late 19th and early 20th century, include Vitaliano Poselli, Pietro Arrigoni, Xenophon Paionidis, Eli Modiano, Moshé Jacques, Jean Joseph Pleyber, Frederic Charnot, Ernst Ziller, Roubens Max, Levi Ernst, Angelos Siagas and others, using mainly the styles of Eclecticism and Art Nouveau.
The city layout changed after 1870, when the seaside fortifications gave way to extensive piers, and many of the oldest walls of the city were demolished, including those surrounding the White Tower, which today stands as the main landmark of the city. As parts of the early Byzantine walls were demolished, this allowed the city to expand east and west along the coast.[129]
The expansion of Eleftherias Square towards the sea completed the new commercial hub of the city and at the time was considered one of the most vibrant squares of the city. As the city grew, workers moved to the western districts, due to their proximity to factories and industrial activities; while the middle and upper classes gradually moved from the city-center to the eastern suburbs, leaving mainly businesses. In 1917, a devastating fire swept through the city and burned uncontrollably for 32 hours.[71] It destroyed the city's historic center and a large part of its architectural heritage, but paved the way for modern development and allowed Thessaloniki the development of a proper European city center, featuring wider diagonal avenues and monumental squares; which the city initially lacked – much of what was considered to be 'essential' in European architecture.
City Center
After the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917, a team of architects and urban planners including Thomas Mawson and Ernest Hebrard, a French architect, chose the Byzantine era as the basis of their (re)building designs for Thessaloniki's city center. The new city plan included axes, diagonal streets and monumental squares, with a street grid that would channel traffic smoothly. The plan of 1917 included provisions for future population expansions and a street and road network that would be, and still is sufficient today.[71] It contained sites for public buildings and provided for the restoration of Byzantine churches and Ottoman mosques.
The Metropolitan Church of Saint Gregory Palamas, designed by Ernst Ziller.
Today the city center of Thessaloniki includes the features designed as part of the plan and forms the point in the city where most of the public buildings, historical sites, entertainment venues and stores are located. The center is characterized by its many historical buildings, arcades, laneways and distinct architectural styles such as Art Nouveau and Art Deco, which can be seen on many of its buildings.
Also called the historic center, it is divided into several districts, of which include Ladadika (where many entertainment venues and tavernas are located), Kapani (were the city's central city market is located), Diagonios, Navarinou, Rotonta, Agia Sofia and Ippodromio (white tower), which are all located around Thessaloniki's most central point, Aristotelous Square.
The west point of the city center is home to Thessaloniki's law courts, its central international railway station and the port, while on its eastern side stands the city's two universities, the Thessaloniki International Exhibition Center, the city's main stadium, its archaeological and Byzantine museums, the new city hall and its central parklands and gardens, namely those of the ΧΑΝΘ/Palios Zoologikos Kipos and Pedio tou Areos. The central road arteries that pass through the city center, designed in the Ernest Hebrard plan, include those of Tsimiski, Egnatia, Nikis, Mitropoleos, Venizelou and St. Demetrius avenues.
Ano Poli
Ano Poli (also called Old Town and literally the Upper Town) is the heritage listed district north of Thessaloniki's city center that was not engulfed by the great fire of 1917 and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site by ministerial actions of Melina Merkouri, during the 1980s. It consists of Thessaloniki's most traditional part of the city, still featuring small stone paved streets, old squares and homes featuring old Greek and Ottoman architecture.
Ano Poli also, is the highest point in Thessaloniki and as such, is the location of the city's acropolis, its Byzantine fort, the Heptapyrgion, a large portion of the city's remaining walls, and with many of its additional Ottoman and Byzantine structures still standing. The area provides access to the Seich Sou Forest National Park[131] and features amphitheatric views of the whole city and the Thermaic Gulf. On clear days Mount Olympus, at about 100 km (62 mi) away across the gulf, can also be seen towering the horizon.
Southeastern Thessaloniki up until the 1920s was home to the city's most affluent residents and formed the outermost suburbs of the city at the time, with the area close to the Thermaic Gulf coast called Exoches, from the 19th century holiday villas which defined the area. Today southeastern Thessaloniki has in some way become a natural extension of the city center, with the avenues of Megalou Alexandrou, Georgiou Papandreou (Antheon), Vasilissis Olgas Avenue, Delfon, Konstantinou Karamanli (Nea Egnatia) and Papanastasiou passing through it, enclosing an area traditionally called Dépôt (Ντεπώ), from the name of the old tram station, owned by a French company. The area extends to Kalamaria and Pylaia, about 9 km (5.59 mi) from the White Tower in the city centre.
Some of the most notable mansions and villas of the old-era of the city remain along Vasilissis Olgas Avenue. Built for the most wealthy residents and designed by well known architects they are used today as museums, art galleries or remain as private properties. Some of them include Villa Bianca, Villa Ahmet Kapanci, Villa Modiano, Villa Mordoch, Villa Mehmet Kapanci, Hatzilazarou Mansion, Chateau Mon Bonheur (often called red tower) and others.
Most of southeastern Thessaloniki is characterized by its modern architecture and apartment buildings, home to the middle-class and more than half of the municipality of Thessaloniki population. Today this area of the city is also home to 3 of the city's main football stadiums, the Thessaloniki Concert Hall, the Posidonio aquatic and athletic complex, the Naval Command post of Northern Greece and the old royal palace (called Palataki), located on the most westerly point of Karabournaki cape. The municipality of Kalamaria is also located in southeastern Thessaloniki and has become this part of the city's most sought after areas, with many open spaces and home to high end bars, cafés and entertainment venues, most notably on Plastira street, along the coast
Northwestern Thessaloniki had always been associated with industry and the working class because as the city grew during the 1920s, many workers had moved there, due to its proximity near factories and industrial activities. Today many factories and industries have been moved further out west and the area is experiencing rapid growth as does the southeast. Many factories in this area have been converted to cultural centres, while past military grounds that are being surrounded by densely built neighborhoods are awaiting transformation into parklands.
Northwest Thessaloniki forms the main entry point into the city of Thessaloniki with the avenues of Monastiriou, Lagkada and 26is Octovriou passing through it, as well as the extension of the A1 motorway, feeding into Thessaloniki's city center. The area is home to the Macedonia InterCity Bus Terminal (KTEL), the Zeitenlik Allied memorial military cemetery and to large entertainment venues of the city, such as Milos, Fix, Vilka (which are housed in converted old factories). Northwestern Thessaloniki is also home to Moni Lazariston, located in Stavroupoli, which today forms one of the most important cultural centers for the city.
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Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...
Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India.
The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.
It’s my Dad’s 90th Birthday today.
I guess this would be 1966 or 1967. My Mum took the picture on my Kodak Brownie Vecta camera.
It was my brother’s birthday and we went to Whipsnade Zoo as a treat. I was in a horrible mood (probably because of the injustice of having to wear school uniform at the weekend). I was desperately trying not to smile for the camera - hence the hand over my face.
The highlight of the visit was being harassed by a wasp at the picnic area. My Dad somehow enticed it onto the floor, dropped a paper cup over it then stamped on it till the cup was like a pancake. Family friend Margaret immediately burst into uncontrollable laughter. She really was crying and it was so infectious everyone was laughing without knowing why. She literally couldn’t speak for about 5 minutes. It turned out she’d seen the wasp fly off a split second before he dropped the cup and started stamping.
Keep on stamping Dad....
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
For nearly a year Lettice has been patiently awaiting the return of her beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, after being sent to Durban by his mother, the Duchess of Walmsford, Lady Zinnia in an effort to destroy their relationship which she wants to end so that she can marry Selwyn off to his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers. Now Lettice has been made aware by Lady Zinnia that during the course of the year, whilst Lettice has been biding her time, waiting for Selwyn’s eventual return, he has become engaged to the daughter of a Kenyan diamond mine owner whilst in Durban. Fleeing Lady Zinnia’s London townhouse, Lettice has been milling over her options over the last week as she reels from the news.
Now we find ourselves standing with Lettice outside the imposing Regency townhouse of Sir John Nettleford-Hughes, not far from Lettice’s cavendish Mews flat, in the upper-class London suburb of Belgravia. Old enough to be her father, wealthy Sir John is still a bachelor, and according to London society gossip intends to remain so, so that he might continue to enjoy his dalliances with a string of pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. As an eligible man in a time after the Great War when such men are a rare commodity, with a vast family estate in Bedfordshire, houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and Fontengil Park in Wiltshire, quite close to the Glynes estate, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, invited him as a potential suitor to her 1922 Hunt Ball, which she used as a marriage market for Lettice. Selwyn rescued Lettice from the horror of having to entertain him, and Sir John left the ball early in a disgruntled mood with a much younger partygoer. Lettice reacquainted herself with Sir John at an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by Sir John and Lady Gladys Caxton at their Scottish country estate, Gossington, a baronial Art and Crafts castle near the hamlet of Kershopefoot in Cumberland. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable. She then ran into him again at the Portland Gallery’s autumn show where she found him yet again to be a pleasant companion for much of the evening.
Now, standing on the sweeping steps of Portland stone she looks up at the impressive Regency façade of Sir John’s townhouse and knocks at the black painted front door with the polished brass knocker. A gentle faced butler in his stiffly starched collar and black barathea suit, answers the door.
“The Honourable Lettice Chetwynd to see His Lordship.” Lettice says firmly and the butler steps aside, ushering her from the golden late afternoon light outside into the cool darkened marble hallway within.
The clip of Lettice’s louis heels echo throughout the lofty entrance hall which is illuminated from a dome three storeys above by a grand electrified crystal chandelier, already on as the autumnal evenings draw in. The butler politely asks her to wait whilst he strides silently up the sweeping carpeted spiral staircase to the upper floors of the townhouse. Lettice has not long been settled into the seat of a walnut Regency hall chair when he returns.
“His Lordship will be pleased to see you, Miss Chetwynd. If you’d please be so good as to follow me.”
Lettice smiles nervously as she follows him up the stairs, past portraits of Sir John’s ancestors who peer imperiously down upon her from their ornate gilded frames. “Interloper!” they seem to silently say: their looks accusational and critical as she lightly treads behind the serious but kind looking butler. Do they know what she has planned, she wonders in a moment of fancy.
“The Honourable Miss Chetwynd.” the butler announces stiffly as she opens the door for Lettice, swinging it widely open and allowing Lettice to walk into the brilliantly illuminated room where music plays on a gramophone, and where Sir John sits in his favourite chair, dressed in a smart velvet smoking jacket.
Being an interior designer, as soon as she is shown in, Lettice immediately appraises Sir John’s drawing room: taking in the elegant and uncluttered lines of his Regency stripe upholstered sofas and chairs, the Regency swan tables and matching pedestals upon which stand some beautiful blue and white Chinese vases, the heavier and more masculine William and Mary cabinets made of age darkened oak and the beautiful Eighteenth Century chinoiserie screen featuring stylised oriental scenes painted in gold and bronze on a black background.
“What a pleasant surprise, Lettice.” Sir John says, rising from his wingback armchair with the aid of a silver topped walking stick. “Please, take a seat. I take it that you’ll stop for a little while?”
“Yes of course.” Lettice replies with a shy smile, doing as Sir John bids and taking a seat on the low backed sofa where he indicates to her with an open gesture.
“Excellent! Grindley, a bottle of champagne for Miss Chetwynd and I.” he says to his butler.
“Yes, Your Lordship.” the butler replies, before retreating discreetly from the room.
“Thank you Si…” Lettice pauses halfway through Sir John’s, title. “John.”
Sir John smiles as he resumes his seat.
“Sorry, old habits die hard.” Lettice apologises as a flush of colour fills her cheeks.
“I know Lettice,” he replies as he watches her with his piercing blue eyes as she shucks her fox fur stole which has kept away the chill of London’s late afternoon weather, and drapes it over the edge of the sofa. “But habits can be changed.”
“Well,” Lettice observes, gazing around the comfortably appointed drawing room again. “This isn’t quite what I was expecting.”
“No, Lettice? What did you expect my rooms to be like?”
“Oh,” Lettice ponders. “I don’t know. Perhaps a little more masculine. Perhaps like my father’s taste. Lots of dark wood and books is what I’d imagined.”
“Well, I do have a library downstairs on the ground floor, Lettice. It is panelled with dark mahogany and is full of books, but I find it rather stuffy, whereas in here it is light and airy, with views overlooking the street.” He points to the large sash windows which flood the room with fading afternoon light. “So, I bring my books.” He picks up a tan leatherbound volume from a pile on a table next to his chair. “And my other reading material, in here,” He indicates to a row of the day’s London papers on a low table nearby. “Where I find it much more pleasant.”
“Oh yes, John. It’s a lovely room, and the daffs are a lovely bright burst of colour.” She nods at the yellow and white daffodils raising their heads proudly above the lip of a tall blue and white oriental vase.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud,
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze*.”
“Wordsworth**, John!” Lettice gasps. “You do surprise me!”
“Really Lettice?” Sir John asks, a little surprised himself. “Well, I am British to the backbone, but yes, you may be a little surprised to learn that for all my dull London business affairs, I do have a few romantic bones in my body.”
“That explains the recording on the gramophone, then.” Lettice remarks. “The Willow Song***: disappointed love. Has one of your young paramours recently left you a little broken hearted, John?”
Sir John clears this throat in an embarrassed fashion, quickly stands up, once again leaning heavily on his cane to do so. “How unconscionably rude of me! Please forgive me, Lettice.” He strides across the thick oriental silk carpet to the gramophone standing on a William and Mary sideboard nearby and lifts the needle, causing the soprano to cease singing her song mid note.
“So do you?” Lettice persists.
“Do I what?” Sir John retorts questioningly.
“Have a broken heart?” Lettice indicates again to the gramophone with its nickel-plated morning glory horn.
“I’m not that much of a hopeless romantic, Lettice. My heart should be a pile of shards if I let it break so readily, when so many women have walked in and out of my life.” He pauses for a moment and looks across at Lettice in concern. “Does that statement shock you?”
“It might have once, John, but not now that I know you better.”
“Good!” he replies. “I was actually listening to The Willow Song because I happen to like Nellie Melba****. Sorry to be so practical.”
“Not at all, John.”
“Oh!” Sir John suddenly notes Lettice’s stumpy ended umbrella as it leans against the sofa next to her. “Grindley should have taken that from you. I’m so sorry.”
Lettice glances to where Sir John is looking. “Oh, please don’t be cross with your butler, John. I have been holding it so tightly, I think he was probably afraid to ask me to relinquish it.”
“Well, I’ll get him to take it with him when he returns. With the champagne.” Sir John pauses momentarily as he walks back across the room. “Are you feeling tense, Lettice?” he asks. “In my presence?”
“A little.” Lettice admits.
Sir John resumes his seat and eyes Lettice. She is dressed in a light moss green satin frock with lilac trim with a matching green hat adorned with lilac satin roses and peacock feathers which he remembers her wearing at Gossington, the Scottish country residence of Sir John and Lady Caxton. Lady Gladys, a successful romance novelist, had once been one of many of Sir John’s lovers before she married Sir John Caxton. As he observes her, Lettice toys distractedly with a long strand of creamy white pearls cascading down her front. She looks beautiful, and proud, yet at the same exudes vulnerability.
“Well, it’s clear you haven’t come paying a social call to pass comment on my décor or musical listening habits.”
“That’s very perceptive of you, John.” Lettice admits with a guilty lilt.
“So, what is it that I can do for you, Lettice?” Sir John asks, resting his elbows comfortably on the rounded arms of his wingback chair, steepling his long and elegant fingers before him.
“Do you remember the last time we met, John?” Lettice ventures.
“Of course I do, Lettice. It was at the Portland Gallery’s autumn showing. I escorted Priscilla because her husband couldn’t, feigning illness as I recall. I met you before that rather brash and unintelligible fingerpainting by that Spaniard that certain people seem to have taken a fancy to.” He pauses. “What’s his name again?”
Lettice smiles at John’s summation of the painting ‘The Lovers’ which hung above the fireplace in Mr. Chilvers’ Bond Street gallery. “Picasso.” she replies.
“That’s it! That’s the chap!”
“Do you remember our conversation, John?” Lettice remarks meaningfully.
“We talked about a good deal as I recall, Lettice.” Sir John replies, the hint of a smile just teasing the edges of his thin-lipped mouth. “Was there something in particular you were referring to?”
Lettice sighs and glances awkwardly around her, her eyes moving in a desultory fashion over a fine collection of Georgian and Regency silhouettes hanging on the white striped paper on the wall above the sideboard on which the now silent gramophone stands.
“You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you, John?”
“I’ve spoken plainly enough before you, Lettice. Please don’t feel embarrassed or anxious about speaking as plainly before me.”
Lettice sighs again, dropping the pearls in her hand so that they fall elegantly down the green satin front of her bodice. “You made me a proposal, John.”
“Did I?” The smile blossoms a little more on his lips. He pauses for a moment, observing Lettice as she holds her breath. “Oh yes, I did, didn’t I?”
“Do you recall what your proposition was?”
The smile, triumphant and self-assured makes itself clearly known now as Sir John’s whole face and demeanour change. “I do.” he says with a pleased purr.
“Then would you mind refreshing me of it, John?” asks Lettice squirming in her seat on the sofa.
“Do you need clarification, Lettice?”
“Put it down to too much of Mr. Chilvers excellent champagne.”
“Ahh yes! I seem to recall commenting on that as well.” Sir John remarks. “Very well.”
He pauses again for a moment, clearly savouring Lettice’s awkwardness.
“It was a proposal of marriage, as I recall, Lettice.”
“But not a standard marriage, isn’t that so, John?” Lettice clarifies.
Sir John’s slender greying eyebrows arch high over his hooded eyes. “No, not a standard marriage. Call it…” He hums and haws for a moment as he deliberates the words he wants to use to describe it. “A marriage à la mode.”
“A poor choice of words, John.” Lettice chides him politely from her seat. “As I recall, Hogarth’s***** ‘Marriage A-la-Mode’****** ended up disastrously for the newlyweds.”
“Very adroitly observed, Lettice, but regardless of the outcomes of the marriage, it was an arrangement, and what I proposed to you that night was also an arrangement of sorts: a marriage of convenience shall we say.”
Lettice gulps, her throat suddenly parched as she dares to ask, “Would you mind terribly, re-stating what the details of that marriage of convenience are, John?”
“Ahh, now we get to the crux of it.” Sir John says knowingly. “As I said, Lettice, you could have spoken plainly to me and simply asked me what my terms of the marriage were, rather than pussyfooting around them.” He winds one of his hands around the engraved silver knob of his cane. “There is something to be said for the merit of directness in business.”
‘Well, I’m not as well versed in business affairs as you obviously are, John.”
“Perhaps not, but if you are to have a successful business, Lettice, or as successful as it can be, I’d recommend a modicum of directness. Whilst perhaps not always perceived as desirous in a young lady, in a businesswoman who intends to make her way through a very male dominated world, it is essential.”
“Your conditions, John.” Lettice exclaims.
“Ahh, there!” He wags a finger at her. “You see! Directness! Excellent!” He sighs contentedly. “I’d never propose a conventional marriage to you, my dear Lettice. I don’t claim to have won your affections romantically, the way Spencely has.” He smiles his oily smile at her again as he licks his lips. “Let me speak plainly, Lettice. You are a frightfully captivatingly attractive girl. Part of that appeal for me, is that you are also an intelligent girl as well as a pretty one, with more brains than half the women of my acquaintance, and you know I know more than a few of them.” His lascivious chuckle makes Lettice cringe. “I don’t speak of love between us. Pity save me, a successful man, from that foolish emotion. No, I speak of respect.”
“Since we are speaking plainly, you’ll forgive me, John, when I tell you that I have trouble reconciling marriage and respect with a man who openly has dalliances with chorus girls.”
“Extra-martial liaisons with Gaiety Girls******* are nothing new, Lettice, particularly in our circles. You have eyes and ears, and you obviously know how to use them. You cannot be oblivious to such a fact.”
“No, John, but I find the idea rather,” Lettice licks her lips. “Rather unpalatable, shall we say.”
“I assure you, Lettice, that if you deigned to marry me, I would keep my liaisons,” The last word sounds even more lascivious dripping from his suddenly blood reddened lips. “Discreet, and no matter how many of them there were, I would never shame you. However, if you find this topic of conversation so unpalatable as you say, why are we having it? You have Spencely. You’ve made that quite clear. I don’t understand this sudden interest in a marriage proposal you seemed so obvious to spurn.”
“Oh please!” Lettice scoffs bitterly. “Don’t play the innocent with me, John. It doesn’t suit you. Surely Lady Zinnia has told you, as an interested party, the news.”
“My dear Lettice, I have said before that Zinnia and I are merely nodding acquaintances, as all members of aristocratic families such as ours are in society. I think the last time I spoke to her was over a bridge table at a house party hosted by a mutual friend of ours before the war, and then it was simply social niceties. Zinnia isn’t my friend, and she certainly wouldn’t draw me into her confidence. In this instance, I must plead innocence. What has happened with Spencely to change your mind that you would consider my unusual marriage proposal?”
Lettice doesn’t answer immediately, allowing her head to loll forward, the brim of her firmly affixed hat hiding her face from view. She takes a few deep breaths that cause her shoulders to rise and fall before she sits up again. “Our engagement is over.”
“No Lettice!” Sir John gasps in shock. “This cannot be! Surely this is some contrivance of Zinnia? She separated the two of you on purpose to try and break your bond, but I told you to stay strong to win out over her scheming. She’d like nothing better than to triumph! I thought you were both playing the long game to win out over Zinnia.”
“I was.” Lettice says with a deflated tone. “And I thought that Selwyn was too, but it appears not. He’s engaged to a diamond mine heiress he met in Durban.”
“No! Surely not, Lettice? Do you have proof?”
“Lady Zinnia invited me to tea at her home here in London. I thought she was going to concede defeat: foolishly I did, John.” Tears well up in Lettice’s eyes and spill over her lids, running in rivulets down her lightly powered dusted and rouged cheeks. “And then she brought out a sheaf of newspaper clippings: photos of Selwyn and this heiress together.”
“A photo does not a guilty party make, Lettice.” Sir John cautions.
“No, but the typeface beneath the photos does.” Lettice snivels, reaching into her crocodile skin handbag and withdrawing a dainty lace handkerchief that she dabs her nose with. “It said they are engaged.”
“Oh Lettice!” Sir John clambers up from his seat and moves to sit beside her. Clasping her hands tenderly in his, he allows his right knee to brush up against Lettice’s own white lisle clad one as it peeps just underneath the hem of her lilac trimmed frock. “Lettice I am truly sorry to hear this terrible news. Are you quite sure it’s true?”
Lettice nods shallowly. “The source is apparently quite reliable and independent of Lady Zinnia.”
“But engagements end.” Sir John insists.
“These articles come from papers over the last few months. I doubt that the engagement will end now.”
Finally, the emotional threshold for Lettice bursts and she flings her arms around Sir John’s neck, collapsing against his dark maroon velvet smoking jacket and weeping uncontrollably. Sir John allows her to cry and gently consoles her for a short while.
At length, he deftly grasps her by the shoulders and sits her upright before him. He runs his right hand over her tear stained left cheek, wiping it gently and with a care filled brush. He looks her directly in the eye. “Spencely is a fool and a swine if he lets a pearl like you slip through his fingers, Lettice!”
“Oh John!” Lettice gasps.
“It is true, I don’t offer you a conventional marriage, and I know I am old enough to be your father, but I can still father an heir with the right wife who understands me and respects my needs. I’d be proud to have you on my arm at public functions, and as I said, I would never cause you public shame. I would respect you, your interests and your wishes. Perhaps love might come over time with any luck, but if not, at least respect would sustain our marriage. The generosity of the allowance I would gladly give you would rival your own, Lettice. You would gain a title. You would be chatelaine to this house, a vast castle in Bedfordshire and several manor houses, including Fontengil Park, which is an easy drive to your own family home. I would allow you freedom. You may follow your own interests and pursuits unimpeded. I would allow you to continue to run your interior design business, even if it is a rather unconventional arrangement. Most men in my position would baulk at the idea of their wife running her own business, even for pin money*******, but as a businessman, I’d be proud to have a successful businesswoman as my wife: especially one as pretty as you, even when you do cry.”
Lettice cannot help but release a snuffling laugh. “Oh John! So,” She gulps heavily. “So the offer is still there?”
“What? Yes! Of course it is, Lettice! And I meant what I said that night too.”
“What was that, John?” Lettice sniffs.
“That if you married me, I’d pay for and let you hang daubs like that Picasso chap in our home.”
“What?” Lettice asks in a breaking voice. “Even in here?”
Sir John looks around him at the elegant Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century pictures hanging about the room. “Well, if you are such the arbiter of interior design as Country Life********* claims you to be, I’ll allow you, Lettice.”
Lettice laughs more light-heartedly this time.
“In fact, I think you should go and see Chilvers this week, and tell him to put that daub on my account. If you will play the dutiful wife, give me an heir, and you let me take my enjoyment where I like it and not complain,” He lowers his voice. “You may even have liaisons of your own, so long as they are discreet ones, and that the paternity of any offspring is beyond doubt mine.”
“So does this mean we’re engaged then?” Lettice asks timidly, sniffing again. “Even if I probably do look like a wreck.” She begins to wipe her still damp cheeks.
“Not at all, my dear Lettice. You look positively charming.” he assures her. “But only if you are sure that your engagement to Spencely is over. I would hate to step in where there is no place for me.”
“It’s over, John.” she replies with an affirmative nod. “And I’ve been thinking about your proposal over the last week since I found out, so it’s not a step I take lightly of flippantly.”
“Then I suppose we are engaged, my dear Lettice.” Sir John replies joyously, and then overcome by emotions he leans in and kisses Lettice on the lips.
Lettice is taken aback, as much by the feeling of Sir John’s lips pressed against her own as by the surprise of it happening. His lips aren’t soft like Selwyn’s are. They are harder and more forceful. Still, Lettice imagines that she will grow accustomed to them, just as she will become accustomed to Sir John himself as her husband over time.
Sir John suddenly breaks their kiss.
“Oh. Should I be seeking your father’s blessing, Lettice my dear, or Lady Sadie’s?”
“Oh don’t worry about that.” Lettice says a little breathily, waving his concern aside. “He’ll be happy if Mater is happy, and Mater will be in raptures when she hears the news. She was vying for proposal of marriage to me ever since the Hunt Ball. We’ll go down to Glynes and break the news to them together. Then we can discuss the banns**********.”
“Very well then, Lettice my dear. Only if you’re sure.”
“Yes!” Lettice says with a steeliness in her voice. “I’m sure.”
Just at that moment, the door to the drawing room opens and the butler returns.
“Oh splendid!” Sir John exclaims as the butler walks in carrying a silver wine cooler of ice from which protrudes a bottle of champagne and two gleaming champagne flutes. “You can be the first to congratulate us, Grindley.”
“And what might I be congratulating you for, Sir?” the manservant asks.
“Miss Chetwynd and I have just become engaged!” Sir John says, joyously.
“Congratulations, Miss Chetwynd! Congratulations Sir!” he replies heartily.
“Thank you, Grindley.” Lettice replies.
“Now you may leave us, Grindley. I can pop the champagne myself. And we are not to be disturbed, thank you.”
“So you won’t want the car brought about at nine, Sir?” the butler asks, implying an underlying meaning to his question.
“The car?” Sir John queries. “Oh, the car! No. No! Annabeth Du Barrie can find someone else to take her out to supper at the Savoy*********** after the show. I’ll write a note to that affect which I’ll have you send around to His Majesty’s************ stage door.” He looks earnestly at Lettice. “I may be a philanderer, but at the very least out of respect to my new fiancée, I shall pass on the pleasure of Miss Du Barrie’s company this evening.”
Sir John withdraws the bottle of champagne from its nest of ice and deftly pops the cork. Pouring champagne into Lettice’s flute he hands it to her before filling his own.
“A toast!” he announces. “To the future Lady Nettleford-Hughes!”
Lettice and Sir John’s glasses clink together, cementing their impromptu engagement.
*“I wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (also sometimes called "Daffodils"), is a lyric poem written by William Wordsworth. It is one of his most popular, and was inspired by an encounter on 15 April 1802 during a walk with his younger sister Dorothy, when they saw a "long belt" of daffodils on the shore of Ullswater in the English Lake District. Written in 1804, this twenty-four line lyric was first published in 1807 in “Poems, in Two Volumes”, and revised in 1815.
**Born in 1770, William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication “Lyrical Ballads” in 1798. Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.
***Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 5 February 1887. One of the songs performed by Desdemona is The Willow Song, which originated as an anonymous Elizabethan or earlier folk song used in the penultimate act of Shakespeare's Othello, which Verdi recreated for his opera. The earliest record of the Willow song is in a book of lute music from 1583, while Shakespeare's play was not written until 20 years later in 1604. The willow is the conventional symbol of disappointed love. In Othello, Othello believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful, despite her unyielding loyalty to him. Their love has become discontented at the hands of Iago and the Willow Song foreshadows Desdemona's fate.
****Dame Nellie Melba was an Australian operatic lyric coloratura soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early Twentieth Century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town.
*****William Hogarth was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Familiarity with his work is so widespread that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
*****“Marriage A-la-Mode” is a series of six pictures painted by William Hogarth between 1743 and 1745, intended as a pointed skewering of Eighteenth Century society. They show the disastrous results of an ill-considered marriage for money or social status, and satirise patronage and aesthetics. The were originally sold as a set of six and offered for sale by twelve noon on the 6th of June 1751, but only attracted two bidders, one of whom bought them all for £126.00. The series was acquired for the newly formed National gallery of London in 1824.
******* Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes.
********Originating in Seventeenth Century England, the term pin money first meant “an allowance of money given by a husband to his wife for her personal expenditures. Married women, who typically lacked other sources of spending money, tended to view an allowance as something quite desirable. By the Twentieth Century, the term had come to mean a small sum of money, whether an allowance or earned, for spending on inessentials, separate and in addition to the housekeeping money a wife might have to spend.
********* Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
**********The banns of marriage, commonly known simply as the "banns" or "bans", are the public announcement in a Christian parish church, or in the town council, of an impending marriage between two specified persons.
***********The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first hotel in Britain to introduce electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel. The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has two hundred and sixty seven guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.
************His Majesty's Theatre in London’s West End is a theatre situated in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The building, designed by Charles J. Phipps, was constructed in 1897 for the actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre.
This upper-class Belgravia drawing room may look real to you, but it is not all that it seems, for it is in fact made up entirely of miniatures from my 1;12 miniatures collection, including some particularly special pieces.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Lettice’s pretty dyed green straw cloche adorned with satin roses, green ribbons and peacock feathers is an artisan miniature. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism such as these are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. The maker of this hat is unknown, but it is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
Lettice’s crocodile skin handbag comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures in England.
Lettice’s furled green umbrella is a 1:12 artisan pieces made of silk, with a wooden lacquered handle. It comes from specialist artisan miniature makers in England. Sir John’s silver knobbed walking stick is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. The top is sterling silver. It was made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures.
Lettice’s fur draped over the sofa end is in actuality, a mink tail attached to one of my own vintage fur tippets. It is just the right size to be a thick fur stole that could have been worn by Lettice as she pays calls on a cool autumnal afternoon in London.
Sir John’s smart and select drawing room has been furnished for the most part by the high-end miniature manufacturers Bespaq and J.B.M. The gilt swan decorated tables and pedestal come from Bespaq, whilst the Regency stripe low backed sofa and wingback arm chair come from J.B.M.
The beautiful gold and bronze decorated black chinoiserie screen in the background is a very special 1:12 miniature screen created especially for me, and there is no other like it anywhere else in the world. It was handmade and decorated over a twelve month period for me as a Christmas gift last year by miniature artisan Tim Sidford as a thanks for the handmade Christmas baubles I make him every year. Tim’s miniature works are truly amazing! You can see some of his handmade decorated interiors using upcycled Playmobil, found objects and 1:12 miniatures here: www.flickr.com/photos/timsidford/albums/72157624010136051/
The champagne glasses on the central swan table are 1:12 artisan miniatures. Made of glass, they have been blown individually by hand by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering and are so fragile and delicate that even I with my dainty fingers have broken the stem of one. They stand on an ornate Sixteenth Century style silver tray made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The wine cooler is also made by Warwick Miniatures. The Deutz and Geldermann champagne bottle is also an artisan miniature and made of glass with a miniature copy of a real Deutz and Geldermann label and some real foil wrapped around its neck. It was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. Even the ice blocks in the coolers are made to scale and also came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
The blue and white Chinese vase, like the ones on the pedestals in the background are 1:12 artisan miniatures. The vase on the table, which has been hand decorated was acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom, whilst the two in the background came from an online specialist on eBay. The daffodils in the vase are all made of polymer clay that is moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. Very realistic looking, they are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.
The pile of books in the table next to Sir John’s armchair, and the newspaper broadsheets in the foreground are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print, as is the case with the headlines on the newspapers! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. In this case, the books on the table are non-opening, however what might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s books and magazines are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.
The tall Dutch style chest of drawers to the far left of the photo was one of the first pieces of miniature furniture I ever bought for myself. I chose it as payment for several figures I made from Fimo clay for a local high street toy shop when I was eight years old. All these years later, I definitely think I got the better end of the deal!
The two Regency silhouettes hanging on the wall came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.
The Georgian rug on the floor has been woven by Pike, Pike and Company in the United Kingdom. The striped wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
Todd Williamson explores ideas of order and tradition to examine the deep uncertainty and uncontrollable political, social, and cultural movements of our time. Both the work and concept generated for this installation were directly influenced by the environment in which it is displayed. Through its long elegant proportions, the church of Santa Maria della Pietà encourages a meditative, sequential process of reflection. Drawing from the site’s richness, the artist has developed a series of works which encourage contemplation, challenge the perceived order of tradition, and ask: Who are our apostles today? Is the influence of today’s perceived ‘influencers’ truly inspirational or dangerously dogmatic?
This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.
The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.
As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.
The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.
Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.
Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.
Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.
In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.
However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.
Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.
With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.
In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.
Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.
As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.
In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.
Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.
This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.
The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.
As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.
The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.
Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.
Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.
Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.
In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.
However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.
Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.
With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.
In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.
Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.
As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.
In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.
Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.