This is an old one that I'd not worked on before but I gave it a shot for a camera club competition themed "flight". It earned me a highly commended and another I took on a glider flight was placed 2nd. I missed the competition night taking a break at Ironbridge so the results email was a pleasant surprise once I'd persuaded the hotel's wifi to stutter into life on my iPad.

The Statue of the Bear and the Strawberry Tree (in Spanish “El Oso y el Madroño”) is a sculpture from the second half of the 20th century, situated in the Spanish city of Madrid. It represents the coat of arms of Madrid and is found on the east side of the Puerta del Sol, between Calle de Alcalá and Carrera de San Jerónimo, in the historical centre of the capital.

 

The statue is a work of the sculptor Antonio Navarro Santafé (1906-1983) and it was inaugurated on 19 January 1967. It was promoted by the section of Culture of the City council of Madrid, which wanted to represent the main heraldic symbols of the city in a monument.

 

The first appearance of a wild bear and a strawberry tree on the coat of arms of the city was in the 13th century. Previously, it only incorporated a bear in passant attitude, until it was replaced in the aforementioned century by the two current figures. With this change, they wanted to symbolise the resolution adopted by the municipality and the Chapter of Priests and Beneficiaries after a long litigation about the control of Madrilenian pastures and trees. Since this agreement, the former became property of the Chapter and the latter of the council. From here they modified the arms, including a strawberry tree and of a bear in a new posture: leaning on the tree with both paws.

 

The sculpture has always been in the Puerta del Sol, but in two locations inside the square. Before 1986, it was situated in the east side of it, in the vicinity of the building between the Calle de Alcalá and the Carrera St. Jerónimo. That year, it was moved to the front of Carmen Street for the square's reform and remodeling, promoted by mayor Enrique Tierno Galván. In September 2009, with the integral renewal of the square promoted by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, it has gone back to its original location.

 

The Statue of the Bear and the Strawberry Tree is made of stone and bronze. It weighs approximately 22 tons (20 tonnes) and stands 13 ft (4 m) tall. It rests on a staggered cubic pedestal of granite.

 

It represents in a real-life form the coat of arms of Madrid, with the tree taller than the bear, who supports his paws on the trunk and directs his attention towards one of the fruits.

 

Antonio Navarro Santafé ( Villena , Alicante , December 22, 1906-id., November 16, 1983) was a Spanish sculptor . On April 24, 1983 he was named Favorite Son of the city of Villena.

 

Born into a humble farming family, he was the seventh child of nine siblings. The family did not have enough money and that is why they had financial problems and to cure his problems, his father and his two older brothers emigrated to Argentina. Some time later, his mother sold the rest of the family assets and, after time, they moved to Madrid in 1913 at Atocha Street , No. 9.

 

In Madrid, from the age of eleven, he had to work to help with the needs of the house. Shortly afterward he went to the studio of the Castellón sculptor José Ortells López , a disciple of Benlliure , and there he made his first sculpture, a head he titled "Peasant". From 1930 he began to carry out important works. He later went to Valencia to the San Carlos School of Fine Arts and then joined the Madrid School of Ceramics as a teacher. Later he was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Colegio de San Ildefonso in Madrid and Master Stonemason of the Villa City Council.

 

He suffered from stuttering, which gave him a shy character and little given to creating "social relationships." This earned him a certain dependence on intermediaries who did not always know how to adequately pay for his work or accept modeling jobs for the firms of other sculptors.

 

About this, he himself wrote:

"When I started to get older, having been living in Madrid for years, and I wanted to fight against the tremendous defect that I already noticed was hurting me, I corrected it somewhat by doing respiratory gymnastics; then someone recommended that I read aloud, syllable, and I read I complete Don Quixote in this way, and breathing deeply. At the height of my life I must admit that the use of such a practice that I have always maintained constantly has helped me on occasions, but any physical weakness, any moment or occasion that affected my nerves, made me fall into the abyss of that evil."

 

His mother was his great supporter in following his vocation in sculpture. She entrusted all of her projects and assignments to her mother and she was the one who first saw her work and gave her her opinion on them. Her mother took care of the order and cleanliness of the sculptor's work studio, as well as acting as secretary when necessary. 5 His death in February 1945 in Madrid was an emotional blow for the sculptor.

 

Navarro Santafé was a sculptor who cultivated diverse themes, ranging from the imagery of virgins and saints, in carving and marble, to the portrait bust, in which he achieved sensational achievements, with an exact resemblance to his sitters, both in stone and in bronze.

 

Monument to the Horse. Jerez de la Frontera

1939. Virgin of the Virtues , Patroness of Villena.

1947. Monument to Ruperto Chapí , monument to the music of Villena in his native Villena .

1959. Virgin of Santa María La Blanca for the burial of the Dukes of Marchena , in San Sebastián .

1967. Statue of the Bear and the Strawberry Tree in the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid .

1968. Monument to the Berlin Bear, in the Berlin Park , in Madrid.

1968. Bust of Doctor Lafuente Chaos, at the headquarters of the Medical College of the city of Guadalajara .

1970. Monument to the Horse of Jerez de la Frontera , considered one of his crowning works.

1973. Monument to the Fighting Bull in Puerto de Santa María

1983. Hunting Dream, at the Villena Museum.

 

The Puerta del Sol is a public square in Madrid, one of the best known and busiest places in the city. This is the centre (Km 0) of the radial network of Spanish roads. The square also contains the famous clock whose bells mark the traditional eating of the Twelve Grapes and the beginning of a new year. The New Year's celebration has been broadcast live since 31 December 1962 on major radio and television networks including Atresmedia and RTVE.

 

The Puerta del Sol originated as one of the gates in the city wall that surrounded Madrid in the 15th century. Outside the wall, medieval suburbs began to grow around the Christian Wall of the 12th century. The name of the gate came from the rising sun which decorated the entry, since the gate was oriented to the east.

 

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the area was an important meeting place: as the goal for the couriers coming from abroad and other parts of Spain to the Post Office, it was visited by those eager for the latest news. The stairs to the Saint Philip church at the square were known as the Gradas de San Felipe, and were among the most prolific mentideros de la Corte (this Spanish idiom sounds as "lie-spreaders of the Court", but it is related with the verb mentar, "to say about someone", not mentir, "to lie", so it is more appropriately translated as "places of the City where people gossip").

 

The House of the Post Office was built by French architect Jacques Marquet between 1766 and 1768. The building was the headquarters of the Ministry of Interior and State Security in Francoist Spain. It is currently the seat of the Presidency of the Madrid Community.

 

Sol has seen protests against the March 11th 2004 attacks on commuter trains, and Spain's involvement in the Iraq War . In 2011, the square became established as a focal point and a symbol for the ongoing Spanish democracy demonstrations. The demonstrations included camping in the middle of the plaza (@acampadasol), which began on 15 May 2011 amidst the election campaign for city halls and Autonomous Communities governments and which was fueled by social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook. The demonstrations then spread to more than sixty other cities throughout Spain. Since 12 June 2011, the square has held a free-standing domed structure made from pallets, which served as an information point for the 15-M Movement. This continued throughout the summer of 2011 until the dawn of 2 August, when the national police decided to evict the structure and protestors. Currently, dozens of committees have their assemblies in the iconic square.

 

Despite once being the meeting point of the six major radial roads of Spain, in 2020 the square was pedestrianized and closed to most traffic. Exceptions are made for supplies to shops, emergency services and blood donation campaigns.

 

The Puerta del Sol contains a number of well known sights both domestically and internationally associated with Spain. On the south side, the old Post Office was the headquarters of the Ministry of Interior and State Security in Francoist Spain. The basement of the DGS (Spanish: Dirección General de Seguridad, lit. 'General Directorate of Security') was infamous for being a place where Dissidents to the regime were subjected to torture. The building now serves as the office of the President of Madrid, the head of the regional government of the Autonomous Community of Madrid (not to be confused with the Madrid City Council, which is housed in the Palacio de Cibeles). There are two commemorative plaques in the front of the Royal House of the Post Office: one is devoted to the neighbours of Madrid who rose up against the Napoleonic invasion of Spain on May 2, 1808; the other one is a memorial of the victims of the March 11th, 2004 terrorist attacks.

 

Also on its south side, the square holds a mounted statue of Charles III of Spain, nicknamed "el rey alcalde" ("the mayor-king") due to the extensive public works program he set in motion. The famous Tío Pepe lighted sign was above the square's eastern building between the Calle de Alcalá and the Carrera de San Jerónimo (Apple Store today) for a long time, now is on top of the former Paris Hotel. Also on the east side lies the statue of The Bear and the Strawberry Tree (in Spanish, el Oso y el Madroño), the heraldic symbol of Madrid. Until 2009, the statue stood on the north side at the entrance to Calle del Carmen. The Mariblanca (a female figure named for its white marble) is a copy of a statue (possibly of Venus, and so the restored pedestal claims), which marks the place of a former fountain displaying that figure.

 

The kilómetro cero is a plaque on the ground directly north of the Post Office serving as the symbolic center of Spain, and the point from which kilometer distances are numbered in the Spanish road system.

 

The Puerta is located in the very heart of Madrid. It serves as the kilometre zero from which all radial roads in Spain are measured. This is demonstrated by a plaque on the floor of the square, marking the exact point of Km.0. This was established in 1857, setting six major radial roads, clockwise:

 

N-1 (Northern Road) to Irun, border town with France, via Burgos, starting from Calle Montera and continuing through Calle de Fuencarral and Calle de Bravo Murillo

N-2 (Northeastern Road) to La Jonquera, border town with France, via Zaragoza and Barcelona, starting from Calle de Alcalá

N-3 (Eastern Road) to Valencia, starting from Carrera de San Jerónimo, where the Congress of Deputies is located, and continuing through Paseo del Prado

N-4 (Southern Road) to Córdoba, Seville and Cádiz, starting from Calle Carretas, Calle Concepción Jerónima and Calle de Toledo

N-5 (Southwestern Road) to Badajoz, border town with Portugal, starting from Calle Mayor

N-6 (Northwestern Road) to A Coruña, starting from Calle Preciados, continuing through Gran Vía and Calle de la Princesa

The old plaque was replaced in 2009, as it had become faded after years of foot traffic. It is also the reference for street numbers in Madrid, which begin at the street-end that is closest to Puerta del Sol.

 

Immediately to the southwest lies the Plaza Mayor; the Palacio Real, the official home of the Royal Family, is further west. Parliament and the museum district are to the east and the train station Atocha is to the southeast.

 

Under the square lies a public transport hub served by lines 1, 2 and 3 of the Madrid Metro. A commuter service was inaugurated on 27 June 2009, four years behind schedule. The lateness of the construction was in part due to the discovery of the remains of the Church of Our Lady of Good Success during the excavation of the main chamber. The new station connects the Puerta to Madrid's commuter rail system and, by extension, to Spain's railroads via direct connections to Atocha and Chamartín railway stations.

 

The square connects several commercial and recreational areas together, and thus both it and the surrounding streets consist mainly of shopping establishments catering to locals and tourists alike, like the several El Corte Inglés department store buildings in Preciados Street, La Mallorquina cafe, and numerous, ever-changing restaurants. The area remains active late into the night and early morning since nearby bars and dance clubs often only start entertainment at 1 am. Street music is also common in the area.

 

Side streets close to the square also contain residential flats, some small offices, and tourist hostels.

 

During New Year's Eve 2018–2019, the clock of the Puerta del Sol for the first time in history rang the bells according to the schedule of the Canary Islands. After the traditional twelve strokes of midnight, the clock delayed one hour its needles to adjust to the Canary hour and also gave the chimes at the same time as this archipelago.

 

Madrid is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and its monocentric metropolitan area is the second-largest in the EU. The municipality covers 604.3 km2 (233.3 sq mi) geographical area. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the central part of the Iberian Peninsula at about 650 meters above mean sea level. The capital city of both Spain and the surrounding autonomous community of Madrid (since 1983), it is also the political, economic, and cultural centre of the country. The climate of Madrid features hot summers and cool winters.

 

The Madrid urban agglomeration has the second-largest GDP in the European Union and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, environment, media, fashion, science, culture, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities. Due to its economic output, high standard of living, and market size, Madrid is considered the major financial centre and the leading economic hub of the Iberian Peninsula and of Southern Europe. The metropolitan area hosts major Spanish companies such as Telefónica, Iberia, BBVA and FCC. It concentrates the bulk of banking operations in the country and it is the Spanish-speaking city generating the largest amount of webpages. For innovation, Madrid is ranked 19th in the world and 7th in Europe from 500 cities, in the 2022–2023 annual analysts Innovation Cities Index, published by 2ThinkNow.

 

Madrid houses the headquarters of the UN's World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), and the Public Interest Oversight Board (PIOB). It also hosts major international regulators and promoters of the Spanish language: the Standing Committee of the Association of Spanish Language Academies, headquarters of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), the Instituto Cervantes and the Foundation of Urgent Spanish (FundéuRAE). Madrid organises fairs such as FITUR, ARCO, SIMO TCI and the Madrid Fashion Week. Madrid is home to two world-famous football clubs, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid.

 

While Madrid possesses modern infrastructure, it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighbourhoods and streets. Its landmarks include the Plaza Mayor, the Royal Palace of Madrid; the Royal Theatre with its restored 1850 Opera House; the Buen Retiro Park, founded in 1631; the 19th-century National Library building (founded in 1712) containing some of Spain's historical archives; many national museums, and the Golden Triangle of Art, located along the Paseo del Prado and comprising three art museums: Prado Museum, the Reina Sofía Museum, a museum of modern art, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which complements the holdings of the other two museums. Cibeles Palace and Fountain has become one of the monument symbols of the city. The mayor is José Luis Martínez-Almeida from the People's Party.

 

The documented history of Madrid dates to the 9th century, even though the area has been inhabited since the Stone Age. The primitive nucleus of Madrid, a walled military outpost in the left bank of the Manzanares, dates back to the second half of the 9th century, during the rule of the Emirate of Córdoba. Conquered by Christians in 1083 or 1085, Madrid consolidated in the Late Middle Ages as a middle to upper-middle rank town of the Crown of Castile. The development of Madrid as administrative centre began when the court of the Hispanic Monarchy was settled in the town in 1561.

 

The primitive urban nucleus of Madrid (Majriṭ) was founded in the late 9th century (from 852 to 886) as a citadel erected on behalf of Muhammad I, the Cordobese emir, on the relatively steep left bank of the Manzanares. Originally it was largely a military outpost for the quartering of troops. Similarly to other fortresses north of the Tagus, Madrid made it difficult to muster reinforcements from the Asturian kingdom to the unruly inhabitants of Toledo, prone to rebellion against the Umayyad rule. Extending across roughly 8 ha, Muslim Madrid consisted of the alcázar and the wider walled citadel (al-Mudayna) with the addition of some housing outside the walls. By the late 10th century, Majriṭ was an important borderland military stronghold territory with great strategic value, owing to its proximity to Toledo. The most generous estimates for the 10th century tentatively and intuitively put the number of inhabitants of the 9 ha settlement at 2,000. The model of repopulation is likely to have been by the Limitanei, characteristic of the borderlands.

 

The settlement is mentioned in the work of the 10th-century Cordobese chronicler Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Razi, with the latter locating the Castle of Madrid within the district of Guadalajara. After the Christian conquest, in the first half of the 12th century Al-Idrisi described Madrid as a "small city and solid fortress, well populated. In the age of Islam, it had a small mosque where the khuṭbah was always delivered," and placed it in the province of the sierra, "al-Sārrāt". It was ascribed by most post-Christian conquest Muslim commentators, including Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi, to Toledo. This may tentatively suggest that the settlement, part of the cora of Guadalajara according to al-Razi, could have been transferred to Toledo following the Fitna of al-Andalus.

 

The city passed to Christian control in the context of the conquest of Toledo; historiography debates whether if the event took place in 1083, before the conquest of Toledo, in the wake of negotiations between Alfonso VI and al-Qadir, or afterwards, as a direct consequence of the seizure of Toledo in 1085.

 

The mosque was reconsecrated as the church of the Virgin of Almudena (almudin, the garrison's granary). The society in the 11th and 12th centuries was structured around knight-villeins as a leading class in the local public, social and economic life. The town had a Muslim and mozarabic preexisting population (a number of the former would remain in the town after the conquest while the later community would remain very large throughout the high middle ages before merging with the new settlers). The town was further repopulated by settlers with a dominant Castilian-Leonese extraction. Frank settlers were a minority but influential community. The Jewish community was probably smaller in number than the mudéjar one, standing out as physicians up until their expulsion. By the end of the middle ages, the best-positioned members of the mudéjar community were the alarifes ('master builders'), who were tasked with public works (including the management of the viajes de agua), and had a leading role in the urbanism of the town in the 15th century.

 

Since the mid-13th century and up to the late 14th century, the concejo of Madrid vied for the control of the Real de Manzanares territory against the concejo of Segovia, a powerful town north of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range, characterised by its repopulating prowess and its husbandry-based economy, contrasted by the agricultural and less competent in repopulation town of Madrid. After the decline of Sepúlveda, another concejo north of the mountain range, Segovia had become a major actor south of the Guadarrama mountains, expanding across the Lozoya and Manzanares rivers to the north of Madrid and along the Guadarrama river course to its west.

 

The society of Madrid before the 15th century was an agriculture-based one (prevailing over livestock), featuring a noteworthy number of irrigated crops.[16] Two important industries were those of the manufacturing of building materials and leather.

 

John I of Castile gifted Leo V of Armenia the lordship of Madrid together with those of Villa Real and Andújar in 1383. The Madrilenian concejo made sure that the privilege of lordship did not become hereditary, also presumably receiving a non-sale privilege guaranteeing never again to be handed over by the Crown to a lord.

 

Later, Henry III of Castile (1379–1406) rebuilt the town after it was destroyed by fire, and he founded El Pardo just outside its walls.

 

During the 15th century, the town became one of the preferred locations of the monarchs of the Trastámara dynasty, namely John II of Castile and Henry IV of Castile (Madrid was the town in which the latter spent more time and eventually died). Among the appeals the town offered, aside from the abundant game in the surroundings, the strategic location and the closed link between the existing religious sites and the monarchy, the imposing alcázar frequently provided a safe for the Royal Treasure. The town briefly hosted a medieval mint, manufacturing coins from 1467 to 1471. Madrid would also become a frequent seat of the court during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, spending reportedly more than 1000 days in the town, including a 8-month long uninterrupted spell.

 

By the end of the Middle Ages, Madrid was placed as middle to upper-middle rank town of the Castilian urban network in terms of population. The town also enjoyed a vote at the Cortes of Castile (one out of 18) and housed many hermitages and hospitals.

 

Facing the 1492 decree of expulsion, few local Jews opted for leaving, with most preferring to convert instead, remaining as a non-fully assimilated converso community, subject to rejection by Old Christians. Likewise, adoption of Christianism by the mudéjar community facing the 1502 pragmatic law of forced conversion was also widespread. Seeking to protect its economic interests, the council actively promoted assimilation in the latter case by awarding tax and economic benefits, and gifts.

 

The 1520–21 Revolt of the Comuneros succeeded in Madrid, as, following contacts with the neighbouring city of Toledo, the comunero rebels deposed the corregidor, named Antonio de Astudillo, by 17 June 1520. Juan Zapata and Pedro de Montemayor found themselves among the most uncompromising supporters of the comunero cause in Madrid, with the former becoming the captain of the local militias while the later was captured by royalists and executed by late 1520. The end of revolt came through a negotiation, though, and another two of the leading figures of the uprising (the Bachelor Castillo and Juan Negrete) went unpunished.

 

Philip II (1527–1598), moved the court to Madrid in 1561. Although he made no official declaration, the seat of the court became the de facto capital. Unlikely to have more than 20,000 inhabitants by the time, the city grew approaching the 100,000 mark by the end of the 16th century. The population plummeted (reportedly reduced to a half) during the 5-year period the capital was set in Valladolid (1601–1606), with estimations of roughly 50–60,000 people leaving the city. The move (often framed in modern usage as a case of real estate speculation) was promoted by the valido of Philip III, Duke of Lerma, who had previously acquired many properties in Valladolid. Madrid undertook a mammoth cultural and economic crisis and the decimation of the price of housing ensued. Lerma acquired then cheap real estate in Madrid, and suggested the King to move back the capital to Madrid. The king finally accepted the additional 250,000 ducats offered by the town of Madrid in order to help financing the move of the royal court back to Madrid.

 

During the 17th century, Madrid had a estate-based society. The nobility, a quantitatively large group, swarmed around the royal court. The ecclesial hierarchy, featuring a nobiliary extraction, shared with the nobility the echelon of the Madrilenian society. The lower clergy, featuring a humble extraction, usually had a rural background, although clerics regular often required certifications of limpieza de sangre if not hidalguía. There were plenty of civil servants, who enjoyed considerable social prestige. There was a comparatively small number of craftsmen, traders and goldsmiths. Domestic staff was also common with servants such as pages, squires, butlers and also slaves (owned as symbol of social status). And lastly at the lowest end, there were homeless people, unemployed immigrants, and discharged soldiers and deserters.

 

During the 17th century, Madrid grew rapidly. The royal court attracted many of Spain's leading artists and writers to Madrid, including Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Velázquez during the so-called cultural Siglo de Oro.

 

By the end of the Ancient Regime, Madrid hosted a slave population, tentatively estimated to range from 6,000 to 15,000 out of total population larger than 150,000. Unlike the case of other Spanish cities, during the 18th century the slave population in Madrid was unbalanced in favour of males over females.

 

In 1739 Philip V began constructing new palaces, including the Palacio Real de Madrid. Under Charles III (1716–1788) that Madrid became a truly modern city. Charles III, who cleaned up the city and its government, became one of the most popular kings to rule Madrid, and the saying "the best mayor, the king" became widespread. Besides completing the Palacio Real, Charles III is responsible for many of Madrid's finest buildings and monuments, including the Prado and the Puerta de Alcalá.

 

Amid one of the worst subsistence crises of the Bourbon monarchy, the installation of news lanterns for the developing street lighting system—part of the new modernization policies of the Marquis of Esquilache, the new Sicilian minister—led to an increase on oil prices. This added to an increasing tax burden imposed on a populace already at the brink of famine.[42] In this context, following the enforcing of a ban of the traditional Spanish dress (long cape and a wide-brimmed hat) in order to facilitate the identification of criminal suspects, massive riots erupted in March 1766 in Madrid, the so-called "Mutiny of Esquilache".

 

During the second half of the 18th century, the increasing number of carriages brought a collateral increment of pedestrian accidents, forcing the authorities to take measures against traffic, limiting the number of animals per carriage (in order to reduce speed) and eventually decreeing the full ban of carriages in the city (1787).

 

On 27 October 1807, Charles IV and Napoleon signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which allowed French troops passage through Spanish territory to join Spanish troops and invade Portugal, which had refused to obey the order for an international blockade against England. In February 1808, Napoleon used the excuse that the blockade against England was not being respected at Portuguese ports to send a powerful army under his brother-in-law, General Joachim Murat. Contrary to the treaty, French troops entered via Catalonia, occupying the plazas along the way. Thus, throughout February and March 1808, cities such as Barcelona and Pamplona remained under French rule.

 

While all this was happening, the Mutiny of Aranjuez (17 March 1808) took place, led by Charles IV's own son, crown prince Ferdinand, and directed against him. Charles IV resigned and Ferdinand took his place as King Ferdinand VII. In May 1808, Napoleon's troops entered the city. On 2 May 1808 (Spanish: Dos de Mayo), the Madrileños revolted against the French forces, whose brutal behavior would have a lasting impact on French rule in Spain and France's image in Europe in general. Thus, Ferdinand VII returned to a city that had been occupied by Murat.

 

Both the king and his father became virtual prisoners of the French army. Napoleon, taking advantage of the weakness of the Bourbons, forced both, first the father and then the son, to meet him at Bayonne, where Ferdinand VII arrived on 20 April. Here Napoleon forced both kings to abdicate on 5 May, handing the throne to his brother Joseph Bonaparte.

 

On 2 May, the crowd began to concentrate at the Palacio Real and watched as the French soldiers removed the royal family members from the palace. On seeing the infante Francisco de Paula struggling with his captor, the crowd launched an assault on the carriages, shouting ¡Que se lo llevan! (They're taking him away from us!). French soldiers fired into the crowd. The fighting lasted for hours and is reflected in Goya's painting, The Second of May 1808, also known as The Charge of the Mamelukes.

 

Meanwhile, the Spanish military remained garrisoned and passive. Only the artillery barracks at Monteleón under Captain Luis Daoíz y Torres, manned by four officers, three NCOs and ten men, resisted. They were later reinforced by a further 33 men and two officers led by Pedro Velarde y Santillán, and distributed weapons to the civilian population. After repelling a first attack under French General Lefranc, both Spanish commanders died fighting heroically against reinforcements sent by Murat. Gradually, the pockets of resistance fell. Hundreds of Spanish men and women and French soldiers were killed in this skirmish.

 

On 12 August 1812, following the defeat of the French forces at Salamanca, English and Portuguese troops entered Madrid and surrounded the fortified area occupied by the French in the district of Retiro. Following two days of Siege warfare, the 1,700 French surrendered and a large store of arms, 20,000 muskets and 180 cannon, together with many other supplies were captured, along with two French Imperial Eagles.

 

"In the early years of this century, Madrid was a very ugly town, with few architectural monuments, with horrible housing."

 

Antonio Alcalá Galiano. Recuerdos de un anciano.

 

On 29 October, Hill received Wellington's positive order to abandon Madrid and march to join him. After a clash with Soult's advance guard at Perales de Tajuña on the 30th, Hill broke contact and withdrew in the direction of Alba de Tormes. Joseph re-entered his capital on 2 November.

 

After the war of independence Ferdinand VII returned to the throne (1814). The projects of reform by Joseph Bonaparte were abandoned; during the Fernandine period, despite the proposal of several architectural projects for the city, the lack of ability to finance those led to works often being postponed or halted.

 

After a liberal military revolution, Colonel Riego made the king swear to respect the Constitution. Liberal and conservative government thereafter alternated, ending with the enthronement of Isabella II.

 

At the time the reign of Isabella II started, the city was still enclosed behind its walls, featuring a relatively slow demographic growth as well as very high population density. After the 1833 administrative reforms for the country devised by Javier de Burgos (including the configuration of the current province of Madrid), Madrid was to become the capital of the new liberal state.

 

Madrid experienced substantial changes during the 1830s. The corregimiento and the corregidor (institutions from the Ancien Regime) were ended for good, giving rise to the constitutional alcalde in the context of the liberal transformations. Purged off from Carlist elements, the civil office and the military and palatial milieus recognised legitimacy to the dynastic rights of Isabella II.

 

The reforms enacted by Finance Minister Juan Álvarez Mendizábal in 1835–1836 led to the confiscation of ecclesiastical properties and the subsequent demolition of churches, convents and adjacent orchards in the city (similarly to other Spanish cities); the widening of streets and squares ensued.

 

In 1854, amid economic and political crisis, following the pronunciamiento of group of high officers commanded by Leopoldo O'Donnell garrisoned in the nearby town of Vicálvaro in June 1854 (the so-called "Vicalvarada"), the 7 July Manifesto of Manzanares, calling for popular rebellion, and the ousting of Luis José Sartorius from the premiership on 17 July, popular mutiny broke out in Madrid, asking for a real change of system, in what it was to be known as the Revolution of 1854. With the uprising in Madrid reaching its pinnacle on 17, 18 and 19 July, the rebels, who erected barricades in the streets, were bluntly crushed by the new government.

 

1858 was a marked year for the city with the arrival of the waters from the Lozoya. The Canal de Isabel II was inaugurated on 24 June 1858. A ceremony took place soon after in Calle Ancha de San Bernardo to celebrate it, unveiling a 30-metre-high water source in the middle of the street.

 

The plan for the Ensanche de Madrid ('widening of Madrid') by Carlos María de Castro was passed through a royal decree issued on 19 July 1860. The plan for urban expansion by Castro, a staunch Conservative, delivered a segregation of the well-off class, the middle class and the artisanate into different zones. The southern part of the Ensanche was at a disadvantage with respect to the rest of the Ensanche, insofar, located on the way to the river and at a lower altitude, it was a place of passage for the sewage runoff, thereby being described as a "space of urban degradation and misery". Beyond the Ensanches, slums and underclass neighborhoods were built in suburbs such as Tetuán, Prosperidad or Vallecas.

 

Student unrest took place in 1865 following the ministerial decree against the expression of ideas against the monarchy and the church and the forced removal of the rector of the Universidad Central, unwilling to submit. In a crescendo of protests, the night of 10 April 2,000 protesters clashed against the civil guard. The unrest was crudely quashed, leaving 14 deaths, 74 wounded students and 114 arrests (in what became known as the "Night of Saint Daniel"), becoming the precursor of more serious revolutionary attempts.

 

The Glorious Revolution resulting in the deposition of Queen Isabella II started with a pronunciamiento in the bay of Cádiz in September 1868. The success of the uprising in Madrid on 29 September prompted the French exile of the queen, who was on holiday in San Sebastián and was unable to reach the capital by train. General Juan Prim, the leader of the liberal progressives, was received by the Madrilenian people at his arrival to the city in early October in a festive mood. He pronounced his famous speech of the "three nevers" directed against the Bourbons, and delivered a highly symbolical hug to General Serrano, leader of the revolutionary forces triumphant in the 28 September battle of Alcolea, in the Puerta del Sol.

 

On 27 December 1870 the car in which General Prim, the prime minister, was travelling, was shot by unknown hit-men in the Turk Street, nearby the Congress of Deputies. Prim, wounded in the attack, died three days later, with the elected monarch Amadeus, Duke of Aosta, yet to swear the constitution.

 

The creation of the Salamanca–Sol–Pozas tram service in Madrid in 1871 meant the introduction of the first collective system of transportation in the city, predating the omnibus.

 

The economy of the city further modernized during the second half of the 19th century, consolidating its status as a service and financial centre. New industries were mostly focused in book publishing, construction and low-tech sectors. The introduction of railway transport greatly helped Madrid's economic prowess, and led to changes in consumption patterns (such as the substitution of salted fish for fresh fish from the Spanish coasts) as well as further strengthening the city's role as a logistics node in the country's distribution network.

 

The late 19th century saw the introduction of the electric power distribution. As by law, the city council could not concede an industrial monopoly to any company, the city experienced a huge competition among the companies in the electricity sector. The absence of a monopoly led to an overlapping of distribution networks, to the point that in the centre of Madrid 5 different networks could travel through the same street. Electric lighting in the streets was introduced in the 1890s.

 

By the end of the 19th century, the city featured access to water, a central status in the rail network, a cheap workforce and access to financial capital. With the onset of the new century, the Ensanche Sur (in the current day district of Arganzuela) started to grow to become the main industrial area of the municipality along the first half of the 20th century.

 

In the early 20th century Madrid undertook a major urban intervention in its city centre with the creation of the Gran Vía, a monumental thoroughfare (then divided in three segments with different names) whose construction slit the city from top to bottom with the demolition of multitude of housing and small streets. Anticipated in earlier projects, and following the signature of the contract, the works formally started in April 1910 with a ceremony led by King Alfonso XIII.

 

Also with the turn of the century, Madrid had become the cultural capital of Spain as centre of top knowledge institutions (the Central University, the Royal Academies, the Institución Libre de Enseñanza or the Ateneo de Madrid), also concentrating the most publishing houses and big daily newspapers, amounting for the bulk of the intellectual production in the country.

 

In 1919 the Madrid Metro (known as the Ferrocarril Metropolitano by that time) inaugurated its first service, which went from Sol to the Cuatro Caminos area.

 

In the 1919–1920 biennium Madrid witnessed the biggest wave of protests seen in the city up to that date, being the centre of innumerable strikes; despite being still surpassed by Barcelona's, the industrial city par excellence in that time, this cycle decisively set the foundations for the social unrest that took place in the 1930s in the city.

 

The situation the monarchy had left Madrid in 1931 was catastrophic, with tens of thousands of kids receiving no education and a huge rate of unemployment.

 

After the proclamation of the Second Republic on 14 April 1931 the citizens of Madrid understood the free access to the Casa de Campo (until then an enclosed property with exclusive access for the royalty), was a consequence of the fall of the monarchy, and informally occupied the area on 15 April. After the signing of a decree on 20 April which granted the area to the Madrilenian citizens in order to become a "park for recreation and instruction", the transfer was formally sealed on 6 May when Minister Indalecio Prieto formally delivered the Casa de Campo to Mayor Pedro Rico. The Spanish Constitution of 1931 was the first legislating on the state capital, setting it explicitly in Madrid. During the 1930s, Madrid enjoyed "great vitality"; it was demographically young, but also young in the sense of its relation with the modernity. During this time the prolongation of the Paseo de la Castellana towards the north was projected. The proclamation of the Republic slowed down the building of new housing. The tertiary sector gave thrust to the economy. Illiteracy rates were down to below 20%, and the city's cultural life grew notably during the so-called Silver Age of Spanish culture; the sales of newspaper also increased. Anti-clericalism and Catholicism lived side by side in Madrid; the burning of convents initiated after riots in the city in May 1931 worsened the political environment. The 1934 insurrection largely failed in Madrid.

 

In order to deal with the unemployment, the new Republican city council hired many jobless people as gardeners and street cleaners.

 

Prieto, who sought to turn the city into the "Great Madrid", capital of the Republic, charged Secundino Zuazo with the project for the opening of a south–north axis in the city through the northward enlargement of the Paseo de la Castellana and the construction of the Nuevos Ministerios administrative complex in the area (halted by the Civil War, works in the Nuevos Ministerios would finish in 1942). Works on the Ciudad Universitaria, already started during the monarchy in 1929, also resumed.

 

The military uprising of July 1936 was defeated in Madrid by a combination of loyal forces and workers' militias. On 20 July armed workers and loyal troops stormed the single focus of resistance, the Cuartel de La Montaña, defended by a contingent of 2,000 rebel soldiers accompanied by 500 falangists under the command of General Fanjul, killing over one hundred of rebels after their surrender. Aside from the Cuartel de la Montaña episode, the wider scheme for the coup in the capital largely failed both due to disastrous rebel planning and due to the Government delivering weapons to the people wanting to defend the Republic, with the city becoming a symbol of popular resistance, "the people in arms".

 

After the quelling of the coup d'état, from 1936–1939, Madrid remained under the control of forces loyal to the Republic. Following the seemingly unstoppable advance towards Madrid of rebel land troops, the first air bombings on Madrid also started. Immediately after the bombing of the nearing airports of Getafe and Cuatro Vientos, Madrid proper was bombed for the first time in the night of the 27–28 August 1936 by a Luftwaffe's Junkers Ju 52 that threw several bombs on the Ministry of War and the Station of the North. Madrid "was to become the first big European city to be bombed by aviation".

 

Rebel General Francisco Franco, recently given the supreme military command over his faction, took a detour in late September to "liberate" the besieged Alcázar de Toledo. Meanwhile, this operation gave time to the republicans in Madrid to build defenses and start receiving some foreign support.

 

The summer and autumn of 1936 saw the Republican Madrid witness of heavy-handed repression by communist and socialist groups, symbolised by the murder of prisoners in checas and sacas directed mostly against military personnel and leading politicians linked to the rebels, which, culminated by the horrific Paracuellos massacres in the context of a simultaneous major rebel offensive against the city, were halted by early December. Madrid, besieged from October 1936, saw a major offensive in its western suburbs in November of that year.

 

In the last weeks of the war, the collapse of the republic was speeded by Colonel Segismundo Casado, who, endorsed by some political figures such as Anarchist Cipriano Mera and Julián Besteiro, a PSOE leader who had held talks with the Falangist fifth column in the city, threw a military coup against the legitimate government under the pretext of excessive communist preponderance, propelling a mini-civil war in Madrid that, won by the casadistas, left roughly 2,000 casualties between 5–10 March 1939.

 

The city fell to the nationalists on 28 March 1939.

 

Following the onset of the Francoist dictatorship in the city, the absence of personal and associative freedoms and the heavy-hand repression of people linked to a republican past greatly deprived the city from social mobilization, trade unionism and intellectual life. This added to a climate of general shortage, with ration coupons rampant and a lingering autarchic economy lasting until the mid 1950s. Meat and fish consumption was scarce in Post-War Madrid, and starvation and lack of proteins were a cause of high mortality.

 

With the country ruined after the war, the Falange command had nonetheless high plans for the city and professionals sympathetic to the regime dreamed (based on an organicist conception) about the notion of building a body for the "Spanish greatness" placing a great emphasis in Madrid, what they thought to be the imperial capital of the New State. In this sense, urban planners sought to highlight and symbolically put in value the façade the city offered to the Manzanares River, the "Imperial Cornice", bringing projects to accompany the Royal Palace such as the finishing of the unfinished cathedral (with the start of works postponed to 1950 and ultimately finished in the late 20th century), a never-built "house of the Party" and many others. Nonetheless these delusions of grandeur caught up with reality and the scarcity during the Post-War and most of the projects ended up either filed, unfinished or mutilated, with the single clear success being the Gutiérrez Soto's Cuartel del Ejército del Aire.

 

The intense demographic growth experienced by the city via mass immigration from the rural areas of the country led to the construction of plenty of housing in the peripheral areas of the city to absorb the new population (reinforcing the processes of social polarization of the city), initially comprising substandard housing (with as many as 50,000 shacks scattered around the city by 1956). A transitional planning intended to temporarily replace the shanty towns were the poblados de absorción, introduced since the mid-1950s in locations such as Canillas, San Fermín, Caño Roto, Villaverde, Pan Bendito [es], Zofío and Fuencarral, aiming to work as a sort of "high-end" shacks (with the destinataries participating in the construction of their own housing) but under the aegis of a wider coordinated urban planning.

 

Together with the likes of Cairo, Santiago de Chile, Rome, Buenos Aires or Lisbon, Francoist Madrid became an important transnational hub of the global Neofascist network that facilitated the survival and resumption of (neo)fascist activities after 1945.

 

In the 1948–1954 period the municipality greatly increased in size through the annexation of 13 surrounding municipalities, as its total area went up from 68,42 km2 to 607,09 km2. The annexed municipalities were Chamartín de la Rosa (5 June 1948), Carabanchel Alto (29 April 1948), Carabanchel Bajo (29 April 1948), Canillas (30 March 1950), Canillejas (30 March 1950), Hortaleza (31 March 1950), Barajas (31 March 1950), Vallecas (22 December 1950), El Pardo (27 March 1951), Vicálvaro (20 October 1951), Fuencarral (20 October 1951) Aravaca (20 October 1951) and Villaverde (31 July 1954).

 

The population of the city peaked in 1975 at 3,228,057 inhabitants.

 

Benefiting from prosperity in the 1980s, Spain's capital city has consolidated its position as the leading economic, cultural, industrial, educational and technological center of the Iberian peninsula. The relative decline in population since 1975 reverted in the 1990s, with the city recovering a population of roughly 3 million inhabitants by the end of the 20th century.

 

Since the late 1970s and through the 1980s Madrid became the center of the cultural movement known as la Movida. Conversely, just like in the rest of the country, a heroin crisis took a toll in the poor neighborhoods of Madrid in the 1980s.

 

On 11 March 2004, three days before Spain's general elections and exactly 2 years and 6 months after the September 11 attacks in the US, Madrid was hit by a terrorist attack when Islamic terrorists belonging to an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell placed a series of bombs on several trains during the morning rush hour, killing 191 people and injuring 1,800.

 

The administrations that followed Álvarez del Manzano's, also conservative, led by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón and Ana Botella, launched three unsuccessful bids for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics. Madrid was a centre of the anti-austerity protests that erupted in Spain in 2011. As consequence of the spillover of the 2008 financial and mortgage crisis, Madrid has been affected by the increasing number of second-hand homes held by banks and house evictions. The mandate of left-wing Mayor Manuela Carmena (2015–2019) delivered the renaturalization of the course of the Manzanares across the city.

 

Since the late 2010s, the challenges the city faces include the increasingly unaffordable rental prices (often in parallel with the gentrification and the spike of tourist apartments in the city centre) and the profusion of betting shops in working-class areas, equalled to an "epidemics" among the young people.

M3 Halftrack with M45 Quadmount for anti-aircraft defense.

 

Read the write-up on The Brothers Brick.

Standard stoppages, innit?

 

Amirite?

Title from Maroon 5's new song "Stutter."

 

I really like this. I was supposed to do this with my friend, Matt, but he had to work for someone today. It was good to see him after, though.

 

Inspired by: this.

From the Archive

I enjoy going back through my library of images. There are many reminders of things past. James, my son Jordan's veiled chameleon is now with another owner, but he was such a great and challenging subject for my 150mm macro.

Read the write-up on The Brothers Brick.

We've got to listen and to learn............

  

What passing-bells for those who die like cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-

The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;

 

Quote from Anthem for Doomed Youth

by Wilfred Owen

 

Save the innocent people of Libya

League of Heroes: Ascent

 

Episode 3: Darkest Before Dawn - Part 2

 

“We interrupt our continuing coverage of the New Brickton prison break, it seems that we are getting an unexpected live feed from the madness in Midtown.” The news anchor stuttered, nervously shuffling through the stack of papers on the news desk. “Frank, can you switch us over…”

 

Static… and then the picture suddenly changed from the busy news room to a devastated street. A blonde woman, statuesque and menacing stares into a shaky camera lens.

 

“Good morning citizens of New Brickton. From this day forward, it will be remembered that you sent forth your champions to face Celedon the Destroyer… and I have found them wanting. They lie here now in pathetic heaps, driven before me and broken at my feet. Is this really the best you have to offer? I demand a challenge worthy of my strength! For every hour that I am unsatisfied, I will raise another block of this insignificant city! Your only other option is complete surrender. Death or servitude, I give you the gift of choice mortals. Your first hour begins now.”

 

The broadcast suddenly cuts to a rainbow test pattern. Unseen by the camera, a winged figure descends to the devastated street. Upon touching down on the pavement, she kneels over the motionless form of the Indestructible Man.

 

“Wake up! Please!” She shakes Fred’s seemingly lifeless body, “Fred, I don‘t know what’s happened to us, but I do know that you are still alive and I know that we need to get you and your friends out of here.”

 

This was built for the League of Lego Heroes Group… www.flickr.com/groups/llh/

 

For a closer look at the unedited pictures: www.flickr.com/photos/10211834@N07/sets/72157652091575263

 

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 863. Photo: Paramount.

 

British actor Henry Wilcoxon (1905-1984) was best known as a leading man in Cleopatra (1934) and many others of Cecil B. DeMille's films. He also served as DeMille's associate producer on his later films.

 

Harry Frederick Wilcoxon was born on 8 September 1905 in Roseau, Dominica, British West Indies. His father was English-born Robert Stanley 'Tan' Wilcoxon, manager of the Colonial Bank in Jamaica and his mother, Lurline Mignonette Nunes, was a Jamaican amateur theatre actress, descendant of a wealthy Spanish merchant family. His older brother was Robert 'Owen' Wilcoxon. Henry had a difficult childhood. His mother disappeared suddenly and mysteriously when he was about a year old, and his father took him and Owen to England with the intention that his own mother Ann would take care of them. But, because his mother was too frail to care for the children, they were first sent to a foster home, where they became ill from malnutrition and neglect and they were moved on to an orphanage. There, Harry suffered from rickets, and Owen developed a stutter and had epileptic fits. They were rescued from the orphanage to a new foster home. After several years Harry's father 'Tan', with his new wife Rosamond took the children home with them to Bridgetown, Barbados, where they were educated. Harry and Owen became known as 'Biff' and 'Bang' due to their fighting skills gained in amateur boxing. After completing his education, Wilcoxon was employed by Joseph Rank, the father of J. Arthur Rank, before working for Bond Street tailors Pope and Bradshaw. While working for the tailors, Wilcoxon applied for a visa to work as a chauffeur in the United States, but upon seeing his application refused, turned to boxing and then to acting. His first stage performance was a supporting role in an adaptation of the novel The 100th Chance, by Ethel M. Dell, in 1927 at Blackpool. He joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre the next year and toured for several years. He found critical success playing Captain Cook in a production of Rudolph Besier's The Barretts of Wimpole Street at the London Queen's Theatre alongside Cedric Hardwicke. In 1932, He played at the Queen's Theatre in Sir Barry Jackson's production of Beverley Nichols' novel Evensong alongside Edith Evans.

 

In 1931, Harry Wilcoxon made his screen debut as Larry Tindale in The Perfect Lady (Frederick J. Jackson, Milton Rosmer, 1931), followed by a role opposite Heather Angel in Self Made Lady (George King, 1932), alongside Louis Hayward. In 1932, he appeared in The Flying Squad (F.W. Kraemer, 1932), a sound remake of a 1929 silent film based on the novel by Edgar Wallace. Altogether he made eight films in Britain till 1934. In 1933, a talent scout for Paramount Pictures arranged a screen test which came to the attention of producer-director Cecil B. DeMille in Hollywood. He cast Wilcoxon as Marc Anthony in Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934) opposite Claudette Colbert as the man-hungry Queen of Egypt. Harry was renamed by DeMille for the role and from then on he was Henry Wilcoxon. He was next given the lead role of Richard the Lionhearted in DeMille's big-budget spectacle The Crusades (Cecil B. De Mille, 1935) opposite Loretta Young. That film, however, was a financial failure, losing more than $700,000. After the lack of success of The Crusades, Wilcoxon's career stalled. He starred in a number of B-films, like The President's Mystery (Phil Rosen, 1936) and Prison Nurse (James Cruze, 1938) for Republic Pictures, and he portrayed the supporting role of Maj. Duncan Heyward in the commercially successful Last of the Mohicans (George B. Seitz, 1936) starring Randolph Scott. Wilcoxon himself called 'his worst acting job' Mysterious Mr. Moto (Norman Foster, 1938) featuring Peter Lorre. That year, he also played in If I Were King (Frank Lloyd, 1938) with Ronald Colman, and featured in Five of a Kind (Herbert I. Leeds, 1938) with the Dionne quintuplets. In Great Britain, Wilcoxon appeared as Captain Hardy in Lady Hamilton (Alexander Korda, 1941), alongside Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. When America entered the World War II in December 1941, Wilcoxon enlisted in the United States Coast Guard. He served with the Coast Guard until 1946, gaining the rank of Lieutenant. During his period of service, he had three films released in 1942, among them Mrs. Miniver (William Wyler, 1942), which received considerable public acclaim, as well as six Academy Awards. Wilcoxon, in his role as the vicar, re-wrote the key sermon with director Wyler. The speech made such an impact that it was used in essence by President Roosevelt as a morale builder. Upon his return from war service, Wilcoxon picked up with Cecil B. DeMille with Unconquered (Cecil B. DeMille, 1947), starring Gary Cooper. After starring as Sir Lancelot in the musical version of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Tay Garnett, 1949) with Bing Crosby in the title role, he featured in DeMille's Samson and Delilah (Cecil B. DeMille, 1949). Wilcoxon returned to England to feature in The Miniver Story (H.C. Potter, 1950), a sequel to the multi-Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver (1942) in which he reprised his role as the vicar opposite Greer Garson. In the late 1940s, young actors and actresses came to Wilcoxon and wife Joan Woodbury and asked them to form a play-reading group which in 1951 became the Wilcoxon Players.

 

Henry Wilcoxon played a small but important part as FBI Agent Gregory in DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille, 1952), on which he also served as Associate Producer. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1952. He also acted as associate producer on, and acted as Pentaur, the pharaoh's captain of the guards in DeMille's remake of his own The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956). Wilcoxon was sole producer on The Buccaneer (Anthony Quinn, 1958), a remake of DeMille's 1938 effort, which DeMille only supervised due to his declining health while his then son-in-law Anthony Quinn directed. After DeMille died, Wilcoxon worked on a film based on the life of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement, which DeMille had left unrealised, and was also ultimately abandoned. After a relatively inactive period, Wilcoxon appeared with Charlton Heston in The War Lord (Franklin Schaffner, 1965). He was co-producer on the TV tribute The World's Greatest Showman: The Legend of Cecil B. DeMille (1963). At the opening of the DeMille Theatre in New York, he produced another short film. In the last two decades of his life, he worked sporadically and accepted minor acting roles in TV shows including The Big Valley (1965), I Spy (1966), It Takes a Thief (1968), Gunsmoke (1970), Lassie (1973), Cagney & Lacey (1982), and Private Benjamin (1982). He also appeared in a few films films, including F.I.S.T (Norman Jewison, 1978), starring Sylvester Stallone. He also had a memorable turn as the golf-obsessed Bishop Pickering, struck by lightning, in the slapstick comedy Caddyshack (Harold Ramis, 1980) with Bill Murray as his caddy. His final film was Sweet Sixteen - Blutiges Inferno (Jim Sotos, 1983). By loaning money from his early film acting, Wilcoxon assisted his brother Owen to establish himself in 1931 as a partner in the Vale Motor Company in London, and for a short time he showed a personal interest in the development of their sports car, the Vale Special. At that time his girlfriend was a London-based American stage actress Carol Goodner. Wilcoxon married 19-year-old actress Sheila Garrett in 1936, but they divorced a year later. In 1938 he married his second wife, 23-years-old actress Joan Woodbury. They had three daughters: Wendy Joan Robert Wilcoxon (born 1939), Heather Ann Wilcoxon (1947) and Cecilia Dawn 'CiCi' Wilcoxon (1950). The couple divorced in 1969. Henry Wilcoxon passed away in 1984 in Los Angeles. He was 78 years old and had been ill with cancer.

 

Sources: The New York Times, The Scott Rollins Film and TV Trivia Blog, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Having fun with Krea and comfyui

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgKwr02WzSo

Seaside Reverie

Well, I rarely post a so-called "selfie" but my new hairdresser wanted to know if I did "facebook" so I could recommend her!

This was the best I could "do" with my "do" to promote this wonderful gal! And, this is also another first, as I've done my own hair for the past 5 or so years . . . it was time for a treat!

And now I'm hooked! I felt like I should be going to a prom or something!!!

 

ps....the nail job is fake! I just painted them on line with a rouge filter!!! I still don't indulge in manicures!

  

[Verse 1]

"Jimmy was a soldier brave and bold

Katy was a maid with hair of gold

Like an act of fate, Kate was standing at the gate

Watching all the boys file on parade

Kate smiled with a twinkle in her eye

Jim said "M-m-meet you by-and-by!"

That same night at eight

Jim was at the garden gate

Stuttering this song to K-K-K-Kate"

~ Billy Murray ~

 

1017 has only stuttered a couple of yards past Robertsbridge signal box and the signaller has already returned the signal to danger and got the barriers half way up. 1017 is heading for Hastings with the 14.45 service from Charing Cross.17/07/1984

Copyright Geoff Dowling; all rights reserved

Vegetation

A recurring set. Portraits in foliage. Beauty and the color green.

The idea for this photo is inspired by Mr. Oliver Morris' flickr stream.

Dark and emptied and deathlike

Full of fear and shadows

I went to the Sun King for help

He was too bright for me to look at

His radiance shone upon my iniquity

So in my shadow fright I stuttered a plea

That I might be soaked in everlasting Light

His laughter made me tremble

Echoing around the Universe

His sound almost shattered me

Finally he leaned my way

He explained that even he is a shadow

Though a very bright one

We play at being kings and children of kings

That we may lose and find ourselves in variations

That we may detach and witness every story

In every lump of coal a diamond waits

In every dark and spinning moon such radiance

In every black and brooding hour a promise lingers

This Light is ever with us

Regardless if we feel it or not

So now I can proclaim that I AM a child of the Sun

and shadows are not real

 

© Ganga Fondan, 2011

 

*Sometimes after long periods of silence and brooding, a new light shines. A new understanding emerges. We cannot explain it but it is there. After such excruciating heaviness and self-judgement ,we realize the inevitability of this change. Again and again, the letting go to this process reveals the mystery and the sublime joy of life. The brooding moon is overwhelmed with light again. The sun finds its joy in this. Both are subject to a greater love.

 

Ad Note (October 2015):

 

One day the sun admitted

I am just a shadow.

I wish I could show you

the Infinite Incandescence

that has cast my brilliant image.

I wish I could show you

when you are lonely or in darkness

the astonishing Light

of your own Being.

~ Hafiz

 

Made for SWFactions on Eurobricks.

www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/180827-j...

 

Captured by pirates! While searching for the natives of Imynusoph, our trio are beset upon by the cavalier Colonel Corbett's callous rogues! The murderous pirates and their flamboyant leader drag our heroes to their camp, where intrigue abounds!

  

Clod blinked against the harsh light streaming in from above. His hands were shackled. It wasn’t the worst situation he’d been in, he thought. Then, to his surprise, his next thoughts were about his two companions. He hoped they were alright. It would be a million years before he’d admit it.

The sergeant called “Slyfoot” stood in the darkness a few feet away. He could feel the man watching him, disturbingly calm. Precise.

“Look at you,” he sneered. “A treasure hunter. Ha! I believed Klatoonians to be nothing but pirates and scum.”

It was a struggle to form words, but Clod couldn’t give up the opportunity for a zinger. “Look how the…tables have turned.”

He almost immediately regretted it. The droid administered a searing shock to his ribs that sent his limbs convulsing. His skin burned. He shouted, and for a moment, he panicked.

“Such wit. No more of that, I think,” he heard Slyfoot say. “You should put your words to better use, like securing a release for you and your companions. All you must do is tell me what it was you were searching for.”

“Fat chance—Augh!” Another shock. More horrible pain.

Slyfoot stepped into the light. He slowly shook his head.

“’Fat chance’, you say? On the contrary, Mr. Clod,” he said, and a smile crept onto his face. “I quite like my odds.”

      

“Tea or Caf, Professor?” offered Colonel Corbett, busying himself with a gleaming pot and an ion heater.

“O-Oh, tea, I suppose.”

The Colonel looked up at him, a pleasant expression on his face. “I see you appreciate my décor!”

Floon had been staring at some of the trophies scattered about; horns, hides, huge eggs, droid parts, scraps of clothing. Some from beasts, others from treasure hunters who’d come before.

“Why…yes! It’s very…eclectic. Er, thank you again for having me, Colonel.”

“Of course, of course! I must say, I’ve positively chuffed about you being here. An academy man! On Imynusoph! Chandrila, you say?”

“Er, yes. I had, er, tenure at the Chandrila Academy.”

“Ha! Chandrila! A professor from Chandrila makes my acquaintance here, of all places. Who would have thought it would happen? Certainly not me! I admit it! Please, make yourself comfortable, my questions are bound to be numerous.”

The Neimodian professor looked nervously around the tent. One of the pirates loitered at the door. Floon felt that he should do some great act of bravery, try to free Mr. Clod and Ms. Rigo, but he didn’t know where he would even start.

“Professor?”

The question shook Floon from his thoughts. “Oh, y-yes?”

Colonel Corbett smiled. “You don’t look very comfortable. Come, you’re in good company. I am a man of learning and intelligence myself.”

“Why, o-of course!” said Floon. Unable to muster a relaxed smile, he summoned a polite grimace.

The Colonel frowned. “Professor, I brought you here that we might engage in riveting conversation! Without conversation, I have no reason to bring you here rather than lock you up in our brig. Do you understand?”

Floon did, but he was not very good at staying calm when faced with threats. He knew all too well what the murderous pirates might do if the Colonel permitted. With a great amount of sweating and stuttering, he apologized. “I’m…m-most…s-sorry, Colonel. Most s-sorry. Let us…er…converse, s-shall we?”

“Very good, very good!” said the Colonel, settling in and looking at the professor expectantly. “Well then, let us get down to, as they say, brass tacks. I want to hear everything you know about the giant birds of Imynusoph! I expect I’ll be quite fascinated!”

“Er, yes…” mumbled Floon. “Quite.”

       

“Let go of me, you idiots!” Kitsa did her best to break her restraints through sheer will, but no dice. She settled for whacking one of her captors instead, sending him reeling with a broken nose. She couldn’t believe how lucky her aim was. And finally, something for her story!

“Let the Stud take care of her! I don’t want to get kicked again,” whined one of the pirates. The others parted, allowing the largest one, the one with the bandolier and the AT-AT driver helmet, to step towards her. He was enormous, at least 6’8”, and not what you’d call ‘lanky’. There was no chance she’d make a dent against this guy. He settled one giant hand on her shoulder, and he steered her away.

She muttered threats as they walked through the Imperial camp, shooting glances around to take in everything she was seeing. They had left the treeline onto an open savannah. The camp had clearly been an Imperial outpost, but now was all ramshackle and bolted together to keep out the wildlife. There was a junkyard of impounded vehicles that caught her attention. Most of them were scrap, but one airspeeder, red-and-white, looked intact. She took note of this for later.

She eyed the pirate. He was a muscular guy, that was for sure. Where was he taking her? A pit of gundarks, or an interrogation chamber?

Neither, it turned out. She was escorted to a quiet corner of the pirate camp, a breeze-blown tent with foliage breaking in overhead and enshrouding the space.

“You can stay here,” said the big pirate.

She scoffed. “What are you, good cop? And what’s this place, the torture waiting room?”

“It’s, well,” the pirate hesitated. “No, it’s just a tent. I had a wife when we came here. This used to be hers. Thought you’d like it more than a cage, but if I’m wrong…”

That was unexpected. She turned and sized him up suspiciously, but there wasn’t much to observe in the blank stare of the helmet’s facemask. “A wife, huh? What happened to her? Your pirate buddies shoot her?”

“You think they’d get past me? Nah, not in a million years,” he chuckled, but his tone turned somber. “No, one day she went out to get clean water, our purifier was broken, and one of the jungle beasts came out of the trees. She couldn’t get away fast enough. Her blaster misfired. That’s all it took.”

In a rare moment, Kitsa didn’t know what to say.

The pirate took a deep breath, then said, “So if you were thinking of running, I wouldn’t.”

“Sure,” she nodded, collecting herself. “Sorry about your wife. Thanks for the tent.”

“No problem,” said the pirate. He then stood there awkwardly for a moment, before asking, “So, uh, you, uh, some kind of reporter?”

Kitsa lit up. “I sure am, Galactic Gazette.”

The man swayed on his feet, coughing uncomfortably. “What’s, uh, what’s going on out there? In the galaxy? Rebels gone, yet? We heard we had another Death Star.”

Kitsa stared at the emotionless facemask for a moment. Of course, it made sense. When was the last time they would’ve heard any news?

Her story was really heating up.

She smiled and deflected the question. “What’s your name?”

“Deksen. They call me ‘the Stud’. What’s your name, uh, miss?”

“Kitsa Rigo,” she answered smartly. “What do you say about sitting for an interview with me, Deksen? In return, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

The pirate said nothing for a moment. He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching. “I guess that’d be alright. We don’t exactly get much press on Imynusoph. I suppose you can tell the galaxy about our bravery.”

Kitsa sat on the medical bed, her pen poised. “So, Deksen, what’s it been like for you, out here?”

The pirate set his gun to the side and took a deep breath.

“Well…” he began.

     

Another shock, another burn, another stab. Harnaby Clod struggled in the interrogation gurney, his mouth full of spit. He couldn’t take much more of this. He felt like his mind was slipping through his fingers, jolted free by every prod from the droid. Karfing droid. He’d smash that droid to bits if he ever got out of this.

Another stab of a needle. His vision swam. He’d get out of this, right? Could he?

“Tell me why you’re here. Tell me what you know,” Slyfoot said, walking around him. “I’d love to see you dead, believe me. Who will remember you if you’re gone? Some dog-faced lunatic on the edge of the galaxy, no one important. No accomplishments, no fealty, nothing of note. Another dead alien.”

“You…don’t…know…mersh.”

“Hm, perhaps. But tell me…am I wrong, Mr. Clod?”

The dark room blinked in and out of existence before Clod’s eyes. He felt his tongue go limp. His heart felt like it was drying up.

The sergeant watched him, smiling cruelly. “Alright, I’ll get it out of the Neimodian, then. Good bye, Mr.-“

“Waitsh, waitsh!” Clod gasped. “Ah’ll tell yoush…”

Slyfoot brightened. “Indeed, Mr. Clod? If you tell me, as I’ve said, this can all end.”

He couldn’t do this anymore. What was he thinking?

He wasn’t. Anything to stop this. Karf this place.

“Ah’ll…ah’ll…tell yoush anything…” he wheezed.

Slyfoot straightened his cap. “Very good, Mr. Clod. Go on then.” He leaned in, until his face dominated Clod’s view. Slyfoot tried to manage his own expectations, but he couldn’t suppress his excitement. He looked down at the drooling Klatoonian.

“Mr. Clod,” he said. “Is the treasure…real?”

       

“Wow!” muttered Kitsa, scribbling in her notebook.

“That’s just how it is out here. It’s made the other pirates what they are. It’s made me…” he shrugged. “Changed.”

“That’s really…tough! I’m so sorry you’ve had to suffer through this place.”

“Hm, I’ve been lucky…I think. But what about you, Ms. Rigo?” asked the pirate called Deksen.

“M-Me?”

He leaned in attentively. “How does a woman such as you find yourself in a place like this?”

Even with the facemask in the way, Rigo felt his gaze on her face. She frowned.

“Well, I work for the Gazette.”

He tilted his head. “Because you wish to tell stories?”

“Because I want to…” she paused before answering. “I want to make others see the truth.”

Deksen nodded slowly. He was impressed by the honesty of her answer. “Will you tell me more?”

In a strange moment, the both of them felt the softening in their spirits take its full course, and they entirely let down their guards. Kitsa avoided his gaze, but launched into a treatise on how it was she ended up here, the absurdity of the situation, and how she hoped she might get something out of it anyway because while she was here there was no one investigating the Ubrikkian corporation and something had to be done soon because those poor Duros in the factories had no one standing up for them, and if no one else was going to take Ubrikkian to task, she sure as shaft would.

Deksen listened quietly, occasionally asking questions or affirming how Kitsa felt. Eventually she had completed her story. She took a deep breath, which she had expended whilst going on about her passions.

Deksen folded his hands. “Your spirit…moves me.”

“Oh!” said Kitsa, not sure how to respond. She felt her cheeks burn, and said quietly, “Thanks for listening.”

“And thank you for talking.”

She laughed. “You’d be a much better editor than the one I’ve got. Getting him to listen is a full time job.”

A breeze blew through the tent, carrying the sounds of harsh laughter from where the other pirates were getting into the brew. Far off, Kitsa heard a howl of pain that made her skin crawl and her mind turn towards her lost companions.

After a moment of silence, she looked into Deksen’s facemask. It was a risk, could she trust an ex-stormtrooper-turned-pirate? Strangely, she felt that she could trust him more than almost anyone she’d met. This disturbed her in a profound way, but she didn’t have time to dwell on her emotions. She had to take action.

“Deksen, I need to get out of here.”

“Yes, you do.” His shoulders slumped as he prepared himself for the choice he was making. His life would never be the same after this. “And yes, before you ask; I will help you.”

Kitsa sighed with relief, but there was no time to waste. They had to get down to business. “Alright, here’s what I was thinking. Tell me if it makes sense…”

       

“Spiritual creatures, you say?”

Colonel Corbett stroked his moustache, listening to what Professor Floon had to say with a most attentive mind.

“Well, y-yes. Regarded as spiritual creatures by…” Floon kept himself from revealing the natives at only the last moment. “…by all who visit this planet, I’ve heard.”

It was all Floon could do to keep the existence of the native tribes a secret. Apparently these pirates had no clue they might still be around.

“Fascinating! And you say the wingspan…”

The words tumbled out of Floon like a brook. His trepidation could not dampen his excitement. “No one has seen it in millennia, but I do not lie when I say,” he leaned in, saying conspiratorially, “it is said to be three men across!”

Corbett rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Incredible! Simply incredible. Say, Professor, I know you count yourself among the squeamish, but do you suppose that shooting down a bird of spiritual importance grants a hunter more, how do you say, ‘bragging rights’?”

Floon raised an eyeridge and stared. “Are…are you…joking, sir?”

“I assure you, I am not!” said Corbett, jabbing the desk with his finger. “A hunter such as myself has precious little time for jokes, what with so much glory left unobtained. You’re the closest thing in the galaxy to an expert, Professor. Do you believe killing such a creature would grant me more glory?”

Floon watched the officer nervously. His eyes were eager, his face covered in sweat. The heat was dull and damp in the shade of the tent, the kind of environment Floon had been born into. Very much a comfort zone.

The professor summoned up all his courage, swelling up his chest in rather an alarming way. Corbett’s eyes widened.

“No!” squeaked Floon.

Corbett was puzzled. “…’No’?”

“No!” Floon stood his ground. “How can you talk of killing a creature such as this? For all your talk about appreciating great beasts, you end their magnificent lives with such…relish!” He licked his lipless mouth, his words sputtering and cracking as adrenaline shot through him. He’d never confronted anyone in his life. Certainly not anyone who was willing to kill him. “I don’t mind saying that it is…despicable! Yes, despicable!”

Colonel Corbett, who had initially been very surprised, now furrowed his brow. When he spoke, his tone was dark. “Professor…I’m not used to being talked to in such a-”

“Indeed, indeed!” squawked Floon, suddenly desperate to turn his situation around. “But nor are you used to talking to your intellectual equal, as you have said! This is true, yes?”

Corbett considered it. “Yes, it is true,” he admitted.

“Then please, hear my words, as another man of learning! These creatures are not for killing, they are for studying! For conserving! For…loving! Please, take my offer of friendship and understand I mean you no ill will. I only wish to see a force such as yourself used for…better things!”

Colonel Corbett looked bothered. He had never thought of it in such terms before. Professor Floon breathed heavily, waiting in silence, heart hammering, hoping for a reaction that spared his life.

Finally, the Colonel’s expression softened, and he began to speak. “Professor, I—“

“Colonel Corbett!” came a voice from the tent’s opening. Floon, uncharacteristically, cursed in his head. His heart sank.

“How dare you interrupt me? I said, very clearly I thought, that no one was to interrupt!”

The pirate at the opening was the huge, shirtless one, with the AT-AT driver’s helmet. “But it’s the others, sir, they’ve broken out!”

The moment had passed, Corbett’s mind was on other things. He grabbed his cap and marched towards the entrance. “Well then! Wait here with the Professor, we must hunt them down!”

Corbett marched toward the tent flap, where he was promptly whacked in the head with a blaster handle, and fell flat on his back. He lay there, hair mussed, tongue out, and unconscious.

“Oh my goodness!” cried Floon.

“Quiet, Professor! It’s just me, Kitsa. Ms. Rigo.”

Indeed it was. The reporter came ducking in, blaster in hand. The large pirate stood guard while she knelt down to rummage in Corbett’s holster.

“What-what is going on? Who is this abnormally large man at the door?” asked Floon, who’s voice dropped to an anxious whisper as he added, “Is he not one of the pirates?”

Kitsa pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Huh? Oh, that’s Deksen,” she explained simply. “He’s gonna help us escape.”

The pirate named Deksen raised a hand in casual greeting.

“O-Oh, how do you do?” Floon replied weakly, and he tipped his hat on instinct. “You are…very big!”

“I get that a lot,” came Deksen’s reply, filtered through his helmet.

“He is, isn’t he?” Kitsa grinned.

“Y-Yes—hold on; escape, you said?” squeaked Floon, who’s brain was beginning to catch up at last.

“Yes, escape,” she repeated firmly, looking him in the eye. “But we have to go now, understand? Otherwise we’ll die?”

Floon withdrew a handkerchief and dabbed at his face. “O-Oh, my. This is all rather a lot. And so sudden…”

“Yes, it is. We still have to save Clod, against my better judgement.”

“S-Save…Clod, you say?” said Floon, wilting with every word, and very close to fainting.

Kitsa smiled wryly and patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, Professor,” she said, and she handed him the Colonel’s blaster before turning to leave. Deksen made to follow her.

Floon went after them, but before reaching the tent’s exit he spun around awkwardly to address his host.

“I’m…very sorry for all this,” he said to Corbett’s unconscious body. “It really w-was lovely meeting you.”

Floon felt it was polite for one to wait to be excused, but Corbett did not reply.

Thus, with a great deal of stumbling and nervous mumbling, the professor hurried to catch up with the others.

     

“And the natives,” said Slyfoot with relish. “You said you’ve met them before, is that true?”

“Yesh,” spat Clod. He eyed the interrogation droid floating a foot away, its red receptor blinking, prod extended towards him.

“Then you could lead us to them. You will lead me to them.”

“Didn’t you hear a word I said? They found me the first time. I don’t know how to find them now!”

Slyfoot waved a hand dismissively. “Well, no matter. They asked you to return, I’m sure they’ll show up to you soon.”

Clod wished he could wipe his mouth where he’d drooled after one of the many electroshocks. It was starting to chape. “…Thought you…were gonna let us go?” he groaned.

Slyfoot laughed. “Really? You did? I didn’t take you for a fool. No, Mr. Clod. You’ll stay in this luxury for many days to com--I said I wanted no interruptions!”

Light had flooded the room from the now-open door. He heard a blaster go off, and a red bolt smashed into the interrogation droid, knocking it to the ground.

“Pardon me!” said Professor Floon, turning the gun on Slyfoot. The pirate sergeant raised his hands in surrender. “I nearly forgot something on my way out!”

“P-professor?” slurred Clod, craning his neck to see. “I can’t believe it.”

“That’s right, it’s me! I’ve come to rescue you, Mr. Clod.”

Clod groaned with relief. He hadn’t expected this in a million years. “You gotta get me out of here, doc.”

“Indeed!” said the Professor, who prodded Slyfoot with his pistol until he gave up the key to the bindings.

“Nice entry."

Floon seemed pleased. “Thank you! I am honored by the compliment, especially from someone as…daring-do as yourself! I practiced on the way here.”

“It paid off. Now…” he stretched and groaned his weary, burnt muscles. Then he turned towards Slyfoot, who held to his dignity even while fear seeped in the cracks. Weakened though he was, the Klatoonian was dangerous. He proved this to Slyfoot by knocking him to the floor with a right hook.

“Jerk. Wish I had more time.”

“We really must go, Rigo is waiting! She found a way out!”

Clod looked at the Professor and raised an eyebrow. “You already saved her?”

“Saved her?” replied the professor, leading him into the daylight. “Why, it was her who saved me!”

“You’re kidding!”

“I am not kidding, Mr. Clod! I assure you, I am entirely serious!”

  

They caught up with Kitsa and Deksen at the camp’s boneyard, where ship and vehicle carcasses formed a monument to the pirates’ past conquests.

“He’s fine,” said Kitsa, in response to the alarmed look on Clod’s face. “His name is Deksen, he’s helping us.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Deksen, voice filtered through his helmet.

“Sure, sure. A pleasure,” muttered Clod. “Listen, I told that creepy imp about the natives.”

Kitsa and Floon looked at him with dismay.

“It wasn’t exactly by choice,” grumbled Clod, but he avoided their gaze. “I’m betting they didn’t torture either of you.”

They answered by way of silence.

“Of course not,” he grunted. “Who else here has a face like a Corellian hound?”

“Ahem...I cannot imagine what you went through in that little room, so I cannot blame you for anything you’ve done,” said Floon seriously. “Besides…I let slip quite a lot about the wildlife to the Colonel, and I was under no compulsion besides a foolish enthusiasm for my subject! Oh, how moronic of me. I’m far worse than you, Mr. Clod. Fear no condemnation from us.”

Clod looked at him with something approaching humility and gratitude.

“I didn’t tell anyone anything,” said Kitsa. “Except about myself.”

“Their knowledge simply means we must make greater haste to find the natives first. And with the skills and talents of us three, I find our chances encouraging!”

Kitsa gestured to their soon-to-be-stolen ride. “Especially with this thing.”

Clod hurried forward to look at what she’d found. Underneath a tarp sat a small, aged red-and-white craft. Barely enough space for two people. “What is this, an Incom? Tiny, isn’t it?”

“Who cares who built it?” she replied shortly. “It’s an Airspeeder. Deksen says it’ll still fly.”

Deksen shrugged. “We use it for scout missions.

“Wait," Clod frowned. "We can’t leave yet.”

Kitsa threw up her hands. “Why not?”

“Hat."

“Oh, for karf’s sake--I got your hat, here. Can’t believe you’d get us killed over your hat.”

“My hat! You’re alright, Rigo.”

 

Deksen cleared his throat. “You three should climb in, you don’t have a lot of time.”

They threw their things in the speeder. Clod clambered into the pilot’s seat and brushed some crumbs off the controls. He checked various switches and toggles with an air of familiarity. Floon crammed himself into the back.

Kitsa was last to get in. She turned and threw herself at Deksen, hugging him awkwardly. She didn’t hug many people. Were you supposed to do it so forcefully? Fortunately, Deksen didn't seem to mind. He folded her gently in his massive arms.

“Thank you. I wish you could come with us.”

His tone carried a smile she couldn’t see through his facemask.

“It was good to meet you. I’ll see you again.”

“And you’ll be okay? The other pirates won’t…”

He put a calming hand on her shoulder. “You think they could?”

“Miss Rigo!” called the professor from the speeder. “I’m quite nervous waiting in here! I wouldn’t say anything, except that my muttering has made Mr. Clod angry.”

The two shared a chuckle. Kitsa smiled sadly and let go of him. She clambered into the airspeeder with the others, where she discovered it was a much tighter fit than she’d expected. Once she’d negotiated space with Floon, she leaned against the window and gave Deksen a final wave.

The pirate waved back.

  

“Whoof. He’s ripped, huh?” she said wistfully.

“Ripped?” Floon squeaked. “I’d say his shirt is beyond ripped, madam! There’s hardly a shirt there at all!”

The speeder was humming to life, the way any vehicle does that’s taken some battering. A warm, clanky kind of hum.

“Alright,” said Clod from the front. “Off to find the natives?”

“Before the pirates do!” said Kitsa.

“Oh my! A race against pirates, for the good of knowledge and sentient life!” flushed Floon. “It’s all rather exciting, isn’t it?”

 

sing to me from a satellite signal

a human being brought down to a symbol

a stuttering light in the coal black night

bright ones and zeros stuck in a trance

(give peace a fighting chance)

sing me a song from the cell phone tower

when the power flickers for the final time

we'll raise a glass of wine to our electric shrine

it's those fiber optics that bring us together

those motherboards made of silicon sand

printed and pressed in the fatherland

it's that rippling liquid crystal display

that shows you the shadow of what I say

an artificial sun in the shape of a window

making shade of the room around you

the false shine glimmers like diamonds in the dust

it takes your heart and scrapes off the rust

iron oxide from the aging of your blood

a ruddy complexion by vection

love suffers no correction

at least that's what it says in the branding

safety, surety, and understanding...

  

© Steve Skafte

  

tumblr | etsy | blurb | facebook 1 - 2

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.

 

Today however we are northwest of Lettice’s flat, in the working-class London suburb of Harlesden visiting the home of Edith’s, Lettice’s maid, beloved parents. Edith’s father, George, works at the McVitie and Price biscuit factory in Harlesden as a Line Manager, and her mother, Ada, takes in laundry at home. They live in a small, two storey brick terrace house which opens out directly onto the street, and is far removed from the grandeur of Lettice’s Mayfair flat, but has always been a cosy and welcoming home for Edith and her younger brother Bert all their young lives. Since her father’s promotion in 1922, Edith’s mother is only laundering a few days a week now. The money she makes from this endeavour she uses for housekeeping to make she and George’s life a little more comfortable, but she is able to hold back a little back as pin money* to indulge in one of her joys, collecting pretty china ornaments to decorate their home with.

 

We are in Ada’s front parlour, which is where most of her decorative porcelain finds from different shops, fairs and flea markets around London are proudly displayed. With busy stylised floral wallpaper and every surface cluttered with ornaments, it can only be described as highly Victorian in style, and it is an example of conscious consumption, rather than qualitative consumption, to demonstrate how prosperous the Watsford family is, especially now that George holds the management position that he does. Like many others of its kind in Harlesden and elsewhere in London, it is the room least used in the house, reserved for when special guests like the parish minister or wealthy old widow and the Watsford’s landlady, Mrs. Hounslow, pay a call. However today’s special guest is not either the minister, nor Mrs. Hounslow. It is Frank Leadbetter, Edith’s beau, who has arranged to visit Edith’s parents on his own, as he has a very important question to ask of them both.

 

Dressed in his Sunday best suit, Frank sits awkwardly in one of two Victorian high backed barley twist chairs. The combination of the formality of his suit and the hard and uncomfortable horsehair upholstery of the chair encourage Frank to sit with a ramrod stiff back in his seat. He looks awkwardly around the room, allowing his gaze to flit in a desultory fashion around the unfamiliar surrounds of the Watsford’s formal front parlour. Cluttering the surface of an old Victorian sideboard and an ornate whatnot, the cold stares of Queen Victoria, Edward VII, Queen Alexandra and the current King George V and Queen Mary stare out from the glazed surfaces of plates and other objects celebrating coronations and jubilees, whilst on the mantle, flanked by pretty statues of castles and churches, younger versions of George and Ada in sepia pose formally with Edith as a little girl and Bert as a baby, gazing out from brass frames with blank stares. Frank coughs awkwardly and nervously tugs at his stiff collar, feeling hot even though there is no fire going in the small grate of the fireplace.

 

“Now, now, young Frank!” George booms good naturedly from the one comfortable seat in the room, an old armchair with thick red velvet button back** upholstery. “No need to be nervous, me lad!”

 

“Oh, you don’t know why I’m here, Mr. Watsford.” Frank replies, running his right index finger nervously around the inside of his collar.

 

George chuckles. “I think I can guess, Frank.”

 

Frank gazes down at Ada’s dainty best blue floral china tea set on the lace draped octagonal table set between the cluster of chairs. A selection of McVitie’s*** biscuits brought home by George from the nearby factory sit in a fluted glass dish.

 

“Will Mrs. Watsford be long, do you think, Mr. Watsford?”

 

“I shouldn’t think so, Frank. She’s only gone to boil the kettle and fill the pot.”

 

As if knowing that she was being spoken about, Ada sweeps through the door of the parlour, holding aloft the glazed teapot in the shape of a cottage with a thatched roof with the chimney as the lid that Edith bought for her as a gift from the Caledonian Markets****. “Here we are then,” she says with a heightened level of exuberance. “Tea for three!” She carefully places the teapot in the centre of the tea table.

 

“Perfect timing, Ada love.” George replies, and without waiting, reaches across the void between him and the tea table and snatches up a biscuit.

 

“George!” she chides. “Where are your manners?” She looks askance at her husband, who settles back in his seat, quite unperturbed by his wife’s scolding. “Guests first.” She sweeps her hand across the table towards the biscuits as she lowers herself precariously onto the edge of the other high backed barley twist chair. “Frank?”

 

“Err… umm…” Frank stutters. “Ahh, no… no thank you, Mrs. Watsford. I… I’m not hungry.”

 

“Oh well, more for us then, Ada love.” George says cheerfully through a biscuit filled mouth, stretching out his hand to the glass dish again.

 

“George!” Ada cries, slapping her husband’s hand sharply, the sound echoing around the cluttered parlour.

 

George retreats in his seat, recoiling and rubbing his chastised hand rather like a dog nurses a limp paw.

 

“Shall I be mother then*****?” Ada asks rhetorically as she automatically picks up the milk jug. “You take milk, don’t you Frank?”

 

“Err… yes, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank replies as she slops some milk into his cup before adding a dash to her husband’s and her own.

 

“And sugar?”

 

“Err.. two please, Mrs. Watsford.”

 

“Ahh, a sweet tooth after my own heart.” Ada replies with an indulgent smile, putting two heaped teaspoons of sugar into Frank’s cup before adding one to George’s and two to her own. “Now!” she sighs, taking up the cottage ware teapot pouring tea into the cups. “You wanted to talk to us, Frank?”

 

“Well…” Frank begins.

 

“You know it feels jolly funny having you here Frank, but not Edith.” Ada interrupts the young man even as he begins. “I’m quite used to you coming with Edith now.”

 

“Well, you know… I… I really wanted this to be a conversation that I had alone with you and Mr. Watsford,” Frank indicates to George, still licking his wounds. “Mrs. Watsford. So, I asked Hilda to take Edith out shopping today.”

 

“And she isn’t missing you, Frank?” Ada queries, as she replaces the pot in the middle of the tea table.

 

“Err…” Frank blushers, heaving and puffing his cheeks out. “Well, I told Edith a bit of a tall tale. I said that I had to help Giuseppe, my chum with his restaurant in the Islington****** today.”

 

“Oh yes,” Ada remarks with a tone of distaste as she hands George his cup of tea. “Giuseppe. He was your Italian friend who gave you the wine that we shared that first time we met, wasn’t he?”

 

Frank blushes red at the painful memory of that first rather awkward Sunday luncheon he had at the Watsfords’ when he and Ada had had a disagreement about some of his beliefs about life. “Yes.”

 

“My, my.” Ada takes up her own cup of tea and cradles it in her lap as she smiles to herself. “Such subterfuge to be alone with us.”

 

“You might not enjoy poor Frank’s discomfort quite so readily, Ada.” George pipes up from his seat as he sips his tea, tempering his wife.

 

“I was merely asking a question, George love.” Ada replies with a smug smile.

 

“No you weren’t, and you know it.” George retorts. “You were bringing up difficult memories of that awkward first tea we all had together, when you know perfectly well that we have all come a long way from there.” He gives his wife a doleful look. “Stop raking over old coals that don’t need to be raked over.”

 

“I agree, George.” Ada replies calmly. “We have come a long way; however, I was merely reminding Frank that in spite of that, we still have some concerns about his philosophies about life.”

 

“You have concerns, Ada love. I don’t.”

 

“Well one of us has to, if Frank has come here asking for Edith’s hand.” Ada turns her attentions to their young guest. “That is why you are here, isn’t it, Frank?”

 

“Well… I…” Frank stammers.

 

“Of course it is, Ada love. Frank?” George asks, sitting up in his seat.

 

“Well yes, Mr. Watsford. That’s what I came for. I came to formally ask for Edith’s hand in marriage.”

 

George leaps from his seat, dropping his half drunk cup of tea into the tea table noisily, sloshing tea into the saucer in his haste, before he bustles around the small black japanned cane table on which a vase of flowers stands before patting Frank on the back. “Of course! Of course! We’d be delighted, wouldn’t we Ada?” He turns and beams at his wife before turning quickly back to Frank without waiting for a reply. “What took you so long, Frank my boy?”

 

“Well Mr. Watsford, I know Edith and I have been stepping out for a while now,” Frank explains, sighing with relief and smiling at George’s exuberant acceptance of his request for Edith’s hand. “But I wanted to have a few things in place before I asked you.”

 

“Jolly good! Jolly good!” George chuckles delightedly. “Have you got a ring yet?”

 

“I’m not quite there yet, Mr. Watsford, but I’m getting there. I… I also wanted to assure you that my intentions are genuine. I… I love Edith and I don’t want anyone else.”

 

“Well, of course you don’t, lad!” George puffs, rubbing the young man’s right shoulder comfortingly. “We knew the moment we saw you together, that you two were made for each other, didn’t we Ada?”

 

Ada doesn’t reply immediately.

 

“Oh, this is wonderful, Frank!” George shakes Frank’s hands, barely able to contain his joy. “Welcome to the family!”

 

“Now just hang on for a moment.” Ada’s voice cuts in, slicing the joy with its sharp edge. “Let’s not rush into this without a few clarifying things first.”

 

“What?” George asks. He snorts preposterously. “Whatever do mean, Ada love? Frank’s just said his intentions are good. I don’t need anything more than that.”

 

“Well I do.” Ada replies calmly.

 

“What… what is… is it, Mrs. Watsford?” Frank asks, his voice quavering with nerves.

 

“Now, if you’d both just sit down for a moment,” Ada says, replacing her cup on the table, indicating for the two men to resume their seats.

 

Deflated, both Frank and George return to their respective seats.

 

“Now, Frank,” Ada starts, leaning forward in her seat. “I would just like to say that in principle, I am as pleased as my husband is that you’re asking for Edith’s hand in marriage.”

 

“Then Ada…?” George begins, but his wife silences him by holding up the palm of her hand to him.

 

She goes on. “I’d already had words with Edith about the two of you eloping.”

 

“Oh I’d never do that to you, Mr. Watsford or my Gran, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank assures her, looking earnestly into her unreadable face.

 

“Yes, I’m glad to hear it, as it confirms what Edith said, which was the same as you.” Ada turns to her husband. “Prospects?”

 

George looks quizzically at his wife. “Prospects?”

 

“Yes, prospects!” Ada’s eyes grow wide as she looks knowingly at him. She lowers her voice and whispers, “Remember, we discussed this?” When he looks uncomprehendingly at her again, she adds in a hiss, “When I said you’d go all doolally******* over Frank’s proposal, which you have?”

 

“Oh!” George pipes up. “Oh yes!” He sits up in his seat and turns to Frank. “Now young man, Both you and Edith have told us that you’re trying to improve your lot in life.” Ada scoffs from her seat. Ignoring her, he asks, “What are your prospects for Edith, once you’re married?”

 

“Well, it is true that I am trying to improve my circumstances. It’s one of the reasons why I have held off asking for Ediths hand until now. Like I said, I wanted to get a few things in place before I did.”

 

“Such as?” George’s bushy eyebrow arches over his right eye as he asks.

 

“Well, as you both know, I’ve been doing extra duties at Mr. Willison’s to build up my skills. I don’t want to be a delivery boy all my life.”

 

“No of course not, lad!” George pipes up.

 

“George!” Ada exclaims. “Let the boy finish. I want to hear what he has to say, not you.”

 

“Err… no, of course not.” George blusters. “Go on, Frank.”

 

“Well, I’ve been doing a bit of window dressing and arranging of products for Mr. Willison. I’ve also been taking a correspondence course on bookkeeping, which Edith doesn’t know about.”

 

“Why not?” Ada snaps.

 

“Because I wanted to complete it first and show that I’ve applied the skills before I told her: rather like a surprise, Mrs. Watsford.”

 

“Alright Frank.” Ada softens. “And have you?”

 

“Well, it’s a bit hard to get Mrs. Willison to relinquish anything about the shop’s books, but I did manage to do a bit of bookkeeping earlier this month when she was poorly and in bed. Technically she gave the task to her daughter, Miss Henrietta, but she wanted to do other things in her spare time, so it was reasonably easy to convince her to give it over to me to do, and Mrs. Willison did admit that I did a good job of it.”

 

“Well that’s something, isn’t it Ada?”

 

Ada nods in agreement with her husband, but keeps looking at Frank with an observant stare.

 

Frank continues. “And I’ve been tapped on the shoulder by friends of mine who are part of a trades union.” An uncomfortable look begins to cloud Ada’s features at the mention of unions. “And they tell me that soon there might be an opening or two in one of the suburban grocers for an assistant manager position, which would lead eventually to a position where I’d be running my own corner grocer.”

 

“In Metroland********?” George splutters. “My daughter all the way out there?”

 

“It’s not so bad, Mr. Watsford. The Chalk Hill, Grange and Cedars Estates are all built along the railway line not too far from Wembley Park, so Edith would be able to visit you easily, and you’d be able to come and visit us too. We’d live in a nice little flat above the shop with indoor plumbing and all electrified.” Ada tuts at the mention of electricity, but Frank continues to paint a vision of his and Edith’s rosy future. “The children we have, your grandchildren can grow up attending local schools and getting lots of fresh air.”

 

“Well, since you put it like that, I guess it’s not so bad, is it Ada?”

 

“Well,” Ada purses her lips. “I’m sure that Edith has told you that I hold no faith in that newfangled electricity, but living in Cavendish Mews she seems to have become a convert.”

 

“And a lovely new estate is far healthier for any children that we have, Mrs. Watsford. It’s far better than living in a house in Clapham Junction.”

 

“And how much will this flat of yours cost?” Ada asks seriously.

 

“Around five shillings a week for a two-up two down******** semi********* in the Chalk Hill Estate, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank says, gaining strength in his convictions, filling his voice with a new boldness and surety. “And, if we were to live in a flat above the grocers’ shop, it would be even less, and we’d still have all the modern conveniences like hot and cold running water and an inside privy.”

 

“Nothing wrong with an outdoor privy.” remarks George.

 

“Nothing wrong with an indoor one, either, Mr. Watsford. I only the best for Edith and our children.”

 

“Alright, young Frank.” George backs down.

 

“Now, going back to what I had eluded to before, Frank,” Ada continues. “You’re a good lad, Frank Leadbetter, and I can see that by your thoughtfulness and your manners. I know you love our Edith, and you obviously treat her very well…”

 

“As she deserves, Mrs. Watsford.” Frank assures her.

 

“I know, Frank.” Ada tempers him. “However, the vehemence with which you spurn your new ideas around is still a bit frightening to me.”

 

“Oh, there’s nothing to be frightened of Mrs. Watsford.”

 

“But these labour unions of yours…” Ada’s voice trails off.

 

“I can assure you, Mrs. Watsford, the unions aren’t bad, and I am not a Communist.” Frank defends himself. “As I said just before, I only want the best for Edith and for the family I hope we will have together. I just want a better world for all of us, and the unions will help with that. However, I swear that I’m not associated with any of those militant factions that popped up after the Russian Revolution. I believe in peaceable actions, discussion and compromise.” Frank looks earnestly at Ada. “I would never put Edith in any danger. I’m a hard working man who just wants a good future. Some of the finer details of it may be different to yours and Mr. Watsford’s, Mrs. Watsford, but at the end of the day, our ideals are the same, and whatever I do, Edith and her wellbeing is central in everything I do, and everything I have planned.”

 

Ada sighs and smiles. “Alright Frank. So long as she is, I can only give you my blessing too.”

 

“Oh thank you, Mrs. Watsford!” Frank exclaims, standing up and walking over to Ada who rises from her seat and embraces Frank kindly.

 

“Good lad!” George says, standing up as well and beaming over his wife’s shoulder, winking at Frank.

 

He reaches down and snatches up two more biscuits from the fluted glass bowl on the tea table.

 

“George!” Ada scolds, not quick enough to catch him this time.

 

He smiles back at her gormlessly.

 

“At this rate I’m going to have to let out that vest of yours, George Wastford!” Ada remarks.

 

George turns to Frank. “Are you sure you want the joy of these moments of wedded bliss, Frank my boy?” he asks jokingly.

 

*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.

 

**Button back upholstered furniture contains buttons embedded in the back of the sofa or chair, which are pulled tightly against the leather creating a shallow dimple effect. This is sometimes known as button tufting.

 

***McVitie's (Originally McVitie and Price) is a British snack food brand owned by United Biscuits. The name derives from the original Scottish biscuit maker, McVitie and Price, Ltd., established in 1830 on Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company moved to various sites in the city before completing the St. Andrews Biscuit Works factory on Robertson Avenue in the Gorgie district in 1888. The company also established one in Glasgow and two large manufacturing plants south of the border, in Heaton Chapel, Stockport, and Harlesden, London (where Edith’s father works). McVitie and Price's first major biscuit was the McVitie's Digestive, created in 1892 by a new young employee at the company named Alexander Grant, who later became the managing director of the company. The biscuit was given its name because it was thought that its high baking soda content served as an aid to food digestion. The McVitie's Chocolate Homewheat Digestive was created in 1925. Although not their core operation, McVitie's were commissioned in 1893 to create a wedding cake for the royal wedding between the Duke of York and Princess Mary, who subsequently became King George V and Queen Mary. This cake was over two metres high and cost one hundred and forty guineas. It was viewed by 14,000 and was a wonderful publicity for the company. They received many commissions for royal wedding cakes and christening cakes, including the wedding cake for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip and Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Under United Biscuits McVitie's holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II.

 

****The original Caledonian Market, renown for antiques, buried treasure and junk, was situated in in a wide cobblestoned area just off the Caledonian Road in Islington in 1921 when this story is set. Opened in 1855 by Prince Albert, and originally called the Metropolitan Meat Markets, it was supplementary to the Smithfield Meat Market. Arranged in a rectangle, the market was dominated by a forty six metre central clock tower. By the early Twentieth Century, with the diminishing trade in live animals, a bric-a-brac market developed and flourished there until after the Second World War when it moved to Bermondsey, south of the Thames, where it flourishes today. The Islington site was developed in 1967 into the Market Estate and an open green space called Caledonian Park. All that remains of the original Caledonian Markets is the wonderful Victorian clock tower.

 

*****The meaning of the very British term “shall I be mother” is “shall I pour the tea?”

 

******The Italian quarter of London, known commonly today as “Little Italy” is an Italian ethnic enclave in London. Little Italy’s core historical borders are usually placed at Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue - the Saffron Hill area of Clerkenwell. Clerkenwell spans Camden Borough and Islington Borough. Saffron Hill and St. Peter’s Italian Catholic Church fall within the Camden side. However, even though this was the traditional enclave for Italians, immigrants moved elsewhere in London, bleeding into areas like Islington and Soho where they established bars, cafes and restaurants which sold Italian cuisine and wines.

 

*******Doolally is British and Irish slang for a person who is eccentric or has gone mad. It originated in the military.

 

*******Metroland is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north-west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the Twentieth Century that were served by the Metropolitan Railway. The railway company was in the privileged position of being allowed to retain surplus land; from 1919 this was developed for housing by the nominally independent Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE). The term "Metroland" was coined by the Met's marketing department in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide. It promoted a dream of a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway service to central London until the Met was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.

 

********Two-up two-down is a type of small house with two rooms on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs. There are many types of terraced houses in the United Kingdom, and these are among the most modest. The first two-up two-down terraces were built in the 1870s, but the concept of them made up the backbone of the Metroland suburban expansions of the 1920s with streets lined with rows of two-up two-down semi-detached houses in Mock Tudor, Jacobethan, Arts and Crafts and inter-war Art Deco styles bastardised from the aesthetic styles created by the likes of English Arts and Crafts Movement designers like William Morris and Charles Voysey.

 

*********A semi-detached house (known more commonly simply as a semi) is a house joined to another house on one side only by a common wall.

 

This cluttered and old fashioned, yet cosy front parlour may look realistic to you, however it is in fact made up of pieces from my 1:12 miniatures collection, including pieces from my childhood.

 

You may think that by 1926 when this story is set, that homes would have been more modern and less Victorian, and many were. However, there were a lot of people during this era who grew up and established their homes during the reign of Queen Victoria and did not want to update their homes, or could not afford to do so, so an interior like this would not have been uncommon in the 1920s and even in the lead up to and during the Second World War.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The old fashioned high backed Victorian chairs with their barley twist detailing and brass casters were made by Town Hall Miniatures

 

Ada’s collection of commemorative plates of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1902 and the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911 on the sideboard and the whatnot are all made by the British miniature artist Rachel Munday. The plate of Edward VIII on the far left is a piece of souvenir ware from around 1905 and is made of very finely pressed tin.

 

The bust of Queen Victoria was made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. It has been hand painted by me.

 

The Victorian Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) vase in the centre of the fireplace has been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys.

 

The Watsford family photos on the mantlepiece are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are from various suppliers, but all are metal.

 

The church and castle statues at either end of the fireplace are made of resin and are hand painted. They came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

Sitting on the central pedestal table is the cottage ware teapot Edith gave her mother as a gift a few years ago. Made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson, it has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched rood and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics.

 

Also on the table, the glass dish of biscuits is an artisan piece. The bowl is made from real glass with the biscuits attached and hand painted. It came from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The teacups, milk jug and sugar bowl also come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop.

 

Ada’s wicker sewing basket, sitting closed to show off its pretty florally decorated top, has knitting needles sticking out of it. The basket was hand made by Mrs. Denton of Muffin Lodge in the United Kingdom.

 

The fireplace, the whatnot, the central pedestal table, the embroidered footstool by the fireplace, the brass fire irons and the ornate black japanned cane table on which Ada’s sewing box stand also came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop.

 

The sideboard is a piece I bought as part of a larger drawing room suite of dolls house furniture from a department store when I was a teenager.

 

The collection of floral vases on the bottom two tiers of the whatnot came from an online stockist of miniatures on E-Bay.

 

The vase of flowers are all beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium and inserted into a real, hand blown glass vase.

 

The little white vase in the forefront of the photo is mid Victorian and would once have been part of a tiny doll’s tea service. It is Parian Ware. Parian Ware is a type of biscuit porcelain imitating marble. It was developed around 1845 by the Staffordshire pottery manufacturer Mintons, and named after Paros, the Greek island renowned for its fine-textured, white Parian marble, used since antiquity for sculpture. I have had it since I was about ten years old.

 

The ‘home sweet home’ embroidery and the painting on the wall come from online shops who sell dollhouse miniatures, as does the Art Nouveau vase on the left hand side of the picture.

Taken from right-to-left, as I was sitting on the north side of the train, headed west.

 

I really like what happened when I set the camera on my phone to 'panorama' and then held it stationary against the window of the train: (from an email I wrote) "The camera accrues the image unevenly: it's looking for motion but its internal gyroscope ("accelerometer") is confused. If things aren't changing much in the foreground, the picture 'piles up' and the horizon stutters, but water or trees close-by trigger a richer capture

This was just after sunrise. Fall colours here, and lots of standing water."

Read the write-up on The Brothers Brick.

since childhood i've stuttered and i've created several images along this theme.. this is one of them

It was a rainy weekend. We were holed up and ate pizza and watched TV the whole day. We took photos of ourselves too!

 

I intend this to be a press photo for our band My Parasol (check us out: myparasol.bandcamp.com)

 

What do you guys think? Do you like?

 

Wild Thing

 

Many a Saturday night I’d just spend in the house on Victoria Blvd with a dozen beers and a mickey of Johnny Walker Red. Around 7 PM I’d send Shane and Suzanne out to Steffees B B Q to pick me up some ribs, as payment they got to chew on the bones. By now, seventeen or so many of us were following in the footsteps of the working class stiffs of our neighborhood. Scores of young fellows found love in the drink at a young age, some more than others. One evening at Victoria a friend named Scotty Collins was passed out on the couch, a few of us thought it would be funny pouring liquid honey, peanut butter, jam and such all over his thick combed back hair! Scotty was full of himself he thought he was Gods gift to women. He got up after some razzing singing his praises, like a white James Brown, “ain’t I beautiful, I am so good looking the women can’t resist me, ain’t I beautiful.” Then he realized the state he was in we all fell over in laughter.

 

There were a couple of other memorable nights at Victoria Blvd. The all time best was on a Saturday night when a local Toronto Disc Jockey named Dave Mickey was on a TV show doing a telethon to raise funds for something or the other. I got the free number and called in over a dozen times issuing challenges from the twelfth division police station for any other station to match our donation of a $100 if Mickey could do ten push ups on TV. Mickey did the pushups and then I’d call back using another voice saying I was the Softley Cartage baseball team and we meet the challenge and will give an extra $100 if Mickey can do fifteen more push ups and twenty sit ups. This was all happening live on channel 11 TV from Hamilton Ontario, there weren’t many channels at the time, maybe three in Canada, more if you had an antenna, I can’t recall if we had one, cable was still an idea as was sattelite. A big football star of the day Angelo Mosca was also on the telethon we had him doing pushups. I asked him why he was so mean on the field, this got under his skin when I suggested he was a dirty player, all live on air! That was my moment of fame. We tallied it up and we had fictitiously donated over a thousand dollars to the fund, several fire stations and police stations had unknowingly become donors. The loud mouthed Dave Mickey was so much clay in our prankster hands.

 

John the Italian lived next door to us on Victoria Blvd. His English was poor, what he could speak he spoke it with a stutter. His wife looked like she belonged on an Italian movie set as one of the mourners, rotund, olive skinned, kerchief forever on her head, she might have been bald except for her moustache! They did something to bug us, complained about the dog barking, or the loud noise of our parties. A bunch of us were sitting in the living room on a Saturday night drinking and the idea comes up to order some food for the neighbors. There was no such thing as call display in those days and the food joints relied on Take Out orders, they were ecstatic when you placed an order. One after another the delivery cars came to the neighburs front door, pizza delivery came from Little Tonys in Weston then Vesuvios brought some spaghetti from their shop in the Junction, then some chicken delivery from the Pic N Chick’n place up towards Weston, more pizza from the place I ordered my ‘butter pizza’ from Renatos, we even ordered Chinese food from Happy Buddha the Chinese place, we even called Steffee’s Barbecue using an Italian accent. While the delivery persons were at the neighbours door we were listening from our house bent over in laughter at the poor stuttering Italian who was about to pull his hair out, the poor guy was losing his mind. Towards the end of the night we called the fire department to report his house on fire and then an ambulance to pick up a sick child and then we had to stop or get ourselves in trouble. Our relationship with him was fine afterwards.

 

Every weekend there was some kind of event usually involving the drink. Some of us boys weren’t interested in anything other than drinking as if this was a remedy to the boring repetitiveness of our boring lives in Boringville. The soon to be famous group The Band were playing as the Hawks at the Crang Plaza Banquet Hall down at Jane and Wilson. I remember getting all duked up, nice strides, raincoat, mickey of lemon gin in the side pocket and taking in the show. It was a Canadian version of West Side Story. Several of us were giving off terrible energy by way of pseudo violence, throwing ones energy. Word was out that these black dudes from downtown were going to look for trouble, in our part of town. Word got around they had guns a bunch of us independents were in attendance. Fortunately there was no big brawl. Up on stage the Hawks rocked the place. They were dressed in tight silk mohair suits, their hair slicked back which was the fashion of the day, they wore pointy shoes maybe what we called Beatle Boots, the ties were thin, but boy could they play! I was no match for the bitter lemon gin. The evening turned out to be just a lot of posturing, somehow I managed to get picked up for being drunk and woke up in the 31 Division cells up around Jane and Sheppard, they were brand new so the name C Tuna was one of the first to be scratched into those walls. John and Gisele were not impressed when they had to come and bail me out again the next morning. Somehow at the age of sixteen I managed to get thrown in for these petty drunk charges several weekends in succession in various parts of Toronto. Nobody ever said this boy needs some help, not the judges, the cops, the parent or relations or the church it wasn’t an option back then. I wonder from time to time if the good folk weren’t afraid I’d hook someone or if it just wasn’t too much for mom to see this back then as that would question her values the mask of alcohol she was wearing to bear her own grief and I now know what a burden I must have been and at times feel terrible for this.

 

I knew I was a burden to her one weekend in Niagara Falls USA where we used to go drinking as the drinking age was only 18 in New York State. John Crossey and I were remotely involved in an afternoon disruption at a downtown bar, other people were also in town to party from the Nicks pool hall scene. Guys like Tom Brolley Rick Fordham, Scotty, Alfie my brother Alex. There was a minor skirmish with the doormen and the screws were called who caught John and I who were just belligerent at being falsely accused. Crossey was known to be nutty when drinking he later did a fin for armed robberies. They took us to the local bucket and this was a major drag as we could have been released and across the border for about twenty five dollars each. Those other guys didn’t give a fuck, it was their beef, just left us there to rot with the black inmates in the dirty city jail who did not want to share their Kools with us.

 

Well we sobered up and went to court on the Monday morning and got remanded for a couple of weeks to the county jail in Lockport New York about thirty miles from Niagara Falls. It was a modern structure, less than five years old quite an improvement from Toronto’s Don Gaol. When we got there they gave us orange coveralls to wear, fresh shorts, socks, soap, a toothbrush and fed us a meal of chicken and dumplings, it was like moms home cooking. We got taken up to a ward on the second floor with a bunch of other young guys in their late teens and early twenties. Both blacks and whites. Up till then I didn’t know any black people except Elton Horner who lived more or less in the Weston area and the Patterson family which had moved to Rogers and Keele from Nova Scotia but I didn’t know them, I saw them and was only aware that they were around. The other inmates liked us, we played cards or read all day long, fattened up on the great food. Canteen was allowed to be purchased if you had money. We had some dough I think John’s folks had sent him twenty or fourty dollars, not enough to bail ourselves out but enough to buy a carton of Luckys and Marlboro cigarettes each and both of us bought a box of chocolate bars, boy the other inmates really liked us then! I can with certainty recall eating sixteen chocolate bars one day, it was either eat them or give them away. They were Mars bars, John bought Three Musketeers bars, they cost a dime each, 24 in the box!

 

At cards, especially rummy five hundred I never lost, had a gimmick I’ll share with you. When the game is early and you have three in a row or three of a kind don’t lay them down but discard one of them into the pile, then a few moves later you can pick up that card and get to hold the rest of the cards that have been laid down then if possible discard another card from your hand that makes three of a kind or three in a row. You will always be able to control the game because you have almost all the cards. One black guy named Leroy (another Leroy) would remark in a voice not unlike one the comedian Eddie Murphy would later adopt, “you’re good Charlie Brown” and we’d all start laughing cause of course he said it with a stylized black American twang extending the vowels to make the phrase sing. “He Good”.

 

Those two weeks went by quite simply, you’d get a routine going, get up, wash, eat, play cards, out to exercise in the yard, in for lunch, take a nap or play more cards, dinner time, read a book brought around in the book cart by an inmate, wash a few floors, clean the pissers, tea and cookies for snack, smoke your brains out if you ran out of your own blowers they gave you some crappy papers and a cotton pouch called Bull Durham tobacco and you could roll your own, see what I mean about smoking? They gave it to you! The word was that the pouch tobacco was full of salt peeter which rumour has it cuts back on the need to jerk off. It sure never slowed me down.

 

I Never had a fight in Lockport, people respected us we were different, it was like being a foreigner. In court after the two week wait they dismissed the charges, we defended ourselves and told the judge we were just in the wrong place at the right time, which was true we weren’t even involved in the bar fight, we just happened to be there. The local cops looked bad when we got off and we were escorted across the border to Canada by a Border Patrol officer. We had a little bit of money to take the bus home to Toronto as Johns step folks (he was adopted) sent him dollars. That’s when I called home. I remember two things distinctly about that day..The Troggs song Wild Thing was number one on the charts and it could be heard on a cars radio as it passed us by when the Border Police were letting us go, and my mother saying, “Oh No” when I informed her from the payphone that I was coming home. She must have been enjoying the rest from my endless antics.

 

This would have probably been the summer of 66. Going to jail with someone really bonds the individuals cause now you’ve been doing something together that usually doesn’t happen except at school or in the military or on a sports team. In the summer of 67 Walter Husk, Pee Wee and myself drove to Montreal to see Expo 67. Top down summer in the city, three crazy guys thinking this was a big carnival or a party to attend. Walt had a beautiful Mercury convertible creamy white with a red vinyl top and interior. Here were the three most ineligible bachelors in the world in this luxury car heading down the highway. I recall the incredible array of structures of the fair, that modern architecture was lost on us, we found the beer tent quickly and afterwards guzzled down the quarts of beer we bought at the ‘deppanier’ downstairs from the room the three of us shared in an older area of Montreal. Expo 67 had created a wealth of money for those with rooms to rent, I suppose this was an economic spinoff. We brought a case of quarts home to Toronto where no one had seen them before, brands now non existent, Dow and O’Keefe. Dow was actually one of my moms favourite beers, not to many years on and it was removed from the market after several people in Quebec died from drinking it it. O’Keefe was a large brewery the O’Keefe Centre now called the Hummingbird Centre was their flagship.

 

Later that summer we took a trip to Parry Sound, up north to the great fresh air. We got a room out of town at a hotel on the water that had a big draft room, The Goat aka pee wee and self borrowed Walt’s mercury convertible to do some sight seeing. You know how it is when the afternoon booze suddenly hits you and you’re drunk, from nowhere you’re drunk, but not usually in the middle of the hills and lakes surrounding Parry Sound. Most often you are walking on a city street and that is much safer than driving. I tried the old squint one eye technique but forgot to put the car in forward gear instead putting it in reverse and I drove us backwards into a big ditch! We were miles from town, totally lost. We waited and waited then a young guy showed up and we went to a service centre and they called us a tow truck and not the police! Walt’s car went to a garage for extensive repairs to the undercarriage. We continued to party until the next day when we took the train home and had our own carry on bags of warm Labatts 50s in stubby bottles to entertain the long weekend crowds with. A few weeks later Walter took the train up to Parry Sound to get his car the repairs costing in excess of three hundred dollars. He never complained or harassed me and the G man for any cash it was all part of the friendship. Friends were friends, thicker than blood, lots of us created relationships out of frustration, out of lack of satisfaction with our lives at home, at work or in school. In these relationships the rules were made as life went on. Friends were family.

 

My calming down is an ongoing evolution. When I think of the years 64, 65 and 66 when I left York Memorial high school I realize I could easily have wound up in jail or dead from any sort of accident related to drinking and the fast life. When my buddies Ken Goobie and Eachie went away I lost my fast friends and changed crowds, went back to the Mt. Dinky corner boys with their cars who were a little less prone to adventures that might irk the lawmakers. One time before changing crowds a bunch of us were on a northbound Weston Road bus heading up to the Albion loop to catch the bus to Jane and Wilson and for no reason a few of those guys started to fight with passengers just for the sake of having a fight, I knew better and was always on the watch for them to explode. We ran off the bus via the side doors and got away. The next week with that same group we were eating in a Chinese restaurant up near Weston Rd and Oak street, it’s long gone. We ate piles and piles of food the Chinaman comes over for his pay and we all laugh then bolt out the door never to be seen again. The old eat and run trick……………

 

My job for a spell was shoplifter. I still have a bit of a problem not putting something in my pocket, it gets the adrenaline running, gives me a thrill, does this categorize me as a kleptomaniac? I don’t know, I never let a shrink or anyone like that get so personal. Yorkdale had just opened up it was a giant mall the biggest in Canada. Guys wanted hubcaps, wire ones off of fancy Caddys, Buicks, Olds’s and Impalas. I’d borrow Walts old cream coloured Volkswagen the one that you had to light the pilot light to get heat on. I’d tell him I was going out looking for a job and head up there to Yorkdale with my order book, looking for hubcaps. Not to long later I expanded the business to include suede coats. I Should have stuck with the hubcaps as they didn’t have things like cameras or roving security teams then in the parking lots the way they do today. I knew the mall quite well as I had worked there the year the mall opened as a busboy with my mother at the Noshery Encore dining room one of the better eateries at the plaza. Busboys were always being accused of stealing the waitresses tips, I never did, I drank the half filled cocktails from time to time though.

 

I got busted at 16 or maybe I was 17 for stealing a suede coat in the Yorkdale Eatons store. The security team were waiting for me as I’d already scooped three or four coats in the previous week, custom ordered for guys at the corner and at Mac’s BP. I asked the buyers their size and the style they wanted and I would go and get them a coat charging twenty five dollars a coat as nobody could afford the hundred or so bucks the stores were charging for these jackets. This bust really put my brakes on as I had to go to court and tell more lies, my lie this time to the judge was that I wanted to buy my dad a new coat for Christmas but only had enough money to buy my mom one as I had about a hundred and twenty bucks in my pocket when they arrested me. Fortunately the judge bought the story and my sentence was quite reasonable, first offence, probation, they didn’t even bar me from the mall. And thank the Lords that the cop who lived up the street on Victoria Blvd Mr Allen wasn’t on duty in the court room when I was telling the judge my story, my dad had been dead for about four years!

 

That summer prior to getting busted I used to score coats at the Miracle Mart store down by Crang Plaza, it was a forerunner to Walmart and K Mart. Here again I’d worked the same store in the restaurant when it first opened up with my buddy from York Memo, Eamon Lever. He was a rascal as well, we were both petty thieves, small time. As servers at this lumpy snack bar inside the Miracle Mart store we got to take the cash from each order and put it in the till or at least it was supposed to go into the till, most of it went into our pockets, that is until Eamon got busted and they checked his locker and found about fourty bucks in change. Warren Beasley who owned the snack bar also owned some racehorses, he fired him fast and I left shortly after as they plugged the holes for me to make any graft. The Miracle Mart store had their own line of suede coats, not as nice as the Eatons coats but still nice. Ken Goobie and I were looking quite dapper in our new coats our hair all slicked back one wet Saturday afternoon when we strolled into the Mercury dealership on Wilson Avenue beside the new Beverly Hills Hotel and asked to test drive a brand new 1965 Mercury Comet Caliente.

 

Incredulously, the salesman in his stupidity and greed mistook us for two preppies from Forest Hill and gave me the keys to a brand new car. He never asked for my drivers license or any information whatsoever, I guess we just snowed him under with our bullshit story and fine apparel we were off to the races. I recall the car being a sporty two door model, baby blue in colour. It was a sleek model with vinyl front bucket seats. Brand new. We headed right for the 401 and sped along the highway making the odd stop here and there to see if we could show off our ride. We didn’t see anyone, all the better because ten minutes turned into an hour or more and we got worried that the salesman might call the police on us as it was getting close to five. The newly under construction Weston Rd cloverleaf ramp loomed ahead. If only I had slowed down in the pouring rain before entering the hairpin turn. The Comet spun out of control at the top of the turn and rolled down a thirty foot or so hill the back end catching up to where the front had been moments before. The car did three full turns in all before it landed on its roof, tires spinning, motor running right beside the busy expressway! Kenny and I checked each other out and got the hell away from there by climbing the embankment and we ran like hell down a street named Pimlico and hid in someone’s utility shed for what seemed like hours as the cops were going crazy looking for the drivers of this abandoned car. Cops were everywhere in unmarked cars, patrol cars. They were knocking on the doors of homes to see if anyone had seen us. After some time, an hour or so we headed over to the corner of Albion Road across from the area we had been hiding in and we asked two guys in their late twenties to give us a lift. They were driving a black suicide door 1950 something Lincoln Continental. We got in and immediately noticed there were no handles on the inside rear doors to use to get out. We naturally thought we had been busted! These guys with leather jackets and the old ducktail hairdos said they’d heard about the accident at the police station where they must have been paying tickets or something. They drove us right down to Weston Rd and Lawrence and after stocking up on some booze at the John St. liquor store in Weston we went to a party at the Kirkpatrick house in Mount Dennis on Brownville Avenue where many other notables were gathered. Joe Budiki was there along with Bobby Miller and this guy Dave Harris from Weston whom I later worked with at Dyer and Miller Brothers fire extinguisher service and repairs. There was a lot of boasting that night about the car ride and it was in the day when guys wanted to test you, to see how tough you were, I almost got in ten fights but for some reason that night I was an untouchable. That old problem of getting drunk was still with me as I recall being out of it. Again. But for the grace of the Ten Buddhas I was still alive and kicking!!!

 

Another story relating to cars took place a few years earlier when I was fifteen. I know I was fifteen because I got taken to Juvenile Hall down on Jarvis street in downtown Toronto and my poor mother had to come and get me or I’d still be in there. Brian Hishon and self got a key at Nicks poolhall from someone that purportedly opened the doors to and worked in the ignition of certain GM cars. It was a master key. Well now, a free ride! We weren’t long in finding a two tone 57 Chevrolet on one of the side streets off of the main drag. We headed north on the main drag Weston Rd and then east on Trethewey Drive when we noticed we were being chased by the cops who were being secretive by not turning their cherry light on. Hishon sped it up making a quick left onto the Hearst Circle in an area of wartime houses, in a maze of small side streets, as he flew around the corners I jumped out at a parkette as it motored on, I rolled a little bit first onto the hard pavement then onto a grassy area in the parkette, just like in the movies. I stayed low under the trees as the cops passed me by chasing the car and then I got up and ran for hell. Across from the Hearst Circle the Dominion Steel plant welcomed me except I had to climb their eight foot high steel fence, which I eventually did and found my way to the friendly train tracks which led to the bottom of the streets in our working class neighborhood.

 

About two in the morning there was a knock at the front door of 26 Victoria Boulevard, it was the police, two plain clothes officers. Hishon had ratted me out and after some questioning and the usual laying of guilt they took me right downtown to the Juvenile Centre where the quarters were as modern as a motel room, but when they locked your door you didn’t come out. I was only there for two or three days at the most. Memory tells me that they did some group de-criminalizing sessions that were a waste of time and of course some do-gooder was always testing you to see if you were telling the truth. The food sucked and if anything this was a bad place to be as there were kids from ‘very’ troubled situations sharing rooms with kids like me, not really bad but adventurous. In court some time later I received a light sentence to see a probation officer once a month who was another do gooder that was always busy undermining you, running down your successes and discriminating against your lifestyle, your clothes, your brand of smokes the music you listened to. I felt then and I do now that I could never please a probation officer. He made such an impression on me I don’t recall his or her name or face and never will. My friendship with Hishon was never the same after he ratted on me, even at this young age he should have kept his trap shut. Mum was pretty pissed off having to come downtown to attend court and take me home, she had five other kids at home to look after, I don’t know who looked after them while she did this, a neighbour?

 

Seeing this reminded me of 2 things: 1) the scene from the movie: "little miss Sunshine" where brother Dwayne finds out he is colourblind (and he wants to become a pilot!!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVcNv4VLLA8&NR=1

 

2) this beautiful song by The Counting Crows

 

The real fun thing is that when trying to find the scene on youtube, I find a link where they combine it with the Counting Crows song!!! Pretty amazing! (see next link)

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSUd2u33UnY

  

And the original vid from the CC's

www.youtube.com/watch?v=164jS1qnCU0

 

I am colorblind

Coffee black and egg white

Pull me out from inside

I am ready (repeat 3 times)

I am taffy stuck and tongue tied

Stutter shook and uptight

Pull me out from inside

I am ready (repeat 3 times)

I am fine

I am covered in skin

No one gets to come in

Pull me out from inside

I am folded and unfolded and unfolding

I am colorblind

Coffee black and egg white

Pull me out from inside

I am ready (repeat 3 times)

I am fine (repeat 3 times)

 

Counting Crows

Hi everyone! Just a quick update on the state of the photostream, my personal affairs which affect it in a direct way and some really bad news (at least for me).

 

UPD: Oh, yeah, probably SPOILER ALERT! 'Cause, you know, the picture surely was not taken from the beginning of the game. :P

 

-So I took a break from shooting racing games (in fact, I still have lots of unedited stuff on my drive. I blame my lazy for it mostly) and I tried games of other genres.

Of course I couldn't miss the upcoming Epic's Paragon in particular. And I had a few quite fun matches here and there, I got used to its replay editor and took some shots of its AMAZINGLY DETAILED world along with STUNNINGLY CRAFTED characters and effects.

 

These shots were made on the last days of August, before I went to the University to find out I was set to work on announcing students' science projects, conferences and other research activities. And it's quite an appointment, I must say.

"Everybody has his/ her own part in the teaching/ working process, so will you", just like that - even though I still work on my PhD thesis with my science instructor on the background. Ok then!

 

After all, it turned out to be a quite interesting to work on. Now I regularly meet people who are deeply interested in bringing new ways of researching and scientific thinking to the industry, not just my typical ecological stuff I'm heavily involved into when attending various annual conferences.

 

I forgot to mention how I actually got Win10 this July, how I almost completely got used to its UI (which is of course isn't as good as in Win7, but it's still nice nonetheless!), and how it appears not just to "boot faster" but work faster as well. At least in some apps that I use too often.

And I shot in Forza: Apex, too. Quite a delicious graphics engine, yup!

 

Last week I saw that infamous "Anniversary update" ad browsing Microsoft sites, and I decided to give it a try. It felt kinda weird, since Start Menu had lost its "Show All [Programs and apps]" option, and "Search in Web" wasn't there, too.

After a few days the system showed me 2 or 3 updates, I downloaded 'em without any second thought.

 

And then. THEN! The system couldn't boot up, showing this "Blue" screen of… sad smiley emoji (?). I guess. Also there was a QR-code completely useless for a man like me who haven't got any mobile connection (besides laptop "HostedNetwork" before the bed). And there was some text message, something about "NTFS ERROR", I haven't remembered what was there exactly.

 

Well, I tried to reboot the PC, but had no luck - the error message appeared again. Then I booted into my Win7 HDD, and got BSOD there as well! Reboot, CHKDSK and there we go, log in screen.

Then I probably committed the biggest mistake of my life: I didn't log in but rebooted PC again to see if CHKDSK fixed Win10 instead. Brilliant!

Shortly after that my PC entered endless loop of rebooting w/out even showing a thing on screen, it wasn't just "black", it didn't turn on, like, at all.

And I spent the whole weekend desperately trying to fix it, ending up removing both HDDs and inserting 'em into my old rig (thank god I didn't move it somewhere else!). It's slow, it has only 4GB of RAM, GTX 260 and I still feel it in a bad way (e.g. Chrome loads pages excruciatingly slow!), although it works!

 

And now I'm stuck between

 

*actually attempting to recover the data from the faulty Win10 HDD with MANY screenshots I love so much ['Cause, you know, "an artist puts a piece of his/ her soul into the work of art he/she's working on" kinda stuff]

 

AND

 

*one heavily time-consuming task related to students and their graduation works.

  

It's truly super sad to realize, I was just about to share my Paragon shots with you, I was so excited about it, and now I can't even see them, and lots of other unreleased works! I was painfully stabbed in the back by that monster that Win10 Anniversary Update surely is.

 

Word of advice: DO NOT INSTALL WIN10 ANNIVERSARY UPDATE BY ANY MEANS! It's still so faulty I just can't imaging how MS let it hit the users' update schedules and download queues.

Of course, it might be just my fault all the way, but I guess a little bit of a warning wouldn't hurt anyone.

 

P.S. Sorry for low shot quality, it was taken in this January when I was on my 1st playthrough trying to beat the game's stutter and other graphics problems, didn't even think of screenshooting it because of low amount of VRAM (* 2GB = only Low Textures, Medium ones take ages to stream correctly) and 1080p resolution (*because again - I was just playing it without any intension to shoot it, may be take some pics just to remember the finest moments of it. While now I decided to choose this particular shot is because I felt it's pretty fitting to the themes I explain here, below it).

 

I'm really sorry for both having that tragedic event happening (* I really, really-really loved those shots that are probably lost forever on Win10 HDD) AND for having you read this long-a$$ wall of text. I love you all! Stay positive people!

 

V. Vorsin @polyneutron

Socal, I love you but I hate your car-centric culture.

Los Angeles, March 2011

Golden State Memories

Ian Prowse and Lara Simpson at Alexander’s in Chester. Backdrop of the ancient Roman walls. Outdoor concert. Audience obeying the rules; organisers getting it spot on. Great venue.

 

It’s different these days. Our glorious leader hasn’t a fucking clue about running a country. Drowning not waving.

 

Still you Tory bastards support the liars. You are all cunts and I hope you die soon. Some of us - and maybe you will have to deal with unnecessary deaths because you voted for a stuttering-on-purpose,serial philanderer, who cares about one person only. You swallowed his spaff. You are as guilty as he is.

 

Anyway, we had tunes like Raid The Palace echoing over Chester (a city that voted for Gyles Brandteth) and we took it back.

 

Roy was dancing on the walls. He came down to take centre stage.

 

There is still joy and hope.

  

The Fern GP team are concerned to see Felix Baggott's Dallara F301 stutter to a halt on the way to the assembly area for the first Monoposto Tiedeman Trophy race. After several unsuccessful attempts the car managed to get on its way, albeit slowly, and finished the race in 11th place. Whatever the problem was he improved in race two and came home 6th.

Read the write-up on The Brothers Brick.

HP5+ @IE 100, ID11 8min @21°C

 

By accident exposed @IE100, reduced agitation to 3 inversions every 2min during development, increased agitation to 3 inversions every 30sec during fixation

 

The Werra II on the left has a defective shutter that wouldn't open at all, the Zenit on the right has a stuttering shutter. Gladly, the Werra IV in the middle is working fine.

He looked at me when he heard the stutter clicking

Piglet: A "Very Small Animal" and best friend of Winnie-the-Pooh who has a stutter, a timid disposition, and a big heart.

 

Gamorrean Guard: A porcine humanoid from the planet of Gamorr who guards the Tatooine palace of Jabba the Hutt.

 

If they had to fight, who would win?

 

#322 in the Duel 365 series.

Central Coast, NSW.

These may seem a little odd, but yesterday morning turned out to be very, very interesting for me.

 

I was just working on my comic at my computer, hearing the local bus (#80) that runs past the front door of my house coming up the hill, when all of a sudden there was the most outrageous bang followed by the bus stuttering for power, it then limped to a halt outside my front drive in a fog of acrid black smoke, whereupon the driver immediately opened the engine bay door and started dousing the street with sand from what had apparently been a fuel leak.

 

Passengers were unloaded, and Country Bus sent up another two buses to cover. Eventually their engineers arrived in their company coloured LDV Convoy, as did a local hero of the roads, the Count of Heathfield, a gigantic tow truck used to rescue HGV's and Coaches.

 

The bus is a 2004 Dennis Dart SLF with SC Coachbuilders body, and is a regular on this route. I overhead one of the engineers mentioning something to do with the 'Big End', which is part of the Connecting Rod, and connects to the bearing journal on the crank throw.

who did walk down the street

white robe with no shoes on his feet

and on top of his head place a box with two slits

and the sign from his neck said

'I do not exist'

or a woman who could not remember her name

did stutter and stutter

again and again

and saw you and called you her son

her eyes said

'my being is gone

but still I'm not dead'?

 

Yep, inspired by Miserere - The Cat Empire =)

It took me hours to edit this shot... literally. I started preparing at, like half past 1, began shooting one hour later, finished shooting at 3 o'clock, finished editing at 5 and finally the decision between this and a slightly different version took me another hour...

 

I guess you need to view it larger

 

Mar 8 68/366

they stutter off my lips.

League of Heroes: Ascent

 

Episode 3: Darkest Before Dawn - Part 2

 

“We interrupt our continuing coverage of the New Brickton prison break, it seems that we are getting an unexpected live feed from the madness in Midtown.” The news anchor stuttered, nervously shuffling through the stack of papers on the news desk. “Frank, can you switch us over…”

 

Static… and then the picture suddenly changed from the busy news room to a devastated street. A blonde woman, statuesque and menacing stares into a shaky camera lens.

 

“Good morning citizens of New Brickton. From this day forward, it will be remembered that you sent forth your champions to face Celedon the Destroyer… and I have found them wanting. They lie here now in pathetic heaps, driven before me and broken at my feet. Is this really the best you have to offer? I demand a challenge worthy of my strength! For every hour that I am unsatisfied, I will raise another block of this insignificant city! Your only other option is complete surrender. Death or servitude, I give you the gift of choice mortals. Your first hour begins now.”

 

The broadcast suddenly cuts to a rainbow test pattern. Unseen by the camera, a winged figure descends to the devastated street. Upon touching down on the pavement, she kneels over the motionless form of the Indestructible Man.

 

“Wake up! Please!” She shakes Fred’s seemingly lifeless body, “Fred, I don‘t know what’s happened to us, but I do know that you are still alive and I know that we need to get you and your friends out of here.”

 

This was built for the League of Lego Heroes Group… www.flickr.com/groups/llh/

 

I was shown Lake Merced last night and instantly fell in love. It was way too dark for me to see anything but I found a couple people smoking weed and cigarettes and decided to take a polaroid for them, which as my best polaroid to this date.

I love this city, but i am still confused if it's just because it is a different city, where I am away from family and stress; or it is just because I am truly happy here.

Everywhere I look, I see a future photo shoot. I see the beauty in everything here; San Fran. I do not see the beauty in everything at home (Huntington Beach). All I see is ugly memories that torture me and keep me tied down to that city. I see beauty in the cultivation of life and liberty here.

The weather isn't the most promising here. It is cloudy, foggy, but still beautiful. I love watching the people walk by, each and everyone of them are different and have a story that rests in them; but so do I. I share my story and grief through my eyes, I can tell about theirs by the way of their body language and I really love everything about that.

I talk to random people here, which I cannot do at home. I stutter at home. I cannot complete a sentence without condemming myself of how unworthy I am for the other person.

I do not miss my problems, I do not miss my family at home. I hope they are not lonesome without me there... BUT I do need to find out who SCOTT is before anything else.

 

To move here, or not... That is the question.

 

1. As I've mentioned before, when I'm stressed or worried or nervous, I tend to laugh. *laugh laugh laugh*

2. As I uploaded this I glanced at yesterday's photo. Hilarious how they look like they were taken by different photographers, huh.

3. I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday.

4. My son spilled Cheetos in my closet. Don't ask me A. Why he was in my closet or B. Why he had Cheetos.

5. I love typos. They make me laugh.

6. I haven't worn my hair down in weeks. But, I have a Dr. Appt tomorrow so I figured I'd look somewhat presentable for a change.

7. I'm drinking a Sprite. It's yummy.

8. I saw an article today that had a poll about mothers never having painted nails when their kids are young. For once I'm NOT in the minority. What's nail polish, anyway?

9. I napped with my kid today. Like, literally, he laid on me and slept. Gotta take these opportunities before he's a linebacker asking to borrow my truck for the weekend.

10. I can't take a compliment. I blush, then stutter, then say something completely smartass.

11. If I ran into myself on the street I'd probably think "Nice pants, pluck your eyebrows, and why do you have a huge phone in your pocket?"

12. I totally should count how many pairs of socks I have and tell you tomorrow. I may do that.

13. I cleaned my humidifier today. In retrospect, I should have eaten first because it killed my appetite. Just saying.

14. I have a secret love of post-it notes. Especially the smaller ones. They're like...adorable post-it note babies.

 

15. Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.

~Bill Cosby

 

Goodnight All

mwah

.K

 

Random Fact: The average roll of toilet paper has 333 pieces.

I came to in a dark room, my hands cuffed behind my back. My eye felt swollen from where the gun hit me. Above me stood the man in the ski mask, clutching a machete. Off to the side stood the man in the baseball.

 

"Had a nice nap now have we, princess?"

 

"Wh-where am I?" I stutter.

 

"Pffffttt... I'd say the middle of nowhere, South Africa, twenty metres or so under ground level? No one can hear ya scream for shit if that's what you're gonna do..."

 

"Who.... who are you?"

 

"I'll be the one asking the questions here, kitten... but I guess you should know, seein' as you'll be here till you're no longer deemed a threat-"

 

"A threat? A threat to who?"

 

"Us. Not gonna lie to you, sweets, this here? Golden for us. None of your costumed little shits can come find you here. You're ours. Forever."

 

The man in the cap stifles a chuckle. Sick bastard....

 

"Care to elaborate? You couldn't be less vague if you tried." I spit at him.

 

*Sigh* "Us? We work for a guy... calls himself Mordred. Doubt you know of us. We barely know ourselves... heh! All we know? Mordred's a righteous outlaw Robin-Hood type. Hell, he fits out morals like a glove!"

 

"Those morals being?"

 

"The corrupt shouldn't rule! The rulers of our great homeland, the good ol' US of A... corrupt pile of shit if you ask me. You? You help the pigs hunt the free! The ones who dare overthrow the corrupt system!"

 

"Soooo... you're just locking me here for the rest of my life so this 'Mordred' fucker can attempt to singlehandedly, and likely fail to, capsize America?"

 

"You're right, all except for one small thing... Mordred ain't gonna fail! Heheheheheheheh!!"

 

I roll my eyes as the lunacy of this group's ideals. Radicalism at its rock-bottom worst. The man in the cap removes his cap and flops it onto a crate. He exhales deeply, crack his knuckles and flips his hair. He reaches into his hip holster and pulls out a gun. He clicks the hammer and performs a little wild-west-like spin. I nearly shit myself. This isn't how I'm gonna die, twenty feet under, miles from civilization.

 

But no, that's not how. At least not yet. He points the barrel at the machete-toting barbarian in front of me and without blinking or letting the other man at least let out a gasp, a loud pop echoes throughout the room and the man's brain matter paints the walls. He falls down dead, clutching his knife still. The other man walks out briefly and returns with a flak vest, cargo pants and other military gear in hand.

 

"Put this on. They'll recognize you too quickly in what you're wearing right now. I'll leave the room if you like."

 

I nod, and he leaves. I change into the heavy fitting clothes, much bulkier than my Zulu armour for damn sure. It's uncomfortable, but it might save my life. I let him back in.

 

"As you can tell by now, I'm not with these hooligans. In any way, shape or form."

 

"...So you're a turncoat?"

 

"Can't say I am. I'm here on official business, but you, Zulu? What are you doing here? Gotham could use you right about now anyway..."

 

"How do you-"

 

"Ah! Yes, allow me to introduce myself!"

 

I'm a little freaked out by this guy, I'm gonna admit.

 

"Yes, please do..."

 

"Colonel Hal Jordan, United States Air Force, covert CIA agent and all around badass. Pleased to make your acquaintance, and I'm absolutely, one hundred percent sure the feeling's mutual!"

__________________________________________________________________________

 

Eden got her horns in from Sparrows shop! They're gorgeous, and she's finally complete!!

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For a two volume ebook, a very pretty drug-addicted street prostitute allows her life to be documented by photographs and tape-recorded interviews for an entire year while she is working the streets of Atlanta. She does it for an ebook available from the usual websites. Here is Volume One on Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/B0755CS9ZJ/

Street Prostitute: A Streetwalker Tells Her Story While She’s Working the Streets

 

If you want to read what happens her first full day in the hospital, check out Volume One. You may read it in its entirety for free by clicking on "Look Inside this book."

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I get out of the car and lean against the hood. If Ronda does keep me waiting, at least I can spend the time taking in the stirrings of spring. The jonquils are already in bloom...the redbuds will be bursting forth any day...the birds are beginning to sing...

 

"Mar—Mar—Mar—Marcie—"

 

Ronda is suddenly back. A sweater draped over one arm, she is stuttering her hooker friend Marcie's name.

 

Very emotionally, her voice breaking, she tells me Marcie had just admitted that she did indeed have the ring that Ronda thought she had stolen from her. And then, after Ronda told her she could keep it, Marcie had started to cry...

 

Ronda seems so moved by this, I'm thinking. Really and truly and genuinely moved...

 

Suddenly she grabs my shirt—just below my neck— twists it—hard —and jerks me toward her—

 

"Give me some money for a pill—or I'm gonna kill you!"

 

"WHAT!?" I'm shocked.

 

She releases my shirt. Her tone had been only half kidding.

 

"You're full of shit," I say. "What are you talking about? You know I'm not gonna do that."

 

"I'm getting strung out again, George. I discovered the other day I'm getting strung out again... Please. "

 

"I will not!" I declare.

 

"Pleeeeease!"

 

"I told you what the deal was before. And I'm not changing."

 

"Don't be on principle!"

 

"That's not—"

 

"Fuck principle!" She's almost shouting.

 

"That's not just principle."

 

"Principle sucks, man!"

 

I back up: "What do you mean...you're... What do you mean that you're stru— You said you discovered the other day that you're strung out again."

 

"I am, I'm strung out again. I know I am."

 

"All right, explain to me what that means... That you're strung out again."

 

She yells her answer—

 

"I—WANT—A—FUCKING—PILL!"

 

"Okay"—my voice is normal, or fairly normal—"but that doesn't mean strung out. I thought, basically, strung out, the way you've used the term strung out...was that you had to have it so damned much and you were doing it constantly— "

 

Ronda interrupts: "I have been doing it constantly—that's the problem."

 

"Well, Melvin said you've been averaging two a day. How many have you really been averaging?"

 

"Five or six. He don't know what I've been doing."

 

"Okay. You've been doing five or six a day?"

 

"I'll give you this watch."

 

"You've been averaging five or six a day for how long?"

 

"I don't know! "

 

She clenches her teeth in frustration.

 

"A week?" I push. "Two weeks? A month?"

 

No answer from Ronda.

 

"Two months?"

 

Still no answer.

 

Then: "Since my coat got stolen. At least. Before then. I don't wanna talk about it. Pleeease, George, what can I do?”

 

"You have been averaging five or six a day for...a month? And Melvin doesn't know that. Is that correct?"

 

"What have I got to do?" she asks—no, demands. "Have a goddamn—" She stops.

 

"Is that correct?"

 

"Yeah." [Sounding definitive.]

 

"Okay. Well, this is what I've been asking you for a long time, was to tell me the truth about the pills. So you're getting strung out? "

 

"I am strung out."

 

Now I raise my voice:

 

"But you're not getting strung out like you have been, Ronda! Because I know how you were."

 

"Well, lemmee..." She gives a frustrated little sigh. "You can have everything in my house," she offers. "You can have Melvin included. You can have me. "

 

I just look at her.

 

"I'll be your personal slave for a week," she says—and laughs. "You can say, 'Ronda...'"

 

"You're lying. You have not been doing five or six a day for that long."

 

"I have," she contends. Her brow furrows... "A hundred and fifty, two hundred...about three hundred dollars a day. That's six, right? Yeah."

 

"So where do you shoot up?" I ask, looking her hard in the eye.

 

"Here. At Rick's. They don't tell anybody. [Pauses.] What can I do?"

 

"So... So you're strung out again..."

 

"What can I do?" she interrupts, repeating her question more forcefully.

 

"Well, what do you usually do?"

 

A sound of exasperation is her response.

 

Then suddenly I'm wondering:

 

Did she mean something more by her question? Something more crucial? More hopeful?

 

So quickly I ask: "What can you do about what?"

 

"George," she answers," I will do anything..."

 

My hopes evaporate.

 

"...I swear to God I would."

 

"I'm not," I say, "in the business of supporting your habit. You understand? I don't like it!"

 

"I know... That's not..."

 

She stops in mid-sentence and for a minute she's quiet.

 

"I would do it for you," she says finally.

 

"And besides that," I remind her, "we had a deal. We had a deal. We had a deal."

 

Ronda snaps her fingers:

 

"Broke."

 

"What?"

 

Another quick snap of her fingers:

 

"Broke."

 

"What's broke?"

 

"The deal just got broke. Now. Look..."

 

"It did not," I counter. "Not on my side it didn't."

 

"It's not supporting my habit"—she softens her tone—"it's not that."

 

"Please," she adds in a sexy little voice.

 

"Ronda, we made a contract on this deal. And I work thirty or forty hours a week on it." I pause. "Look, just get...get in the car and we'll go to Popeye's and—"

 

"If you'll buy..."

 

"...you're not hurting that much!"

 

"If you'll buy me a pill, we'll have a four-hour interview!"

 

She laughs. She's obviously enjoying this new line of argument.

 

"You've just had your methadone..."I say again "...you're not—"

 

"Fuck the methadone! The man won't raise my goddamn dose— I'm tired of his bullshit. He takes it personal if I can't make it to counseling. It hurts his feelings..."

 

She lowers her voice: "I'd do anything; I swear to God I would. I'd kill somebody. If I had to. But I ain't got no way to kill somebody."

 

"You would kill somebody?"

 

"If I had a gun."

 

"If you had a gun, you would kill..."

 

She interrupts, speaking louder now: "No, if I had a gun, I'd take it to Rick and trade it for a pill."

 

"Okay, but otherwise," I continue, "if you couldn't trade it for a pill, would you kill somebody for one?"

 

"I'd rob somebody. [A pause.] There's gotta be something I could do."

 

"Well, you could turn a trick, right?"

 

My question is met by a long silence.

 

Finally I say very nicely—and hopefully, "I wish that we would just go...get something to eat...and do this interview. They've got to be done, Ronda! If this book is gonna come together."

 

"Uh...let's get it," Ronda says. "I promise, we'll sit...we'll sit for hours. Upon hours."

 

"I can see— I can see that you are...you must... You've got to be strung out again."

 

"We'll go to your office..."

 

"I really... I really could not tell it before..."

 

"We'll go to the office..."

 

"...because you haven't done this..."

 

"In a long time," she finishes for me.

 

"In a long time."

 

"We'll go to your office," she says again, "and we'll just sit there. Because the pill, you know, it'll hold me for...about four hours. I'll just sit there and talk, talk, talk. Four hours, I promise."

 

I level my eyes at her. "After all the work I've put into this book, I'd ditch it before I gave you the money for a pill right now."

 

"Please"—now she's sounding like a little girl—"I'll pay it back to you."

 

"Give it up, give it up. It's not like you're hurting... physically hurting."

 

"Yeah"—she places a finger on her chest. "Right here it is. Right here."

 

"But you just had your methadone!"

 

"Fuck that methadone."

 

There's a silence.

 

"How do you feel about getting strung out again? If you are."

 

"I—just—like—the—way—the—stuff—feels. Okay?"

 

She climbs up onto the hood of my car.

 

"If you've been doing five or six a day"—I address her up there—"that means you've been on the street a fair amount. Right?"

 

Quickly: "Not in front of the hotel! George, you know I get that check the first of the month—can't you go on that?"

 

"Ronda, I'm not available for this."

 

"Pleeease!" she implores. "I don't know nobody to ask. ... Don't fuck with me."

 

"Ronda, I'm not gonna do it. So if you need to get it, go ahead. I'm not gonna do it."

 

"Why?" She asks it like she truly wants to know.

 

"Do you want me to spell out the reasons?"

 

She nods that she does.

 

"Number one," I say calmly and seriously, "we had a deal. Which you agreed to. I'm sticking to my part of the deal. In what I will do and will not do. That's the main thing.

 

"Number two: I don't have that kind of money. I'm in debt myself right now. Number three: you're always able to talk folks into...getting your drugs for you."

 

"No, I'm not!"

 

"You're not able, " I say, "to talk me into it."

 

There's a long, frowning silence from Ronda, still perched on my hood.

 

"But I wish to God," I say, "that you'd...get into shape or whatever, because if you get totally strung out, the only time I'll be catching you will be a little bit on the street, and that's it."

 

She slides down off the hood. With great agitation, she walks to the rear of the car—then back to me...

 

"Jesus Christ! Fuck it. I've gotta go turn a date, George. I'm sorry, I can't—"

 

"I'm sorry too. Now when are we gonna do this interview?"

 

"We could've done it right now."

 

"All right. Are you—" I start to ask, "are you—"

 

Wheeling around, Ronda walks off.

 

I draw deeply on my cigarette. Across the street, an old woman is sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. As I'm watching her, I hear the slamming of my car door, and turning, I see that Ronda has climbed into the car and is pulling her shirt off over her head. I look quickly away. Through the windshield, I'd caught only a brief glimpse of her small but pretty breasts. I watch the old woman sweeping until I hear the car door shut again.

 

Now wearing the sweater she'd brought out from Rick's, Ronda is standing by the door, her eyes on me.

 

"I appreciate the, uh...I appreciate that," she says. Her tone is sincere. "You know?"

 

"What?"

 

"The, um...respect you just showed by not watching. I appreciate that."

 

"Well," I reply, "I would appreciate it if we can—even if you get strung out—if we can continue on this book without you making—"

 

She interrupts: "Where are you gonna be? At your office?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"After I get my dope," she says, "I'll come see you."

 

"You'll what?"

 

"I'll get a trick to bring me over there."

 

For a few seconds she just stands there.

 

"You don't want to loan me just ten dollars if I lay something on it?"

 

I shake my head.

 

"I've got to go straight broke, right?"

 

"Yep."

 

"Okay. Fuck you."

 

This she had said without raising her voice. But she sounds, for the first time today, truly angry.

 

She starts walking away.

 

I say to her back: "Are you saying you're coming over there?"

 

She stops; she turns and faces me:

 

"I'll be over there. I don't know why. Because I'm mad at you. I'm real mad at you, but I'll still come over."

 

"Okay."

 

Again she starts toward Ponce de Leon, then speaks over her shoulder:

 

"I'm coming because we're friends. You know what I mean?"

  

--------

A little hopeful, I wait at my office.

 

She never comes.

 

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For a two volume ebook, a very pretty drug-addicted street prostitute allows her life to be documented by photographs and tape-recorded interviews for an entire year while she is working the streets of Atlanta. She does it for an ebook available from the usual websites. Here’s is Volume One on Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/B0755CS9ZJ/

Street Prostitute: A Streetwalker Tells Her Story While She’s Working the Streets

My self-portrait on the cover of a book. I licensed it to marchand de feuilles

  

You can read more about it on my blog. :)

Cooranbong region, New South Wales