Purple heart

Hoveyda's watch

Oddly, I'm just waiting for a BBC political correspondent in Washington DC to phone. No, I haven't gone off my head or decided that blogging about repainting my allotment shed is so banal that I need to invent something, nor does the BBC in Washington need my insight into the Republican Party primaries.

...

And there he was, on the other end of the line, sounding a little bit like a Christopher or Peter Hitchens, responding to the email with my home phone number within ten minutes of me sending it, ever the hardworking hack.

The story starts with an Iranian in Paris in 1941, moves on to Marylebone Road in the mid '70s, falters in Croydon and ends in Nottingham in 1981. The call from Washington DC is merely an epilogue, a testament to the effort that some journalists are willing to expend in correcting errors in previously published articles.

...
UPDATE: 14.03.2012 :
The remainder of the original post has been removed for the time being as the story and its epilogue develop. For more information follow the links below and if you're curious, get in touch.


BBC News - The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis

'In the Lion's Shadow' - Fariborz L. Mokhtari

'In the Lion's Shadow' - Reviews: Amazon.co.uk

Improvements

The builders next door have been making some improvements. Can't quite see what they've changed in the garden since I used to look after it for Irene. Perhaps your eagle eyes can spot the difference.


Before


After

I bet the ground elder comes back though. 'Tis a persistent weed. Watch this space.

Up and coming

Woven

Wide awake on the Keynsham bypass

Rays Bright

(Ray Bright; Australian, slow left-arm, 7-87 v Pakistan 1979/80)

Sugarlump Saturday

The latest in a series of tracks - sketches/demos - produced in no more than a day. The time restraint is partly due to software instability, the builders next door and a nod to creative constraints similar to the Dogme 95 filmmakers.

Due to an unavoidable upgrade to a Macbook Pro running Mac OS Lion, the only music software to be relied upon, after multiple crashes of Ableton Live, is now Logic 9. If its stability continues and the builders put down their drills, time constraints may be relaxed.

Cusp

January sails

Not a chance

Intermittent glitch

Other people's computer problems are a little like other people's dreams. For the person who experiences them they can be frustrating, absorbing, difficult and time consuming to resolve, if not ultimately impossible, with the best option being to move on and look for the next one. People who want to hear about them are few and far between and some of those who don't glaze over or leave the room might attempt to make helpful suggestions but interpretations and solutions are varied, multiple and confusing.

Leeking

Easton sunsets

Cheese for supper

Fuelled by an addiction to cutting up beats and speech, a bit of lunacy, even by standards usually heard here.

If you can't play these audioboo streamed tracks and/or see an empty white box, check your java and javascript...or is it yer Flash?

Alternatively, they can be downloaded for free direct from here.

Song for Irene

Not a shag in sight

Crash and burn

There's been a castastrophic failure in the computer room at Green Lung Towers, following the kernel panic back in September. Almost all of the creative software is now unusable and the browsing and email applications are hanging on by their fingertips to a computer which is itself teetering on the brink. Unfortunately, the series of musical sketches posted below will have to be put on hold until a replacement computer and software are found.

At this time of year the allotment's on ice, or rather, there's ice on the allotment, as the first frosts arrive and heavy rainfall waterlogs the predominantly clay soil. There's still plenty to harvest (kale, winter greens, leeks, parsnips) but now that the onion sets and garlic cloves are in the ground, nothing left to plant or sow for several months.

Just time for a small bonfire before the rain soaked everything, after a mild and dry autumn: Sunflower stalks release a useful amount of potash when burned but there's no point in burning everything in sight and incinerating or rendering homeless all the wee beasties.

Not Cricket

There's just something inherently wrong with bowling underarm.

December Dub

Still Breathing

Multivitamins

Blown Again

Gardeners have a habit of boasting of their successes and not drawing attention to their failures, but to break the mould, here's the first of the season's brussels sprouts, 'blown' again, instead of being tightly formed buds. Perhaps the roots should have been deeper and more firmly planted and maybe they could have done with more potash. Whatever, they'll still be edible.

Periwinkle

"But it's not real music is it?"

On Your Bicycle Maybe

The first of a couple of recent tracks, the first produced with Ableton Live, the second with GarageBand, both recorded within a newly imposed 24 hour rule.

Down The Line Mash Up

Blooming Late

Green 5

Tom Roberts

Tom Roberts: 21.02.62 - 25.10.02

Here Tom, you'll never guess what! I came out of retirement and defected to our old rivals and won two rather natty trophies for the best bowling performance and most wickets in the season. Any chance you could make a comeback? Your 7-9 still p1sses over my 6-34.

Late goodness

Prowler

Squatter's rights

This frog made me feel like a bailiff or bulldozing land-grabber as an autumn clear up disturbed its place in the sun.

Feather the bed

Dried artichoke flowers make excellent nesting material for small feathered friends.

Isle of Avalon

Roots Manoeuvred

Green futures

Top seeds

Second coming

Swans & Cygnets

Cut short

What is it with hairdressers and barbers? You ask for an inch off and they leave not much more than an inch on. Don't they realise that if they did what the customer asked and only took a little off, the customer would return more often and they'd get more business? As it stands, and as I bristle, I won't need to return until late next year.

Television emptiness

When your very old Belgian made telly sounds like a motorbike, it's time to banish it to the garden.

Dahlia Ring

In a pickle

The cherry tomatoes self seeded from last year and have finally ripened this month.



But blight has attacked the large 'Marmande' variety, which prefer a Mediterranean climate.

Only thing for it, with many kilos of green tomatoes, is to get busy making pickle / chutney.

Just add:

Apples
Beetroot
Marrow
Red onion
Demerara sugar
Ginger
Turmeric
Cumin
Dill
Fennel
Chillies
Cayenne pepper
Mustard seeds
Cardamon
Garlic
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Vinegar
Sultanas

Kernel Panic

The uninitiated might be forgiven for thinking that a kernel panic occurs when a squirrel forgets where it's put its nuts. Then again, perhaps it should be Colonel Panic, a rather jittery army officer.

Neither are in fact true. It turns out that what the Mac Powerbook has been suffering from is 'an action taken by an operating system upon detecting an internal fatal error from which it cannot safely recover.'

Bother.

Living on borrowed time ...

Final frames