I dreamed I bought a mandolin

Bloggledebook is notching up some landmarks. We are two tomorrow so break out the cherry pop and chocolate fingers. And right on cue it was a record day on Monday with nearly 90 hits, and passed the 10,000 threshold this morning. Thank you all for passing by and taking the trouble to comment on my muddled meananderings. It’s kinda fun (…isn’t it?).

So with more of that on the menu, no doubt you are dying to hear about that crazy dream. In Istanbul we marvelled at all the weird and wonderful stringed instruments on sale. There was only one mandolin. (I curse that I didn’t take a snap to show you). In the dream, I went in and tried it but as I was playing the notes to one tune, a different one was coming out. It was one of those frustration things and probably linked to the confusion Matt pointed out below.

I’ve been a bit lax with the banjo so I got the music out and did some serious graft. Mighty sore fingers but have finally started to crack ‘Maid behind the bar’. (I can hear the wisecracks now). The mandolin is tuned the same as the banjo and ditto the fingering so I am tempted to acquire the little beasty.

More news:
The poor old MR2 has got a few problems. It’s in the menders tomorrow so I’m hoping it’s not major surgery which I can’t afford.

Matt has bought a swish new camera so I’m looking forward to pointing to a new Flickr account shortly.

Barnet tonight. Need some points. Perhaps we’ll head a few in (Barnet. Head ‘em in. Geddit?).

Turkish delight

Istanbul-Constantinople-Istanbul-Constantinople ****
If you’re blue and don’t know where to go
Why don’t you go where fashion sits
Puttin’ on the Ritz

Hadn’t expected Istanbul to remind me so closely of that song but it really is a swish place – cleaner, less anarchic and more Western than any of us expected. And huge, and I mean vast. I reckon it’s about the size of HerefordSHIRE but wall-to-wall walls.

Enjoyed some really splendid, relaxed, humorous company and beautiful, jaw-droppingly spectacular sights though I was a tad hindered by a dose of something that rhymes with the last word of the lyric. (Dipped out of the boat trip up the Bosphorous and a Turkish bath on diplomatic grounds).

Also purloined a rather elegant snowdome of the Aya Sofia after a bit of amateurish haggling with a Fernabace supporter in the grand bazaar… though now I think of it I’m not entirely sure he was actually the stall owner. Oh well no matter, it’s ready for the collector.

I’ve posted a few pictures but the conditions were a little challenging. For those of you interested in these things, the light was really flat, no contrast or shadows and very difficult to find a vantage point to convey a sense of scale. Even in the mosques they allow you take photographs, but flash is banned which is just as well because the wondrous tiles just blast it all back. So I guessed the exposures and tried to brace myself to keep it steady….with, um, shaky results. If you go to Istanbul (and it’s well worth a visit off-season if you don’t mind the cold), a boat trip is probably the best option for getting a skyline scene, and be sure to take a tripod – especially for the nightscapes which I found impossible with my wee snappy camera. Felt like I missed a trick there because the city was even more beautiful after dusk.

Anyway, back to normal. Shame about the FA Cup but we’re still in the promotion battle, and spring is round the corner. Ian suggested a walk at the beginning of Feb so I’ll try to make it home for that.

**** Matt has elightened this eejut that they are, in fact, two separate songs. (see comments below). Unfortunately they are irreversibly and inoperably connected in my head so I’m afraid I shall be making a dork of myself for some time to come.

Beware of ‘The Purples’

I’ve been reading a little about the 17th Century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper. He was a libertarian, philanthropist and staunch republican who stuck two fingers up to the corrupt and authoritarian physicians of his day. I like him already.

If that wasn’t enough, his words are laced with poetry and humour. He was rather effusive about common bistort (also known as snakeweed or dragonwort) which by chance I photographed near Abbeydore last summer.

So if you’re feeling off-colour please take heed of his advice thus: “The root in powder taken in drink expelleth the venom of the plague, the smallpox, measles, purples, or any other infectious disease, driving it out by sweating.”

Now you can’t say fairer than that.

Off to Constantinople on Thursday to see Byzantium (also known as Hell by Galatassaray fans). See you when I get back.

Things they say

I watched a bit of that Jamie Oliver scare programme last night – and it was scary. But what had me howling with inappropriate laughter was when they asked a morbidly obese guy about his rather depressing diagnosis. His reply:

“I’m gutted.”

And then I read an interview with Alan Shearer this morning. He was responding to speculation that he might be appointed deputy to Kevin Keegan. Here’s what he had to say:

“I don’t know whether, one, he wants a number two, or two, I would like to be one.”

Yes quite. I wonder what they make of that in the Newcastle dressing room.

And finally…I wrote a rather nervous and speculative email to the chap I consider to be the world’s leading expert on King Alfred to see if he would give me his insight on various questions and confusions. He replied within the hour with incredibly detailed responses to all my dumb-ass questions in a lucid and engaging way, with humour and without being patronising. What a champion fella. One of his replies had me chuckling though. I asked him if there was any more biographic detail about Alfred’s rather shadowy adversary, Guthrum, from sources I may have missed. The answer, from the person who would know if anyone did:

“Nope.”

Lost age

I picked up a copy of Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee last week. I dimly recall reading it at school but the wondrous prose was lost on me then.

What struck me, and what was so illuminating for my book, was the ‘primitive’ way people existed even within living memory – and we are talking about a Cotswold village of the 1920s here. Old people living off potato peelings and finally being killed by the winter, constant hunger, pumping water inside the kitchen, candle light – the coming of the age of the bus which took people as far as Stroud.

And then it hit me that kind of existence was not that far removed from our own timelines but now disappeared. When I was a small child I remember visiting my mother’s friends at Shelwick. They lived in a house which was truly ancient with floors at all angles and a well in the kitchen floor. One set of grandparents didn’t have a fridge or heating save for a small coal fire and the other set remembered keeping pigs and chickens in the garden – off Bath Street in the city centre.

Then a few years ago (I guess about the time of the millennium) my mum told me a story about an old fella who was taken ill and then referred to social services. His birth had never been registered and he didn’t have a national insurance number – I guess he’d never paid any tax either. He was invisible to society even in the 21st Century. He lived in a hovel in the outer reaches of the universe near Peterchurch…and, get this…he’d made himself some false teeth – out of a horse’s nashers!

I sincerely hope those kind of times never come around again, but if they do, are any of us truly tough enough, mentally or physically, to take it on?

Thoughts and memories?

Normal service

Well Happy New Year everyone. Sorry there hasn’t been much activity but I went down with something akin to gastric flu on Christmas Day and I still don’t feel right.

I know 2007 wasn’t very kind to many people so let’s hope we all have a better one this year.

With my ongoing project in mind, I offer you my favourite Groucho Marx quote: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”