The Next Post

I have decided that my next post will not appear until I have something to report on my garden.

80 Years Young

Aged 80 in this clip and just about the last one left of her generation of real, old, live entertainers - and no wonder the Carlisle Hotel in NY lets Elaine Stritch live there free in return for a couple of nights' entertainment a month:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1xthO7eYhM

Going Dancing in Sleepy Hollow Centro Tonight

But not as well as this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQwK6AZozZw

Morecambe and Wise

One of Britain's most loved double-acts, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEmZwcOIFjc

Genevieve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AndSwYyE3vE

Raffaello Baldassare Castigilione's Dictum

In his Book of the Courtier (1528), Baldassare Castigilione describes wit, sprezzatura, and apparent effortlessness in any endeavour, as ‘’a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.’’

Mrs T's Table

There will be a great deal of loved-her-eulogy and hated-her-diatribe about Mrs T over the next few days but here is a unique titbit (apparently, it's 'tidbit' in the USA). Margaret Thatcher was the pupil of Peter Rowland in his tax chambers at 2 Temple Gardens, in the Inner Temple. Almost by chance, I now possess various books that belonged to him and two things that Mrs T would certainly remember: a framed print of the mural in the Palace of Westminster of The Plucking of the Red Rose and the White Rose in Inner Temple Gardens, by Henry Arthur Payne (depicting the start of the War of The Roses, as supposed by Shakespeare):

- and an ornate, mahogany pedestal table at which Mrs T (remembered by Rowland as 'bossy') must have worked. The table is in storage in England, so no picture, I am afraid.