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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
There are pop-up pics and links all over the place here. In text they are indicated by a double underline like this:
mouse-overing brings the pop-up up and clicking (usually) goes to the link |
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Some time ago I happened to mention that one of the problems with being as on-line and switched-on and obviously hip as I am is that one has a horribly unsettling and debilitating tendency to stumble onto things that are much more interesting than the things that one has already started, and that one really ought to be doing, but the hell with it I just must look at that, and then that, and then th...!
I blame it all on those damned search-engines, they make it too easy to find things on-line. Now the search engine that occasioned my aforementioned mentioning happened to be the one in Apple's iTunes online store and the actual instance of my mentioning was the stumbling upon a folksong called Tam Lin '.
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To start with I should warn you that there are absolutely no offensive words of any sort in this essay, so you have been warned: and anyway even if there were, when it comes to language and the meaning of words Humpty Dumpty was undeniably right, but only for large values of himself---You know, like the mathematicians' "two plus two equals five, for sufficiently large values of two".
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Well it turns out that it didn't take me long to get over my jet and tube strike lag, so here I am on the second day of my visit and I'm back to my routine---up at 4 am and out for a run (actually I'm not quite back to my routine, I really only got up at 4:20 but I'm proud to say that I didn't need an alarm clock: and yes I do know that my routine wouldn't pass for normal with normal people, but at least I am back to it). Oh and didn't I mention that I'm in England--- flew in Wednesday, BA, and man I had a dreadful flight, the service was horrible and far be it from me to put down anything with the word 'British' in its name but next time I'm flying American! And then once I got to London I was immediately swept up into the vicious vendetta that London Transport employees have been carrying against me since the early seventies, boy their spies must be good: you see just as soon as they realized that I was on my way they came out on a twenty-four hour strike to cover the day and (note) only that one day that I was crossing London, so it took me about three and a half hours to get from Victoria to Liverpool St., but I did eventually get here in spite of their spite.
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I'm sure you'll be overjoyed to know that, in an overwhelming show of support for the writers of the Book of Ecclesiastes, this summer Hollywood will be continuing its massive campaign to prove there is nothing new under the sun. A significant part of of this proof will be the release of yet another Arthurian movie
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People at work have, of late, developed the very strange and rather troubling habit of sending me examples of those emails that float about the æther vigorously (and presumably hilariously) suggesting that English, unlike all the other languages in the world, has culpably erratic, foolish (and presumably hilarious) spelling and grammar. Why they do this I have no idea, because I don't think I've ever done anything to encourage it---I mean, you'd think that the way that when I get one of those emails I print it out and go into the cubicle of the sender and then carefully place the print-out on the floor and then jump up and down on it whilst screaming would give them a clue to my feelings about the genre...
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So much depends on your point of view... Have you considered, for example, that if Amoebas had a Bible, their book of Genesis would almost certainly tell them to go forth and divide?
Well it's in that spirit---the spirit of going forth and dividing of course--- that I'm going to approach the absolutely devastating news, or, maybe, perhaps, the bloody good news that a warehouse in east London has recently burnt to the ground.
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Friday saw my kids all dressed up in their little threadbare monks' habits with their little peg legs and hooks poking out from various orifices and their eye patches all askew: munching on raw turnips and going down the street to school chanting "kirie-eleison! Oh-arrr me hearties!" of course the other kids do make fun of them, and occasionally throw things, but we need to get some momentum going here...
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I had a really great run this morning--It was one of those increasingly rare (rare, of course, as we race, here in Texas, down towards the hell of summer), rare mornings when it wasn't too hot or too humid and, as a bit of gilty gingerbread, for my part I didn't feel too old and decrepit and over-sweaty as I ran: and so it's not surprising that (after my shower and a pretty-well stress-free and traffic-light friendly drive) I was singing quietly to myself as I walked from the car park to my office. I was, in fact, singing...
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Well! I'm sure that by now you are aware that the office where I work is a hotbed, a veritable "well it's not my fault it was on fire when lay down on it" hotbed, of modern technology, so it should come as no surprise to you when I tell you that the other day I overheard Mandy and Diana giggling, as technological girls will, about the fact that Mandy had mentioned me in her blog.
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When þe nyghtegale singes þe wodes waxen grene
Lef ant gras ant blosme springes in Aueryl Y wene1
...of course that's before the temperature soars into the grillions and all hope dies down here in Texas (and stays dead, until after Labour Day at the very least) and, come to that, I'm not sure if I've ever actually heard a nightingale sing or even cough noticably down here; or in fact any sort of a bird apart from those insane looking pidgeony things, the occasional sparrow frothing at the beak and the insane and vicious looking skinny corvoids, but I'm sure you get the general springy idea.
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