pumpkinstrokemarrow

Must be feeling poor today as I spent half the ride to the baker being irritated by all the people who have made a lot of money out of the excess credit fiasco. That is to say, feeling very moral about all those people who have made a lot of money out of lending money to people to whom they should not have - given that the people themselves did not know any better. These people, the victims, might, have been greedy too, but to my mind the perpetrators carry more guilt. In particular, the late boss of Northern Rock who sold his shares at peak (possibly at a time when he was getting windy about whether the good days were going to last) and made £10m or so - enough to cushion his decision to spend more time with his family - and the saleman from California whom I read about somewhere, a recent immigrant from somewhere in the Middle East as I recall, and who made a good deal of money - perhaps another £10m or so - selling mortgages to people who should not have mortgages, on commission. Enough to make one a lefty all over again.

Further to the aeroplane irritation at Kew, paid a second visit to Epsom Downs yesterday, inter alia to check on the aeroplane situation there. Middle of the afternoon, very clear, planes landing every couple of minutes or so. And one could indeed see the things on the runway. Couldn't pick out the ancient rotating radar - that is to say the red rotating radar somewhere near the Queen's Building which must have been there at least 30 years. Never seems to stop. Maybe it doesn't actually do anything, just being there to reassure travellers. The real radar is hidden inside something or other. Also able to pick out Post Office Tower, Nat West Tower and several Gherkins.

Which all reminds me to observe that while I don't mind Kew being used as a sculpture park - one would be hard pushed to find somewhere more suitable - I do mind if I don't like the sculpture in question. And I find that a good deal of Henry Moore I don't particularly care for. The rule of thumb seeming to be that the less figurative and the less detail, the more I am going to like it. Like the one outside Riverwalk House on the Embankment. Maybe what I like best is touched up boulders. So the boulder in Hyde Park (from Norway I think, something to do with the war) does not qualify, not being touched up at all. It has to be touched up enough to make it an artefact rather than an accident. And not amused by people who try to blur that particular boundary, like the enterprising artist in New York who was able to sell sculpture that he had sent direct to the customer from the quarry, unseen and untouched by his good self. He may, of course, have left a supply of plinths with the quarry to give his boulders an artefactual appearance. The catch with these ploys being, that once one has done it a few times, one cannot resist the urge to tell someone, perhaps the victim, about the ploy. At which point the bubble bursts. I seem to recall that friend Hirst came a small cropper on this one.

And now it is time to move onto today's edition of pork soup. Pearl barley, pork, cabbage and so on.