Flights of the butterfly

  • WILDFIRES

    There are wildfires raging in Europe. It is a tragedy and my heart goes out to those who are losing everything day by day. I will not say “I feel your pain”, that would be trite and insulting. I try to think of the worst desolation I have felt( and I ‘ve had a few)…

  • A Crow and Buzzard story

    One morning, a buzzard was soaring above the field behind my house, about 70 metres away. The birds in the garden didn’t give a monkey’s about her. They were safely out of range, and probably too big or too mobile to present an easy meal. However, the local rooks took a different view. Initially, a…

  • Perfume

    Why do women, and in an increasing number of men, persist in rolling in what I assume is a mixture of lavatory cleaner and tear gas and then stomp along the streets trailing a toxic cloud of fumes, marked by the dead and dying insect life? Do they not understand that they are doing their…

  • Frankie and the Wolf chapter II

    I wasn’t expecting to be doing this so soon. It’s beginning to sound like I’m banging on about stuff. But, I bumped into an article in the Times about our old mate Frankie. Time marches on and things change: 1877 Merson Luc Olivier This is very  clearly a completely different kind of art. A lot…

  • Why is my spine bent?

    Why is my spine bent? Why is it an “S” shape and not a straight column? I was going to put in a load of pretty diagrams, but, frankly, my graphics package is pants. So, you will need to follow the words. Or join the D and the S and watch Netflix. Well, there are…

  • The hagiography of the Sacred Cow

    In the fourteenth century, the Black Death swept through Europe, wiping out a significant proportion of the population. Entire villages disappeared, their history and their future stopped dead, literally, by the plague. As a result of this drastic loss of population, there was an obvious loss of the workforce. Serfs who had been tied to…

  • The four chambers

    Why has the human heart got four chambers? 1 CHAMBER OK, so we need a pump to circulate blood through the lungs, the organs, muscles, brain and Clapham Junction. So, we get a pump, fill it with blood, squeeze it and Whoosh – off it goes all round the system. Job done. Er, slight problem.…

  • The History of Art

    Mike and Pablo Mike was a painter. You may have heard of some of his work. He did the ceiling of a chapel somewhere which everyone raves about. (It was a bit of a surprise for the old Popeydope who was expecting two coats of magnolia emulsion.) Mike had an assistant called Pablo, of whom…

  • The thought never entered your head

    I have an idea. Why don’t I write it down on paper and post it to you? (Forgive the anachronism, but it helps with analogy.) You get my message, you read it and now you know my idea. I sent it to you. WRONG. The idea never left my head. And it certainly never entered…

  • Government

    The duty of a government is to lead the nation, follow the wishes of the people and serve the interests of the country. In fact, a government follows the wishes of its leader, serves the interests of its members and leads the people into the next ambush of history.