The Glass Bead Game
(by Hermann Hesse) Hesse’s ideation of his own life as a monk is a heavy but worthwhile read.
Continue Reading →The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress
(by Beryl Bainbridge) An odd, slight, oddly touching and slightly naff story of a road trip to oblivion, culminating in the death of RFK; but is the dysfunctional, libidinous Rose ‘the girl in the polka dot dress’ who exclaimed, ‘We shot him!’ as reported in the LA Times on 6 June 1968? Bainbridge’s last, almost finished novel is, unlike The Original of Laura, worth reading.
Continue Reading →The General Strike
(by Julian Symons) 13 May 1926 – the General Strike in Britain ended this day. People thought Marxism was through in Britain as a result but like Mao in exile, it would return. Calling a strike requires keen judgment because the reaction of the public as a whole might be sympathetic, hostile, or mixed. One example is the pilots’ strike in Australia in 1989, which resulted in the pilots, and their union, being blown out of the sky. Another famous campaign was the Miners’ strike of the mid 1980s in England, when organized labour found out that the majority of the…
Continue Reading →Asoka
(dir.Santosh Sivan) (2001) Surreal Bollywood biopic of the great Indian King who eschewed violence after his campaign to conquer Kalinga in Madras, circa 250 B.C. Shah Ruk Kahn as Asoka smoulders, swivels eyes and bleeds from the nose with all the subtlety of Rudolph Valentino; vivid scenes of robust battles (of conquest, family strife and romance); not a lot of H.G. Well’s Outline of History.
Continue Reading →Purple Wednesday
Welcome to the third edition of my blog, Annabel Lee. What colour is Wednesday? You may be surprised to learn that it is purple. Quite obviously that means evening bags. So, in honour of Wednesday, here are a couple which I prepared earlier…. Many of the beads in this first little one are Swarovski crystal, one of my favourite things. The medium dark filling in the lace sections in the lower part are comprised of precisely 1,267,098 French knots. This second bag is a lovely soft bouncy embossed velvet netted beaded beribboned thingie. The Tarot card which I have chosen for today…
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