Toll Keen

My booksy antennae wave, my contacts send thru the needful.

Why do I shudder at news of Tolkien's three Great Tales:

'The Children or Hurin', "reconstructed from its 'unfinished state' by Christopher Tolkien, edited together from multiple drafts" (groan retch) grabbed by the Prince of Darkness' Harper UK house. April 2007 release.

Nepotistic US rights, to once-classy Houghton Mifflin for same-time US bombardment.

"Very special"

Damn. You just can't tell when tears will spring.

Very gallant gent:

"When a rocket-propelled grenade exploded inches from his head during fighting in Iraq, Private Johnson Beharry, mere 24, sustained life-threatening injuries.

Despite, he saved his buddies by driving his Warrior out of danger before losing consciousness.

For this, and other gallantry, he's one of only 12 to be awarded the Victoria Cross since the Second World War.

Good Dog, Happy Man

Actually, rather a good name for an album.

I was going to head this post, 'Where the weather fits my clothes' or something wimpy.

Actually, "Actually, rather a good name for an album" *is* rather a good name for an album, provided one is young and spikey haired with a spikey voice and collapsible eyes.

Past one's salad days, the label insists on a "mature" title, "Wilted Salad" or ""Dun-greppin'".

In fact, reading that back, it *could* read like 'Dung Repping' which is a joyous subtitle for my cubicle memoirs, 'Living Death in the Queues'.

Ricardo will be on that in a flash, and I can hear rvaux' Yorkshire chuckle from here.

Damn I miss those goodies.
To muted Kondokoli where the last batch of tourists wander disconsolate and finger cheap belts and vulgar t-shirts.

I pass 'Mythos' where they call me in for a cognac. No, I'm heading home for lunch.

Lunch here!

At your prices?

For you free. But sit by window so people can see we have customer.

"Endaxi. Kick off with megalo ouzo to whet the appetite for the T-bone and feta salad and carafe of house red, after that Eurydice's pie and lashings of coffee and leave the brandy bottle on the table. Ta muchly.

Driving with my bro in Italy, who hurls his Merc at breakneck speed and lightning reflexes, I was impressed by his identification of each region's number plate, goading them accordingly.

I printed out the Greek regs (KY for Kerkira) so me and the girls could play games spotting the damn'd furriners.

Like the Beach Boys croon, "Don't back down" and the Greeks *don't*, insisting in macho fashion that the *other* driver reverse.

DIGRESSION: Dad and brother goading feisty daughter/sister: Guv'nor wants to be a grandpa and daughter ain't delivering.

Hilarious exchange on the question of hubby lacking the needfuls

Verdict: Below, dad pronounces: Nah, the boy lacks the cojones.

Won't translate dutiful daughter's filial reply but it was along the lines that *his* weenie didn't even hit the loo pan.

Family power.

Anyway, back to the action:

Pulling out to pass a delivery wagon, I found myself facing a vulgar SUV with Salonika plates which, to my surprise, refused to budge, the driver leaning out to shout something rude.

I got out the car - very provocative - and advanced on the bully, but throwing up my hands in mock shock at his reg plate ID.

"Honoured sir - well-padded lady - many apologies.

I took you for local. I am reversing immediately. (Crowd emerging from the tavernas) I see your Salonika plates, I know your motors tactfully lack the difficult maneuver of reverse gear. I am reversing in an instant.

Please, enjoy your visit to our garden isle."

Eruption of laughter and much cuffing of forearms in dismissive mirth.

The bit that gets the biggest laff is that "well padded" is a compliment to a woman's plush wardrobe and her man's wealth in keeping her in the latest fashion, BUT it has a double meaning of well bosomed. Also, I suppose, a compliment to the woman *and* her bloke for landing a hottie with a good pair to grab onto in the saddle.

Anyway, face saved and the other driver waved, the woman blushed prettily and the bystanders guffawed and made rude gestures.

"Hey, English, where you learn you good Grik? Come for ouzo, bring padded kopella. Oopah!"

Living la vida loca.

Man of Constant Borrow

Chris Howse, good on religiosi, taking on the sainted one.

BILL FRISELL

Peon's Praise

I am not worthy to cinch my former Bainbridge Islander strumming buddy Bill Frisell's capo d'astro even to the 2nd fret, but I have had some time since leaving Bezoshire to listen to his recordings in some detail and each playing humbles me. Awe comes into it.

The tab 'genius' is bandied to devaluation but I'm lost for an alternative.

His tone and understanding of the various guitars he plays is nigh perfect.

In my humble way, I've acquired a touch or two on the six strings and can pick up a guitar no matter how crappy and find its worth and make it sing.

Mind you, depending on how crappy it is, a fret either side can land you back in its crapdom, but I've seen owners double take at what i milk from their battered axes.

Forget technique: Frisell plays the notes, period, leaving us to listen to the chording and timing and tone and just swoon.

Check out or be dangerously deprived: his renderings of 'Shenandoah' on his stunning East/West live album and the studio Good Dog, Happy Man.

Fluting Fauntleroyal accents seems to have some play here because I've got a gig down Taki's taverna, DJ'ing some of my Ionian Isle discs, now and then stepping down to thrum a ditty or two on the Ovation before passing it round to anyone in the audience who fancies 'emselves as a 5-chorder.

Petra-fied: I thought I knew a bit about self-effacing virtuoso accompaniment.

Frisell backs Petra Haden (daughter of noble contrebassiste Charlie) in the definitive performance.

Hark to 'Yellow', hark to BF's solo on 'John Henry'.

I could order 50 from Amazon and sell them at thrice price and be re-ordering within the weekend.

Producer: I'm meeting a few local producers and bringing in local anglais talent in the unlikley case there's any mileage there for some Corfu-based album to be flogged round the bars and at the aiport and other sad scenarios.

I play them my Frisell and they make 'poh poh' Greek gestures and shake their Greek locks at Lee Townsend's sheer mastery of the art.

We can reel back aghast at the Frisell sound coming over the Wharfedales or thru the cans but it's unsung maestros like Lee T who deliver the actual goods. Tucker Martine another with the lovely Laura Veirs.

Sales sans frontières : Honest idiot that I am, when I left Seattle I cut my ties with the lovely folks who sent me review albums.

Doh! I get mails from Paxos to Piccadilly Circus, Tegucigalpa to Tenerife:

"Yo, Chris - wha' happened? You turned me onto the amazing Bill Frisell. I wait to read your judgements of new ones but nothing comes.

I buy it anyway, but what do *you* think."

Ah, my darlings, I'm too busy chomping on lotuses and being happy man with good dog.

Yellow Flower

My sketching mum suddenly excited about some fleure jaune that has sprouted and scampers to get her watercolours and sketchbook.

I get my camera and click.

No idea what it's called but the yellow is so intense that I don't think the repro does it justice.

Good exercise for the creaky bones getting down in the lower flower bed to snap.

This shot seems boringly similar to the first one.

Tried a gimmicky shot from above but I don't think it really comes off.

Shucks darn gee whizz

Waal pard'ner ... etc.

Funny old world, or rather it isn't. It's a defiantly pompous - nay, blimpish - one from what I hear and see from my vantage point in my Tooloee 12x12 treehouse 16 feet up in the olive grove.

Maybe I'm missing something, but whenever I'm in company of someone who's actually *lived* in a country down in which I've touched for mere days, and that in the air-conditioned conference room of the Ramada Renaissance, I tend to hold back on swingeing pronouncements and bad imitations of the native accents.

But here I am staggering back from another swarayy among the local great and good, ladies and gents of the utmost sophistication and manners, euro-linguists of the finest BUT limited in their acquaintance with our brethren across t'Pond.

My curio value has at last dwindled so I'm no longer trotting out the potted autobio wherein I own up to having spent the last 20 years in the land of the free and yes I suppose it IS odd that I still have my original accent, and so forth.

But somewhere around the 3rd John Wayne accent and patronising quotes from Greene's Ugly American, I slip in the modestest self-effacing reference to a passing familiarity with the States ... to absolutely no effect.

"Really? Twenty years, you say? You don't sound it - does he, darling? Remember Billy Ackroyd? Six months in Noo Yawk and he came back with THE most atrocious accent, wasn't it darling? 'Sure I'll have another beer ... hey, who was that cute broad you introduced me to? I'd sure like to visit with her some time, yeahh."

I exaggerate but only just.

Not sure where I'm going with this, except to vent.

OK, vented. No need to bore anyone more than I am by the whole performance.

Mama off to Londinium next week, leaving me lord of the manor with a dinner list of nice ladies that should swell the coffers of the local eateries.

Have restrung the Ovation with gleaming new Martins and surreptitiously stacked my Bill Frisells, big bands, and Dylan ready for a serious blast out.

Liquor store alerted to open a bible's length of credit on the class hooch.

Sam is eyeing me uneasily.

Watch this shpace.

Almazon Mater

Wherever I go, people urge me to regale them with tales of derring-do from my frontier fromgrep days with e-dominant Amazon.com.

They's basic folk out here. They sing, they dance. How their eyes widen at the very mention of QA on "tone issues".

At the same time, I like to keep them up to date on Jeffrey Preston's inexorable tread towards benevolent galactic despotism.

Hence a quickie on the various 3rd-party "fulfillment" boosters being wheeled out offering - to quote the jargon - "access to Amazon's order fulfillment, customer service, customer shipping offers, and underlying website technology to improve the experience they offer their customers."

A share in the world-beating Amazon customer service, egad.

Competitors may as well close shop here 'n' now and go back to selling matches on the street.

Needle

Last boy I took for the death needle was my good old Harry, 15-yr old lurcher, creaking with arthritis.

This young 'un was a new experience.

Had to be done: be practical, stop indulging self, etc.

Found him Saturday, healthy little chappie. Vet closed and at that point thought might keep him so was in training mode, nudging him from entry in prep for being outdoor dog.

Thunder n lightning storm, of which Sam is terrified and is usually allowed in.

"NO mixed messages," I tell mum. "If Sam stays inside, I'm not training a puppy to stay out.".

Between then, accept reality that pup must be put down.

Meanwhile, I push the puppy gently but firmly from the door every time it makes to come in.

Monday morn: Vet opens at 10.

I might as well be there with the puppy, get it over with.

Might as well feed the babe before the big needle.

Open door and take food out, leave it open because what the heck if it comes in now?

H..akes to enter and stops at door stoop.

Get it to vet, tell him regret reason for delivery, vet nods and takes puppy to next room (doorless) and comes back to process 30 euro fee for put down.

As we talk, puppy appears in doorway and starts to waddle across.

Vet gets up to catch it and send it back but, instinctively, I say "NO! Not inside!" and pup retreats.

Dino the vet looks at me: "How long you train this?"

"Since yesterday."

"You're sure you want to do it?" (Gesture of needle jab)

I hardly nod.

I give Dino his 30 euros and walk out, not looking to see what I'm sure is the pup sitting inside the door, waiting for my next instruction.

Clever boy, swift learner.

Tardy and Tempted

Anguished Alliteration

I'd not heard of skittish scribbler Amanda McKittrick Ros but she sounds a fount of fun.

Her novels "provided the entertainment at gatherings of the Inklings, a group of Oxford dons including Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien who met from the 1930s to 1950s. They competed to see who could read her work aloud for longest before starting to laugh."

Her novel are out of print - Irene Iddesleigh, Delina Delany and Helen Huddleston - but not for long, I'll be bound, thanks to exultant exposure at the "Celebrate Literary Belfast" festival.

A sample:

"The trials of a tortured throng are naught when weighed in the balance of future anticipations ... The living sometimes learn the touchy tricks of the traitor, the tardy and the tempted; the dead have evaded the flighty earthy future, and form to swell the retinue of retired rights, the righteous school of the invisible and the rebellious roar of the raging nothing."

"Flighty earthy future", eh? There's some good imagery for the speech writers to reach for next time Dubya needs a surly bonds line with which to mourn the prang of some spacecraft.

Quoth Frank Ormsby, editor of the invitingly titled anthology of her work, Thine in Storm and Cabin,

"She alliterated obsessively. Even if one has forgotten her work for a few years, you only have to read a few paragraphs and you find the smile broadening on your face. You begin to realise why her work had such an appeal."

Family Tree

Uncheering to read Rachel P's succinct exposé in the Bainbridge Islander
of the back-biting and squalid wangling behind the hounding of Nezam Tooloee to dismantle his kids' treehouse.

The usual huffing and puffing and jargon of hypocrisy:

"City councilman charged with upholding the law broke it when he built a platform without permits on a protected slope above the beach."

Shock horror! (We're actually talking about a 12' x 12' tree house, 16' off the ground in the branches of a maple tree).

NT is clearly in someone's sights and they're determined to get him via maggots in the city planning office.

'City planner'Josh Machen knows his red tape garble: The offending platform is on "a geologically hazardous slope ... in a 50' native-vegetation buffer zone."

According to Tooloee, it was verminous city planning staffers *themselves* who ratted to the Planning Director, complete with photo (which is cheap even by city planner standards).

Sanity (and honesty) may still prevail: Sounds like Hearing Examiner Terry McCarthy brings needed common sense and moral fibre to the case, declaring, "I’m not going to judge this case on the basis of city politics; it’s improper and it’s wrong".

McCarthy even intends to view the the treehouse before reaching a final decision.

World Headlines

Crouching here with rake and secateurs in hand and lousy reception from CNN, I do occasionally need to sound vaguely clued-up on "current affairs" (Mafeking - did our chaps make it through on time?)

Dotso packs a punch: latest world headlines sans dreary trawling thru numerous sites. Fast, easy to use.

No email address needed

No registration

No login

No username or password

News Search also good.

Militant Irritants

Daily Telegraph piece on 50 annoyances.

All 50 somewhat resonate with me ....

• People who tell you that something or other has been "a learning curve".
• Young women who continually rake long, wild, ringletty hair with their fingers in a gesture that is meant to imply "I am a free spirit".
• Loudspeaker announcements about late train arrivals that apologise for any inconvenience they "may" have caused.

#51 - could be pretentiosi who describe things as "resonating".

Mrs Desmond Underwood

Oh for heaven's sake - how formal can you get?

I'm sitting here typing daft nothings and my eye is caught by the book on the shelf afore me, and the publishers' ridiculously polite nomenclature for the author.
Published by Billy Collins in 1971, so it's not as if it's some pre-war politesse.

By golly, I'd've gone to town on that if I'd been an interviewer:

"Not THE  Mrs Desmond Underwood?

By my troth, what a rare honour."

The Comfortable One

BBC did a quiz a while back, asking readers what instrumental they'd take to a desert isle if they only had one choice. Usual stuff: the rippling keyboard of Horowitz, the sinuous Stradivarius of Oistrakh or Mehuhin.

My Auntie Vick voted for the human voice. Not the treble of Callas but the warmer timbres of Ferrier or Sutherland, said she'd need the sound of another human to remind her. Nice point.

If someone did the needful on me and banished the 'puter but left me one blog, I think I'd go for El Seditione.

I'd want to be kept off balance, that mix of learning and mountain man sheer bloody mindedness.

Biggie regret leaving WA state: Not being there to be fly on the wall - and I bet Ashers can tell me *exactly* what species to be - as his beaut daughter(s) (puella pondensia ) reach that age when unwary youths come calling.

Chortle. Yon Lion of the Night Krü is gone be some fatha to get one over on.

Then again, any daughter of his 'n' Julie's loins will be boxing clever herself, so it'll be a match of minds: thunder-brow pater versus foot-stamping babe.

Groucho: The 'tached one wouldn't join any club that would have *him* as a member. I always feel that Lord Sedition wouldn't want as a groveling friend anyone who slavers my kind of admiration.

Frankly, from this distance I don't care: He proposed marriage to THE best most worthwhile beautiful woman and she had the astonishing perceptiveness to say Yes, and they are my favouritest couple and their children are divine and when I hit the lottery, the first stop pilot Kosta makes is to collect them in my customized 747, deliver them to Kerkira airport where my customized chopper will airlift them to my poolside pad and I will hug that growly seditous mountain man and Mrs Sed will say "Hey what about me?" and I'll stammer 'Later, babe, first things first.'.

Cancel my table au Cirque de Soleil; I'll go for the candid camera corner ceiling chez Ashers.

I'm reminded of all this by his characteristically succinct Quinault post about the 'best bed', enhanced by my recent reading of Bill Bryson's account of his Walk in the Woods, them woods being the taxing Appalachian Trail.

I so loved his punchline I sent it to my gruff bro', swearing to use it asap.

"Not much point *you*", bounced the reply, "Mother's boy in lap of luxury. Me, I can use it everywhere I go, and will:

Poland, Sardinia, Nice ... I'm having it translated sans delay.

Great line. I'm constantly being ushered into sub-zero flea-ridden chambers where I bow and scrape and make a big to-do about pulling back the covers and then whip out the sleeping bag and nestle it over the more giving floorboards.

Best place to deliver it is my Scottish clients, but I don't know where to go for a decent translation."

I'm so not an outdoor type but in my youthier fitness I used to go down to stay with cousin Gethyn around Welsh Capel Curig and climb a rock or two.

I have a vertiginous head when it comes to heights so I never looked down. One climb, we'd got a way up and were resting on an outcrop, untangling our ropes and congratulating ourselves on a major feat.

Suddenly a hand appeared and up hauled a friendly face who secured his rope, accepted a cup of tea and then proceeded to lean to peer back down at what looked to be a 45 degrees angle at his companions. I felt sick just watching.

Dougal Haston: As PR honcho for Cassell publishers, I had the privilege to promote Dougal'sIn High Places.

On publication day, DH was up Mount Everest (pronounced Eve-Rest, please) being blown about by 300mph winds. They didn't make the ascent but the book was that month's best-seller in the UK charts.

Cassell had just been bought by an American bunch so we were swarmed with ignorant MBAs and crew-cut smartie-pants. I'd made the error of lunching an biggie name author and not taking him up to meet the Big Guy.>p>When Dougal checked in to the office I said we'd better go round to the Red Lion pub where the boss held forth and let me introduce him to the guy whose book was currently #1 on the charts.

Dougal shrugged and said he'd prefer to have a meat pie and Worthington White Shield someone less fancy but I was the boss.

Enter the Red Lion, el supremo holding forth, I move thru the fray with Dougal behind me, bent on intro to my Lord and Master as instructed.

"Fred? I'd like you to meet-"

Foiled. One of the chief's many minion minders has spotted me moving in on the big guy's oration, some hippy pal in tow, "Not now, Chris!".

Relieved, we left the pub and retired to the Venezia for fine nosh and jugs of Julia's chianti.

Coda: At one of the parties the mountaineers held, I espied a totally unfit looking bloke, belly hanging over his belt, and commented to Dougal "who's THAT ?"

"That's Don Whillans."

"But he's ... been on the climb ..."

"Listen ... we came to a rock we couldna handle. Don said stand aside you big girls' blouses, and up he chimneyed.

Aye, he looks like he's due to give birth, but he's the mon."

Dougal set up a mountaineering school in Switzerland ("Dangle with Dougal") and I heard he was buried 'neath an avalanche. Wiki has the facts but i don't read it. I took him round various interviews and there was a magnetism to the man that everyone felt.