Today feels like a day for posting a poem. This one, by Hopkins, will have to do:
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Slightly early, this week, because I’m going to Cambridge for a party tomorrow. A mask from Japanese Noh theatre, via the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art:
![[picture of a Noh mask]](https://www.ishibi.pref.ishikawa.jp/msm-2d/tn_detail/syozo/11/11003300.jpg)
Apparently, if you ask wine experts to match the tasting notes to the wine, not only are they unable to identify them on the basis of other people’s notes (beyond obvous things like ‘it’s a sauvignon blanc’ or ‘it’s oaky’), they are unable to identify them on the basis of their own tasting notes from a few months ago. In other words, all that stuff they come out with (“I’m getting a slight hint of candle-stubs and grass”) is too impressionistic to be really informative.
Presumably the same would apply to a lot of poetry reviews.
I just downloaded The Gimp as a substitute for Photoshop. And so far it looks pretty damn impressive. The interface is a bit Windows-y (Unix-y?) for my liking – not because there’s anything wrong with that, but because I’d prefer all my software to be consistent. And it’s a tad geeky (a menu called ‘Script-Fu’? Puh-lease).
But as an alternative to ordering £500 worth of Photoshop from Apple, a five-minute free download takes a lot of beating.
I thought this article by Daniel Finkelstein about the differing rhetorical styles of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair was surprisingly interesting, given the subject matter.
I’ve got a sparkly new iMac.
Which is nice.