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Quick alterations in London
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Jul. 16th, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
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Can anyone recommend a sound 24-hour turn around alterations service in London? I bought a Brooks suit off the rack, and now need it altered (it's virgin, so 'altered' includes hemming and adding buttons to the jacket).
I could ask my tailor, but I don't intend to spend more altering a suit than I purchased it for, or I could wait until Lisbon, but I don't speak Portuguese. |
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a digression on allegory
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Jun. 15th, 2008 @ 11:38 pm
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This is a scheme of æsthetic signs or elements, simple indeed and consisting of only a few elemental colours, which is actually employed to convey great lessons in human safety and great necessities of the commonwealth. It need hardly be said that I allude to the railway signals. They are as much a language, and surely as solemn a language, as the colour sequence of ecclesiastical vestments, which set us red for martyrdom and white for the resurrection…It is perfectly conceivable that a degree of flexibility or subtlety might be introduced into these colours so as to suggest other and more complex meanings. We might (under the influence of some large poetic station-masters) reach a state of things in which a certain rich tinge of purple in the crimson light would mean “Travel for a few seconds at a slightly more lingering pace, that a romantic old lady in a first-class carriage may admire the scenery of the forest.”
from G.F. Watts, G.K. Chesterton |
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qtd. on G.F.Watts
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Jun. 14th, 2008 @ 06:41 pm
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He had his own notion of when to dream and when to draw; as he shrank from no toil, so he shrank from no idleness. He was something which is one of the most powerful and successful things in the world, something which is far more powerful and successful than a legion of students and prizemen: he was a serious and industrious truant.
G.F. Watts, G.K. Chesterton |
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New book
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Jun. 14th, 2008 @ 03:53 pm
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Although it is unfair that books I like sometimes come out in the UK before they do in the States, I don't really mind if they are easily imported.
As is the case with Amitav Ghosh's new novel Sea of Poppies, which I received in the post today.
I first read Ghosh a decade or so ago (the first book was The Calcutta Chromosome, which I probably came to by way of Eco), but didn't come to my current high esteem for the man until I read The Glass Palace, a brilliant roman fleuve which I cannot praise highly enough.
And now a new one.
Yay! |
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Drat Drat Drat
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Jun. 9th, 2008 @ 08:47 pm
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REM is on tour while I'm on vacation.
I has hit on a cunning plan to fly to Italy (Naples or Udine) to see them while I was at ICAN.
Unfortunately, there appear to be no convenient flights to either of them for my schedule.
Drat drat drat. |
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Chicago restaurants
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May. 28th, 2008 @ 03:29 pm
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I know I have at least a few Chicagoans (both living there and elsewhere) on my friends list--help!
Alinea, Moto, Everest, and Charlie Trotter's are all closed on Mondays, the one day I have available for dinner in Chicago this summer.
Where does one go? |
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Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe/ Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st:
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May. 8th, 2008 @ 02:44 pm
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"That is why Christianity is not easily accepted when it presents itself as true religion. I recall a young man who said to me recently: “Above all, don’t tell me that Christianity is true. That upsets me, that blocks me. It’s quite something else to say that Christianity is beautiful....”
Cardinal Martini in America Magazine (linked from Whispers in the Loggia)
'But my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all.'
'Can't I?'
'I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.'
'Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea.'
'But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea.'
'But I do. That's how I believe.'
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh |
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qtd: Peter Levi
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Apr. 23rd, 2008 @ 02:19 pm
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“Then again people in endless, almost perpetual training to become priests are encouraged to take seriously all weighty matters. They were so perhaps more in my day than they are now. But that’s because the training in my day was more meaningless, and more endless, than it is now. Now it’s all purposive. Frightful nonsense. In my day it was rather purposeless and went on and on and on. One had a lovely time.”
“I don’t think there’s anything so odd about being a classical scholar. It’s just that most people aren’t classical scholars because they don’t know Greek and Latin, poor things.”
Interviewer: Auden was concerned that the quality of the English language be preserved, and he hoped to help do that with his writing.
Levi: I think it’s nonsense. Do you think Ausonius should have written in Burgundian?
Interviewer: What?
From a 1976 interview with The Paris Review |
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Sought:
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Apr. 18th, 2008 @ 10:00 pm
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"He was a very gentle and gracious youth, with what are called cultivated tastes—an acquaintance with old china, with good wine, with the bindings of books, with the Almanach de Gotha, with the best shops, the best hotels, the hours of railway-trains. He could order a dinner almost as well as Mr. Luce, and it was probable that as his experience accumulated he would be a worthy successor to that gentleman, whose rather grim politics he also advocated, in a soft and innocent voice. He had some charming rooms in Paris, decorated with old Spanish altar-lace, the envy of his female friends, who declared that his chimney-piece was better draped than many a duchess. He usually, however, spent a part of every winter at Pau, and had once passed a couple of months in the United States."
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James |
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Duchesses
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Mar. 24th, 2008 @ 03:06 pm
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In England, it is widely agreed, the ducal families are not uniformly superior. There is a roughly normal incidence of intelligence and stupidity, good taste and bad, and morality, immorality, homosexuality, and incest. But very few people are dukes or even duchesses, although the latter have become rather more frequent with the modern easing of the divorce laws.
The Affluent Society, JK Galbraith |
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ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ!
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Mar. 22nd, 2008 @ 10:49 pm
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The Lord is risen!Current Music: Vidi aquam |
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Airlines
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Mar. 22nd, 2008 @ 08:28 am
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I'm about to board a Silverjet flight to Luton (apparently in the middle of nowhere), and will have to post about the experience. I don't know if I ever posted on my London-JFK flight on Eos, which was divine.
So far, I will say that I am extremely fond of the private terminal, which alleviates one of the major hassles of flying through Dubai. |
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Etiquette/shop hours
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Mar. 22nd, 2008 @ 08:25 am
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It appears that there may be snow tomorrow. Given this, I wonder:
1) Whether Englishmen use umbrellas against the snow; and,
2) If the answer to (1) is "Yes," how late Swaine, Adeney, Brigg are open today. |
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Pretty pictures!
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Mar. 9th, 2008 @ 11:28 am
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Not many, but Dappled Photos was updated in January with the first set of new pics since 2006:
Dappled Photos |
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A beautiful recent photo from the Sartorialist
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Mar. 1st, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
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NYT -- Dollar Weakens to $1.50 to the Euro
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Feb. 28th, 2008 @ 01:26 am
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Does anyone have a nice job to offer me? One which provides a salary not denominated in USD? |
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qtd
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Feb. 7th, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
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I never seemed to have more money than I had before, but I began to have things, and I enjoyed them.
Diana Athill, Don't Look At Me Like That |
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Oxford hotels?
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Feb. 6th, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
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Well, a morning of searching among Oxford hotels has left me with little that seems reasonably priced, attractive, available, or centrally located among the offerings.
I'm going to be in Oxford from 27 to 29 March--anyone have hotel recommendations? |
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Dear Friends
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Jan. 18th, 2008 @ 08:43 pm
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On why you should not grow marijuana if you live next to Justice Scalia, counsel for Petitioner who seems not to know the meaning of the term reductio ad absurdum, and counsel for Respondent who seems quite annoyed that the Nine Wise Souls keep getting things wrong, I refer you to:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/06-1082.pdf |
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Seeking British travel suggestions
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Jan. 13th, 2008 @ 11:53 am
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O cosmopolitan-LiveJournal types:
Although I've only just returned from my holiday, it's already time to start planning the next one.
I've decided that I'm going to be a better traveller of Britain than I have been of France, where I've only seen Paris.
To date my only travels in England outside of London have been to Oxford (and that only briefly) and Cambridge.
So, what sort of national treasures do you recommend in Great Britain for my next holiday in late March/early April? I will be in London for Good Friday and Easter, which I will follow up on with two days in Paris (visit to Arnys), and then I have eight days in which to visit the highlights of England, Wales, and Scotland.
Suggestions? Tips? Thoughts? |
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