TOMB MUCH CHAT

CAPTION COMPETITION
The Results!

You will remember I asked you to provide some dialogue for John and Margaret Treherne who have spent the last 400 years on public show in Southwark Cathedral


The call for captions on this occasion yielded a bumper crop of such uniform excellence that deciding on a winner was particularly testing...

There was one response that I wasn't altogether sure about: was it a caption or was it a complaint from one of John and Margaret's decedents who took exception to my describing their epitaph as doggerel? It was posted by David Trehearne and merely read '...doggerel?' Oh, dear, sorry, Mr Trehearne.

Anyway, back to what were definitely entries...

CARL V speculated:

I can quite literally hear him making one of many lascivious comments about the endowments of the women of today while she quite clearly seems to be saying, 'Good heavens, I have a worrying feeling in my colon.' (Thank you Vicar of Dibley)

ANDY in GREECE picked up on that plaque which the Trehearnes's are holding:

John: You would have thought that after 400 years someone would have fixed this plaque in place so we could let go of it.
Margaret: Perhaps you ought to try getting out a bit more.

BOLL WEAVIL (as is his wont) produced a variety of possible comments:

Margaret: I see Sibley's here again, Sire.

And...

John: I've told Brian when that hospital can do new pins, they can come and fetch me!

And, again...

John: Another recession out there! Nothing for hundreds of years then two come together!

GILL picked up on Mrs T's bored expression and suggested:

John: I know it is tedious Margaret darling, but do at least try to smile for the tourists.

ANONYMOUS considered the inevitable exhaustion of standing around for 400 years:

John: At last finally recognised for all that I did for him [the King]. Just wish that we could now sit.

While SUZANNE noticed that Mrs T seemed to have less room than her husband:

Margaret: Shove up a bit, I'm squashed up against this wall and my shoulder's killing me.
John: Oh, stop nagging woman!

SUZANNE also suggested:

John: As if 50 years wasn’t enough and she’s still giving me the belly ache.
Margaret: I never should have had that roasted swan - I’m sure it wasn’t fresh.

While SHEILA (remembering earlier blogs about culinary potential of goats) offered the following glimpse into the Trehearne's dietary habits:

Margaret: I knew I shouldn't have had goat stew for my last supper.
John: And I don't think having an ice pack on your head is going to sort out a 400-year-long stomachache.

I liked the ice pack!

Interestingly, quite a few of the entries were concerned with food, eating and the aftereffects thereof...

JEN offered:

John: Don't hold your stomach like that, it'll put folks off the menu...

LISAH suggested:

John: I wish they'd all hurry up and leave - I'm dying to nip out for a kebab.

LUINFALATHIEL also imagined an exchange about grub:

Margaret: Whoo... I knew I shouldn't have had that burrito!
John: When they're all gone, I'll go get you some Tums, dear.

And ROGER, similarly inspired came up with:

Margaret: Will someone hurry up and invent Gaviscon (TM)?

So to the WINNERS!

In JOINT THIRD PLACE---

SUZANNE with...

Margaret: Why couldn't Will have written your epitaph? Now we're stuck with this rubbish for ever.
John: How many time do I have to tell you? Will died two years before us!

And DAVID WEEKS with...

John: Those priests look more effeminate every year.
Margaret: Verily my dear, that is because they are women.
John: Women priests!
Margaret: Yea, John.
John: Tush 'tis unnatural. They'll have women in the service of Her Majesty next!
Margaret: John!

In SECOND PLACE ---

BOLL WEAVIL who offered this simply but effective one-liner...

John: Faith, Sire, that was a good night! I'm totally legless!

And in FIRST PLACE---

ROGER who suggested the following intimate revelation...

Margaret: I know our older sons are already bearded,my lord, but verily, I believe I'm up the duff again.
John: Gadzooks, wife, I should have gelded that Groom of the Bedchamber!

Congratulations to all the winners and many thanks to all the entrants for providing us with so many amusing conversations!

...CAN SPRING BE FAR BEHIND?

The Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence is vast: an exhausting labyrinth of passageways, corridors and rooms, adorned with what, at some time or other, has been rated as Great Art, though in truth it ranges from the dull and mediocre via the curious and passably interesting to works of masterful brilliance like Sandro Botticelli's famously iconic, Birth of Venus...

Click image to enlarge

...and his equally delightful (and similarly allegorical) Primavera...

Click image to enlarge

In case you wondered, here's (basically) what's going on...

Venus, , the goddess of love, is standing in the centre of the picture, set slightly back from the other figures. Above her, Cupid is aiming one of his arrows of love at the Charites or Three Graces who are dancing a rondel and who are, from youngest to oldest, Aglaea (Beauty), Euphrosyne (Mirth) and Thalia (Good Cheer).

The garden of Venus is guarded on the left by Mercury, who stretches out his hand to part the clouds of winter and make way for spring. From the right, Zephyrus, the god of the winds, is forcefully pushing his way in, in pursuit of the nymph Chloris (who, according to mythology, he raped but later, in a mood of contrition for his volent crime, married the wronged ladyand made her the goddess of flowers. Botticelli shows Chloris transforming into Flora who scatters flowers before Venus.

What I love about this picture is the fact that it's packed with stuff happening, crammed to the edges with activity: the scene is dense with detail (the flowers springing from Chloris' mouth as she turns into Flora, not to mention every leaf, bud and blade of grass) and everything is obviously laden with significance, such as the halo of foliage that frames the head of Venus.

Looking at this crowded scene, it's also amusing to realise that there are times when even the gods can be a bit cramped for space!

Anyway, I was reminded of Boticelli's masterpiece not long ago when saw a young pavement artist painstakingly recreating the picture in coloured chalks on a sidewalk on London's South Bank.


Whether hanging in one of the most prestigious art museums of the world or drawn on paving stones where it will be walked on and rained away, all art is really transient and, perhaps, that very vulnerability is part of it's power and beauty...

Image: Brian Sibley © 2008

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW

There is no area in which women are more prejudiced against than in the inconvenient inadequacies of public conveniences. For example, while the guys are enjoying an interval drink at the theatre, the ladies are standing in line outside the loos until the two-minute bell is ringing...

I can only assume that the wall decoration for a gents toilet below (thoughtfully forwarded to me by Cindy) is an example of female revenge!

HAVE I GOD NEWS FOR YOU

Writing in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885) Frederich Nietzsche included this allegorical exchange between the protagonist, Zarathustra, and an elderly Saint:

'And what is the saint doing in the forest?' asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: 'I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, cry, and hum: thus do I praise God. With singing, crying, laughing, and humming do I praise the god who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?'

When Zarathustra had heard these words he bade the saint farewell and said: 'What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly lest I take something from you!' And thus they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh.

But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: 'Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!'

Well, one of the top news stories this week has been the announcement that the British Humanist Association with the backing of Professor Richard (The God Delusion) Dawkins have raised £36,000 to pay for an advertising campaign on the sides of thirty London 'bendy buses' announcing...

THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD
NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE

Er... Sorry? What was that......

PROBABLY??

I mean, you'd expect the British Humanist Association to be a bit more certain really, wouldn't you? After all, you don't get many churches saying 'There probably IS a God'.

According to Professor Dawkins: "This campaign... will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion." But a recent article by the Prof in The Huffington Post was entitled Why There Almost Certainly Is No God (my italics).

There we go again... 'Almost Certainly'?

Sounds suspiciously like hedging your bets to me. You didn't catch Nietzsche saying "God is probably dead" or "God is almost certainly dead", he just said "Gott ist tot" --- "God is dead".

Still, since we're still waiting for London Mayor, Boris Johnson, to rid London's streets of the ghastly bendy buses, maybe - come January, when the campaign gets rolling - he'll get some divine help. Certainly, every time a bus breaks down, I'm going to be checking out what ads are displayed on its sides!

It could, almost-certainly-probably, happen...

And, if not, then maybe a few Non-Humanists ought to raise a fund for an ad featuring this piece of German graffiti (courtesy of W C Notes)...


Or we could all buy T-shirts and bumper stickers (available here) with the English translation...


To be fair to Nietzsche, his famous line has largely been taken out of context - his chief argument being that since belief in God was being reasoned into non-existence, by what philosophy and moral code would future mankind live.

It is interesting to read if you've got the time (if not it's been around for over 120 years and will keep!) another of his allegorical stories in The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) of 1882:

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"

As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves?

"That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still travelling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves."

FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE

Today's photo is the handiwork of Sibley-blog-regular (pun-intended) BOLL WEAVIL...


Well, after all: when you've gotta go...

Image: Nick Clark © 2008

GRAVE REMARKS

I quite often visit Southwark Cathedral - it's a little treat I give myself after sitting around for hours in the rheumatology clinic in nearby Guy's Hospital.

A place of Christian devotion for over 1,000 years, Southwark is a beautiful oasis of peace, light and tranquility poised on the banks of the Thames, alongside London Bridge which spans the river from the hustle and bustle of the fruit and vegetable traders of Borough Market and that of the bankers and brokers of the City.

Whenever I'm there I renew my acquaintance with the Once-Great-and-the-Good who are buried here in an aggregation of the most characterful - and colourful - tombs...

There is, for example, the final resting place (well, it's more like a very elaborate, slightly gaudy, canopied bed) of John Gower, the fifteenth century poet and friend of Chaucer with whom he shares - at least amongst literary historians - the distinction of being one of the fathers of English poetry...


But, my favourite tomb (if that doesn't that smack of too much morbidity) is that commemorating the life of...

John Trehearne
Gentleman Portar to King James the First

who died in 1618 and who is depicted alongside Margaret with whom "he lived together man and wife for fifty years" and (below) a collection of children and Very Small People...

Click image to enlarge

The plaque that Mr and Mrs Trehearne are holding is inscribed with a piece of doggerel that is quite clearly not the work of the aforementioned J Gower Esq...

Had Kings a power to lend their Svbject's breath,
Trehearne thov shovld'st not be cast down by Death,
Thy Royal Master still wovld keep thee then.
Bvt length of days are beyond the reach of men,
Nor wealth, nor strength, or great men's love can ease
The wound Death's arrows make, for thov hast these.
In thy King's Covrt good place to thee is given,
Whence thov shalt go Ye King's Covrt in Heaven.

Now, the Trehearne tomb has given me the idea for a new

CAPTION COMPETITION

What I'm inviting you to do is suggest what conversations, comments and observations might be being exchanged by the Trehearnes as they pass yet another day in their getting-on-for-400-year-long sojourn in Southwark...

Click image to enlarge

Submissions via the 'Thoughts' option below.

Closing date 26 October. Usual Terms and Conditions apply!

Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2008

FISHY BUSINESS

Here's another of those animals - well, in this case a fish - on the Underground...


And here is some more marine life which I caught sight of the other day swimming up an escalator on the Piccadilly line...

These new advertisements are astonishing but they are also, it should be noted, highly dangerous, since one gets so absorbed in watching them that it's all too easy to STOP watching out for the end of the escalator!

Not only that, of course, but we really must hope those tanks don't start leaking!!

BOG-BLOG

In response to yesterday's loo-door signs, the insanely-talented (well he's certainly insane) ELLIOT COWAN left a comment and a link to a picture that, for some time, was posted on his blog.

Elliot spotted this sign on a toilet door on the ferry from Melbourne to Devonport and, he says, "I still have no idea what it means..."

Anyone got any helpful suggestions??

Added later...

Regular blog-reader JEN has solved the mystery! It is a PHOTOLUMINESCENT MUSTERSTATION SIGN (No. 6039, by the way) and, should you feel the need, you can buy one - at $5.50, a mere snip - from American Nautical Services, Inc!

The only mysery remaining is why anyone would decide to locate the MUSTER STATION in the ferry toilet. Maybe it's an Australian thing...

SLIPPING & SLIDING

We're all of us used to seeing cautionary signs such as the one on the left and, if we have any sense, we heed their---

WARNING!

Recently, SUZANNE saw on a sign posted on a sliding toilet door on Belgium Pier that - depending on what language you happen to speak - appears to offer contradictory advice...


If you speak English you're relatively OK, SLIDE PLS; if Flemish is your language, you'll read SCHUIVEN AUB ('PLEASE MOVE' or 'SHOVE') and, probably, get the generally idea; but what about those poor French who see GLISSER SVP and read it as 'SLIP (or even SKID), IF YOU PLEASE'?

Let's just hope the floors were dry...

Talking of signs on lavatory doors, I spotted one on my recent hospital visit...


Excellent, I thought: a PATIENT TOILET: just what we all need at some point! You know, the kind of toilet that, however many times you need to use it's facilities, will never complain; and however long your visits take, will never get cross and impatient and try and hurry you out! Very considerate and thoughtful, I call it!

However, the adjacent door carried this warning...


NOT SUITABLE FOR PATIENT USE? WHY??

And if that no-go symbol represents a PATIENT, what does the symbol for a member of STAFF look like? Maybe it has a stethoscope...

AFFAIRS OF THE HEART

There's an old saying (which, like all those Old Sayings, is trite but true): “It isn't what you have in your pocket that makes you thankful, but what you have in your heart.”

Which - in unromantic terms - is what I've been worrying about for the past eighteen months since a hospital test suggested that I had something in my heart that oughtn't to be there - to wit, one or more malfunctioning arteries.

Finding out what's going on in a person's heart is far easier and more prosaic than the poets ever imagined: you undergo a coronary catheterization (it's OK, you don't have to click on that link!) which provides photographic evidence of what, if anything, is not tick-tocking properly within your ticker.

After several postponements (due to infections resulting from the drugs I take for arthritis) and one painful aborted attempt when they couldn't insert the catheter through which to pass the camera, yesterday was the designated date for the next attempt.

Then, over then weekend, it looked as it would once again have to be postponed when I started having a serious plumbing malfunction which led to my spending most of Monday in A & E fully expecting to have a rather different kind of catherterization. Despite the discomfort I was in, I was secretly comforted by the thought that, at least, I wouldn't have to go through the next day's cardiac test.

But medication was provided and I very quickly started recovering and was deemed well enough to go back to the same hospital the following day for my heart to be investigated. So, screwing the courage to the sticking place - I was, I freely admit, totally terrified - I turned up at the Cardiac Catherterization Unit at King's College Hospital prepared (in my most Eeyore-ish state of mind) to find out the Worst...

Even before I arrived at my bed, I passed a door bearing a sign that said it all...


Several anxious hours later, I was lying on my back with a mini-camera crawling through my chest grabbing snaps of my heart that were being televised on a screen above my head. Frankly, I'd have sooner been watching re-runs of the worst-ever TV shows of the 20th Century...

Anyway, with the aid of wonderful sedatives (I wanted to bring a supply home for recreational use, but they weren't having it!) and a fabulous team who talked me through the whole experience rather in the way that those cool, calm and confident Air Traffic Controllers used to talk down failing aircraft in '50s 'B' movies, I --- they, we --- got through it and the Good News - which was like someone vanishing that sword of Damocles that had been hanging over me since Spring 2007 - was that my heart was FINE!

All wasn't entirely plain-sailing: the artery in my groin being deep and difficult to get into - I always knew I had depth! - led to a lot of rather painful prodding and poking. Then, afterwards, the self-dissolving plug which is used to stopper-up the entry point refused to go into the puncture hole which resulted in the doctor having to apply a great deal of pressure for rather a long time to stop the bleeding. By far the worst bit was having to lie perfectly still for four hours while all the other patients in the ward were merrily toddling off home.

But that was a small price to pay for long-needed peace of mind. David fed me chicken mayo sandwiches and sips of tea through straw and when I was finally able to totter round the ward to see if I sprang a leak (thankfully, I didn't) gave me a firm arm to lean on - although, to tell the truth, I'd been leaning on him quite heavily, one way and another, for the past month or more...

Of course, I still have the arthritis and the hernia and the asthma and several other faulty fittings, but the HEART is, as I say, fine! Fine! Nice word, that! I like having a fine heart!

Like undertakers, doctors have a very particular sense of humour. Here's a sample from a note-board in my ward. It used to be said that the way to man's heart was through his stomach, but, apparently, not so...


Images: 'Heart' by Heather Garland; 'Door' and 'Noteboard' by David Weeks