THOSE WONDERFUL LINES!

CAPTION COMPETITION RESULTS!

What, I asked, might Jimmy Stewart be saying in this scene from one of his all-time great movie-performances as George Bailey in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life...

What he's actually saying in the film is----- But, no! You don't really want to know about that, what you want to know is who won!!


There were so many ingenious offerings that it has, in fact, been very hard to choose a winner...

Several interesting themes emerged: for example, Ryan Rasmussen suggested...

"The stylish yogi always performs Warrior II with flair."

While Good Dog came up with...

"Hiiiiiii-Yah! Ooooh, well, I guess I do know kung fu."

There were also a clever magical caption from a friend in The Magic Circle:

Mark Lee proposed...

"I can only back palm one card with my left hand but I can palm two complete decks of cards now I've had that wonderful new right hand enlargement surgery."

There were Sibley-blog-specific captions such as one of Boll Weavil's entries...

"Alright you lot, there's room for everyone to see the Sibley Greece holiday picture collection. Just step this way!"

While LisaH (saucepot that she is!), came up with (as it were!) the following...

"I was snorkelling when David was posing for those photos for Brian and honestly, it was this big!"

While we're on the theme of predictable smuttiness (and you know how I abhor such things!) Chris submitted...

"Well, uh, yeah, size does matter."

And Boll Weavil lived up (or down) to expectations with...

"You want to know why I look like this? Well it was THIS big!"

Anyway, turning our back on the Carry On Captioning fraternity, there was David Weeks' amusing submission...

" . . .and these fingers are stuck too."

While Gill offered a caption which, she rightly says 'only older bloggers will understand'...

"And I had to stand like this all evening while she wound her b***y wool."

Still, Gill, there are quite a few of us older bloggers, so that's OK...

Boll Weavil was as ingenious and prolific as ever with (in addition to captions already cited) the following lines...

"So, I said I had heartburn - they gave me a lousy tablet and stuck me on traffic duty."

"Hey - come and get your money! The English Prime Minister, he say YES!"

"Speak to the hand baby, 'cos the face ain't listening!"

"Somebody ruins my Mr Botibol impersonation again."

"Keep your eyes on the screen - this one's a rabbit."

Mention of a rabbit brings me to our joint second-place winners who cleverly referenced, in one case, an alternative famous Jimmy Stewart film and, in the other, managed a one-line summary of the plot of It's a Wonderful Life.

SUZANNE's
Joint Second Place Caption

"I'm telling you, Harvey, you're getting much too fat for me to carry you around like this for much longer... and, no, I will not kiss you again!"

DAVID WEEK's
Joint Second Place Caption

"Palm reading without my specs is quite difficult - no, now I can see it: 'A bad situation will turn out OK in the end when friends help'."

But the winner is, yet again, the indefatigable BOLL WEAVIL with this caption which wins for its simplicity and topicality...

BOLL WEAVIL's
WINNING CAPTION

"Northern Rock queue this way."

Thank you all for taking part and for giving me so many smiles and laughs...

UNAPEELING

Who can explain this mystery...?

Who do so many Europeans - particularly in Greece and Italy as well as on Malta and Madeira and, doubtless, in (or on) other Mediterranean countries - never, ever seem to ever get around to peeling off those peel-off labels?

ON SALE IN ATHENS

I always enjoy finding out what's on sale in any city - especially anything that's unique to that place.

In Athens there are plenty of very well-made (but expensive) replicas of Greek artifacts...


And even more cheaply-made tacky dittos...


There are street vendors selling a dozen different type of nutty snacks...


...and pyramids of fruit...


You can buy the obligatory sponge for your bathroom...


And Pom-pom slipper-versions of those funny shoes worn by Greek guards...


There's lots of blue glass...


Lots of throws, shawls and fabrics...


Plenty of bling...


Curious silver egg-shaped things...


And uniquely Greek goodies include such objects as gods-clocks...


Barbie goddesses...


And illuminated Parthenons...


And while in the city of legends, we also came across some leg ends...


And, finally, if you happen to find yourself shopping in Athens, make sure you keep an eye open for special offers!!


Images: © Brian Sibley & David Weeks, 2007

[Read part 2 of Buttons' what i did on my hols]

OLD BILL

Commenting on yesterday's blog, ELLIOT asked whether, when I referred to the work of BILL STICKERS, I actually meant BILL POSTERS...

Well, Elliot, they are, as it happens, one and the same: being a devious customer, he goes by either name, but may well favour Bill POSTERS in your native Australia.

I grew up, knowing this fly-by-night criminal as Bill STICKERS, and you will realise just how old I am when I tell you that the following joke appeared in the London Graphic in 1884:

A countryman named William Stickers, flying to London to escape from rural justice, was appalled at reading on a wall: BILL STICKERS BEWARE. He went a little further, but reading again, BILL STICKERS WILL BE PUNISHED WITH THE UTMOST RIGOUR OF THE LAW, gave himself up for lost and surrendered.

In 1960s London - in direct response to the proliferation of BILL STICKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED signs...


...Mr Stickers (aka Posters) famously began sticking up posters (or posting up stickers) which read:

BILL STICKERS IS INNOCENT!

There was a skiffle group called Bill Posters Will Be Band; and - strictly for snappers-up of unconsidered whatsits - you will be amused to know that an utterly useless anagram of Bill Stickers Will Be Prosecuted is: Restrict well-publicised blokes.

And that, I regret to say, concludes your trivia allowance for the day...

ON THE STREETS OF ATHENS

The first thing that needs to be understood about the streets of Athens is that many of them - particularly those in the Plaka - scarcely merit the term 'street' at all, having pavements that are little more than eighteen inches wide and comprising a succession of hazards including pot-holes and dead pigeons...


There are also dodgy arrangements of steps down and up to concealed doors and even the odd, small but hardy tree...

Incidentally, coming down this particular road is an Athenian taxi. These angry yellow beasts rush and roar through the city, impatiently and excitedly honking their horns whenever they don't have clear and open access for their busy-busy rushing and roaring.

Curiously, they are also almost always EMPTY and will never, ever stop for anyone who might conceivably be a tourist since, as one driver explained to David - before NOT taking us where we wanted to be: "Tourists never want to go far enough!"

All Greek taxi drivers are, presumably, retired shipping magnets who don't need to worry about earning any money and just enjoy treating the streets of Athens as a stock-car race track!

Common features of the streets of Athens include: ancient ruins...


And buildings not so ancient, but equally ruinous...


A lot of ugly and unsightly graffiti...


And quite a bit of wild and fantastical graffiti...


There is also plenty of evidence of the handiwork of Master Bill Stickers...


A lot of street slogans, one of the most popular being: Free your mind and your ass will follow...


Controversial exhibition posters - sometimes (daringly) in close proximity to the national flag...


And, of course, useful messages that have a universal familiarity...


Images: © Brian Sibley, 2007
[Buttons' fans can read part 1 of his what i did on my hols report.]

ANY MORE WONDERFUL LINES?

CAPTION COMPETITION!

Final Call for Entries!!

If you haven't yet entered the current Brian's Blog Caption Competition, you've got just three days left to come up with what you think James Stewart ought to be saying in this still from Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. Send your suggestions by blog comment; or e-mail: mail@briansibley.com

COMPETITION CLOSES MIDNIGHT FRIDAY!

ANIMAL-SITTERS

From the work of Aesop and Aristophanes to that of Walt Disney and George Orwell, we have always delighted in anthropomorphism: endowing animals with the appearance or characteristics of human beings.

There are thousands of examples from across several thousand years, but the Victorians and Edwardians had a regular passion for anthropomorphic representations of animal life - in a variety of manifestations...

So, whilst Beatrix Potter was dressing up creatures of farm and hedgerow in period costume...


...across the Chanel, French caricaturist, Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (known as J J Grandville) was was busily drawing pictures of people wearing animal masks...


Back in England Walter Potter (no relation of Beatrix) was one of a number of taxidermists who were stuffing animals and arranging them as charming -- or, depending on your point of view, creepy! -- tableaux to be displayed as conversation-pieces on the Victorian mantelshelf.



These are just a few of the resonances that leaped to mind when I attended the book launch, this week, of Charlotte Corry's The Visitors: All Cliches Conserved and an accompanying exhibition of photographic curiosities.

Charlotte Cory is a true Renaissance Woman - novelist, journalist, travel writer, wood-cut artist and photographer - and her latest project is as diverting and disturbing as the nineteenth century obsessions which have inspired it.

Cory has taken the concept of anthropomorphism and in a dreamy - occasionally nightmarish - way has ingeniously combined it with the Victorian fanatical passion for the carte de visite: visiting card-sized photographic portraits that, from their introduction in France in 1854, became a phenomenal European and American craze.

What, Cory seems to ask, would have happened if the photographer's now long-forgotten subjects, so stiffly posed in front of painted balustrade and swagged curtain or seated on an antimacassered chair by potted aspidistra, had been not people but those faded, dusty, glass-eyed creatures from the taxidermists' mummy-vaults?

The results of her photographic experimentation are what might have ensued if the Reverend Charles Dodgson - a prolific amateur Victorian photographer - had set up his camera in that topsy-turvy realm of Wonderland, discovered by his intimate friend, Mr Lewis Carroll.


Charlotte Cory's book contains 64 witty examples of extraordinary portraiture. In sepia tones (with occasional spalshed of hand-tinting) there are pictures of clerical pugs, harp-playing parrots and dignified ducks...


Also captured are military bulldogs, naval woodpeckers, professorial owls and one decidely constipated-looking cat...

There are even instances of striking similarities between owners and their pets...


The Visitors: All Cliches Conserved is published at £14.99 by Dewi Lewis Publishing.

As the photographer (or, perhaps, photographic manipulator) observes:

Many millions of carte de visite were produced and are now so commonly discarded in junk shops that they are almost worthless. Can there be anything more poignant than a person got up in their best bib and tucker, preserved for a posterity that is no longer interested?


Yet there is something assuredly sadder than discarded photographs of forgotten faces and family pets: all those stuffed animals in museums, shot long ago not on glass plates but with guns, their very bodies preserved for posterity to gawk at. Where did this moth-eaten lion sniff his last antelope? How many of us have stood with our noses pressed to the glass eyeing these captured creatures.

Well, now, thanks to Ms Cory, they live again: not on veldt or in farmyard, but in the overstuffed faux-elegance of Victorian parlours and withdrawing rooms.


In addition to her album of anthropomorphic visitors, Charlotte Cory has produced a number of prints of her photographs which are displayed either in large, ornately gilded and authentically period frames or are else encased in authentic Victorian lockets, pendants and broaches; all of which can be viewed at Rebecca Hossack's Charlotte Street Gallery, where they remain in captivity until 14 October.

Image: Portrait of Charlotte Cory with her 'Tsar' and 'Tsarina', © David Weeks, 2007.

PEARLS: MARK III

MARK'S LAST (for now) FIVE


OF

WISDOM

Guest Pearl-Diver: MARK LEE

1. Never lick a steak knife.

2. Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.

3. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age,
gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

4. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

5. Your friends love you anyway.

SNAPPING AT PERFECTION

Ever since I had my very first camera (at the age of 7) I have sought for that elusive creature, the perfect picture. In the days of film (on reel and on cartridge), I would shoot off hundreds of images only to be largely disappointed when I surveyed the results in the dozens of packets collected from Boots the Cash Chemist.

Digital photography made it easier (or at least less expensive) to wantonly point the camer and click. And yet, 'the perfect picture' - in terms both of subject and composition - is still amazingly hard to entrap!

If, once in a while, I get even vaguely close I am inordinantly pleased and from this year's thousand-or-so photographs taken in Greece, here is one with which I am particularly satisfied...

Click on image to enlarge

I like the placing of the body in the landscape (this was camera compostion, not created by subsequent cropping); and I love the soft early morning light on the mountains in the background, the mirror-calm of the sea, the glimpse of seaweed and stones beneath the water, and the ripples of light and shadow on the sun-warm body.

Of course, it isn't perfect...

I took this other picture (in portrait) with the bather's face more in profile and this would have been a much better pose for the figure in the landscape version...


Oh, well... Next time!

Images: © Brian Sibley 2007

[My grateful thanks to David for permission to publish these images]

GRAVE PERSPECTIVE

Being just back from Greece, where smoking is NOT an issue, it is very curious to see so many ugly NOSMOKING notices slapped up everywhere and the harried huddles of smokers trying to find doorways that are not now designated NOSMOKING doorways...

Anyway, whoever thought it was witty to decorate a "Smoking Room" with this ceiling painting must now be kicking themselves for having wasted their dosh on commissioning the contemporary Michelangelo responsible for the work...


Since being legally defined as "an enclosed space", this Smoking Room must actually now be a Nosmoking Smoking Room!

MORE EYE-SIGHTS

Perhaps more than some of the other great cities of the world - Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, New York, Sydney - Athens takes a little time to embrace the visitor and we've met people who've dismissively said: "Well, I was there for a day once and that was more than enough!"

I'm not sure that last year we didn't have a similar reaction (after just two days) but this year's return visit - when there was more time for street-wandering and people-watching and no obligation to clamber up all those slippery marble steps to the Parthenon - I felt that we had begun to establish a somewhat better rapport with Athena's city.

So, here are a few more eye-sights of, on this occasion, Athenian arty eye-sites---

Athens has quite a lot of public art and statuary, some of which is rather strange...


And some of which (like this exhibit in a sky-light from the metro) strange but rather wonderful...


There are several expensive (AmEx customers only!) art shops...


As well as other less exclusive points of sale...


There are also occasional opportunities to enjoy live-ish music...


...though concerts are sometimes rather poorly attended!

But when it comes to the Ancient Greeks, there is much to commend their arty-facts for their wonderful sense of fun such as these interesting bird-animals...


These delightful little jug-creatures that pre-date Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Walt Disney and the Surrealist movement by several thousand years...


And an refreshingly unabashed attitude to the ins and outs of sex!



Images: © Brian Sibley, 2007