London noir

Dark spring evening, Willesden High Road

Musical gate

The wind plays tunes in this iron gate. I have tried twice to record it but failed. Might try again sometime.

The countess and the café

Roundwood Park gazebo and café

Four years in jail for transsexual ‘countess’ who conned council out of £197,000

"Marianne Jonson [born Robert Duxbury], 49, was found guilty of 23 counts of fraud at Harrow crown court after it emerged she was known by 10 other names, including one she claimed was her twin sister. That alter ego was the Countess Mariaska Romanov, who ran a local café [the one in Roundwood Park] and even served as a school governess..." (London Evening Standard)

She even persuaded Louis Theroux to back her campaign to "save the café", which was not even under any threat! Shame about the fraud but what a colourful way to go. Perhaps not guilty on the grounds of insanity, on the face of it?

End of day blues

Graffiti

On a hoarding in St Andrew's Road, Nw10

Oh Stacey (look what you have done)

Tribute to Eastenders LIVE - one of the best BBC productions ever. Remember you heard it here last.

Syrian School - part 3 - highly recommended

Being Inspired

Watching and typing...

8 mins.
Bet you didn't expect poetry like that - "Tales from a lover's notebook" - etc. Touching.

9 mins.
Of course on to the infants' school and the political brainwashing is absolutely appalling. Fully Stalinist in its scope.

10 mins.
The actual teaching and kids all seem very nice.

18 mins.
A bit like similar programs about schools in China, I think, certainly the primary school section. Perhaps slightly less frenetic competition.

24 mins.
Start of section about war. Amazing the propaganda sort of "expertise". Indoctrination is complete. I say nothing about the facts though I imagine they are totally distorted. They would be distorted by all sides, I'm sure but these are fairly blatant. It's not totally unlike the old history teaching in Ireland. We knew that we were massacred and tortured by the Brits etc - pitch caps, Cromwell's massacres etc. We didn't hear much about home made civil war atrocities and suchlike though.

26 mins.
An odd mixture of very appealing ordinary activities - basketball, happy, smiling etc and a Big Brother society with full brainwashing but all tied into nationalism and identity. Absolutely indelibly dyed in the wool - just like all nations, I suppose. Why should I care which tribe wins? Because our tribe is the best.

30 mins.
What do you call this sort of watching and posting messages? I quite like it. Just watched the disco bit.

35-36 mins
Internet. The girl wants to continue with basketball and play in the N.B.A. (?)

37 mins.
That inspirational teacher again. He does poetry with them as an extra curricular option. Good man. They love him.

39- 43- (and on) mins.
The basketball final. A great game - close finish. "Sarah stop crying." "The girls did their best."

45 mins.
Sweet kid who comes first in the class wants to share it with his friend.

47 mins.
Final preparations for the poetry festival - very touching.

I'll give you some quotes from the girls' poems (they are rehearsing to themselves how to recite them. One girl [Nour] walks back and forth in the schoolyard, while kids mill around, in a world of her own, rehearsing her words and hand gestures).
"Sit beside me and let me tell you a story of love and dreams."
"Oh lord it was my love's favourite, this dress/And this and that, and this and that/And my room became a garden."

49 mins.
A guy does their hair? [Another thing you probably were not expecting.]

50 mins.
One of the girls who wasn't going tol will read after all. The amazing teacher says one girl was crying yesterday because she hadn't been selected to read. "I woke after midinght, worrying, and read some of her poems and decided they had some merit and she should read something after all. And now she's happy and dancing like a butterfly."

58 mins.
Poetry is obviously very important to all. A great turnout of literary figures and parents and kids for the poetry festival. The headmistress reads her own poem by way of introduction. "The only motivation for my work is love" etc. The first girls poem (the one who was rehearsing to herself in the yard) begins "A river streamed through my room/It scared me./It broke my wardrobe/Scattered my clothes/Released my dresses/From yesterday's bonds" (to a musical accompaniment). "It made me wear them" (I can't transcribe it all, she goes on to the section with "Lord this was my love's favourite - this waistband ... etc." Ah - that is where she was saying "this and that, this and that" interesting. And she ends powerfully with a long pause and then repeating the title line, "A river streamed through my room."

Second girl is so sweet. A different type.

55-56 mins.
A poem in English! [An appeal for peace and understanding between people of the world.]

57 mins.
Nour will be published. The judge says her poem was of "international standard" and he wants to publish it.( "A river streamed through my room.")

Broadcast on:

BBC Four, 7:30pm Monday 1st March 2010

Duration:

60 minutes

Available until:

9:59pm Wednesday 17th March 2010

Latest from Harlesden Road

Zadie Smith interview

Listen (CBC Radio)

"Eleanor Wachtel in conversation with the dynamic, young author, Zadie Smith. The author of the bestselling hits White Teeth and On Beauty, has a new book of essays about writing, about her addiction to reading, and about her family. It's called Changing My Mind." (Writers & Co.)

Blue marble home

"... the "blue marble" beauty of our home planet ... [the image] was produced by a team of scientists using months of satellite observations of the land, oceans, sea ice and clouds, covering every square kilometre of the Earth's surface. The wafer-thin atmosphere on which all life depends can just be discerned as a brilliant blue glow on the western horizon, while the vast expanse of blue ocean illustrates that the Earth is truly a water world." (The Independent)

They play marbles don't they, the gods...

The Known Universe by AMNH

Somebody should dub that Monty Python song to this...

100 Stories for Haiti - Buy The Book

100 Stories for Haiti - Buy The Book

All proceeds to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake

Video: Farewell to London fashion week | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

Video: Farewell to London fashion week | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

Why do the models look morbidly underweight, like concentration camp inmates? Matchstick legs are positively off-putting, I suggest. I can't imagine what the appeal is supposed to be. Hasn't the fashion industry become like the dog breeding industry, so distant from reality that it can't see the harm it's doing to those involved nor the bad example it's setting?

Ossian

Norman Tebbit's possible UKIP defection?

Is the Willy first to notice this by Norman Tebbit in the Telegraph, responding to commenters: "I was glad to hear from my one-time supporter in Chingford, [commenter name], but sad that he like so many others has been driven to go over to UKIP. I understand why, and nearer to polling day I will offer my advice to voters… but not just yet." 

Earlier this evening

By the way, it's a little dark but at the bottom left of this picture you can see a building that people have built in their garden, as many people are doing, with a view to leaving it for four years, which they think is the time limit for planning objections, and then no doubt turning it into a rented hovel. Boo. (Annoyed of Willesden).

Yeah?

Free cash sign

Esperanza Spalding

"Wild Is The Wind" (Live in San Sebastian july 23, 2009 - 5/9)

Every now and then something comes along that's too good not to share.

Count Arthur Strong

You can watch that as many times as you like. It's like a symphony, is that.

Tuesday

Picture by Craig

This is the baboon's bonbons

Oh well, if it helps distract them from plotting a high school massacre then I suppose it's alright. (Steve)

Announcement: Willesden 2010 shortlist

The shortlisted stories for the Willesden short story competition 2010, adjudicated by Richard Peabody, are:

Busy. Come. Wait. - Tom Vowler
Emily Strabnow's Freckles - Willie Davis
Falling - Henrietta Rose-Innes
In the Land of Flies - Julia Goubert
Letters - Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Love and Longing in the Marvellous City - Jonathan Attrill
Monkey Hat - Kevin Spaide
Precious - Carys Davies
The Architects - Wena Poon
Veronika and Roger-Roger - Toby Litt

Also highly commended:

Hope Street - Paul McGuire
Learning Stick - Jarred McGinnis
Pearl - Peggy Riley
Shutters - Jo Cannon

All will be included in the forthcoming anthology "New Short Stories 4". There will now be a very long wait till the results event when we'll be revealing which story takes the prize mug. The date could be as far ahead as end of March I'm hearing*, which I know is a long drag but at least spring may have arrived by then. Meanwhile here's to the short story. Cheers!

* New Short Stories 4 launch and results announcement: Saturday 10 April, The Charles Dickens Museum. Invitation only.

Update 10/4/2010: Results announced

Conclave cloisterered, smoke anticipated

The special chimney has been fixed to the roof of Herald House and the cardinals are voting. White smoke will indicate making tea. Black smoke will indicate making toast. We will not announce the winners till the results event, but we will announce the shortlist before then. At all events not long till the shortlist but not short till the long event. We never make things simple here in Willesden, the new Byzantium.

Ossian

Monday

Eclectic electric

What's on David Bowie's iPod? Music Culture The Observer "The pop master gives us an exclusive peek to mark the release tomorrow of A Reality Tour, the live double album of his acclaimed 2003-4 world tour"

You can play David Bowie's current favourite iPod tracks courtesy of Spotify, which has his playlist here: http://bit.ly/6oTqwp. A long way from sheet music?

Library car park