Nigeness
Nice
Nige, who, like Mr Kenneth Horne, prefers to remain anonymous, was also a founder blogger of The Dabbler and a co-blogger on the Bryan Appleyard Thought Experiments blog. He is the sole blogger on this one, and his principal aim is to share various of life's pleasures. These tend to relate to books, art, poems, butterflies, birds, churches, music, walking, weather, drink, etc, with occasional references to the passing scene. His book, The Mother of Beauty: On the Golden Age of English Church Monuments, and Other Matters of Life and Death, is available on Amazon or direct from the author.
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All posts (242)
Last night on the vintage music quiz Face the Music – an awful smugfest, really, but strangely compelling – the guest was Gerald Moore, who had recently celebrated his 80th birthday. As well as being probably the finest accompanist who ever lived, Moore was blessed with a genial personality, a sense of humour and a...
I've always liked pencils – the look, the feel and the smell of them – and the best pencils are surely those with a nice sharp graphite point at one end and a little eraser conveniently placed at the other. Who first came up with that bright idea? Well, as it happens, it was on this day in 1858 that one Hymen L....
Yesterday I was walking with my brother and walking friends by the Thames in London, from Southwark Cathedral to Rotherhithe, by way of St Margaret Pattens, All Hallows by the Tower, Tower Bridge, the Mayflower Inn (lunch) and St Mary, Rotherhithe, accompanied by a more than lively breeze and flurries of hail. In...
Back in the days when the late Sage of Tiverton and I were exchanging frequent text messages, he somehow convinced himself that my nightly routine was to retire to bed and read Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. I've no idea where he got this notion, as I had never read the much praised Memoirs, but it was a...
It's World Poetry Day today (though it should be World Music Day, as it's Bach's birthday).To mark the occasion I've assembled a little collection of poems in which one poet addresses or encounters or hails another – thereby doubling the poetical headcount. Or even tripling it, as here, where Keats encounters Homer...
Another glorious spring day, and this morning I took a walk in hope of seeing more butterflies. There was much to enjoy – birdsong (including chiffchaffs now), flowers and early blossom – but, as it turned out, the slight touch of chill in the breeze was enough to deter the butterflies, fussy creatures that they...
And the birthdays just keep on coming – this time it's John Sebastian, of Lovin' Spoonful fame, and he's 82 today. I loved the Spoonful from the first time I heard them, and still regard Sebastian as a fine songwriter. Here is one of my favourites – a good-time song with some very clever lyrics...
A proper spring day at last: blue sky, a warming sun and a drying wind – and butterflies! Peacocks flying or basking everywhere, including two at once in the garden, one nectaring at length on a primula. I can't say I've noticed any burnished doves, but...."In the spring, Jeeves, a livelier iris gleams upon the...
It is an oft lamented fact of modern life, at least in 'Broken Britain', that nothing seems to work any more. Lord knows, I've lamented it myself often enough – so it is good to be able to report that I've found at least one thing that still works, and actually works far better than it used to... Some time last week...
Born on this day in 1593, in the Duchy of Lorraine, was the painter Georges De La Tour, a somewhat mysterious figure of whom little is known, and who was quite forgotten until his work was rediscovered in the early 20th century. He's generally classified as a follower of Caravaggio, but that influence came...
The month of March really should have been called January, after the double-faced Janus, looking both backward and forward. March looks back to winter, giving us frequent reminders of its cold and gloom, and forward to spring, offering tantalising glimpses of what is to come. It is the true hinge of the year, a...
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