Plenty of Nothing

Yellow Piping

Last Days of the YMCA

Wagon

The ghost of a childhood. Could it be one of these?

Girl on a Suitcase

Girl on a Suitcase, Gourock. Source.

The first quarter of the season is over. Morton have five wins and four losses, with a goal difference of +4. They have not given up a point at home, but have only one win away. If they carry on in this fashion they will finish the season with 60 points, which was good enough for third place in last year's League One.

Ayr United are just behind them in the table, with four wins, a draw, and four losses, and a goal difference of +1. They have held first place, but are now on a three-game losing streak.

Prior to today's play Hamilton Academical hold first place in the Premiership, Hearts in the Championship, Forfar League One, Arbroath League Two, Edinburgh City the Lowland League and Brora the Highland League. If Celtic do not win the Premiership title it'll be the first time since 1984-85 that the Old Firm has missed out.

Ayr United visit Cappielow [and win 0 - 1, jumping ahead of Morton who slip to fourth place.]

Tomorrow Grulla Morioka host Machida Zelvia. [1 - 1]

Genji at the Noh

The Tale of Genji supplies the text or subtext for several Noh plays, which themselves have spun off numerous interpretations. This 1897 print by Tsukioka Kogyo captures a moment from the play Aoi no Ue. Source.

Beryl Bainbridge at Ken Barlow's House

Coronation Street 1961.

    I was in Coronation Street more than twenty-five years ago. I played one of Ken Barlow's girl friends before he married Valerie. I was some sort of ban-the-bomb marcher. I remember I carried a placard. The unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover had just been published -- is this the sort of book you would allow your wife or servant to peruse? -- and Ivan Beavis, who played Lucille's Dad, read out all the naughty bits during breaks in rehearsals.

Beryl Bainbridge, English Journey, page 80.

Ukiyo-e Exporter's Card

One of the many Japanese items in the online collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. In advertising it never hurts to have a picture of a person looking at your name and address.

Emperor's Cup Quarter-Finals go today. J2 clubs are in bold.

Game #81: Gamba Osaka [2 - 0] Omiya Ardija

Game #82: Nagoya Grampus [2 - 2] Shimizu S-Pulse [Shimizu win on penalty kicks]

Game #83: Cerezo Osaka [0 - 1] JEF United Ichihara Chiba

Game #84: Montedio Yamagata [1 - 0] Giravanz Kitakyushu

Chartres

    Whenever we travelled with my grandmother to Combray she always made us break the journey at Chartres. Without being too sure why, she thought its two bell-towers had that absence of vulgarity and affectation which she found in nature when the hand of man does not smarten it up, and in those books which, subject to two provisoes -- nothing vulgar, and nothing shoddy -- she thought harmless to children, those beings who have nothing vulgar or shoddy about them. I think she would have said that they "looked natural" and looked "distinguished." In any case, she loved them, and thought we should be the better for seeing them. As she knew nothing at all about architecture, she had not learned that she ought to admire them, and said: "My dears, you'll laugh at me -- they don't match, they may not be beautiful 'according to the rules,' but their unsymmetrical old faces please me. There is something about their ruggedness that I like very much. I feel that if they played the piano they would make it sing." And she looked at them so wholeheartedly that her head and her glance strained upward, one would have said she was longing to soar up in company with them, while she continued to smile tenderly at the old weather-beaten stonework.

Marcel Proust, On Art and Literature 1896-1919, page 253, translated by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Photo.

Allegory of Bern

By Joseph Werner.

Edward Gorey on Kawabata's Nobel

    I feel the Nobel Prize has for once been given to someone I think is a good writer; what can they be thinking of? Anyway, Connie and I were sitting at breakfast talking about Kawabata, whose name I can never remember, and usually recollect it as being Watanabe, whoever he may be, when the radio suddenly announced that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize; at first I thought it was some aberration of sound in my head. He was the one I was complaining to you that he was so little translated, which will now change as I expect at this very moment the minions of Alfred A. Knopf are arranging for a great pretentious Collected Works or the like, which in this case is fine by me. Connie filched my copies of Snow Country and Thousand Cranes to take to the Vineyard to reread, else I would have sent them to you, but I think they can still be come by -- Berkeley has them out in paperback.

Edward Gorey to Peter F. Neumeyer, October 18th, 1968. In Floating Worlds: Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer, page 72. Somehow, Watanabe seems to be the default Japanese name when you can't think of the right one. Genshiken chapter 59: