Saying no to summer

Cambodia: four vessels

Cambodia: a disagreement

Actually not a disagreement at all. This lot - assorted gods and demons who can be seen heaving and ho-ing on the walls of Angkor Wat - are Churning the Ocean of Milk. You know folks be serious about churning when their churning equipment includes 1. An actual mountain (the rod) and 2. A massive snake (the rope).

Three photos from Cambodia

From the top: Stone faces at Angkor's Bayon temple, prison cells at Tuol Sleng genocide museum, and doorway to nowhere somewhere in the Angkor Thom city.

Toilet graffiti

Spotted in The Prince, Brixton

Peckham Rye in the snow

"It was a sunny day for November, and, as he drove swiftly past the Rye, he saw the children playing there and the women coming home from work with their shopping bags, the Rye for an instant looking like a cloud of green and gold, the people seeming to ride upon it, as you might say there was another world than this." (The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Muriel Spark)

Reading for 2013

Happy new year!

My top 50 tracks of 2012

Warning: it gets quite schmindie in places. Also, I hope you like Regina Spektor...

Going out west

You were probably starting to think I was only going to blog when there was a London Olympics on and you'd have to wait till 2057 or something. You were PROBABLY WRONG, for here we are, finally getting round to looking at the photos from our break in and around Cheddar back in November.

 

Weston-super-Mare, where grey beach sludge, which happened to be exactly the same colour as my trainers, ruined my trainers. Bad music blared out and it started to rain. We stood under the pier eating our fish and chips, sheltering from the downpour. It wasn't as romantic as it sounds. 

Wells Cathedral. Blah blah misericords blah blah 14th Century clock. Bought my sister and brother-in-law some biblically themed socks in the gift shop, then went into town for a chocolate brownie.

This is Cheddar Man. He dead. That's what happens if you overindulge on cheese. On the plus side, he does have a nice roomy grave.

If I sound a bit miserable, it's because Google Chrome keeps tearing my tabs and forcing me to open hundreds of different windows. Google Chrome is a cruel mistress, as the saying goes. We did go on an amazing walk along Ebbor Gorge, past babbling brooks, o'er golden hilltops and across rocky crags, until we were stopped by a monstrous wicker bear, which Sarah defeated by wrestling to the ground.

We celebrated the bear's defeat by drinking some of this. I'm being modest: all of it.

Para/Olympix