The Idler's Academy in Port Eliot, Cornwall

They’re singing sea shanties. I’m at a festival where the lineup includes Jarvis Cocker, Luella Bartley, and Diana Athill and here is a Cornish men’s vocal group singing a capella sea shanties. The crowd— a mix of people my age, my parents’ age, and children— lap it up. This is either the weirdest or most brilliantly eclectic festival out there. I have fallen down some kind of rabbit hole into an alternate British universe without irony or hipsters. I am so confused.-Lauren Elkin

I've been musing with a friend about a Bath-Wales-Cornwall trip when I'm feeling better & have the wherewithal. When I saw Lauren Elkin's Maîtresse post, You haven't lived until you've seen an English field full of teepees at twilight, I thought, aha Port Eliot. Yep. You can read Lauren's Letter from Cornwall: the Port Eliot Festival on Bomb . It's pretty inclusive. (I would've loved the Persephone tent arranged as Vanessa Bells's Bloomsbury sitting room. I don't see any photographs but I shall pursue. Here's the Persephone blog.)

Teepees are OK but I'm the Gypsy Bowtop Caravan type. Enough tents in my lifetime, thanks. The kids atop a bovine is not from the festival. I'm looking for decently priced rainboots. (To everyone who will email: Hunters, yes I know. The prices are out of the question presently & for the abstract future. Update--I forgot to say that they're now made in China. So, ugh.) I had wet feet most of last winter. Plus, it's so hot out, that I need to look at something green. My paternal grandparents had a cow* that I don't remember riding but I choose to believe that I did. And if I'm not mistaken, some time ago my father either bought a cow-out-to-pasture for hanging out or he meant to. Anyway, I've done this, yes.

From the website: This year the Idler’s Academy of Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment opens its doors for the first time. Tom Hodgkinson, editor of cult magazine The Idler, has established the Academy as a resource for these three valuable but generally neglected disciplines. This year’s curriculum includes Latin grammar, scything, woodwork, education theory, poetry and, of course, lashings and lashings of fun...

Bring on the rest of the weirdness.

[photograph of teepees by Bill Bradshaw; Gypsy Caravan via Port Eliot site; *bulls & asst. cattle are still bovine]

On the Horizon

On the way here (huge storm)...but click here if you want to see a funny photograph of a friend's nephew; Ian is in the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Hilarious. That's what we've all been doing (watching on-line or at the downtown DC Hyatt). I spoke with Ian & his auntie Maria Caterina di Perugia on speakerphone just a bit ago--live from the hive (sorry, I can't help myself; it's a sickness). So far, so good. (He reminds me of Calvin - of Calvin & Hobbes!) Buona fortuna, Ian!

{Update: Ian is the third photo--the exact link did not "take."}

[Gorgeous photograph by Giampaolo Macorig who does storms better than anyone. Look at it up close. I want to live right there. Now.]

On the edge of Vesuvius

Original Polaroid Land Camera snaps from the mid-1970s on an Italian Sunday afternoon. The story is long & short. Presently, it feels necessary to say only that I loathed the person on the left (my right), & liked the one on the right -- very much. My second trip to Italy (from France) but my first to the south & "real" Italy (ten days in Venice a few months before was a world away). The photographer & person I liked lived in the area. The photographs looked this spooky as soon as we saw them...it's not their age now. No tourists were there that day, just a bored guard--delighted to talk to someone. I was excited to be so close to a volcano, I remember. I saw several in Iceland but they didn't have tragic stories, ancient & modern, attached to them. The Neapolitan area inspires both longing & loathing. What a complicated place...

Joni in Black & White, this flight tonight

The English Muse wants a getaway & asked where she (we) should go. Her post, I'll book the flight instantly brought This Flight Tonight to mind. Except that song is an "oh what did I just do, getting on this plane." Yes, but no, but yes. Get on the plane & visit (move here), someone told me once. Get on the damn plane, he said. Upon landing, all I could think was: turn this crazy bird around...

The photo above is pre-Blue but JM wrote an astonishing number of well-known songs early in her life, recording them much later. I liked happening upon the early photo while looking for something else. But of course.

Update: Word from la Muse is that Paris is the consensus, BTW. Free man in Paris...la la la.

Un chat blanc

I love this cat, Alvar. Again, from Marianne Perdomo's flickrstream.