'A chartered member of Blandings'

 For some unfathomable reason, I continue to be bombarded with Bertrand Russell material on Facebook, invariably accompanied by photographs of the Great Man sagely sucking on a pipe. Today's bit of Russelliana did, for once, pique my interest. It quoted from a fan letter that Russell wrote in 1954 to P.G. Wodehouse, in which he declared that, 'In common with the rest of mankind, I derive great pleasure from reading your books.' He goes on to proudly outline what he has in common with Bertie Wooster:
'My name is Bertie; I had an aunt called Agatha and an uncle called Algernon; I came within an ace of being called Galahad; and my great grandfather put a plaque in his garden to commemorate a victory over his head gardener.'
Galahad Russell? Could he have had a career in philosophy with a forename like that? it would have been uphill work...
Wodehouse, in reply, declares that 'I am very proud to think that you have enjoyed my books', and goes on to tell Russell that 'You are certainly qualified to rank as a chartered member of Blandings!'.
The letter, the only one between the two men, is in the Russell Archives at McMaster University, which also has eleven Wodehouse volumes owned by the illustrious 'chartered member'. 

Painted by a Norwegian

 I don't often look at the stats for this blog, but when I do I always check to see which countries are giving Nigeness the most views. Today I was surprised to find that Hong Kong, a territory that I don't think had ever featured before, is now in second place – way, way ahead of the US, which itself is way ahead of the UK, which is not far clear of, er, Singapore. And who is in the coveted number one spot? Why, it's Norway again, a whisker ahead of Hong Kong (who I suspect will fade fast). 
  I've observed the strong Norwegian interest in this blog before, and put up obliging posts (this one, for example). So now here is another painting by a son of Norway, though it doesn't look in the slightest degree Norwegian. The picture above, titled Turner Fernisserer, shows J.M.W. Turner on a 'varnishing day', an occasion which he invariably used to finish his paintings in public, doing a great deal more than just applying varnish, while onlookers marvelled at the last-minute magic he wrought. Turner Fernisserer was painted, on a visit to London, by a Norwegian artist  with a very English name – Thomas Fearnley. He was a painter mainly of Romantic landscapes, and he owed his English name to a grandfather, also Thomas Fearnley, a merchant who emigrated from Canada to Norway. The painter Fearnley's brother was an astronomer, and his son founded a dynasty of shipping magnates. 
  Once again I salute you, Norway! 

Cookie

 Hatched on this day in 1933 was Cookie, the Pink Cockatoo, who was to achieve fame as the oldest living cockatoo and the oldest living parrot in the world. When he died in 2016, peacefully at home – the Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago – he had achieved the remarkable age of 83, and was the sole survivor from the zoo's original collection, formed in 1934. He was suffering from osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, the latter perhaps caused by his being fed only seeds for his first 40 years (as was then standard), and was living a quiet life in the zoo keeper's office, making public appearances only on special occasions, such as his annual birthday celebrations (no doubt that is a birthday cake in the picture above). In the 1950s Cookie had been introduced to a female bird of his own species, but he rejected her as she was 'not nice to him'. He was memorialised in a bronze sculpture at the zoo, which makes him look rather like a chicken – and a volume of poems for 'middle-grade children' by one Barbara Gregorich titled Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes. It does indeed.

At Last!

 I've often lamented the fact that Lichfield, a city whose parks and avenues are blessed with a glorious abundance of lime trees (currently in flower and smelling lovely), seems strangely devoid of any lime hawk moths. I seldom pass a lime tree at this time of year without checking out the trunk for newly emerged hawk moths, but I've never seen one here. Or rather I had never seen one – until yesterday, when I was walking with my cousin in the cathedral close, and suddenly, out of the blue, she spotted one, resting on a fence!  An exciting moment, and wholly unexpected, given my dismal record so far. It was a fine specimen, and obligingly stayed still while I took its photograph (above). So there are lime hawks in Lichfield after all – another reason to love the place...
  Meanwhile, my fancy birdsong identification app came up with a rogue reading the other day. Hearing a lusty song as I walked in the park, and not being able to see its source, I turned my phone towards the sound, and, after long deliberation, the app delivered its verdict: Bewick's Wren, a long-tailed wren native to western parts of North America and singularly ill equipped to fly across the Atlantic. Apparently the bird was named by Audubon in honour of his friend, the great engraver Thomas Bewick. My bird, I imagine, was the common or garden Eurasian Wren, which glories in the binomial Troglodytes troglodytes. 

Election Fever

 A week to go till polling day, and here in the City of Philosophers election fever is burning red hot. As I stroll its pleasant streets, I've been keeping a mental tally of all the election stickers I've seen in people's windows. The total so far is... one (for Labour). I've never known a pre-election period like this, so imbued with hopelessness and apathy – and a kind of cool, steady anger. Truly this is the Abstract Election – and, by happy chance, it's coinciding with an abstract soccer championship over in Germany, where Our Lads are pioneering Abstract Football, a form of soccer so abstracted that it amounts to little more than sketches of possibilities, rather in the manner of Cy Twombly at his most hesitant. Unfortunately they are up against players of Real Football. 
As for the election, I'm going to make one prediction: there will be more spoiled papers than ever before in any general election. This will probably be the most significant statistic, though it's unlikely to attract much notice. 

In the Attic

 A browse in Donald Justice's Collected Poems seldom goes unrewarded. The other day I happened on this one. Perhaps it caught my eye because I had that day been obliged to climb up to my own attic (a far from poetical experience). 
  It's a poem suffused with the characteristic Justice mood of bittersweet (more sweet than bitter) nostalgic melancholy... 

In the Attic

There's a half hour toward dusk when flies,
Trapped by the summer screens, expire
Musically in the dust of sills;
And ceilings slope toward remembrance.

The same crimson afternoons expire
Over the same few rooftops repeatedly;
Only, being stored up for remembrance,
They somehow escape the ordinary.

Childhood is like that, repeatedly
Lost in the very longueurs it redeems.
One forgets how small and ordinary
The world looked once by dusklight from above...

But not the moment which redeems
The drowsy aria of the flies – 
And the chin settles onto palms above
Numbed elbows propped on rotting sills.

This apparently artless little poem achieves its effect through a complex pattern of repeated words (eight in all) at the end of lines: I make it 1234 2536 5768 7183. 
The poem is suffused too with a particular quality of light  – something Justice, a very painterly poet, is particularly strong on. Indeed it is the opening theme of one of the last, and most beautiful, poems he wrote. I've posted it here before, but it's a poem that bears returning to, again and again. It is, I think, one of the great short poems of the twentieth century:

1 
There is a gold light in certain old paintings
That represents a diffusion of sunlight.
It is like happiness, when we are happy.
It comes from everywhere and nowhere at once, this light,
  And the poor soldiers sprawled at the foot of the cross
  Share in its charity equally with the cross.

2
Orpheus hesitated beside the black river.
With so much to look forward to he looked back.
We think he sang then, but the song is lost.
At least he had seen once more the beloved back.
  I say the song went this way: O prolong
  Now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong.

3
The world is very dusty, uncle. Let us work.
One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good.
The orchard will bloom; someone will play the guitar.
Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good.
  And all that we suffered through having existed
  Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed.

'Its notes are deep & sweet'

 I've been deriving a good deal of innocent pleasure from an 'app' I recently acquired that identifies bird song. You point it in the direction of the bird, touch the Record button for a few seconds (ten or so usually does the job), wait another few seconds, and back will come the name of the bird whose song you've recorded. On my walk the other day, I was crossing a field when I heard a bird giving its all in a wonderfully musical, free-ranging improvisation. Some kind of warbler, for sure – but which of that numerous tribe? I employed the app, and soon had the answer – it was a Blackcap, a bird whose song Gilbert White aptly described as 'full, sweet, deep, loud and wild'. In his journal for May 19th, 1770, he notes: 'Black-cap sings sweetly, but rather inwardly: it is a songster of the first rate.  Its notes are deep & sweet.  Called in Norfolk the mock nightingale [and more widely, today, the northern nightingale].' A songster of the first rate, indeed...
  The next day, in the local park, I (or rather my app) identified another Blackcap, and today, a little farther afield, a Common Whitethroat (a species first differentiated from the Lesser Whitethroat by Gilbert White). Its chattering song took me back to summer days walking on the Surrey downs and hills – one of the few things I miss from my previous life 'down south', especially in the butterfly season.