A lazy, day-off summer mixtape...

Merry Christmas!

illustration by Maurice Sendak
(click to see full size)

Christmas Oddities

As much as I like watching traditional Christmas movies, sometimes I'm in the mood for something a little weirder. Presented for your viewing pleasure, one of my favorite unusual holiday offerings:

The BAFTA and Oscar winning Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life (1993) is a strange little mashup of Kafka's Metamorphosis and Frank Capra's holiday classic. Directed by Peter Capaldi (the current Doctor Who), starring Richard E. Grant, and costumed by Monty Python contributor Hazel Pethig, it makes for darkly funny December viewing.

Giving Thanks

Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)

Because I have two countries, I have the odd privilege of feeling very British on Independence Day and very American on Thanksgiving. I love that Thanksgiving isn't about anything you can buy, simply gratitude and time spent with those you love. Some of my most favorite Thanksgivings were spent far away from the US, cooking and baking and sharing with friends.

Here's my usual annual Thanksgiving mixtape, slightly edited. Enjoy it while you're baking, or eating, or just feeling thankful:

November

I've been reading a lot of poetry with my grandma lately. Here are some of her favorites for November:

portrait of Thomas Hood, artist unknown

No! (November) by Thomas Hood

    No sun—no moon!
        No morn—no noon—
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day—
        No sky—no earthly view—
        No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no “t’other side the way”—
        No end to any Row—
        No indications where the Crescents go—
        No top to any steeple—
No recognitions of familiar people—
        No courtesies for showing ‘em—
        No knowing ‘em!
No traveling at all—no locomotion,
No inkling of the way—no notion—
        “No go”—by land or ocean—
        No mail—no post—
        No news from any foreign coast—
No Park—no Ring—no afternoon gentility—
        No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
   No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
        November!

unfinished portrait of Christina Rossetti by John Brett

Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

portrait of Lord Tennyson by Alice Hambidge

The Brook by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

 I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow. 

 I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows. 

 I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

Treats or Tricks...

(illustration by Adrienne Adams)

Happy Halloween!

More Music for Halloween

Illustration from A Woggle of Witches by Adrienne Adams (1971)

A virtual mixtape of spooky music for you (listen to last year's mix here):