Misc.

1. Sunday was ridiculously warm here. I went with Francesca and some nice Italians to what they say is the best icecream place. It was pretty good but the queues were long, and inside they had leaflets telling you the glycaemic index of all the flavours, which annoyed me. The Italians I was with seemed to think it wasn't the correct weather for icecream as the sun was making it melt.

2. I am working on Old English boundary clauses. From my window I can see S. Luca with its lit porticos snaking up one of the hills outside Bologna, and nearer to hand a large scooter park where Italian youths congregate of the evenings, but on my desk it's all about the coombes and lynchets of Wiltshire. Now, Old English boundary clauses are proper scholarship of the best precise antiquarian kind, and as such I constantly fluctuate between a strong affection for them and feelings of intense boredom and inadequacy. They do have their own dry poetry though. They describe the area of an estate by detailing the landmarks you'd follow to walk around it, and a lot of the time you go along the old way to the hoar oak, and from the hoar oak to the standing stone, and then down the valley to the fox stream, etc etc. On the Wiltshire chalklands the Anglo-Saxons were constantly encountering the marks of much older cultures, so a lot of mine involve going from the broken barrow to the stone circle to the earth fort along the old dyke, etc. There are also more grim markers like the gallows (literally villain's tree) stood on Wansdyke (Woden's dyke), and a murder quarry (morth crundel); and the oddest so far, the place where someone slew a man for his billy-goat. I intend to visit at least a few of these estates on foot, probably with my parents, in the hope that we'll be able to match up these old markers with modern features in some cases -- often the modern parish boundaries still follow estate bounds laid out over a thousand years ago. My dad is a proper forester and knows something about landscape, but still I can't help but feel that what's needed here is a national treasure.

3. Here is a picture of Figaro (Feegy for short) pretending to be a cushion on my sofa. I took several pictures without waking him. When I get in I shout out Ciao! and Giorgia and Federica shout Ciao! and Figaro goes Miao! and it sounds just like he's joining in. When I get a dog I might call her Bella and then when it's dinner time I could call out Chow Bella. That would make me happy every single time.



4. I've been listening to stuff while wrestling with the damnable boundaries and the exact difference between a coombe and dean. I downloaded all of Adam and Joe's old podcasts, including the ones where they talk about new music, which I didn't expect to like. It's been a long time since I got all excited about hearing new bands. (Indie bands, that is, not pop.) However, I have discovered some good stuff off that. There's a song called "Monster in a Shirt" by a band called Headland which sticks in my mind, and I keep going around singing dah dah dah dah dah, Monster in a Shirt, doodoo doodoo doodoo doodoo, Monster in a Shirt, because I can't remember any of the other lyrics. You can find a preview in itunes. Plus a rapper called Frazer is quite good and has a MySpace page with a fun James Bond thing on it and some more serious songs too. Also good, but from other sources, are Annie, whose fantastic Chewing Gum song is listenable for free on her myspace page, and Hercules and Love Affair. Here is the video to their single Blind, featuring Ray Winstone's daughter stumbling over some sort of ancient smokey orgy. It's like a disco-ier McAlmont and Butler, and the Hercules theme is good too. And Roisin Murphy's Modern Timing is brilliant. I got hold of it free quite legally somehow, I think by subscribing to a newsletter. I do think she'd do better commercially if she didn't wear such ridiculous hats.
Róisín Murphy – Modern Timing

I do like Adam and Joe, they're quite funny. Other good podcasts include some ancient American radio adventures of Hercule Poirot (Zis is... muerder! musical sting); poor old Stephen Fry feeling utterly miserable about his arm; and the BBC radio 4 news quiz podcast. Also on Radio 4 but not as a podcast is a good thing with Bill Bailey called the Museum of Curiosities. I don't think the first episode is up any more, but it had Brian Blessed on shouting about yetis, which was pretty unique. I quite like Russell Brand, reluctantly, but I can't believe his predictably sex-obsessed podcast is from Radio 2! Does Wogan use the same microphone? I'm not so keen on both "Collings and Herrin" and Ricky Gervais for the same reason, which is that they seem to score off other people as part of an ego-bolstering thing.