My morning walk to the station: a photographic diptych

Portrait I

Few things in our tiny lives are certain, but this is. No hamster cage was ever abandoned in happy circumstances. Pain and sorrow always go before.

Part II

Nothing says school's out for summer like deserted tennis courts and an empty cider bottle.

Well, it doesn't feel very lucky

I was sitting on the grass outside the Tate Modern at lunchtime, with my book, looking at one of my fellow al fresco readers.

I was thinking how, with her copy of Daphne Du Maurier's The Birds and her empty packet of chicken sandwich, she was pretty much asking to be attacked by pigeons.

Five minutes later, it was I who had been ornithologically shat on, both literally and metaphorically.

That's showbiz, as Alfred Hitchcock would almost certainly not have said.

And now… some music

It seems like there are a lot of RIPs to be said at the moment. Today, it's for Ellie Greenwich, who co-wrote this:

And this:

Oh, and she produced this:

And all that – which is barely a fraction of it – makes her one hell of a gal in my book.

The Italian Shetland

Oh Strictly Come Dancing. My beloved Strictly, what have they done to you? I am cradling your broken form in my arms. Over these past few months, I've watched as the fire in your eyes faded to glowing embers. I've prayed for the day that you would rally.

That day = not today.

We knew the budget cuts were biting. We knew this. We knew that Bruce Forsyth's salary had been cut by 25% and that somewhere in Surrey there is a golf caddy facing up to a chill winter of redundancy. But vraiment, this is Thrifty Come Dancing. This year, more than any other, you would be met by an awful lot of blank faces if you went vox-popping in a shopping centre (vox pops must always happen in a shopping centre, it is the Law Of Vox Pops) with the contestants' photos and held them up in front of the Great British Public. My own Strictly-watching cabal, as media-literate and TV-savvy as they are, could only respond with an indignant WHO? (their caps) to about 40% of the celebrities on The List.

In the past, I may have asserted that the line-up of Strictly is not that important. It is all about the soap opera, and the appropriate shapes simply slot into the gaps in the puzzle. Someone is always Sue-Ellen Ewing. Someone is always Kirby Colby. Now I'm not so sure. God, Strictly, I'm tired. I'm just. So. Tired.

It makes me tired to think of these things:

[Deep sigh] Footballers' Wives actresses Leila Rouass and Zoe Lucker pitched against each other in some clumsily orchestrated Battle Of The Bitches.

[Weary voice, but still getting off on it a little bit] Rav Wilding and Ricky Whittle having their own battle – of the Blandly Buff Physiques; kissing their 'guns'; making pistol hands at each other through the camera lens.

[Definitely not getting off at all on this] Tess Daly leering long and loud over RW & RW (above).

[Unattractive smart-assness] How long is it before Rav or Ricky waggishly incorporates 'the caterpillar' into a dance routine and their partners have to paint on a smile and say 'He really wanted to have an input into the routine so he bought in one of his own moves. WHICH I HATE.'

[Lazy grumble] The tireless stream of police puns pouring forth when Rav is being introduced. I can't even bring myself to think of any.

[Unpleasantly supercilious piece of premature judgement] Ali Bastian is this year's Rachel Stevens. Sweet, highly competent but…

[Whiney carping] If they wanted to avoid another John Sargeant scenario, they should maybe have thought twice about booking Phil Tufnell.

[Tennis-related griping] Martina Hingis is in it. Monica Seles did Dancing With The Stars. She didn't stay in long, but it was properly touching to see her getting excited about putting on ludicrous dresses and attempting to recreate a sense of the Prom, which she had never been to in her school days, since she was probably playing in the final of the US Open, and anyway she had spent about 85% of her life in sportswear. For lots of reasons, Martina Hingis is not Monica Seles.

[Lamely misfiring wordplay] One of the contestants is, like, practically called Jaded.

But wait. Wait. Who is that riding over the Saturday teatime hill to save us? Oh, it's just a child on a Shetland pony. NO IT ISN'T. It's pocket rocket Vincent Simone! And Good Egg (in the Jones Egg Box, at least) Natalie Cassidy. And Vincent's eyebrows!

Look! Just look! He has either spent two thirds of 2009 in a home gym intensively working out those facial muscles, surrounded by inspiring pictures of Roger Moore, with sweat pouring off his face like the end of Airplane! – or he has had some kind of pioneering eyebrowplasty. Either way, he is magnifico.

This blog is not done with Vincent's eyebrows. Not nearly.

Postcards from the weekend

I found this card tucked into the top of my seat at the Proms on Friday…

I'm in the slow readers' group when it comes to classical music. I don't know a lot. Although I know you're not meant to clap between movements of a symphony as this is a time that is reserved for coughing. I also know that I do not want classical music to be sexed up, solely to pique my interest further. But superheroed up, Lichtenstein-style? Oh yes.

Then there's this card that I found at Tea & Make, a cool craft event in south-east London full of idiosyncratic, wildly creative, quirkily stylish people – the kind I am constantly and disappointingly rediscovering I don't quite fit in with, instead having to content myself with throwing money at their work to try to make them like me, like some bloated Renaissance patron.

The Storkupine is part of a set of amazing animal hybrid creations from Garudio Studiage that also includes, among others, The Badgerigar, The Puffalo and The Stagpie. I like the fact you could tell a small child that this was a real creature that once walked the earth, before evolution dealt it a fatal blow, and they would totally believe you.

Dictionary corner part 836

By popular demand – and by that I mean at least three people, admittedly one of whom is me – I am turning again to the edifying illustrations of the Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary.

We'll save the diagrams of the Slaughterhouse (Abbatoir) and Machine Tools part 1 and 2 for a rainy day, and instead plump for a subject that is vaguely topical but still about a month behind everyone else – a position I frequently find myself in – with a celebration of the moon landings.

The most illuminating parts of this illustration are obviously no 15: piece of rock, no 40: window, and no 21: access flap, named with intriguing vagueness given its location just below the groin department. There is a further access flap for the 'purge valve'. What is this for? I don't know, but it suggests that the extreme pressure of being a really big deal in space travel may lead to an unhealthy relationship with one's freeze-dried dinner.

You can click on the image to make it bigger. I only recently discovered this. We are on a journey, you and I. Another journey I am on is trying to scan things squarely, but I'm not expecting to arrive at that destination any time soon.

Dealbreakers

Maybe there are certain traits that you so detest in other people that you simply cannot stand anyone in possession of them, even if that person is otherwise pretty much perfect. Maybe it's their political leaning. Maybe it's their starsign. Maybe it's their fondness for, say, Bryan Adams. (I love Bryan Adams. I'm sorry if that means it's the end for us.) Maybe it's someone who takes their unopened wine home again after a party.

At the weekend I discovered a new one for my own dossier of dealbreakers. Someone who haggles in a charity shop.

Here is the scene that played out across the glass-topped counter:

Softly spoken charity shop worker: That will be £15.97 please.

Angry joyless customer: So we'll call it £15 then, yeah?

SSCSW: No, it's £15.97.

AJC: Yeah, so we'll just round it down to £15, shall we?

SSCSW: No, it's £15.97. It's for charity.

AJC: [Now particularly angry and joyless] YOUR ATTITUDE STINKS.

I gave him the Jones Family Withering Look. It didn't really help.