Thursday 22 October 2009

Christmas keeps on getting earlier

Despite the postal strike, which I fully support (damn you Mandelson, you sounded almost like a Labour Party minister for a few weeks, but bad will out), I've received a couple of interesting things - a photographic (stressing the graphic) catalogue of Eric Gill's sculptures and engravings (ranging literally from the sacred to the profane, with a fair amount of crossover), the new Kings of Convenience album and Yo La Tengo's Popular Songs. I'll listen to it once I manage to stop playing Nancy Elizabeth's Wrought Iron, which is a more sensual cousin of P J Harvey's bleakly beautiful White Chalk.

I also accidentally bought a couple of books in Manchester yesterday - Amis's Money (for work purposes) and the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, which is fascinating though rather venerable, having been published in 1951.

1 comment:

Benjamin Judge said...

Is that the Iona and Peter Opie one? I've got a copy of that. It is great but you do find yourself thinking "no, no, no, it's..."

I suppose it is all down to regional variation on what are essentially part of the last great European oral tradition - the schoolyard chant.