The Hammock Papers

The King's College Choir performs ...

An excellent movie ... Resurrect The Chowder Society!

A little toddy the body ...

It's sandwich time.

Oh, the times, they have changed ... Can you imagine if this happened today?  The tears?  The screaming? How quickly it would end, once some...

Today's destination takes us through wintery snowscapes towards "The Waltz of the Snowflakes" from Tchaikovsky's ballet, ...

In the Autumn of 1984, I went alone to see a movie that changed my life ... To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman m...

Drink a pot of ale, eat a scoop of Stilton every day, you will make "old bones." Nineteenth-century saying

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value ...

 The King's College Choir performs ...

Giacomo Puccini was born on this date in 1858. Elina Garanca and some other people perform "Vissi d'arte," from Tosca ......

When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat;...

An excellent album ... Prepare Ye!

Duke covers it masterfully ... 

I see a small white chalet with a garden near the pine forests. I see it all very simple, with big white china stoves and a very pleasant wo...

An excellent book ... In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows. In my mind are all the halls, the endless pro...

MUM'S BLUE CHEESE DIP For a festive afternoon's-worth of family snacking ... 2 8-ounce packages Philadelphia cream cheese 4 cups May...

Thomson, Moonlight , 1916 AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate ...

Wyeth, North Light , 1996 Let there be a cottage, a real cottage, a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a...

Where are the prophets?   Where are the poets?   Where are the visionaries?

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

There's never a dull moment between me and the bone.

An excellent book ...

Poortvliet, Hare , 1976 Look up at the miracle of the falling snow, - the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transfor...

My Mum instilled in me an appreciation for books and reading, art, music, and stillness. She taught me how to cook. She lived the importance...

Alan Parsons was born on this day in 1948. The Alan Parsons Symphonic Project, "What Goes Up" ...

An excellent album ...

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper pric...

Charles Dickens published  A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas on this day in 1843. The full text is HERE . Neil Gaiman reads fro...

Mrs. Crocombe of Audley End House demonstrates plum pudding ...

Firchau, Rain Shadow , 2013 Life's biggest tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. Benjamin Franklin For best results ......

BostonReview asks, "To whom does the world belong?" ... AI developers will doubtless argue that they need to be able to exploit t...

Stieler, Beethoven with the Manuscript for Missa Solemnis (detail), 1820 To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is ...

Paul Simonon was born on this day in 1955. Clash, "Clampdown"

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, We have come to our real work, And when we no longer know which way to go, We have begun o...

Once considered so valuable to Jews in Eastern and Central Europe as a critical cooking fat, schmaltz was stored in vessels secured with pad...

Kurt reminds me of the book my Pop was reading when he passed ... Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the ...

Caldecott, The Yule Log , 1886 An Oyster Months-approved songbook of Yuletide drones and dirges ... The pitchy gloom without makes the heart...

Romney, Portrait of Emma Hart, later Lady Hamilton , 1786 George Romney was born on this day in 1734.

A excellent book ...