Hector Acebes Portraits in Africa 1948 to 1953

Eiji Tsuburaya 円谷 英二 (1901-70) Ultraman 初代ウルトラマン (1966-7)

Andreas Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1660

Troubled Eden, Don McCullin, 2005

Bae Doona as Park Namjoo, The Host 2006 (Gwoemul 괴물)

Cote d'Ivoire Crisis

The Feast of Trimalchio, Wheelchair bliss

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris & London, 1933

  “…. twenty years ago the London working classes habitually used the word 'bloody'. Now they have abandoned it utterly, though novelists still represent them as using it. No born Londoner (it is different with people of Scotch or Irish origin) now says 'bloody', unless he is a man of some education. The word has, in fact, moved up in the social scale and ceased to be a swear word for the purposes of the working classes. The current London adjective, now tacked on to every noun, is fuck. No doubt in time fuck, like bloody, will find its way into the drawing-room and be replaced by some other word.

The whole business of swearing, especially English swearing, is mysterious. Of its very nature swearing is as irrational. The indeed, it is a species of magic. But there is also a paradox about it, namely this: Our intention in swearing is to shock and wound, which we do by mentioning something that should be kept secret--usually something to do with the sexual functions. But the strange thing is that when a word is well established as a swear word, it seems to lose its original meaning; that is, it loses the thing that made it into a swear word. A word becomes an oath because it means a certain thing, and, because it has become an oath, it ceases to mean that thing. For example fuck. ...."

Jane Birkin's English Bull

Eric Elmosnino is awkwardly
elegant and louche as Serge Gainsbourg
in the appropriately titled Gainsbourg (2010)  There is more than a suggestion of Rowan Atkinson’s Bean as he shyly or slyly sips a cocktail. Like Gainsbourg, I fell in love with Jane Birkin’s Engish bull.

Une servante, sans vous dire un mot, vous précède

Des escaliers, des couloirs sans fin se succèdent

Décorés de bronzes baroques, d'anges dorés,

D'Aphrodites et de Salomés.

Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the Speckled Band, The Hideous & Distorted Child (1892)

“…. A moment later we were out on the dark road, a chill wind blowing in our faces, and one yellow light twinkling in front of us through the gloom to guide us on our sombre errand.

     There was little difficulty in entering the grounds, for unrepaired breaches gaped in the old park wall.  Making our way among the trees, we reached the lawn, crossed it, and were about to enter through the window when out from a clump of laurel bushes there darted what seemed to be a hideous and distorted child, who threw itself upon the grass with writhing limbs and then ran swiftly across the lawn into the darkness.

     "My God!" I whispered; "did you see it?"

     Holmes was for the moment as startled as I.  His hand closed like a vise

upon my wrist in his agitation. ….”