Fed by Birds

The best thing about London is that, even if you've lived there nearly your whole life, if you start off walking down obscure backstreets you are guaranteed to come across strange and interesting stuff you have never seen before. Wandering down tiny streets in Westminster, for instance, I went past this shop supplying chasubles and albs to the clergy, with window displays I found fascinating.

What is an alb, anyway? They're quite expensive. And being a godless heathen I had no idea communion wine was non-alcoholic. What a swizz.

Then I turned a corner and came on a well-stocked Oxfam bookshop, where I found what I can tell already is going to be an excellent read:

First page: "I have milked a mammoth [what?]... and christened an electric rabbit with a jeroboam of Lanson 1912... I won five pounds from Lord Birkenhead when he bet that Cleopatra was a brunette."

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The BBC has just put up a selection of recordings of suffragettes from its archives. Many of these were interviews in the Fifties and Sixties for programmes such as Woman's Hour, which ran a piece on the collection today. Dame Ethel Smyth remembers a window-smashing campaign with great relish: "Mrs Pankhurst was not a cricketer," she observes ruefully, of the suffragette leader missing the window of number 10. Schoolgirl Winifred Starbuck talks about pupils running wild in support of an imprisoned teacher. Many describe the horrors of their treatment in Holloway: one recalls the constant "awful sound of the choking of women" as they were forcibly fed.

Most fascinating is dancer Lilian Lenton (below): "My speciality was escapes." She was known as the tiny Pimpernel for her frequent dodging of the police who were set to watch her: her schemes included dressing up as an errand boy, and one very elaborate plot involving the scattering of 50 veiled accomplices. She also seems to have been a keen arsonist.

(Radio Times image from here)

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A sweet teach-yourself guide to painting flowers from 1818 by George Brookshaw, published online in its entirety by the University of Wisconsin.

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Here are a few sounds recorded on the Cote Basque last week.

The waves breaking on a long sandy beach, with a husky-voiced Frenchman of a certain age chatting to his friend on the sea wall:

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Corks popping and cutlery clinking as people eat their lunch in the cafes in the square:

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Church bells floating across the water, boats chugging past, and a bit of flirting on the quayside:

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And the harbour in the middle of the night - tied-up boats making a strange ringing sound, and a fishing vessel bringing its catch into the small docks:

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The Museum of British Folklore looks intriguing, although still in its early stages.

And it's now touring the country, in a very attractive caravan, inspired by a book that I've admired before.

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Back from the Cote Basque, where one shop has found the ultimate window display for enticing the ladies inside: a little black dress, covered with macarons.

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