Fed by Birds

I came across these pictures of a visit to the abandoned Ness Battery on Orkney at BBC Scotland's Island Blogging section. Blogger Stromness Dragon and a group of artists got to go inside this crumbling WWI military installation, where, among the rusty sheds and concrete bunkers, they came across these extraordinary paintings all over the walls of the mess hall, possibly done by the soldiers, depicting Arcadian scenes of rural English life: children in a forest, a gypsy caravan, a pub, a tea shop. The BBC Scotland site seems to be defunct now, but you can follow Stromness Dragon and the further story of the Battery here.

Posted by at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Say what you like about the French Revolution, they knew how to invent a calendar. Today is Primevère, or Primrose, the first day of Germinal. I look forward to Hen, Bee and Lettuce.

(Picture from The Flowers of Milton by Jane Giraud in the NYPL.)

Posted by at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ronald Searle is 90 this week and to celebrate, the Chris Beetles gallery in St James's in London is showing an exhibition of his work, from rum adverts to Molesworth. Go if you can: you can only really see the beautiful intricacy of his illustrations when they're full size.

If you want to see more, there's another exhibition at the Cartoon Museum until July.

Posted by at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Popular Science has put its 137-year archive online (found via BibliOdyssey), which means hours of harmless fun searching for old pictures of space travel for us all. This February 1920 edition features some very of-their-time issues:

But what I'm really fascinated by, among all the cures for bow-leggedness and stammers, are the many ads for money-making schemes, which have some excellent career suggestions:

You can also find Big Profits in Vulcanizing, and Get Bigger Pay through Electricity. Most promising of all is The Police Key, which "opens almost everything". "Every householder should have one", they innocently suggest.

Posted by at 12:58 PM | Permalink