Tuesday 20 November 2012

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Smallholder.



'Zeta' our late and great Border Collie posing for a photograph one Christmas morn.  The dogs always get adorned with tinsel on Christmas Day.    I named her 'Zeta' after Catherine Zeta Jones.  Because she was so beautiful.  I think our 'Zeta' was part human.  She was an amazing canine pal.  God bless Zeta.
Do you like my play on the idiom:  'Beauty Is in the eye of the beholder'?   Apparently (I looked it up) an idiom, is a form of phrase or expression that is peculiar to a language and (yawn) approved by the uses of that language, and its often got a signification other than its logical or grammar one.  Do you follow me?  Can you explain it to me then?

Any road.  The idiom (I like English Idioms) 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' was penned by a West Cork native:  Margaret Wolfe Hungerford in her novel 'Molly Bawn' which was published in 1878.  She was born in Roscarberry which is near Clonakilty and not far from Drombeg Stone Circle.  One of my favourites 'Free' and sacred places to visit in Ireland.   To use Michael Caine's catchphrase:

"Not many people know that."

See You Later.


12 comments:

  1. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" was the awful song from one of my fav disastermovies AIRPORT 77
    It was crooned by the blind (geddit>?)piano player (tom Chambers) who fancied Kathleen Quinlan..... he got crushed to death by the piano!
    hey ho

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  2. Yes, I think beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

    I love to see the mountains in winter, and a stormy seascape, really majestic; but some people don't see these things the same way.

    Handsome Border Collie as well, our local breed, usually very intelligent and easy to work with, an education to see them fetching sheep down from the fells.

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  3. Hi John, Was Airport 77 the inspiration for the Airplane film with the great Leslie Nielson? Imagined getting crushed by a piano.

    Have you not looked up the poet RS Thomas on Google yet? He wrote some great poems about Wales and peasants and country people. Your recent funeral service post made me think of him.

    Thanks!!

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  4. Hi Cumbrian. They call them 'sheep dogs' in Ireland. There's a Cumbrian writer who is the author of a book called 'The Funny Farm and 'Sheepwrecked'. Think she's called: Jackie Moffat? Apologies if I spelt her name wrong.

    Wish I could paint those mountains in water and the stormy seascape. Its like living in a oil painting here in West Cork. I bet it his in Cumbria?

    Thanks Cumbrian.

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  5. Yes, I would love to have the talent and ability to capture some land/seascapes on canvas, photos are OK but don't portray the same sense of majesty.
    I think I could imagine there's places which make you feel like you're in an oil painting, be better with a few working horses and men though, a lot of our countryside gives an impression of desolation.

    We call them sheepdogs here as well, but there's so many now just kept as pets, they make good house companions.

    Another wild wet day here, keeps cold. Gammon on the menu today, but I can feel the pans of soup and hot-pots coming on.
    Raggy cat in and asleep on armchair this morning.

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  6. Hi Cumbrian, My old friend Pat is really into taking photographs. I just point my Argos digital camera and hope for the best.

    Think black and white photographs (Ealing Comedies especially) are brilliant for capturing and evoking wonderful scenes and memories. Music is another incredible medium that moves like water and does what it says in the Carlsberg adverts:

    "Refreshes the parts that other beers can't reach."

    Do you do much writing Cumbrian? I ask that because you write (paint) such wonderful word pictures. I love creative writing and I swear by community arts. We have all got gifts and we should encourage each other to use them. I think allotments are art and the gardener and nature paint the picture with the seasons and spades and forks.

    Zeta was amazing. Almost human. She would sit at Pelican crossings and wait for the green man and the music to beep. She would eat a packet (we had to open it) of crisps ever so daintly and lady like, taking one crisp out at a time. Jean (missus) would hold a ice cream in her hand and Zeta would lick it. We had to spell the words 'out' and 'lead':

    "O-U-T"
    and

    "L-e-a-d"

    Or all hell would let loose.

    Zeta was like another child and we miss her very much. They do make good house companions. I have also heard of them being used for 'comfort dogs' in hospitals and old folks homes. Making some poor old souls day. I hate it when you hear people say that animals don't go to heaven.

    The veg plot and fields are saturated and I can't get on the land.

    Stews, soup, hot-pots and Gammon are what you need this weather.

    Thanks Cumbrian.

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  7. Yes, the Argos digital, probably the same as mine? Canon A140 Power-shot? Almost idiot-proof, I can use about 15% of the functions. But it takes the pictures I want and the little didgerry-do thingy puts them into my computer OK, so what more could I really want?
    I got it as a replacement for the older (even more idiot-proof) one that was stolen along with a few other things including the Karrimor back-pack we used to hang on the back of Mrs wheelchair, some arse-hole swiped it (I could make a case for chopping a hand off) from the wheelchair. So instead of money, the insurance company (they were very good about it) sent me vouchers to buy the equivalent camera from Argos, just the model I had was 2 years old and hopelessly out-dated, so I got the current model (about 18 months ago, it's probably hopelessly out-dated now) with all the wonderful functions I don't understand and will never be used unless I lend it to somebody under the age of about 25.
    Maybe one day I will be granted 5 minutes in a boxing ring with the little shit who swiped it, but I doubt it. Failing that, I hope for the rest of his life, all his itches are really annoying and in places he can't reach. Or the next back-pack he swipes belongs to a 6' and 24 stone bare-knuckle champion who catches him red-handed.

    The limit of my writing is on screen, just blogs and e-mail correspondence. The art of letter-writing has just about died out, or at least changed so much.

    Often thought about writing a book, a biography type reflecting on the changes from the 1950 to present, just wish I'd kept diaries from all the years gone by, sure I'll have forgotten so much.
    But I doubt many people would want to read my ecollections and ramblings, everybody who's even remotely famous (or infamous) seems to have written their memoirs, so there's not much chance of a nobody adding anything of interest.

    Faired up a bit but still damp, grey, cold and windy.

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  8. Mine's a Praktika Digipix 524, Cumbrian. I asked the girl in Argos:

    "What film does it take?"

    Like you say:

    "They are idiot proof."

    Terrible to hear about the thief pinching the Karrimor backpack from your wife's wheelchair. What an horrible world we live in.

    You should write it down Cumbrian. Ask yourself a few questions, Why do I need to write it? Am I writing to make money, fame or something to leave for the grandchildren to read..?

    I write because I have a burning obsession to get my words down on paper or the Internet. Is it a local book? There are lots of local history publishers out there. Do you have any old photographs that can go in it? You could even publish it and some of the proceeds go to your favourite charity? You could even publish it on Kindle for free (like me) and people pay to download (or is it upload?)it. James Herriot wrote his novels about the Yorkshire Dales in the 1960's and he got a publisher who told him to change it to the the nineteen thirties. Hope I have inspired you Cumbrian. If you ever want me to read a bit just email me some. I live for writing.

    Dry at the moment but everywhere is wet through.

    Get writing Cumbrian.

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