June Gleanings

I find it some consolation that whatever indignities the Catholic Church has suffered in recent years, it retains its pre-eminence in the art of casuistry. (Letter in The Times from Sir Richard Stagg about the Prime Minister’s marriage at Westminster Cathedral)

10th September 2012. The idea of His Blondness with a finger on the nuclear button scares the shit out of me; it also scares the shit out of me that people don’t see him as the calculating machine he really is. This is a man who has no obvious political identity or any proven ability to grasp difficult questions and decisions, there is always someone behind the scenes doing it for him, as with all his election campaigns. He has never shown any loyalty to his party or to his government, only ever to himself.(Diary of an MP’s Wife, Sasha Swire)

… a long-drawn sunset was splintering up into a thousand fires, and the radiance caught the sail of a catboat as it beat out through the channel between the Lime Rock and the shore. (The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton)

Our talk made me think of the fate of the gigolo husbands, the one who wed Judy Garland, and others. The biographer who passes through the pearly gates and has to face up to his subjects – it would have to be Shakespeare meeting Richard III – something like that. (I couldn’t cope with it.) (Malice in Wonderland, My Adventures in the World of Cecil Beaton, Hugo Vickers)

John contorted his face and looked like an oyster squirted with lemon. (Cecil Beaton on John Gielgud)

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth…fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober. (Complete Essays, Montaigne)

You are the Leavers! In a month or two you will go on to Great Public Schools, away from this warm cosy little establishment. Ah now … Before I forget, Mrs Noah and I will be pleased to see you all for tea on Sunday. A trifling matter of anchovy paste sandwiches. All come with clean fingernails, no boy to put butter on his hair. We had that trouble with the native regiments. They licked down their hair with butter. It went rancid in the hot weather. Unpleasant odour on parade. There’s no law against a drop of water on the comb. Now … What was I going to tell you? (A Voyage Round My Father, John Mortimer; in which his prep school headmaster explains the Facts of Life)

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing. ( Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s Controller-General of Finances)

At this time of year, fragrant flowers like sweet peas and roses fill the air with scent, telling pollinators when each bloom is ready, and helping them  to distinguish between species. Roses and sweet peas emit compound molecules detectable by human noses at extremely low concentrations, making them smell strong to us but, unlike the rose, sweet pea’s odorants cannot be successfully extracted, making their true fragrance impossible to produce commercially. (Nature Notes in The Times, Melissa Harrison)

Sweet Pea – A delicate floral Sweet Pea fragrance with added fruity notes of melon, apple and garden greenery, all gently rested on a sweet powdery musky base. (Sweet pea fragrance oil, £8.95 / 100 ml, Craftovator.co.uk)