Swinging!

Scilla peruviana (again) - on full breathtaking display [click to embiggen]

The first sunny day since we've been back, and it was inevitable that I'd spend it in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers! We now have two sets of display shelves - and each needed a bit of propping-up to avoid them shifting on our uneven, sloping paving, so all the pots needed to come off. Then came the job of gathering up the plants again (and more), to arrange them on and around the shelving for maximum display and to disguise the edges. At each turn, the crud and litter (mainly from the bastard weed trees) had to be cleared [as did the pots/troughs of spent daffs and the dead wallflowers and tulips, to be replaced with the foxgloves, the first of which I potted-up] - and several plants needed potting on/refreshed compost as I went along. Needless to say, I'm aching...

What finer tonic could there be after all that, than a trip into the heart of Swinging Soho - courtesy of the ever-marvellous Soft Tempo Lounge?

Soft Tempo Lounge - London Chic '67

Ah, that's better.

[Music: Polish Radio Orchestra - My Girl, Suzy; Original film: Swinging Britain in the 60s: A Psychedelic Dream (1967) - British Pathé]

Did you miss me?

Yes, we're back in miserable, dank Blighty, after a wonderful week in the blazing sunshine of Benalmadena. Great friends, great food, booze, totty-spotting, banter, booze, lots of laughs, nights out in the sleazy environs of La Nogilera in Torremolinos and booze - business as usual, really!

Our journey out was knackering: only a meagre amount of sleep, and a taxi at 2.30am to catch a flight from Gatwick at the crack'o'doom - so much so that we didn't even go out on Saturday night - and our journey home from Luton airport was marred by the fact that there were no trains to London, so we ended up on a coach transfer to some god-forsaken hole (Hitchin) to get a connection. At least that train got us straight to Finsbury Park (nearer home than Kings Cross) - but there was no Piccadilly Line either, so we had to get a cab... None of that matters, of course, when the bit in the middle was such a joy!

But - what did we miss while we were on our week of hedonism? Well, there was a massive furore over that plague ship that needed to be evacuated after several passengers died of a Medieval disease; and it was a local elections wipeout for Labour, which has put PM Kier Starmer at risk of being ousted. Then there was the glittering Met Gala (now sponsored by the Google mafia Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez), the important scientific discovery that beer is good for you as it contains vitamins, the departure of Ted Turner for that great 24-hour-television-channel-in-the-sky - and the man who pulled a car using his penis, while on fire [I'm not making this up, you know]!

We also missed celebrating the 90th birthday of Engelbert Humperdinck, the 85th of Earth, Wind and Fire co-founder Philip Bailey, the 80ths of Sir David Suchet and Thelma Houston (and what would have been the 80th of Lesley Gore), the - gulp - 65ths of Jay Aston from Bucks Fizz and George Clooney...

...and Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday!

David Attenborough's Life of Birds - The Lyre Bird

But did we bring anything back for your delectation, dear reader?

This being a Tacky Music Monday, it could only be Spain's answer to Dame Shirl, the late, great Señorita Rocío Jurado, at her big-haired, OTT best!

Rocío Jurado - Como Una Ola

Is it good to be back?

NO!

El ritmo de la noche, sounds of fiesta

By the time you read this, dear reader - if ever you do, given yesterday's debacle - we should (hopefully) be just about landing in Malaga for another week of hedonism...

Here's a little variation on our usual theme of Vamos a la Playa to keep you entertained:

Loona - Vamos a la Playa

"Normal" service will be resumed, with any luck, in a week's time...

You and me can dance so free

Our Scilla peruviana ("Portuguese Squill") is stunning. [click to embiggen]

"Hooray, hooray, the first of May! Outdoor sex begins today."

In the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the daffs, tulips and primulas - as well as the cherry and apple blossoms in the neighbourhood - are over. The air is now scented with the intoxicating perfume of lilacs, jasmine, rowan and the last of the wallflowers. How does one adequately encapsulate the scents of Spring? The combination is simply divine.

To add to the uplifting mood, I'm counting down to the end of a particularly gruelling week - and tomorrow we're up in the deathly hours in order to get a taxi to Gatwick Airport, to catch our flight to Spain for a week's much-needed holiday! I have never needed a holiday this much [since the last one, of course 😎]!

Let's have something suitably Spanish to get the celebrations going, shall we - and who could be more appropriate than our Patron Saint of Plastic, Charo?!

¡Gracias Disco Es viernes!

Charo - Dance a Little Bit Closer

Have a great weekend, dear reader! We intend to.

---

STOP PRESS:

I don't know when - or even if - you will actually see this, dear reader, but I timed it to publish at 7.30am...and it is now 6.30pm and it still hasn't shown up! I hate the Google gnomes.

Of zoos, spider-divas, Southbank, salamanders, Cloris, dead beef, He-Man and 4 Non Blondes

A new Banksy artwork appeared overnight this week in the middle of St. James' in Mayfair, depicting a flag-bearing man, blinded by its material, about to fall off the edge of the plinth. [click any pic to embiggen]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• "Z" is for..? news: It was the 200th anniversary of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) - from where the word "zoo" originated - yesterday! Childhood memories [admittedly of its "sister" institution Bristol Zoo] abound...
• Does whatever a spider can? news: In the wake of the big-screen adaptation starring J-Lo that was a cinematic flop, a revival of the Kander and Ebb [with book by Terence McNally] musical Kiss of the Spider Woman is on a limited tour (Leicester, Bristol and Southampton), starring Anna-Jane Casey. Not London, dammit! Here, Miss Casey gives us a glimpse of her stage costumes:

Kiss of the Spider Woman revival - Anna-Jane Casey costume tour

• Makes you proud to be British news: It's the 75th anniversary of The Festival of Britain on 3rd May - and the Southbank Centre is launching a whole season of events to celebrate, involving some of the UK's greatest artistic talents such as Danny Boyle, Gareth Pugh, Anish Kapoor, Max Richter, Jacqueline Wilson and Quentin Blake, and international artists including Angelique Kidjo, Yuja Wang, and a West-Indian Steel Band Weekender!
• "You say Axolotl, I say what the fuck?" news: A critically endangered amphibian [that lives only in Lake Xochimilco near Mexico City in the wild], an axolotl salamander about the size of a domestic cat(!) was discovered by a young girl - living in a brook at Merthyr Mawr near Bridgend, South Wales! I wonder what the Welsh translation of "bloody enormous exotic amphibian" might sound like?

• Frau Blücher news: It's the centenary today of the birth of the faboo Cloris Leachman. All hail!
• Nostalgic dining news: And, so farewell Beefeater, the spiritual home of the steak & chips dinner, and Brewers Fayre, famous for its "Sunday Carvery". Owners Whitbread have announced the closure of their restaurant chains (with the loss of 3800 jobs) and plan instead to focus on their main Premier Inn hotels business.

• And finally: RIP Roger Sweet, creator of "He-Man" for Mattel [before the animated series]. That gives me the perfect excuse to revisit THIS:

He-Man - What's Up?

And I say, hey yeah yeah, hey yeah yeah
I said hey, what's going on?

Indeed. It's a mindfuck...

And the weather? Utterly glorious!

They drive an ice-cream van

Sharing the day with another panoply of "names" including Zizi Jeanmaire, William Randolph Hearst, Sir Thomas Beecham, Duke Ellington, Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, Leslie Jordan, Jeremy Thorpe, Uma Thurman, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Celeste Holm, Emperor Hirohito, Tammi Terrell, Andre Agassi, Lonnie Donegan, April Stevens, Baron Jacob Rothschild, Toots Thielemans, Professor Heinz Wolff, conductor Zubin Mehta (who is 90), Willie Nelson, Tommy James of The Shondells, Rod McKuen, Jerry Seinfeld, Jo O'Meara of S-Club 7 and - erm - Bernie Madoff...

...it's Bill Drummond's birthday today. Who? I hear you ask...

He was, of course, the co-founder of that most wonderfully loopy of late 80s/early 90s electro rave combos, The KLF!

I need no more perfect excuse (as if I would need one) to play this, their most completely off-the-wall hit that resurrected the career of a forgotten diva. I love it!

The KLF and Tammy Wynette - Justified and Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)

There never was anything like it before, and I very much doubt there'll ever be anything like it again.

Of course, owned by a real king

I told him my ballroom is a mile high just to see his face, says King

The King has admitted claiming to own a domed ballroom a mile high in conversation with Donald Trump to see his crestfallen reaction.

The president had taken the Royal party to see a hole which he was boasting would soon be an even greater ballroom than Hitler’s, when Charles replied ‘Of course, we have terrible issues rerouting planes around ours.’

The monarch continued: “You’d think the view would be wonderful a mile above London, but the diamond capstone on the top is actually in the stratosphere so it’s all clouds.

“Holds 1.7 million people, though it’s not been filled since George V’s inaugural ball because I’m afraid there aren’t enough aristocrats left. Nowadays we use its solid gold art deco interior for family get-togethers and charity events.

“It really is a magnificent edifice and, of course, owned by a real king. But yours sounds like it will be nice too. How large? 90,000 square feet? Ah, so the same size as the palace kennels.”

He added: “You should have seen his mean, crumpled face. He started bragging about 80s golfers’ dick sizes to recover, but of course Camilla has hands-on expertise there.”

Trump said: “I’ve checked on the internet and it’s all true. I fired the aide who told me it was AI.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.