Favourite Quotes - John Ruskin

John Ruskin by Millais

“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting alot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.

"Keep nothing in your houses you don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful"

There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.

Thomas Miller Carol Service 2018 and the City

Thomas Miller Carol Service at St Katerine Cree Church

The Thomas Miller Carol Service was held at St Katerine Cree Church on 11th December 2018 and was attended by many of the present staff as well as a number of retirees.

The City has changed much since last year as vast offices go up. Here are a few photos showing the scale of the new buildings.

The view from our office at 90 Fenchurch St. The building on the right is where our old building once stood. 

The Gherkin and the Aviva Building on St Mary Axe.

The Willis Building and Lloyd's

Lime St with the 'Walkie-Talkie' building at the end

Favourite Poems - A Shropshire Lad

Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

AE Houseman

'Pity the Nation' - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Favourite Poems - The Wound in Time

Pages of the Sea practice at Lyme Regis the day before Remembrance Sunday 11th November 2018. 

THE WOUND IN TIME

It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides,
Not the war to end all wars; death’s birthing place;
the earth nursing its ticking metal eggs, hatching
new carnage. But how could you know, brave
as belief as you boarded the boats, singing?
The end of God in the poisonous, shrapneled air.
Poetry gargling its own blood. We sense it was love
you gave your world for; the town squares silent,
awaiting their cenotaphs. What happened next?
War. And after that? War. And now? War. War.
History might as well be water, chastising this shore;
for we learn nothing from your endless sacrifice.
Your faces drowning in the pages of the sea.

chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it.

Carol Ann Duffy, 2018

Favourite Paintings - Remedios Varo 1908 - 1963

Microcosm 1939

Mimesis 1960

Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst 1961

The Call 1961

I have always loved Remedios Varo's work since discovering her surreal world in the 1980s. She studied at the same school as Dali, and was influenced by Bosch and Goya but her paintings have a strongly feminine character.  Her later work, particularly in the 1960s, is the most assured and interesting but the subject matter, style and colouring scarcely change over the last thirty years of her life.


For more paintings, click here

Her work reminds me of these beautiful words by Edith Wharton.

See also the remarkable Hilma af klint

Favourite Gardens - The Last of The Buildings - October 2018

The Buildings, Broughton, is a superb garden designed and maintained by Gillian Pugh and is the subject of several posts here as well as being the inspiration for the grass garden at Old Swan House.
They are moving house shortly and so this great garden will soon be gone or at least irreparably altered. Fortunately, her son-in-law, Ed Crispin, has made a book of photos of the garden taken in all seasons that beautifully illustrate the ethereal effects and astonishing beauty that she has created.

See also The Buildings in Autumn 
The Buildings, Sept 2014
Favourite Gardens - The Buildings, Broughton