Dress Like Amy Winehouse Day

In honour of the late songstress, I have declared next Saturday 30 July to be:

Dress Like Amy Winehouse Day

Everyone can take part, just pile on the eyeliner, backcomb your hair into a nice tall beehive and take to the streets.

I would love to see the streets of the world peopled with Amy Winehouses.

On the deaths of famous people, and other earth shattering events

Everyone of a certain age can remember where they were when they heard about the assassination of John F Kennedy. Americans of a similar age can remember clearly the night that the Beatles first played the Ed Sullivan Show. I am not of that age, nor even close (here's a hint, I was just six months old when John Lennon was gunned down in front of his home by Central Park).

This weekend has been marred by the deaths of two British greats - one a venerable old man, the other a fragile young woman. So to mark the occasion, I present a rundown of the events which have punctuated my own life.

April 1, 1990
The death of my grandfather, AE Weightman (writer, photographer, artist and teacher)
I had been out swimming with the children of some friends of my parents, and when I returned to their house to be picked up, the mother told me 'Your granddad has gone to Heaven'. I went outside and sat on the unmade road, and cried. I remember my sister coming to talk to me.

November 24, 1991
The death of Freddie Mercury. I was ironing in the lounge at Chapel House (google streetview below). I hadn't really got into Queen yet, but I knew somehow that it was important.


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April 10, 1994
A little belatedly, I found out about the death of Kurt Cobain, in a Sunday supplement in the frequent travellers lounge on a P&O ferry returning from France.

January 9, 1995
The death of Peter Cook. Found out this at my grandmother's house in Wigmore, Gillingham. The next day my friend and I spent the day in mournful rebellion at school.

March 5, 1995
The death of Vivian Stanshall. Found out on Teletext at Nana's house. He'd recently been burgled, which I thought was extra super sad.

August 9, 1995
The death of Jerry Garcia. I probably wouldn't remember this, but I was in Florida staying with a family of Christians. The son came out to the pool and said 'There's good news and bad news.' I said, give me the bad news first. 'The bad news is that Jerry Garcia is dead.' And the good news? 'Dinner's ready.'

August 31, 1997
The death of Princess Diana. In the days just before the widespread internet, I was at Slimelight when a rumour started to circulate that Princess Diana had died in a car crash, and so she had. Went to Macdonalds as usual in the morning, and was relieved to hear classical music all morning in her honour, not the usual pop shite.

September 11, 2001
9/11. Lazing around chez Mr Mole when his flatmate, the beautiful Celine came in to tell us to turn on the news. A crazy day, the sheer scale of what had happened was shocking.

July 7, 2005
The 7/7 bombings. Woke up with my flatmate Jess in the room telling me what had happened. She had been on her way to work at Liverpool Street when the buses were stopped. The rest of the people carried on walking in to work. Sensibly, she turned round and got back on a bus going the other way. Her boyfriend was behind the police cordon, but was safe. They were both OK and that was literally all I cared about.

June 25, 2009
The death of Michael Jackson. Cam had been out at his weekly roleplaying and his friend had had a message about Michael when they were walking home. I woke up and the news was displayed on the projector 'Michael Jackson, King of Pop, dies at 50'.

July 22, 2011
The death of Lucien Freud. I probably wouldn't have cared so much, but was on my way to life model for a group of artists at Art's Complex, one of whom has been described as a cross between Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. I read it on the BBC website while drinking my morning tea.

July 23, 2011
The death of Amy Winehouse. Casually glancing at the news after a visit to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and was stunned, not able to take it in. I so thought she was going to be OK.

The best thing I've read about Amy is this piece by Russell Brand.

Peace and Love.

The study of the 64 Arts

These are the sixty four arts to be studied in tandem with the Kama Sutra, and offer an excellent overview of the topics to be covered in this blog.

The following are the arts to be studied, together with the Kama Sutra:

1. Singing.
2. Playing on musical instruments.
3. Dancing.
4. Union of dancing, singing, and playing instrumental music.
5. Writing and drawing.
6. Tattooing.
7. Arraying and adorning an idol with rice and flowers.
8. Spreading and arraying beds or couches of flowers, or flowers upon the ground.
9. Colouring the teeth, garments, hair, nails, and bodies, i.e., staining, dyeing, colouring and painting the same.
10. Fixing stained glass into a floor.
11. The art of making beds, and spreading out carpets and cushions for reclining.
12. Playing on musical glasses filled with water.
13. Storing and accumulating water in aqueducts, cisterns and reservoirs.
14. Picture making, trimming and decorating.
15. Stringing of rosaries, necklaces, garlands and wreaths.
16. Binding of turbans and chaplets, and making crests and top-knots of flowers.
17. Scenic representations. Stage playing.
18. Art of making ear ornaments.
19. Art of preparing perfumes and odours.
20. Proper disposition of jewels and decorations, and adornment in dress.
21. Magic or sorcer
22. Quickness of hand or manual skill.
23. Culinary art, i.e., cooking and cookery.
24. Making lemonades, sherbets, acidulated drinks, and spirituous extracts with proper flavour and colour.
25. Tailor's work and sewing.
26. Making parrots, flowers, tufts, tassels, bunches, bosses, knobs, &c., out of yarn or thread.
27. Solution of riddles, enigmas, covert speeches, verbal puzzles and enigmatical questions.
28. A game, which consisted in repeating verses, and as one person finished, another person had to commence at once, repeating another verse, beginning with the same letter with which the last speaker's verse ended, whoever failed to repeat was considered to have lost, and to be subject to pay a forfeit or stake of some kind.
29. The art of mimicry or imitation.
30. Reading, including chanting and intoning.
31. Study of sentences difficult to pronounce. It is played as a game chiefly by women and children, and consists of a difficult sentence being given, and when repeated quickly, the words are often transposed or badly pronounced.
32. Practice with sword, single stick, quarter staff, and bow and arrow.
33. Drawing inferences, reasoning or inferring.
34. Carpentry, or the work of a carpenter.
35. Architecture, or the art of building.
36. Knowledge about gold and silver coins, and jewels and gems.
37. Chemistry and mineralogy.
38. Colouring jewels, gems and beads.
39. Knowledge of mines and quarries.
40. Gardening; knowledge of treating the diseases of trees and plants, of nourishing them, and determining their ages.
41. Art of cock fighting, quail fighting and ram fighting.
42. Art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak.
43. Art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of dressing the hair with unguents and perfumes and braiding it.
44. The art of understanding writing in cypher, and the writing of words in a peculiar way.
45. [25]The art of speaking by changing the forms of words. It is of various kinds. Some speak by changing the beginning and end of words, others by adding unnecessary letters between every syllable of a word, and so on.
46. Knowledge of language and of the vernacular dialects.
47. Art of making flower carriages.
48. Art of framing mystical diagrams, of addressing spells and charms, and binding armlets.
49. Mental exercises, such as completing stanzas or verses on receiving a part of them; or supplying one, two or three lines when the remaining lines are given indiscriminately from different verses, so as to make the whole an entire verse with regard to its meaning; or arranging the words of a verse written irregularly by separating the vowels from the consonants, or leaving them out altogether; or putting into verse or prose sentences represented by signs or symbols. There are many other such exercises.
50. Composing poems.
51. Knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies.
52. Knowledge of ways of changing and disguising the appearance of persons.
53. Knowledge of the art of changing the appearance of things, such as making cotton to appear as silk, coarse and common things to appear as fine and good.
54. Various ways of gambling.
55. Art of obtaining possession of the property of others by means of muntras or incantations.
56. Skill in youthful sports.
57. Knowledge of the rules of society, and of how to pay respects and compliments to others.
58. Knowledge of the art of war, of arms, of armies, &c.
59. Knowledge of gymnastics.
60. Art of knowing the character of a man from his features.
61. Knowledge of scanning or constructing verses.
62. Arithmetical recreations.
63. Making artificial flowers.
64. Making figures and images in clay.

The full text of the Karma Sutra is available from Project Gutenberg

Welcome

Welcome to Licentious Times, a blog about all things eclectic, erotic, eccentric, and other things beginning with e.