london – London's Singing Organ-Grinder

When’s the cheapest time to make strawberry jam?

Average wholesale prices, April-October 2015-2017.

Andreu Solà i Vidal (1863–1902), Las Fresas, source of the most terrible back and stomach problems.

Leave your city burnin like Gamera

Stamina, blaze up your space, plus I got it on camera. Lower Clapton’s wildlife and some audiovisual plans.

Early photography by the Organ-Grinder, from Carnaval in Denekamp, Twente, Overijssel, Netherlands in 1989. I can't remember whether the scene was proverbial or topical. Maybe no one knew.

Singing Organ-Grinder tweets for April

Cranking it up along the River Lea.

Organ-grinding tweets for March 2018

The latest barrel organ news from Hackney, London.

Section of London-Harwich in 1675, crossing the River Lea at Bow.

The Singing Organ Grinder’s tweet archive for February 2018

Another abundance of redundance. Featuring Russian, German and Italian puppetry, organ-grinding, and other nonsense.

A Dutch Polichinel on a buffalo in 1856 (2018-02-01 18:10).

How to perform El retablo de Maese Pedro aka El retablo de la libertad de Melisendra in Don Quixote with one puppeteer and a narrator/bottler

Whether Cervantes saw it or not, it is possible as he describes.

Gustave Doré's hallucinogenic 1863 engraving.

Organ-grinding tweets for January 2018

More sofa-based antics of the Hackney street organist.

Another cheerful Bartolomeo Pinelli engraving, playing on the artist's inability to finish the work at hand: tutto finisce

The secret life of organ-grinders

Speculation in French revolutionary fiduciary currency, the murder of the great British ballad-singer, & a revised date (1802) for the start of the supposedly post-Napoleonic emigration of Italian puppeteers & organ-grinders

Napoleon, apparently in 1797, warbling lines <a href='https://www.lieder-archiv.de/es_kann_ja_nicht_immer_so_bleiben-notenblatt_300633.html'>apparently</a> written by Kotzebue in 1802:

In praise of oranges

A First World War letter from a Palestinian orange grove, an orange (lower case) song, and this winter’s favourite orange cake recipe.

Truman Ward Ingersoll, diorama of an orange tree in Los Angeles

Winchester is the centre of English civilisation

Sez Lucio Vicente López in Recuerdos de viaje (1881). This is apparently in part due to the Normans having invaded without women, thus enabling the maintenance of The Saxon Character. He’s wrong. Winchester is suspiciously continental, while Romsey is Ethelflaeda, who sang psalms while skinny-dipping in the Test, and lithe & lusty hooligans.