The Singing Organ-Grinder’s tweets for October

More rubbish.

Organ-grinder in courtyard - Bruno Schulz illustration to his story Księga, The Book, 1937.

Organ-grinder in courtyard - Bruno Schulz illustration to his story Księga, The Book, 1937.

SingingOrganGrinder
@elorganillero
  • Mon Oct 01 15:38 Do all Japanese say "Prince Halibut and Meghan Mackerel"?
  • Mon Oct 01 18:24 Swastikas on the doors of Walthamstow Assembly Hall, built during WWII, but presumably with different glass. The Town Hall complex, still very fine, though shortly to be redeveloped, always reminds me of the slightly older Southampton Civic Centre, which had a beautiful library.
  • Tue Oct 02 07:18 Perhaps building more houses in London increases the centralisation effect, raises rents, and forces more people to live in a place they fear and loathe
  • Tue Oct 02 07:20 RT @chas_dave: Chas & Dave, September 2018.
  • Tue Oct 02 09:33 Bigger than the swastikas at Walthamstow Assembly Rooms, but perhaps less visible, because not at head height. Dates?
  • Tue Oct 02 09:37 Betjeman aged 13: Whatever will rhyme with Summer? There only is “plumber” and “drummer”: Why! the cleverest bard Would find it quite hard To connect with the Summer — a plumber!
  • Tue Oct 02 09:51 Comment: @Transblawg And how is the Aryan man doing in Upminster?
  • Tue Oct 02 10:30 Comment: @Transblawg Perhaps I mean the MP.
  • Tue Oct 02 10:48 Comment: @Transblawg Hence spad, signal passed at danger
  • Tue Oct 02 12:58 Have women never frolicked independently? "Ngrams not found: a frolic of her own"
  • Tue Oct 02 19:00 Apparently Asda pharmacies refuse to dispense prescriptions from other EU countries, despite the European Single Market
  • Tue Oct 02 21:31 Cobbett on the growth of the high street
  • Tue Oct 02 21:33 Comment: Death to the high street!
  • Wed Oct 03 07:34 When I cycled into Hungary in 1994, the first bar I went into for lunch had You Rang, M'Lord (dubbed) on the telly. Thought at first it was a communist satire on the Brits, but gradually the dreadful truth dawned
  • Wed Oct 03 10:46 Season of mists and mellow fruit flies
  • Wed Oct 03 11:30 She's not the Queen, is she?
  • Wed Oct 03 11:41 Comment: @c_massaccesi Meanwhile, the rest of world awaits, breath bated, for news of films at UCL this autumn...
  • Wed Oct 03 20:39 If Theresa May was going to come back after Geoffrey Cox and avoid being the monkey to his organ-grinder, her only option was to come out in a Darth Vader costume and do the whole speech in character
  • Thu Oct 04 08:30 The hangovers I can take, but now they've slapped me with an unexplained health order.
  • Thu Oct 04 08:35 Adorno said yes to wombats. Also, Marxist meerkats
  • Thu Oct 04 09:53 "El tren d'Olot fa chuf chuf chuf" was one of the first songs I learnt in Catalan, but I'd never video of the (defunct) Gerona-Olot line
  • Thu Oct 04 09:54 RT @ingeniousdeb: Pleased & v moved to see my father’s photo and letters in Shattered the #kristallnacht exhibition @wienerlibrary this is…
  • Thu Oct 04 10:14 Finally I am going to meet the man behind John Cage’s Disco Classics
  • Thu Oct 04 10:30 James Last, Daar is de orgelman (There's the organ-grinder)
  • Thu Oct 04 17:23 RT @MattCartoonist:
  • Thu Oct 04 19:00 Pedro, The Hand-Organ Man: 1906 Edison street fight between an Italian organ-grinder and an Irishwoman
  • Fri Oct 05 05:41 "I do what I want to do and that wasn't worth doing."
  • Fri Oct 05 05:54 Full-fat Giacometti, Hertford Union Canal/Lea Navigation
  • Fri Oct 05 06:09 Carrying of portrait of Gypsy King Ivor Hughes at Martock reminiscent of older practice of bearing portraits of real monarchs in processions they were unable to attend
  • Fri Oct 05 11:44 Jump on the happiness train
  • Sat Oct 06 07:20 Continuing attempts to sell the integration of silent films into Varieté where sound film was to sweep all before it
  • Sat Oct 06 07:21 I think I'll have leeks for breakfast.
  • Sat Oct 06 07:26 The neighbours aka Homerton B made a video. Interesting times
  • Sat Oct 06 08:43 TfL assets? Diamond Geezer has them covered
  • Sat Oct 06 08:44 Italia DOC is back and we are happy
  • Sat Oct 06 08:46 Philip Hammond is a vile man
  • Sat Oct 06 08:51 Birdie
  • Sat Oct 06 09:27 The postmistress on Well Street, Hackney also has this Sino-Latin cushion
  • Sat Oct 06 10:22 Mortimer Wheeler at Gazala, 1942
  • Sat Oct 06 11:06 Hackney cyclists curious as to the fate of their front wheel could do worse than try outside the Cape House hostel on Dalston Lane
  • Sat Oct 06 11:11 1870s Gilbert Scott Grand Midland Hotel aka St Pancras vs 1990s Sandy Wilson British Library
  • Sat Oct 06 11:13 C19th gym aesthetics
  • Sat Oct 06 11:32 Organ-grinder in courtyard - Bruno Schulz illustration to his story Księga, The Book, 1937
  • Sat Oct 06 11:52 Comment: The story is a marvel & is apparently translated by Madeline Levine in the Collected Stories. Highlight: the organ-grinders playing "Daisy, Daisy".
  • Sat Oct 06 13:38 Clapping is about aural reciprocity: I make a sound you like, you make a sound I like. Jazz hands are the zombie apocalypse.
  • Sun Oct 07 19:42 Most impressive thing walking Hackney-Chingford and back by different route is overwhelming smell of weed for considerable portions of journey. Even C19th religion can't have been as powerfully opiate as this.
  • Sun Oct 07 19:45 Comment: The guy on C. Lane kicking someone's door down and shouting "You want war, you get war" clearly wasn't serious, not the same league
  • Mon Oct 08 06:36 One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug in Tim Hunkin’s Air B’n'Bug Machine
  • Mon Oct 08 17:55 Low Saxon official language in the Netherlands. Speaking as someone who learnt it before Dutch & German, not sure whether that's a terribly good idea
  • Mon Oct 08 18:18 Comment: Khaleda Rahman at the Mail already can't tell the difference between Dutch & German
  • Tue Oct 09 09:58 BLOG: The Russian folk song in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona: I thought it was a recent version of Stravinsky’s Petrushka theme, but it turns out that Pete Seeger is the intermediary. Plus an East End Jewish version of Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance.
  • Tue Oct 09 17:59 Struggling to pronounce "Autunm in love," slogan at Cocotte, Horta, Barcelona
  • Wed Oct 10 06:40 Now Google Plus is dead, maybe time for resurrection of Google Reader, killed to drive people to Plus.
  • Wed Oct 10 10:38 Ngram "new library building" 1850-2008
  • Wed Oct 10 18:13 Can you still get Google News on a desktop? Seems they forgot this vanishingly small segment
  • Wed Oct 10 18:38 Two really poor exhibitions at CaixaForum Barcelona. Used to be a safe bet.
  • Thu Oct 11 06:35 More evidence that Dutch and German are the same language: the Black Rats (4th Infantry) disembark at Hoek van Holland crying "Guten Morgen!"
  • Thu Oct 11 08:35 Cobbett, 1826: To buy the thing, ready made, is the taste of the day; thousands, who are housekeepers, buy their dinners ready cooked; ... a man actually advertised, in the London papers, about two month ago, to supply childless husbands with heirs!
  • Thu Oct 11 17:31 Perhaps I'm an unspeakable xenophobe, but I think the phonetic jokes in the Two Ronnies' (south Asian?) sheikh sketch are brilliant. The four candles sketch works along the same lines, tho clearly designed to encourage hatred towards Greater Londoners
  • Thu Oct 11 20:41 For some reason Corriere della Sera isn't covering the Sun exclusive about Etna collapsing and causing a tsunami that will devastate the Mediterranean Basin
  • Fri Oct 12 07:09 Visiting all the London boroughs in optimal time is a travelling salesman problem, except you don't need to get back at the end. I guess you can still do this with the Google Maps API
  • Fri Oct 12 07:24 Comment: @Transblawg @igavels Who'd begrudge or cavil a judge their gavel?
  • Fri Oct 12 09:08 Cobbett - sometimes entertaining, frequently obsessively mad & nasty. Tries to defeat Malthus by claiming that rents & church capacities show medieval England more populous & prosperous, & then there's the (quite modern) anti-capitalist obsession with "Jews and jobbers"

  • Fri Oct 12 09:35 Comment: But "tax-eaters" is a great insult.
  • Sun Oct 14 09:03 NATO threatens to bombard a man in Tarragona for arguing with his European neighbours.
  • Sun Oct 14 10:29 Someone needs to edit Suburbicon down to remove the embarrassingly redundant black-white racial stuff, surely Clooney's script contribution.
  • Sun Oct 14 10:29 Motorway churches
  • Sun Oct 14 11:41 Comment: @SydneyNudist1 That is not very goodthinkful of you, Sydney Nudist.
  • Sun Oct 14 14:15 Industrial Revolutionaries would surely have aborted their enterprise and fled to the hills had they been granted a glimpse of TV adaptations. The BBC's North & South, dear God, not a monkey to be seen.
  • Sun Oct 14 14:19 William Cobbett's "locust tree" (Robinia pseudoacacia) scam I'll bet his beer recipe is crap too
  • Sun Oct 14 19:19 Apparently the Hoch- and Deutschmeister Band still use Austro-Hungarian imperial military high pitch at ca. 460 Hz. This is incredibly exciting. Unfortunately they don't seem to have any gigs this year
  • Sun Oct 14 19:25 RT @AcWailing: @MrHarryCole No, Harry, there's only one person who should go on our £50 notes and he should be on the front!
  • Mon Oct 15 08:01 It's about asset allocation on the part of the banks, as well as QE, (foreign) money-launderers, etc.
  • Mon Oct 15 10:06 "Francis Drake was a Catalan called Frances Drac": latest Catalan nationalist pseudohistory, which already embraces Columbus, Cervantes, Vinci, Shakespeare and Erasmus.
  • Mon Oct 15 10:08 Comment: They still haven't noticed the well known Catalan chef, Jamie Oliver, whose real name is Jaume Olivé.
  • Tue Oct 16 10:33 Who's going to maintain the heritage of Ernst Mosch? Another Dutch Egerländer band stops & the decline is similar in Germany
  • Tue Oct 16 10:55 Dear Pepper, if you're made in Middlesex, whence the American accent?
  • Tue Oct 16 10:56 Why the postman calls me "boss"
  • Tue Oct 16 12:41 Comment: @Transblawg Laudator? Age-restricted?
  • Tue Oct 16 13:37 Comment: @Transblawg Lovely day
  • Wed Oct 17 06:03 RT @MattCartoonist:
  • Wed Oct 17 07:00 RT @countcol: The other night 3 girls ran up to me and asked if they could walk with me through the churchyard, explaining they were scared…
  • Wed Oct 17 07:36 Gold Coast Police Band Suppe's Poet & Peasant - UK tour 1947: Critical article by Nate Plageman on political context: Highlife dagomba, also 1947:
  • Wed Oct 17 07:37 Comment: Compare & contrast the contemporary Ghana Police Service Band:
  • Wed Oct 17 08:55 Just what I needed to cheer me up: 2019 as Partition in 1947
  • Wed Oct 17 16:38 BLOG: Several Viennese musical curiosities: Karl Nagl’s claim that, unlike the Germans, Viennese organ-grinders are musicians, because they have “crank-sense.” And female yodelling with Dudlerinnen Trude Mally and Maly Nagl:
  • Thu Oct 18 06:39 The zombie of the Lea Bridge India Rubber Works Dock seems to have gone quiet again after rising up and flooding the dispute-riven gurdwara (in the old Ship Aground) and the new flats' underground car parks


  • Thu Oct 18 06:47 Comment: The dock resurrected, people of God, draining into the Lea Navigation


  • Thu Oct 18 06:51 Self-conscious limericks: A bather whose clothing was strewed By winds which left her quite nude, Saw a man come along, And, unless I am wrong, You expected this line to be rude.
  • Thu Oct 18 08:06 Surely potential for coalition between the Brexit, slavery, PTSD and dyslexia marches
  • Thu Oct 18 13:08 RT @anniemedz: RIP the legendary Anthea Bell, translator of the Asterix series (and Sebald, etc.); the first books I loved and the origins…
  • Thu Oct 18 13:25 Das Lied der Drehorgel (The Organ-Grinder's Song): 1959 radio play by Dieter Fuß, set in London. An organ-grinder is shot dead, apparently because a householder can no longer bear the single tune he plays. With Horst Tappert, later Derrick
  • Thu Oct 18 13:46 Either those are fireworks outside or the next world war has started.
  • Thu Oct 18 16:33 You just pop out for a couple of decades and the bugger goes and builds a boat in his back garden
  • Fri Oct 19 06:16 Muted "vibrant"
  • Fri Oct 19 07:59 I've often thought that hillforts would make great carparks (ditto cathedrals - put in a couple of extra floors....)
  • Fri Oct 19 08:59 Still broken-hearted cos @greggs on T Court Road wouldn't reheat a steak & cheese roll that had unaccountably got cold just before closing time
  • Fri Oct 19 09:34 "The Cowboy's Last Wish" - beautiful song, but now raises too many eyebrows. This is Marc Williams, aka "The Cowboy Crooner," but there's also a great version by Burl Ives entitled "The Cowboy's Lament"
  • Fri Oct 19 11:37 Looking for a Vienna hotel in mail and one finds a barrel organ version of Georg Kreisler's telephone book polka , communicated years ago by @Transblawg
  • Fri Oct 19 11:38 Comment: Original
  • Fri Oct 19 11:39 Comment: Death must be Viennese
  • Fri Oct 19 14:41 Comment: @elilee_ Other face of the Khashoggi coin is non-Turkish descendants of Ottoman subjects with etymologically Turkish surnames - consequence of aggressive Ottomanisation/Turkification of names e.g. in Turkey via Mustafa Kemal's Ask the Armenians...
  • Sun Oct 21 08:02 Great glory of Fry Art Gallery at Saffron Walden is being able to walk north over the chalk (northern rim of London Basin) to Chesterfords etc. (Why did Ravilious, Bawden etc. live at Great Bardfield on the clay.?) Malodorous greens now instead of downland flowers, but still...
  • Sun Oct 21 08:06 Comment: Much of this Ravilian landscape will be destroyed by the North Uttlesford new town planned between Great Chesterford & Great Abington, of course:
  • Sun Oct 21 09:56 RIP Wim Kok, who as prime minister I used to bump into as we cycled to workplaces: "Goedemorgen, meneer Kok." "Goedemorgen." Then came 9/11 and the murders of Pim Fortuyn & Theo van Gogh.
  • Sun Oct 21 10:02 Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms, Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease, If ever deed of honour did thee please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms
  • Sun Oct 21 10:08 Worst YouTube vid ever? Stained Glass Attitudes does Cumbria
  • Sun Oct 21 13:02 Mills Brothers, Just a dream (at sunset / of you, dear)
  • Thu Oct 25 12:26 3 lawyers vs 3 MBAs
  • Thu Oct 25 12:28 Stroud (Hants) pesthouse apples are the best
  • Fri Oct 26 06:42 Masonic doggerel on a jar at : "A little health, a little wealth, A little house, and freedom; And at the end a little friend, And little cause to need him." Gin, morphine, a microdeity? Better than the Wilfred Owen variation in image?
  • Fri Oct 26 07:02 Comment: At last I know what a tracing board is , though I've forgotten the word for ornaments carved from marine mammal bones.
  • Fri Oct 26 07:07 Comment: No I haven't. Scrimshaw, etymology unknown: 1821 Light breezes and pleasant weather. All hands employed scrimshonting. So ends this day. 1836 Work all dun. An idle head is a workshop for the devil. Employed scrimshan. 1840 All hands employed scrimshorning.
  • Fri Oct 26 08:17 Hop not hat
  • Fri Oct 26 08:18 RT @9bills: EXPLAINED: The Difference Between UK Rappers & US Rappers 😂😂😂
  • Fri Oct 26 10:02 TfL: geographic expansionism vs financial decline
  • Fri Oct 26 10:40 V excited about annual visit to George & the Dragon at Gnosall
  • Fri Oct 26 10:46 Comment: History: coming soon
  • Sun Oct 28 18:19 Unusual rabbit.
  • Sun Oct 28 18:24 Jay scavenging on Cartwright Gardens London WC1, following sighting in E9 in July (. More here from Urban J:
  • Sun Oct 28 18:27 Video laxative
  • Mon Oct 29 11:08 Only Czech poem to feature Clacton-on-Sea: he loved her and left her, I think. By Pavel Jirásek. Unfortunately his and Marie's puppet exhibition opens the day one leaves Brno
  • Mon Oct 29 16:54 An autumnal blow from the (Church of England) phallocracy in the parish magazine of Derrington & Haughton (Stafford). The departure of the rector of Haughton (f) is said to be coincidental.
  • Mon Oct 29 17:09 Speech written phonetically for Queen Victoria's Coburgian mum, who spoke German and French and probably a bit of Italian, but no English (source: Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I.)
  • Mon Oct 29 17:10 Comment: Ei hoeve tu regrétt, biing aes yiett so littl cônversent in this Inglisch lênguetsch, uitsch obleitschës - miy, tu seh, in averi fiú words, theat ei em môhst grêtful for yur congratuleschens end gud uishes, end heili, flatterd, bei yur allucheon, to mei brother
  • Tue Oct 30 07:12 Curious that Rome opposes subjecting small boys to sex changes when this will provide a large pool of castrati, enabling authentic performance of large portions of the Baroque & Classical (sacred) repertoire
  • Tue Oct 30 07:20 Chordi has photos of the startling new poster-mural in the C16th church of la Scorziata round the corner from Piazza San Gaetano in central Naples, which has been sacked of its antiquities and wrecked over the past 40 years (PS the Caravaggio was a copy)
  • Tue Oct 30 08:51 Sword ID fail. The Met's Ladbrokes robberies case says samurai, but not curved. Neither is it the popular machete - not broad, heavy, shaped. Looks like a long utility knife, an amateurish ninjatō, and ninja, unlike samurai, are dishonourable thugs
  • Tue Oct 30 10:18 If venta (Venta Belgarum (Winchester), also Silurum/Icenorum) really < Common Brittonic, etymology is surely popular Latin vendita < vendere, sell, like French vente, Portuguese venda, notably Spanish venta - markets with simple accommodation - Libro del Buen Amor, Quijote...


  • Wed Oct 31 13:37 Every time I walk through "rural" Hampshire a banker leans over a fence to tell me that sycamore poisons horses. This is what I'll chant back next time.
  • Wed Oct 31 13:53 Tech/politics Halloween story: Shiri’s Scissor

Bizarrely, Twitter data downloads don't include others' comments on your tweets, or tweets on which you comment, e.g.:

/ I say something
// Someone replies
/// I reply to them
... and so it's impossible to show tweet trees involving third parties correctly.

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