April tweets
Just the usual load of nonsense.
Tag: french literature
Organ-grinding tweets for August 2017
The latest barrel organ news from Hackney, London.
From Charles Trenet, two musical De Gaulle anecdotes
Re the songs, L’âme des poètes and Douce France.
Beyond digesting ducks
Medium-sized data and the street organ’s mannequin.
Two versions of Flann O’Brien’s “The workman’s friend”
With some relevant chunks of Henry Fielding.
Mind over mutter: Céline on the challenges of speech production
Other doctor-novelists; why musicians can’t write.
El santo mocaro
Snot-nosed pseudo-saints in a Lingua Franca song by Juan del Encina.
Gil y pollas, pollos, racho, Gil, etc
The etymology of “gilipollas” as a mere excuse to quote a gross 16th century shepherd and link to some video fragments of Jesús Gil y Gil.
The true origins of “Africa begins at the Pyrenees”
This deeply resented peripheralising aphorism was coined not by Alexander Dumas but by Dominique Dufour de Pradt or conceivably the Conde do Funchal.
The Two Gardeners
An anti-intellectual French horticultural fable.
