Ivor Cutler – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

London organ-grinder tweets for September 2017

Barrel/street organ stuff.

Napoleon as Harlequin, tumbler, fraudster, monkey (?): Come, come, honest gents, have you ever seen a comedy like that!

Two versions of Flann O’Brien’s “The workman’s friend”

With some relevant chunks of Henry Fielding.

Contemporary etching of Fielding from his <em>Jonathan Wild the Great</em>.

My top 10 boxing songs

All-star bill featuring Dan Mendoza aka the fighting Jew, manly Victorians, Joe Louis and the Dixieaires at the Battle of Jericho, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Rocky Graziano aka the Maharishi Yoghurt, Bob Dylan and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Muhammad Ali and over-reliance on computer technology, Rich Hall and the George Foreman Grill, Wesley Willis and Batman, and Ivor Cutler.

Richard Humphries' second blocks a crucial blow from Daniel Mendoza in the 1788 bout.

Grasshopper

Today’s photoboot stars a small green grasshopper which was having its insides sucked out by a spiky black Bosch-beast when we walked past. If only, for the sake of camouflage, it had been able to change places with Ivor Cutler‘s: A great grey grasshopper jumped on my knee, dusty with age. I was wearing my…