The Black Isle

Fingers crossed!

The mushhushshu or “furious snake” guarding the Ishtar Gate of Babylon

Marmots and jackals will skulk in it,
desert owls will haunt it;
never more will it be inhabited and
age after age no one will dwell in it.

From Jeremiah 50:39 (translation unknown)  

From Shame by Salman Rushdie, p. 148:

On Haroun’s tenth birthday, at Daro, his father had presented him with a large parcel, done up in green ribbon, from which a muffled barking could clearly be heard. Haroun was an inward and only child who had grown fond of solitude; he did not really want the long-haired collie puppy who emerged from the package, and thanked his father with a perfunctory surliness that irritated Little Mir intensely. In the next few days, it became obvious that Haroun intended to leave the dog to be cared for by the servants; whereupon Mir with the foolhardy stubbornness of his irritation issued orders that nobody was to lay a finger on the animal. ‘The damn hound is yours,’ Mir told the boy, ’so you look after it.’ But Haroun was as obstinate as his father, and did not so much as give the puppy a name, so that in the bitter heat of the Daro sunshine the puppy had to forage for its own food and drink, contracted mange, distemper and curious green spots on the tongue, was driven mad by its long hair and finally died in front of the main door to the house, emitting piteous yelps and leaking a thick yellow porridge from its behind. ‘Bury it,’ Mir told Haroun, but the boy set his jaw and walked away, and the slowly decomposing corpse of the unnamed pooch mirrored the growth of the boy’s loathing for his father, who was thereafter forever associated in his mind with the stench of the rotting dog.

This passage reminds me of a perhaps apocryphal story about a friend of mine who, when asked what he wanted for his 12th birthday, said, a penguin… whereupon Harrods delivered the little smelly bird to his boarding school.

18 Folgate St, Spitalfields. The Dennis Severs House.

A totally unique London experience in Sounds, Smells and Sight: a 18th century Spitalfields townhouse stuffed to the gills with objets, foods, canaries and life being lived — the conceit is that you’ve stumbled into the home of a family of Huguenot weavers who have just stepped out for the nonce. As you walk up and down its five storeys of dimly-lit, fraying rooms, you hear piped-in sounds of tea cups clinking, babies crying. You smell coal fire, and a whole variety of sourness: unmade beds, unemptied piss-pots, vinegary oyster shells, old cat and old canaries. It tops even the John Soane House, which until last week was my favorite visiting spot.

The Dennis Severs House is only open for a couple of hours on two Sundays and two Mondays a month, and is located on a quiet East London street with no special markings. Here’s the info.

As Dennis Severs’ himself said: “You either see it or you don’t.”

Sign on the door of the Dennis Severs House that’s only up during “visiting hours”: 12 - 2 pm on the third Monday of the month.

Sighted off Brick Lane.

Sign in Spitalfields art shop window next to The Ten Bells, the corner pub where Jack the Ripper’s lady victims used to visit.

Proof that not everything in our care dies.