You and me can dance so free

Our Scilla peruviana ("Portuguese Squill") is stunning. [click to embiggen]

"Hooray, hooray, the first of May! Outdoor sex begins today."

In the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the daffs, tulips and primulas - as well as the cherry and apple blossoms in the neighbourhood - are over. The air is now scented with the intoxicating perfume of lilacs, jasmine, rowan and the last of the wallflowers. How does one adequately encapsulate the scents of Spring? The combination is simply divine.

To add to the uplifting mood, I'm counting down to the end of a particularly gruelling week - and tomorrow we're up in the deathly hours in order to get a taxi to Gatwick Airport, to catch our flight to Spain for a week's much-needed holiday! I have never needed a holiday this much [since the last one, of course 😎]!

Let's have something suitably Spanish to get the celebrations going, shall we - and who could be more appropriate than our Patron Saint of Plastic, Charo?!

¡Gracias Disco Es viernes!

Charo - Dance a Little Bit Closer

Have a great weekend, dear reader! We intend to.

---

STOP PRESS:

I don't know when - or even if - you will actually see this, dear reader, but I timed it to publish at 7.30am...and it is now 6.30pm and it still hasn't shown up! I hate the Google gnomes.

Of zoos, spider-divas, Southbank, salamanders, Cloris, dead beef, He-Man and 4 Non Blondes

A new Banksy artwork appeared overnight this week in the middle of St. James' in Mayfair, depicting a flag-bearing man, blinded by its material, about to fall off the edge of the plinth. [click any pic to embiggen]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• "Z" is for..? news: It was the 200th anniversary of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) - from where the word "zoo" originated - yesterday! Childhood memories [admittedly of its "sister" institution Bristol Zoo] abound...
• Does whatever a spider can? news: In the wake of the big-screen adaptation starring J-Lo that was a cinematic flop, a revival of the Kander and Ebb [with book by Terence McNally] musical Kiss of the Spider Woman is on a limited tour (Leicester, Bristol and Southampton), starring Anna-Jane Casey. Not London, dammit! Here, Miss Casey gives us a glimpse of her stage costumes:

Kiss of the Spider Woman revival - Anna-Jane Casey costume tour

• Makes you proud to be British news: It's the 75th anniversary of The Festival of Britain on 3rd May - and the Southbank Centre is launching a whole season of events to celebrate, involving some of the UK's greatest artistic talents such as Danny Boyle, Gareth Pugh, Anish Kapoor, Max Richter, Jacqueline Wilson and Quentin Blake, and international artists including Angelique Kidjo, Yuja Wang, and a West-Indian Steel Band Weekender!
• "You say Axolotl, I say what the fuck?" news: A critically endangered amphibian [that lives only in Lake Xochimilco near Mexico City in the wild], an axolotl salamander about the size of a domestic cat(!) was discovered by a young girl - living in a brook at Merthyr Mawr near Bridgend, South Wales! I wonder what the Welsh translation of "bloody enormous exotic amphibian" might sound like?

• Frau Blücher news: It's the centenary today of the birth of the faboo Cloris Leachman. All hail!
• Nostalgic dining news: And, so farewell Beefeater, the spiritual home of the steak & chips dinner, and Brewers Fayre, famous for its "Sunday Carvery". Owners Whitbread have announced the closure of their restaurant chains (with the loss of 3800 jobs) and plan instead to focus on their main Premier Inn hotels business.

• And finally: RIP Roger Sweet, creator of "He-Man" for Mattel [before the animated series]. That gives me the perfect excuse to revisit THIS:

He-Man - What's Up?

And I say, hey yeah yeah, hey yeah yeah
I said hey, what's going on?

Indeed. It's a mindfuck...

And the weather? Utterly glorious!

They drive an ice-cream van

Sharing the day with another panoply of "names" including Zizi Jeanmaire, William Randolph Hearst, Sir Thomas Beecham, Duke Ellington, Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, Leslie Jordan, Jeremy Thorpe, Uma Thurman, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Celeste Holm, Emperor Hirohito, Tammi Terrell, Andre Agassi, Lonnie Donegan, April Stevens, Baron Jacob Rothschild, Toots Thielemans, Professor Heinz Wolff, conductor Zubin Mehta (who is 90), Willie Nelson, Tommy James of The Shondells, Rod McKuen, Jerry Seinfeld, Jo O'Meara of S-Club 7 and - erm - Bernie Madoff...

...it's Bill Drummond's birthday today. Who? I hear you ask...

He was, of course, the co-founder of that most wonderfully loopy of late 80s/early 90s electro rave combos, The KLF!

I need no more perfect excuse (as if I would need one) to play this, their most completely off-the-wall hit that resurrected the career of a forgotten diva. I love it!

The KLF and Tammy Wynette - Justified and Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)

There never was anything like it before, and I very much doubt there'll ever be anything like it again.

Of course, owned by a real king

I told him my ballroom is a mile high just to see his face, says King

The King has admitted claiming to own a domed ballroom a mile high in conversation with Donald Trump to see his crestfallen reaction.

The president had taken the Royal party to see a hole which he was boasting would soon be an even greater ballroom than Hitler’s, when Charles replied ‘Of course, we have terrible issues rerouting planes around ours.’

The monarch continued: “You’d think the view would be wonderful a mile above London, but the diamond capstone on the top is actually in the stratosphere so it’s all clouds.

“Holds 1.7 million people, though it’s not been filled since George V’s inaugural ball because I’m afraid there aren’t enough aristocrats left. Nowadays we use its solid gold art deco interior for family get-togethers and charity events.

“It really is a magnificent edifice and, of course, owned by a real king. But yours sounds like it will be nice too. How large? 90,000 square feet? Ah, so the same size as the palace kennels.”

He added: “You should have seen his mean, crumpled face. He started bragging about 80s golfers’ dick sizes to recover, but of course Camilla has hands-on expertise there.”

Trump said: “I’ve checked on the internet and it’s all true. I fired the aide who told me it was AI.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

We're having a gang-bang

Another lovely weekend spent pottering in the garden and - whoosh! Here we are again...

Never mind, eh? - it's just a week, then we're off to Spain at the crack'o'doom on Saturday, and I have another week off after that, so I'm not too despondent.

Meanwhile, it's the 60th birthday today of one of our fave actresses, Miss Siobhan Finneran! We first fell in love with her as the harassed mum "Janice Garvey" in the sitcom Benidorm - dealing with her hapless husband "Mick", pregnant teen daughter "Chantelle", pretty-boy son "Michael" and her bombastic battleaxe mother "Madge" while trying to enjoy her holiday - and she played a blinder in Downton Abbey as the wicked ladies' maid "Miss O'Brien". She was also in Emmerdale, Happy Valley - and this, her first starring role, and a film I absolutely adore. It is a Tacky Music Monday, after all!

Rita Sue and Bob Too - Black Lace - We're Having A Gang Bang

Have a good week, dear reader.

Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty

We had hazy sunshine all day, but that didn't stop me getting out there to complete a few more tasks in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers - more big salvias repotted into fresh compost, some primulas that have gone over tidied-up in preparation for their summer hiatus, and I split one of our indoor peace lilies that was looking very sorry for itself and needed a bit of TLC, among other pottering jobs...

Meanwhile... The bastard gnomes at Google/Blogger have been playing silly buggers again. I published a post at around 6 o'clock yesterday. It remained in Limbo, as far as the Blogger Reading List is concerned. Suddenly at 1 o'clock in the morning - boom! There it was...

WTF leads these creatures to think that a five-hour delay is acceptable is beyond me! Yet another blogging annoyance... Sigh.

Never mind, eh? Here's something soothing from our "house band" to ease our troubled souls...

Postmodern Jukebox ft. Katerina Lomis - Thank You For The Music [ABBA Old-Time Jazz cover]

Ah, that's better...

It's grey, it's grey since she went away, oh, oh

Our lovely Hippeastrum “Cape Horn” has been outside all winter, and evidently came to no harm

It was another beautiful Spring day today, and the chilly wind of earlier this week had completely dropped - so, obviously I spent most of it in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers. The last of the summer annuals-filled window-boxes and a wall pot are done. I moved-on a few more plants in little pots into bigger ones, then began the task of tackling the moth-eaten overwintered large-leaf salvia collection, which have all exhausted the soil they were in. More tomorrow, no doubt - and then hopefully everything will be ready for the summer "jungle" display. Once we get back from Spain, It will be time to do the "Tetris" task of placing the gazillions of pots into the best location for them to thrive and look their best [of course, everything's covered in a coat of flowers and detritus from the bastard weed trees at the moment; there's not a season when they don't give us grief]...

Meanwhile, sad news - Mademoiselle Evy Lenton, lead singer of the camp-as-tits one-hit-wonders La Belle Époque has donned her last glittery jacket and ascended the dry-ice strewn staircase to Fabulon, at - gulp - the age of 80.

It's obvious what to play in tribute, of course, really, since they only ever had one hit:

La Belle Epoque - Black is Black

Love it!

RIP, Évelyne "Evy" Lenton (born Evelyn Verrecchia, 16th December 1945 - 22nd April 2026)