Carter Scott, Lots of Oink and the Topping Gene

Every now and then (or all the time) you want to get your hands on that lazy sensual voluptuary - the one who, by his very fleshy firm porkiness alone, turns on your topping gene, big big time. There's something in Carter's unrelenting pigginess that just makes we wanna flip him over and get to work.


He's the kinda guy you don't have to be politically correct with - and take those agonizing 4 hours and twenty-three and a half minutes of ever-so-gentle prodding and poking (and plain begging) ... just to get the tiniest bit of the head of ya dick in.

One who, after he's given you the I'm-up-for-it-right-now look, ...


... will give a sneak preview of every angle shown in the main event ...




... and then (after a sexily short five minutes and thirty-four second romp around the crimson couch) will produce the absolute ATM of entry points!

Actually, having said all that blah bout no malingering, I prefer a slow (3.5 sec) step-by-step revealing ... of the Holy Grail ...




What follows next will make the gods weep - with unrestrained envy!

The Very Best Kind of 'Multi-Tasking'

And I thought everyone always did it this way!

At least in the meet-and-get-to-know-you phase!

Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) - Sociability in 'A Spanish Galleon Hung with Golden Coins and Lovely Silk Sails' (Virginia Woolf)

Lady Ottoline Morrell (1903)

When I was living in London as a kid, I met someone who totally - but totally - changed my ideas and approach to sociability.

Eve Disher (1894-1991) was then well int0 her eighties and had been a minor painter of the Bloomsbury Group. She seemed to follow E M Forster's dictum of 'only connect' - garnering friendships with such disparates as Noel Coward, Ian Fleming, Kenneth Clark and Sir Arthur Elton, Bart., one of the pioneers of documentary film in Britain in the thirties.

Eve Disher as I Knew Her - We're Just About to Head Out for Dins

We first met through Julia Elton in Eve's large Eccleston Square flat, which was wall-papered with the history of avante garde British painting of the first half of the C20. But instead of talking about herself, she sat me down and said 'Hello Nick, I'm Eve. Lovely to meet you! Tell me all about yourself'. Which was not a conceit or a segue just to talk about her own big connected life and work. I was shy but quite uncharacteristically drawn out - by her intense warmth and empathy ... and have always been immeasurably grateful for being shown another way of being with people.

Now, I suspect Eve may have developed this seductive sociability either meeting, or hearing and reading about, Lady Ottoline Morrell - arch patroness and hostess for the Bloomsbury Group of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Vanessa and Clive Bell, E M Forster, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Vita Sackville-West, Bertrand Russell (Ottoline's lover for many years), D H Lawrence ... . There are debates about who were central to the group and who more peripheral.

Ottoline gave a context for the group at her 'Thursdays' at 44 Bedford Square, Bloomsbury ...

Ottoline First Home in London - 44 Bedford Square, Bloomsbury

... and at her country home, Garsington Manor ...

Ottoline's Country Home - Garsington Manor

A 'Greek' Moment in the Garden of Garsington Manor

Picnic with Dorothy Brett, Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell (Ottoline's lover of a number of years)

She slips through the pages of current British histories of the arts and letters, more as a footnote than a fully realized participant.

And this belies the importance of this extraordinary 'apparition' of the first decades of the C20 - variously described as 'a Spanish Galleon hung with golden coins and lovely silken sails' (Virginia Woolf), 'an over-sized Infanta of Spain' (Osbert Sitwell), 'a queen among women' (D H Lawrence), 'that fantastic baroque flamingo' (Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf's sister) ... it goes on and on.

Ottoline in Particularly Baroque Mode (1912)

With her appearance alone, Ottoline would stop people in the street - provoking stares, laughter, even jeering - perhaps in Turkish attire, or pale purple hair when this was unknown, or .... . Even her voice was extraordinary - the writer Stephen Spender recalled how she 'emphasized syllables ... [in] horn-like blasts'.

Her florid and exaggerated hand-writing is a cypher for the over-blown persona.

Ottoline's Hand-Writing

Born into the aristocracy as the half sister to the 6th Duke of Portland and as a cousin to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother), Ottoline as a young woman broke with her class - studying at Somerville College at Oxforn University, and mixing in the bohemian artistic world, often an 'aristocracy' unto itself.

However, she was not always accepted into the new milieu in the way she wished. This was perhaps best exemplified in D H Lawrence's savage portrayal of her as Hermione Roddick in 'Women in Love' (1916) - someone 'only wanting to know' but, in this, sucking the life blood out of the thing.

Above and beyond all this, and in fact her true legacy, was Ottoline's rare gift of being able to stimulate and excite intimacy. Even those who made the greatest fun of her (such as Virginia Woolf) would be drawn back in again - with renewed contact and conversation.

And it is this characteristic Eve Disher - and so many others - took into her life and which made her special in turn.

And I'm more than grateful to have had an ever-so-tenuous connection - cos it has been one of the greatest influences on my own life.

Ottoline Morrell in old age

I think the best introduction is the biography - 'Ottoline - The Life of Lady OttolineMorrell' by Sandra Jobson Darroch (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, New York 1975).

Enjoy, if you dare!

The Big Boy in Action - Kristof/Whoever Does It With ... Seriously, Does Anyone Care!

'Action' might be too strong a term ... or promise too much - it's just a series of (a tad grainy) stills from a movie. But I reckon you'd rather have them than not! I used the 'do they get me hard' criteria in this post-or-not-post decision! Check your own crotches at the end!

But one 'hot hunky thick juicy slab of meat' would not be an exaggeration for this ...



And I assure you this is exactly what I'd be doing ... in the presence of such a slab ...







... and I'd hope it would encourage Kristof to do this ...


... cos if it did, I'd certainly give him a kiss ...


... and say to him 'Well, that's nice' (the failed banker friend in 'Notting Hill')!

Ethnicity in 'Life' Magazine in the C19 - Wallace G Levison and Others

Native American Kiowa boy, Lone Bear (Tarlow) lying on animal skin rug, dressed as Osage [?] (1870)

In the archive, I found only a handful of non-Caucasian images - sign of the times of course.

Of African Americans, there are mainly images of manual work, or blacks embedded in a wider white community in some form or other, such as in the following ...

A young black boy pulling reins of a horse drawn coach, owned by Surf Ave Stage Co, alongside the boardwalk at Coney Island (1884)

Civil War Portrait of Taylor, a black drummer boy, 78th Regiment, US Colored Infantry, during Civil War (1861)

First African American to actually serve in Congress Hiram R. Revels (1870)

There are a very few exceptions, such that of a woman, presumably at home, putting out her washing.

A colored woman hanging laundry in the backyard of farm-like home (1889)

For me, this image is one of the most effecting in the collection - as it just presents the woman in her real everyday life at home and within her own culture.

Native Americans are mainly approached in the ethnographic mode of the period ...

Native American Indian family from Southeastern ID reservation, wearing tribal vestments (1897)

Native American Indian from Southeastern ID reservation, standing on handcrafted rug and wearing tribal vestments (1897)

Native American Indian from Southeastern ID reservation, wearing tribal vestments (1897)

Native American silversmith from Navajo tribe sitting with his wares (1870)

... with only occasional hints at anything other ...

Asa-to-yet, Native American Comanche chief, sitting w. arms crossed & gun in hand (1870) Photographer: Will Soule

Paiute Indian chief Tau Gu standing with American explorer geologist Major John Wesley Powell near Rio Virgin River (1873)

Too soon for this reprise post ... but I couldn't stop myself!

I was in fact spurred on by recalling something from the film 'The History Boys'.

It was the observation by the older gay teacher that it was only in the late C19 that the names of ordinary soldiers were publicly recorded to be remembered.

So, in the context of this archive, I was more than a bit surprised to see the name of the black drummer boy recorded ('Taylor') as early as 1861.

Another Child at Play (Alex, Michael, Kristoff or Alan) - Photographer and Date Unknown!

All those names! Let's settle on 'Alan' - for reasons that will become apparent later!

When I browse over this non-'Life'-magazine photographic 'archive', I can't help thinking of food - I guess it's the sumptuousness of the 'feast'.

And the following 'dish' is one you have in your mind, long after the meal is over.



I suspect this particular dish is the main course ...






... which comes with an optional garnishing, or not, as you like ...



And here's the entree (we've got the order wrong, but curiously it doesn't seem to matter - to me) ...



... or is it the dessert?

This last mouthful along with its (furry) condiments should be set (at least momentarily) as your desk top!


Actually, our thanks for this post are to another Alan - unless this is his day job and there is really only one Alan here!

I've had these photos for a long time - but not in his super fab big format.