La séduction, la tendresse, la jalousie et la passion

Looky here at this gorgeous thing, Les Animaux Amoureux, found via grow-a-brain. The music is by Philip Glass (but it sounds an awful lot more like Michael Nyman to me).

La chanson des vieux amants

I have been asked to remove the spider from the front page, so here is something much prettier: James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, performing together in 1970 as new lovers when he was 22 and she was 27.

And here, 30 years later, they are at the Joni Mitchell Tribute concert in 2000.

If you're in your 20s and in the middle of a hot love affair, here, if you're lucky, is how you'll feel about each other thirty years from now. And ladies, you may find this hard to believe, but if he's still this attached to you and still singing your songs, you won't mind at all about what's happened to his hair.

October 18th 1947

My mum and dad were married 60 years ago today.

She died in 1999. He's still physically and mentally fit enough at 80 to do an unscheduled speed run to the airport to pick up a sick daughter.

When this wedding photo was taken, she'd spent four years in the workforce and a year in the WAAF. He'd matriculated, learned how to run a farm, done some accountancy training and spent two years in the Navy. They were both 20.

From Alexander McCall Smith's latest book

‘For the most part, we treat others in a matter-of-fact way; we have to, in order to get on with our lives. But every so often, in a moment of insight that can be very nearly mystical in its intensity, we see others in their real humanity, in a way that makes us want to cherish them as joint pilgrims, almost, on a perilous journey.’

One foot on the ground

Here's the first verse and chorus of 'Fidelity', a song from last year by the very hawt and very gifted Regina Spektor:

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music

And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart

Heard this on the radio today, driving down out of the Adelaide Hills in a hot late afternoon, and I wondered (as you do), could I say that? I mean, Spektor is all of 27 and she would think such caution a bad thing, and she still has lots of time. But did I ever take both feet off the ground?

Once. Just once.

And it broke my heart, and it broke my heart ... actually, it permanently derailed my life and nearly killed me. So listen to Auntie carefully, Grasshoppers: keep one foot on the ground. You heard it here.