Another Chance to See ...

The Drill Hall (020 7307 5060) are doing repeats.

Music Theatre London's The Marriage of Figaro (read about it here) is playing Saturdays (8pm) and Sundays (4pm) 13 September to 12 October.

And True or Falsetto? A Secret History of the Castrati (which I loved) is playing Wednesdays to Sundays, 10-27 September: Weds/Thu 8pm, Fri/Sat 6pm and 9pm (12/13 Sept 8.30pm only), Sundays 5pm.

Monday Morning Special: Picnic Photos!

It must be awful, having a Job and having to go to it on a morning like this. </sincerity> These should cheer you up!

( photos from the Greenwich picnic, 12th July '03 )

Ah yes, I was going to ramble on philosophise about why I take photographs. Not very interesting. Some of them are aids to memory, and some are attempts to capture a particular way of seeing something (these latter are the pretentious arty shots of chopped strawberries, blurred fireworks, wave-rippled sand with a sun-dazzle of reflection). Most of them, though, are so that I can say 'look at this, it's beautiful / interesting / amusing / worth looking at': the impulse to communicate, to share, which is what LJ is all partly about.

Oh, and I only keep about 20% of the shots I take. The digital camera is a great boon in this respect: you wouldn't believe the number of printed photos I've thrown away ...

Peculiar Pasts

I've enquired elsewhere about this issue, but the answers are so wildly disparate that I'm beginning to think the question is more complex than it seems!

'Dreamed' and 'dreamt' are both valid past & past participle forms of the verb 'to dream' (according to Fowler and the OED, anyway). The '-t' form, however, seems to be much less widely accepted, and I'm told that it's more or less obsolete in American English.

Also applies to smelled/smelt, burned/burnt, learned/learnt ...

Question: Can anyone explain the difference between the '-ed' and '-t' forms?