"Get out of this house before I kill you!"

And so, farewell then Miss Ann Blyth, who has pouted her way off to Fabulon, at the ripe old age of 98. [To be honest, I didn't even realise she was still alive...]

Despite making dozens of films, starring alongside the likes of Robert Montgomery, Burt Lancaster, Claudette Colbert, Tyrone Power, Gregory Peck, and Mario Lanza (in The Great Caruso...

...there really was only one role for which she gained screen immortality, as the scheming-bitch-daughter-from-hell "Veda" in one of the campest films of the 1940s - Mildred Pierce!

Mildred Pierce - Mildred vs Veda

Delicious!

RIP, Ann Blyth (born Anne Marie Blythe, 16th August 1927 – 24th June 2026)

FOOTNOTE: Anyone else reckon she's the spitting image of our very own not-yet-a-Dame Sophie Ellis-Bextor in that second photo? Spooky.

Cut the heat

From The Garden by H.D. [aka bisexual avant-garde modernist poet Hilda Doolittle]:

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air -
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat -
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

Heatwave or no heatwave, it's the Mid-summer Solstice, the longest day, Festa Junina, Sommersonnenwende, Uttarayana, Saint John's Eve, Majstång, Litha...

...whatever you call it, the nights start drawing in from here on, folks!

Yesterday was...

... a "Say Something Hat" Day at Royal Ascot!

The colour has faded...

Such sad news today of the death of David Hockney, whose vivid paintings of Californian swimming pools and lush countryside always left the viewer feeling the warmth of the sun, who has departed - fag in hand - to tart-up the drearier areas of Fabulon...

There's little I can add to the acres of coverage today about his talent, his wit, his pioneering gay provocativeness, his legacy, that isn't already out there, but suffice to say the world will be a less interesting place without him.

"I prefer living in colour." - David Hockney

[click any pic to enlarge]

RIP David Hockney, OM, CH (9th July 1937 – 11th June 2026)

On the Jukebox this weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers