Brits and me and Eccentricity

I am currently entranced with these pictures of *someone famous* as a eccentric young english child:








These photos remind me of the glorious Jaroslava Schallerova from "Valerie and her Week of Wonders", a hallucinatory swirling Czech 70's masterpeice of fairy tale purity and horror. I must say, I loved this movie and it's innocence and experience, which were expressed side by side. The pictures and this movie express this sort of bohemian eccentric childhood which is very familiar to me. It's the only movie that i could say is truly a dream, rather than just dream-like. You have to surrender all your ideas of plot direction and let it take you where it will with it's disturbing and misty and sun-splashed and erotic and perverse and very 60's imagery. Remided me alot of skinny diipping as a young girl in the summer and thinking the world will never end and the moment will last forever...aka Bliss.

I often talk about the history of the British eccentric (and how they aren't like American eccentrics who usually own used car dealerships and get horrendous plastic surgery) and the acceptance the Brits seem to have for their wierdos, and I add these other folks to the fold, whether or not they are native Brits:

The Incredible String Band: first music I ever heard, first songs I ever knew. My dad used to sing the animal songs to me in my little bed: Cousin Caterpillar, The Hedgehog Song, Big Ted (a pig), and Log Cabin Home In The Sky.

Tori Amos: nuff said. Not a Brit by birth, but she has resided there since the early 90's. Gloriously goofy and weird and HERSELF (against all criticism)!




Vashti Bunyan: who lived in a gypsy wagon with her lover and their child. Sang whisper-soft folk songs about glo-worms and pups long before I was born. Dissapeared to the Outer Hebrides.

AND NOT TO FORGET The Doctor! WOW. Dum dada dumdada Dum dada Dum.........