There is a medium-sized moth down here that is quite beautiful. Not many moths do this for me: most of them I find obese, unpleasantly urgent and frankly a bit dracula-like. Also they have this tedious habit of allowing their badly brought-up larvae to eat one’s clothes. But this little chap is truly the Swan exception to the ugly duckling.

I’ve been dipping into the lepi wotnot sites all over the Web today, but I cannot work out which one he is. So the best I can do is describe him.

When in flight, this moth moves more like a butterfly: coloured like a paler version of the Red Admiral, quite quick wing movements, but more graceful than your average fluttery fatty. The uniqueness of the bloke comes in when he lands, for at this point he behaves like a piece of living Origami: folding himself into a perfect dart shape of orange stripes against a dark-brown background, he looks for all the world like a discreet signature some interior decorator has put on a room makeover. There is no ghastly tube-like body on display: he is simply a neat, clean-lines overhead shot of a psychedelic stealth bomber.

If this helps anyone with identifying him, please get in touch in either the comment thread here or jawslog@gmail.com.

Our gloriously gentle August weather continues. Just this evening, I can see that the prunes are now near-perfect for eating straight off the tree. There are two signs to look for.

  They’re shown quite well here.

1. Light-grey misty colouring at the edges with

2. A shiny plum-like stripe in the middle.

This little fellow was picked by my own fair hand an hour ago, and then consumed soon after photography. He tasted drop-dead wonderful.

But one does have to be careful. After consuming too many of them, it is not unknown for pensioners to break the 100 metres track record when sprinting back to the house in search of a lavatory.

The evening sun tonight is overlaying ruddy light on the interior walls of this lovely old house. It puts me in mind of a classic Joni Mitchell lyric:

And the sun shone in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses/Won’t you stay, we’ll put on the day/And we’ll talk in present tenses

Ms Mitchell was, for me, the greatest female recording artist/lyricist of the 20th century’s two penultimate decades. Eclectic, profound, daring, and dreamlike, she inspired my guitar playing and gave me a standard at which to aim…as well as many hours of sensory pleasure. She is still with us, but her fellow open-tuners JJ Cale and Ritchie Havens sadly are not. Put on Mama Don’t (Track 6 on JJ’s Shades album) and see if you can sit still. I can’t: the fusion of rock and jazz therein has never been equalled. The final tight-band playout is beyond belief.

So that just leaves Ry Cooder, the male version of Mitchell’s experimentalism. What a bloke. On his long and winding road from the Purple Valley to the Buena Vista Social Club, Mr Cooder has engaged every genre from TexMex and Country to New Orleans funereal jazz and mambo. Every one a winner, as they say.

At the end of this day of mine, there is melody, lyricism, percussion, blood-red fading sunlight, and a satisfying sense that all this will triumph sooner rather than later over the ridiculous money-makers who understand but one thing: how to take the pure and natural, and render it contrived, over-produced and worthless. I shall not be sorry to see the end of that greatest King Midas in Reverse, Simon Cowell. He is a cancer upon the flawless skin of creativity.

Earlier at The Slog: After currency wars, we now have bond wars