Rodentia

I'm cheating a bit by writing this post on Saturday afternoon, and scheduling it to publish Sunday morning. That's because we have to catch an absurdly early train to get to Gatwick in time for our 9:40 a.m. flight. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought these plane tickets -- 9:40 a.m. seemed like a reasonable departure time (and the tickets were probably cheaper) but when you consider that you have to get to the airport two or three hours in advance, well, ugh.

The good news is, I reached out to the hotel in Málaga via Whatsapp and they did receive our documents and told me somewhat impatiently that I would be getting access codes to the door on the day of our arrival. So never mind that thing on their website that says we get the codes 48 hours in advance.

In other news, look! The bench outside the phone exchange on Finchley Road has been replaced! I'm shocked that they bothered to install a new one. I figured they'd just go benchless after hauling the old one away. After all, who sits in front of the phone exchange? But no, a new one was evidently warranted.

I spent yesterday packing, doing routine houseplant care and catching up on blogs. I am bringing no books but at least ten of my back issues of The New Yorker with me to Spain. I'm going to read them there and/or throw them away, one or the other.

We did nothing special for Valentine's Day, though Dave did buy me a pastry on the high street. If he's not trying to get me to drink more, he's buying me pastries. Has he taken out extra life insurance on me?!

This week's garden cam video comes from the patio, where I set up the camera right outside our bedroom door to see who or what is prowling around out there at night. Plenty of foxes, or perhaps just one very persistent fox, as well as a few unwelcome critters.

Here are some highlights:
-- At 0:20, you'll see a fox trot by with several links of sausage hanging out of its mouth. This is not the first time we've seen foxes with sausages in our garden. Someone must be feeding them, or maybe they've figured out how to raid the high street butcher's rubbish bin?
-- At 1:03, yikes! A rat! This is not terribly surprising since we live in the city, especially with foxes gnawing on sausages in the garden. But it doesn't make me happy because the last time we saw rats on the patio we had to call an exterminator and I am still psychologically scarred.
-- At 1:23, a token pigeon. I got tons of videos of solo pigeons wandering the patio in daytime.
-- At 1:44, a pair of amorous robins. That male is definitely trying to get the female's attention.
-- Random fox wanderings, and then at 2:52 it runs in at top speed and seems to be surveying the corner. Maybe it saw one of the rodents? It looks like it's in hunting mode.
-- At 4:04, a robin sings happily in the pre-dawn darkness.
-- At 4:26, the fox sneezes while sniffing the garden plants. I think it's hunting again. At least there's no coughing this time!
-- At 4:30, we get a brief daytime shot of the fox. Look at its beautiful red fur! It's easy to forget how colorful they are, looking at the pale infrared footage in my nighttime videos.
-- At 4:40, a mouse visits. I'm not sure that's any better than a rat.
-- At 5:00, I put down a bit of duck breast for the foxes. Now, before you criticize me, let me assure you I have only done this sort of thing three or four times in all the years we've lived here, and I would not have done it had I known we have rodents out there. So don't blame me for the rats. I think they're probably coming around because of the bird feeders. (You can blame me for those.)
-- At 5:12, the fox eats the duck breast and sniffs around hoping for more.
-- At 6:13, the rat is back. The camera caught no evidence that the rodents got any of the duck, thank God.
-- Two token squirrels at 6:47, the only other daytime visitors besides the pigeons and robins.
-- We finish with a last fox sighting. I think the fox is probably attracted to the patio partly because of those rodents. I hope it eats them.

Interesting that we saw no cats on the patio -- where it looks like we need them!

This coming week, I've set up the camera to film the bird feeders directly. I want to see if those rats or mice are climbing the pole and having a nosh. If so, I need to relocate the feeders away from the house. (I probably should anyway.)

Ch-ch-ch-changes

This is sitting in the driveway of a neighbor down the street. I think it's the soundboard for an upright piano. As I understand it, old pianos are very hard to sell nowadays, given that lightweight and easily portable electronic keyboards are available. Remember how my family struggled with that issue when we tried to sell my grandmother's Steinway years ago? And that was a baby grand, not "just" an upright.

Still, it makes me sad to see a piano reduced to this condition.

I have had a killer week, and I'm not sure why. It should have been easy, with two days of parent-teacher conferences during which I dealt with no students. But of course I had plenty to do, because God forbid I be permitted any downtime. Yesterday and Thursday I weeded part of our non-fiction section and covered and labeled about 50 new books, among other things, and when I balked at immediately stamping, sorting and boxing up all the weeded materials, my boss seemed surprised. It was 3 p.m. on a Friday before a break and I was done. I came home.

I only have 26 days of work left! That freaks me out a little bit, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to retirement. My co-workers are talking about making major changes in the library, "genrifying" the collection (sorting mysteries from romances from classics, that kind of thing) and getting a new computer system. I am nothing but relieved that I won't have to deal with any of it.

I'm sure I sound like a spoiled, work-averse baby here (is there such a thing as an enthusiastically working baby?) but as I get older I find that I am much less able to embrace workplace changes, and my boss is a rip-everything-down, nothing-is-sacred kind of person. I need to get out.

Meanwhile, Dave and I have to get ready for Spain! We're leaving early tomorrow morning, and I'm already having a bit of anxiety about our first hotel, in Málaga. The reception is closed after 2:30 p.m. and I was told to send them our documents and they would give us access codes to the door, and I've sent what I'm supposed to send, but I've received no codes. If I'd known this "hotel" was really serviced apartments with no full-time reception I'd have booked somewhere else. I want to be checked in by a person. Argh!

Here are some fun or interesting links I've saved that you might enjoy:

-- The story of the North London house that gave the band Fairport Convention its name.

-- Five photographic treasures displayed at the somewhat recent Paris photo fair.

-- A CBS News segment about a mysterious cache of photos from San Francisco, taken during the Summer of Love.

-- A discussion of the impact of ring-necked parakeets on our local ecology. You'll recall we see lots of these birds in our garden on our bird feeders.

-- One of our favorite video clips from British television, from the TV show "This Morning," in which Gino D'Acampo takes down presenter Holly Willoughby in ineffably Italian fashion.

-- And from just this week, the obituary of actor Bud Cort, who famously played Harold in "Harold and Maude," one of my favorite movies.

Bulb Report

As you can see, the bulbs are a bit further along now. The snowdrops are open...

...as are the daffodils. We have four clumps of them running down the side of the rose bed, all planted before we moved in, and they come up reliably every year. (And we no longer have to put protective stakes around them because Olga's not here to trample them!)

The Leucojum, which is similar to a snowdrop, is blooming too.

The crocuses looked promising at first. This (above) was taken on Feb. 7.

But this was yesterday. The squirrel gods have deemed that no crocus shall be allowed to reach flowering stage!

Stickermania

Aas you know, I always keep an eye out for unusual stickers when I'm walking along Finchley Road (which, in general, is not a very scenic thoroughfare). Here are some I've found in recent days.

Perfunctory Googling this morning didn't solve the mystery of the sticker above. There are songs called "Not So Good," so maybe it's a reference to something like that, but otherwise the meaning is lost on me.

I think "Tommy" must refer to Tommy Robinson, England's criminal right-wing provocateur and all-around loose cannon.

I'm not sure what this one's about. Looks like a logo, but Google isn't sure for what. 

"Boo" has posted several stickers featuring chili peppers.

"Clean Out Louis" really IS a band, or at least a musical duo. I think they're Danish. Apparently one of them is named Louis -- a fact he didn't know until he was six years old, if this article is to be believed. Perhaps he's trying to "clean out" this alter-ego?

And finally, yet another cat sticker. I never tire of them.

Pondering Light Bulbs

There's an apartment in the building behind us where the light is always on. I took the picture above at 3 a.m. this morning, when I got up to get a glass of water. That light is bright, but it doesn't illuminate the whole scene the way it does in the photo -- that's a function of the iPhone's "night photography" feature.

When I turned off night photography, this is what I got:

Not as interesting as a photo, but closer to real life.

Anyway, I think the apartment is vacant. I wish someone would go in and turn off the light. I was a child of the Carter years, when we all talked about energy conservation and were instructed to turn off every light when we left the room. The New York Times says this is no longer necessary, because modern bulbs are so much more efficient than they used to be. (In 1974, the paper said just the opposite -- "It all three million customers in New York City and Westchester County cut off a single 100‐watt bulb that might burn six hours a day, the savings would be 1.5 million barrels of oil a year, 10 days' supply." Apparently incandescent bulbs really were incredibly wasteful, with most of the energy expended as heat rather than light.)

Today is just a half-day with students. Parent-teacher conferences begin in the afternoon and run for the next two days, which means Dave will be busy meeting with lots of parents online (which he's going to do from home), but I don't have much to do during this time since far fewer people will be in the school building itself. I suppose I can neaten shelves.

Picnic in the Street

Yesterday I was carrying the yard waste bags out to the street and I noticed this ladybug (aka ladybird) on one of the discarded stems of the dusty miller (Senecio). I gently broke off that leaf and brought it back to the main plant in the garden, where the ladybug took refuge. I probably disturbed its winter hibernation by trimming away some of the foliage where it was concealed. Hopefully it will find a new retreat until spring comes.

I had to come home yesterday at lunch because our boiler has been leaking and we had a repair scheduled. It only started dripping last week, but by Sunday the leak was worse and I thought, "We can't go away to Spain with this thing dripping like that!" I called British Gas yesterday morning and got a repair window of noon to 6 p.m. I stayed here for the first part of the shift, and Dave relieved me around 1:30 p.m. so I could get back to work. Martin, the engineer, was here by mid-afternoon and our boiler is once again watertight.

It's always something.

Meanwhile, the roofers working on the house next door set up a picnic lunch in the street, right in front of our steps. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone eat lunch in the street before. I wondered why they didn't use the parking space in front of the house (it's full of roofing supplies, I realized later) or the back garden (maybe too wet). Anyway, they didn't seem to mind.

On the way home in the evening I stopped on Finchley Road for a bubble tea (I get the taro milk with tapioca beads). When this place first opened several years ago it was quite swanky, but now it's looking a little downtrodden. I still like their stuffed bubble-tea toys, even though they are themselves bearing the stains of spilled bubble tea.

A Quiet Day

It's official -- I'll be headed back to Florida in early March, for a quick trip to join a "celebration of life" for my stepmother. I bought my ticket yesterday. I bought premium economy again, and it wasn't much more than what I've paid in the past for tickets in regular economy, so I felt pretty good about that deal. More legroom and the world's most expensive glass of "complimentary" champagne!

That's about the only meaningful thing I did yesterday, besides realize that we'd better stop spending so much money. Between our travels at Christmas, our trip to Spain, our summer cruise to Italy, this new ticket to Florida and my new laptop, I am hyperventilating about our checking account balance. We have more in savings but I'd rather not rip through that like a racehorse on the straightaway.

I went out yesterday morning with grand plans to transplant a buddleia that was growing at the back of our garden, underneath our fig and ornamental plum trees. The location was far too shady and last year it didn't look so good. Well, no transplanting was necessary, because when I looked again yesterday it was dead as a doornail. This is not a crisis. We have more buddleia than we know what to do with.

So I spent most of the day on the couch, reading. I polished off three New Yorkers. Oh, and I organized and archived all my photos for the last month or so.

In the evening, Dave and I went to see "Melania." NO! I'm KIDDING! I would never pay money to see that ridiculous film and in fact I wouldn't even watch it for free because WHO CARES?! Mr. Pudding posted this brilliant review from Mark Kermode on his blog and I have to link to it here as well because I got such a kick out of it. "Melania always talks about working," Kermode says. "When she says working, she means trying on frocks."

Other memorable lines from his review:

"It's like somebody making a documentary in which Eva Braun feels sad about war whilst Hitler invades Poland."

"She makes Derek Zoolander seem smart and self-deprecating."

"In its final act, it basically turns into 'Triumph of the Will.' It's a piece of handsomely mounted, crypto-fascist propaganda...a heist movie about a crime family breaking into the seats of power and stealing the cutlery whilst destroying democracy."

Trump "claims to be a peacemaker and a unifier and the ghost of Leni Riefenstahl fills the room."

(Photos: Stickers on Finchley Road.)