Ike and Pinky II

This was the sunset last night from my stepsister's back yard, with the clouds so low and moisture-laden it seemed I could touch them. I am definitely in the semi-tropics!

My flight yesterday was pretty uneventful. I had trouble getting to the airport, though. I took a Thameslink train from West Hampstead straight to Gatwick, and somewhere around Croydon it came to a dead stop. We sat on the tracks, motionless, and sat, and sat. People all around me were starting to freak out because they had flights to catch, but I was so far ahead of my scheduled departure time that I wasn't too worried. More annoyed than anything.

Finally the driver came on and said it was a signal failure blah blah blah (which is actually what he sounded like on the terrible speaker system) and we would be moving shortly. We finally pulled into Gatwick about an hour behind schedule, and everyone sprinted from the train except me. I took it at a leisurely pace.

On the plane, the flight attendant provided me with an extra gin & tonic and an extra white wine without even being asked! As I often say of Dave, she wasn't just an enabler -- she was an enforcer! "You WILL drink this and be happy."

I obliged.

I read Ike Eisenmann's memoir of growing up as a child actor. I polished off the whole book, a little less than 300 pages, and it was quite interesting. (It's been on my blog sidebar as "What I'm Reading" for ages, but I didn't actually start it until yesterday!)

For example, I was intrigued to learn that although he starred in numerous movies with Kim Richards, including the famous Disney film "Escape to Witch Mountain," they didn't really know each other and weren't friends. Apparently they barely spoke on the set when they weren't acting. Eisenmann also wrote about his difficult father (a frustrated actor himself) and his move into voice-over work when he became an adult, a little-known but apparently lucrative dimension of filmmaking.

I also watched "Three Days of the Condor" and "Blow-Up," two of my favorite old movies which happen to have been downloaded on my computer and thus accessible without Internet.

In Tampa I collected my bag and made my way to the rental car terminal (above, with groovy fishnet wall hanging). I am now the proud driver of a very sleek-looking black Honda Accord.

I spent last night chatting with my stepsister and her husband and son, and today we're going to breakfast and maybe working on getting some estimates for selling my late stepmother's jewelry.

Oh, and we have another addition to the family. My stepmother's elderly chihuahua, Pinky, died recently and my nephew (who lives in her house) was very attached to it. So when a relative of my brother-in-law was looking for a home for her own chihuahua, they adopted it right away -- and believe it or not, its name was already Pinky! So now we have Pinky II.

This is a terrible picture because the light was so dim, but it cracks me up. Doesn't she look like a gerbil?

And one more piece of interesting trivia: My stolen AirPods, which I hadn't checked up on in ages since they disappeared with my camera bag in Rome, are now in Algiers, Algeria! I can still see them on Apple's "Find My" app. I have no way of knowing whether the camera is there as well. I guess moving around stolen merchandise is indeed an international skill.

Trouble and Other Public Scribbles

I wonder if whoever wrote this used to hear from their parents, "Here comes Trouble!" And somehow it became their nickname? Or maybe their actual name. Who knows?

In a few more hours I'll be taking off for Florida. I'm trying to wrap up some last minute stuff here at home, packing a few more items, but I'm mostly ready to go. Bailey is squeezed up next to me in bed as I write this. I feel guilty leaving her. She's going to miss having someone here at home all day.

We took a walk yesterday and found the graffiti above, as well as all this:

And then there were a couple of artworks:

Keira, age 6, contributed this fine portrait to the Mill Lane Bridge.

And we found these boards of text propped up outside someone's flat, next to the rubbish. The one at left contains a long quote from a speech by Teddy Roosevelt, urging us all to be people of action.

The one at the right is in Greek and, according to the ever-reliable Google AI function, is a poem titled "As Long As You Can" by Constantine Cavafy, from 1913. "The poem reflects on preserving one's life from the trivializing weight of excessive social interaction and mundane routines," it says. Like going through airport security, I'm thinking.

Finally, here's Bailey Girl, posing next to some very productive yellow clematis -- not a color you see every day.

Next stop, the Sunshine State!

Spice Bag

We've just seen Dave's nephew and his fiancee off to the airport. (Is there a word for a nephew's fiancee? Niece-in-law-to-be?) I've already deflated and put away the air mattress and as soon as Dave gets out of the shower and helps me put the dining room table back in place, I'll take down those awful drapes. And then we'll be more or less back to normal around here.

We had a busy day yesterday. Antavius (Dave's nephew) and Arjeta (his fiancee) left in the morning for the Tower of London. Yesterday was their last day and they asked for advice on what to see, and we both suggested the Tower -- I mean, Henry VIII's armor! The crown jewels! Graffiti from imprisoned noblemen! It's all there!

We met them afterwards on Tower Bridge and walked across the bridge and along South Bank.

It was a beautiful day. We couldn't have asked for better.

Our plan was to eat at Borough Market, a large outdoor market teeming with vendors, food trucks and people. We knew something was off when we arrived and found guys with hi-viz vests pressure-washing the paved areas. Turns out Borough Market is closed on Mondays! Who knew?!

We found a nearby pub and had a beer and a fairly middling lunch -- Dave had something called a "spice bag" that consisted of soggy fries and lumps of unidentifiable breaded meat in something akin to curry spices, literally served in a paper bag. He probably won't do that again.

From there we walked along the river to the Millennium Bridge and over to St. Paul's, where we caught the tube. Antavius and Arjeta went on to the British Museum for a quick look around, and Dave and I headed home.

This was the view looking downriver from the Millennium Bridge. The tide was out (obviously). Look at the dead shrubbery and trees in the planters along the river. This summer's drought was really brutal to a lot of plantings.

Now Dave is off to work and I have 24 hours to do some laundry, get things squared away here and get my own bag packed for Florida.

One of our neighbors threw this bouquet in their garden waste. It still looks pretty fresh to me -- I considered taking it, but decided a picture would suffice!

Oh, and I mailed my ballot off to the USA yesterday, so I have officially voted. I'll watch the Supervisor of Elections web site to make sure it's received and counted.

The September Garden

Not a lot of news today. Dave's nephew and his fiancee went into town on their own yesterday afternoon, so we had some time on our own. I tried to catch up, more or less, in the blogosphere, and Dave took a nap. Later in the afternoon I mowed the lawn, which has bounced back remarkably from the brown, crunchy carpet that it was a month ago. After even our relatively sparse recent rains, it's now green and growing.

(According to our local weather web site, we've had 26 mm of rain so far this month, which is much better than July, when we had zero, and August, when we had 12 mm. But it's still about 25 percent lower than our September monthly average. Of course, the month's not over yet.)

I found this little ladybug (or ladybird) harvesting minute insects from a teasel head in the garden. It crawled around and around that seed head, occasionally dipping down inside it. Even though I couldn't see what it was eating, there must have been something there.

Here are some more photos from the early-autumn garden.

Our rambling roses have bright red hips, including this one that looks to me like some kind of weird fish with long, trailing fins.

Our beautyberry, which has looked desperate all summer, managed to form berries despite the dry conditions. According to my plant-identifier app, it's suffering "late season moisture stress." I don't doubt it! This is a Bodinier's beautyberry (Callicarpa bodinieri), which is different from the beautyberries I know from growing up in Florida (Callicarpa americana).

And the Michaelmas daisies, or asters, are coming out once again.

We finished "Chimp Fever" last night -- a really good show, but as I said before, with a sadder edge than "Tiger King." Bailey watched very intently every time the animals came on the screen. Dave and I are still amazed at how she responds to the television. If a dog barks on a show we're watching, she'll perk up her ears and stare, and if it appears onscreen she'll run right up to it. She doesn't normally get too excited about other animals, but in "Chimp Fever," she responded to the chimps and monkeys as well -- maybe sensing correctly that they're a lot like us humans.

Squirrelicide

On our morning walk yesterday Bailey and I passed this wooden fence, which seemed to be keeping an eye on us. And looking none too happy about it, I might add.

Maybe it knew what was coming next.

Not long after that walk, Dave and I were sitting in the living room talking with our guests, and Bailey was snoozing on the couch. (On my lap, in fact.) She spotted something out the back door and immediately flew off the couch and outside, as she often does. I didn't think anything about it. Chasing squirrels, blah blah blah.

Only this time, Dave's nephew looked out the door and said, "Holy shit, she caught the squirrel!" And sure enough, there was Bailey, standing at the back door with a bloody motionless squirrel at her feet. She was very proud of herself, but as is often true when a dog kills a squirrel, she had no idea what to do next.

Of course I felt terrible all day, especially because I think this squirrel might be the one nesting in our walnut tree. All I could do was bury it. Nature, red in tooth and claw. (Though whether Bailey is really "nature" is debatable!)

This makes two creatures Bailey has definitely killed -- remember, she killed a rat in the garden within days of her arrival here. And she may have killed that bird in our bedroom, though that situation was so weird I hesitate to draw conclusions. I'm not entirely sure the bird didn't bonk itself into the window trying to get out.

Olga also killed a squirrel back in her youth, so this situation is not entirely unprecedented.

We mostly stuck to our neighborhood yesterday, taking Bailey to the cemetery in the afternoon. Then, last night, we took Dave's nephew and his fiancee to dinner at Fallow, which is probably Dave's favorite restaurant in London. This is the place that specializes in cooking and serving livestock that would otherwise go to waste -- their beef comes from dairy cows, for example, and one of their specialties is cod's head, a part of the fish that would normally be discarded. (A cod's head is huge and they serve just half of it -- and there's a surprisingly large amount of good meat on it.)

Then we went to see "Book of Mormon," which Dave thought his nephew would appreciate. We saw it 13 years ago (!) and loved it, but there's a lot I'd forgotten -- it's by the same guys who write "South Park" so the humor is very edgy and in some places downright cringey. They enjoyed it and so did we, but I'm not sure that show has entirely aged well. (It's been adapted a bit over the years, with Jeffrey Epstein now written into the script, among other changes.) The first time around I called it "a little bit shocking, in a good way" and it remains shocking, but I'm less sure about the good.

And just now, as I was writing, a squirrel ran up the avocado tree on the patio right outside our living room window. Bailey is going nuts.

These squirrels clearly have a death wish!

Apropos of nothing, I wanted to also share this photo from our walk on Friday of the Ukrainian flag flying atop a building near Parliament Square. I was happy to see it occupying a prominent place on the London skyline, and thus hopefully in people's minds.

Lady in Blue

I played tour guide yesterday, taking Dave's nephew and his fiancee around Westminster for some sightseeing. We walked from Covent Garden in a circle through Soho, and then down Whitehall to Parliament Square, and then over the Westminster Bridge to the London Eye. That was a fair amount of scenery for a single day!

Along the way we passed the newly-unveiled sculpture on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, "Lady in Blue" by Tschabalala Self. It's described on the fourth plinth web page as an homage to a young, metropolitan everywoman.

"Lady in Blue is a woman that many can relate to. She is not an idol to revere or a historic figurehead to commemorate. She is a woman striding forward into our collective future with ambition and purpose. She is a Londoner, who represents the city’s spirit."

I do love her energy. She's very dynamic.

We ate lunch at a dumpling place in Chinatown that was delicious, ordering a variety of little plates that added up to a meal.

Then, last night, we ordered pizza and watched "Chimp Fever," an HBO documentary that the young folks recommended. It's a mind-blower in the tradition of "Tiger King," about a woman who is ordered to surrender the chimpanzees she's keeping in a Missouri shelter to PETA so they can be re-homed at a more suitable sanctuary. Of course she feels she's being wronged and she holds one of the chimps back, keeping it in a cage in her basement. She's quite a character herself, sporting wigs and false eyelashes and a Trumpian spray tan, and the show explores her devotion to the chimps, as delusional as it may be. We watched two episodes and it was fascinating but also kind of sad. We'll certainly finish it, though.

Preparing for Guests

This is a close-up of one of the old zinnias in the garden. You gotta love the multitude of colors in those petals! It's like a floral tequila sunrise.

Dave's nephew and his fiancee arrived yesterday afternoon from Spain, where they've been staying for several days for a friend's wedding. They'll be with us through the weekend and into the beginning of next week, until the day before I leave for Florida.

Of course that meant I was a cleaning whirlwind yesterday. I started by doing sensible things like cleaning the bathtub, but then I would up working on progressively unlikely tasks like cleaning the dusty floor behind the toilets and cleaning the front of all the kitchen cabinets. I know my guests aren't going to inspect the floor behind the toilets, but you know how it goes -- you clean one thing and the thing next to it looks even filthier, so then you have to clean that too.

I also had to re-hang the drapes in the dining room to turn it back into a serviceable guest bedroom. You may remember I took them down in April 2025 because we never used them (they were always open) and they looked terrible. Dave argued that it gets dark early enough that we didn't need drapes, but I said, "You can't have guests sleeping in a room on the street with no drapes." No woman, especially, is going to go for that. (I can hear my mother telling me so.)

So I got up on a chair and managed a fumbling semblance of re-hanging the drapes. Several of the little plastic hooks broke and there aren't enough functional hooks remaining on the curtain rod, so the drapes sag in places and we have to pin them closed, giving the overall effect of a decrepit drug den in a posh neighborhood. But hey, it's only for five days.

I also carefully made the bed, which Bailey promptly trashed by climbing all over the pillows and building a comfortable nest.

Last night we went to the Spaniards Inn, a historic pub next to Hampstead Heath, where foxes were noisily fighting and/or mating in the dark garden of the building next door. Welcome to London!