I’m blogging from my phone today because my computer has decided to completely die. I’m not sure what’s going on there. It worked fine yesterday when I got home from work and now it’s just showing me the red “recharge battery” symbol — and it’s been plugged in and charging all night. It won’t even turn on using the power cord. Argh!
I suppose I need to go buy a new computer. This one’s been around for a while. I think I got it in 2015.
Anyway, before that snafu, I was excited to report that our repainting project is DONE! Woo hoo! As you can see above, everything in the living room is back in place — including Dave. He and I worked a couple of hours after getting home from work to put our rooms in order.
And here’s the very blue bedroom. I like it! We have to re-hang the big picture on the left but that’s roughly where it goes. As you may have noticed, we moved the gigantic yucca from the living room to the bedroom because the ceiling there is higher. I’m a little afraid it’s going to fall on me in the night and put my eyes out. Wouldn’t THAT be a news story? “Man Loses Eyes While Sleeping.”
Please ignore the awful drapes — a problem still to be resolved.
Dave decided that he wants fewer tchotchkes sitting around, and despite all appearances I’m really not a tchotchke person either. So I’m going to box some of them up and stick them in a closet. As someone in the comments said a few days ago, painting provides a great opportunity to evaluate all your stuff — both ownership and placement.
The painters were back yesterday for their second day. I thought they were close to being done, but it turns out they had to "cut in" the bedroom, which I think just means giving the paint a sharper edge, and they gave everything a second coat and started the front door. We had a scare in the morning when they said the living room wall was too wet to paint -- and indeed, there were water droplets in some areas, which I have never seen before. They insisted the water was coming in from the outside. We have some dampness issues in the living room -- we always have -- but I'm sure what we were seeing was actually condensation from all the humidity in the room. I left the dehumidifier on overnight so it would be drier this morning, and it seems much better.
Also, the tree guy was here and cleared out a huge amount of greenery from the back of the garden. I'll get some photos this morning so you can see what I mean. I think we're going to have him come back and do some more, because he left a huge amount of ivy after cutting its stem, and I don't want all that dead ivy just hanging there. I'd rather pay extra to have him remove it.
So, yes, chaos continues here at home, though the painters say they'll be done today. That would be a mercy.
This was drawn by a boy named Levi in our Lower School library. He brought it to me and said, "How do you like my very friendly dog?" I had to laugh, both at his sarcasm and his artwork. Pretty amazing for a second-grader!
I got a treat yesterday when a book I'd ordered was delivered. It's a collection of UK crisp packets, known to those of us in North America as potato-chip bags, dating from the 1970s to 2000. I read about it in The Guardian and knew I had to have it -- it's just the kind of cultural detritus I love. Apparently the author started collecting the bags in tube tunnels while doing graffiti, which had preserved the decades-old packaging. He wound up with a fascinating assortment of graphic designs involving aliens, cartoon characters, dragons and more, for obscure snacks with crazy names like "Bermuda Triangles" and "Monster Munch."
Speaking of monsters munching, Dave had some leftover lamb chunks from a Chinese meal he'd ordered and we decided to put it out for the foxes. Here's the result. It looks like one fox got all of it -- ate its fill and then carried off a few more pieces for safekeeping, or perhaps to share with a mate. That must have been one happy, contented fox! (Top photo: Edgware Road, a few weeks ago.)
Here's what our dining room looks like at the moment. Pretty much every plant, picture and tchotchke we own is crammed in there, out of the way of the painters.
As I write I am lying in the middle of our very blue bedroom, where the bed is still far from the walls as they dry. Weirdly, I don't smell paint very strongly, but I think that has more to do with my nose than the room. I really should have my sinuses looked at. I can't smell anything anymore, but in this case it's probably just as well.
Here are some "before" shots. Above, our old gray/brown paint, with most everything cleared out of the bedroom. This has all been painted over now. Dave expressed doubts about the blue paint last night. "I hate to say I told you so," I said -- and he replied, "Did I choose that?"
Ummmm...yes. Yes, you did.
The funny thing is, I actually like it, though the darker blue does make the room look smaller. Maybe when we move everything back in again it will look more normal. Photos to come.
And here's our mostly cleared-out living room, awaiting repainting. We eventually rolled up the rug and moved that big yucca into...
...the hallway, along with the fiddle-leaf fig. These plants are so big and heavy we couldn't get them any farther than that.
We moved our Dracaena forest temporarily into the front hallway.
I will be so glad when all this is over and the house is put back together. Having everything topsy-turvy makes me tense. And to make matters worse, the tree guy is coming today to remove our fallen branch and kill the ivy growing up the elders at the back of the garden. I have a real sense of dread about losing the ivy but I suppose it has to be done.
As you may remember, for years now I've been going to the annual Winter Lights installations at Canary Wharf at the end of January. It's an annual show of light and sound sculptures, with the pieces installed outdoors on a walking tour through the neighborhood. They are always inventive and unusual, and they brighten the otherwise dreary days and nights at this time of year.
I went on Sunday and here's some of what I saw. Above is "Un-Reel Access" by KAPPA/Patrick and Kaori Jones of the UK and Japan. It's an illuminated doorway with one corner peeled up, and inevitably people would walk up to it and try the doorknob. "Through the power of light, Un-Reel Access asks us to abandon being bound by common sense. It is a portal that invites the curious mind to reframe and change its vision of the world," according to the sculpture guide.
Here's "Out of Body Experience" by Alaa Minawi of the Netherlands, Palestine and Lebanon. It's meant to evoke dancers and the capacity of dance to take us out of ourselves.
"Sol," by Artistic Latvia / Janis Petersons, suspends illuminated replicas of the planets among the trees in an indoor rooftop garden. "What if the stars leaned closer? What if the planets themselves could rest in your backyard, shimmering softly beneath your gaze?" (That's from the guide again.)
"Colour Rush" by Liz West (UK) was made like this: "Two different large 'Concertina' drawings were created before being cut up, mixed together, repositioned and folded into eight individual stripes. It is these luminous stripes that are the basis of this new octagonal light box." I'm not sure I understand that but it sure is colorful.
"For Ever and Ever and Ever" by Anna Lomax (UK) is installed in three different locations, and I only visited two. It uses "infinity mirrors" to endlessly replicate lit features installed in a column (top) and panels (above).
"Whale on the Wharf" is a more permanent installation, but I hadn't seen it before last night. It's a whale made of pieces of plastic debris like toys, jugs, coolers and shoes, seemingly surging upward from the waters of the canal. That purple box at far left is Hawksmoor, the restaurant where Dave took me for my last birthday in November.
Those are the sculptures that are more static -- that don't depend on movement and sound for their full effect. But like last year, I also made a video so you could experience the more dynamic creations, which use music or sound and spinning, shifting, pulsing light.
In the video, we start with a crowd shot to show how many people were there on Sunday. Answer: a lot!
After that, we move to the art:
1. Two views of "Amplitudes" by Limbic Cinema (UK), meant to evoke "the diverse nature of waveforms that shape both the natural world and human experience." This is my favorite piece of the whole show. It uses light projected onto a spraying fan of water droplets, along with timed music. 2. At 1:55, you see "Lacto-Reacto-Light" by Jack Wimperis (UK), a lit panel made of recycled plastic milk bottles that reacts to movement in the crowd. 3. That's followed by "FloWeЯ PoWeЯ," by Aerosculpture / Jean-Pierre David and Christian Thellier of France. This was an interesting sculpture, but what's even more unusual is that the video fails to fully capture the color. Those little spinning "flowers" were much more vibrant and colorful in real life than they are digitally. 4. "Trispheric Garden" by REELIZE.STUDIO of Australia is supposedly inspired by "the architecture of dreams." From the catalogue: "Each obelisk houses mirror-like orbs that refract and reflect light, casting ethereal patterns across the water’s surface. Together, they transform the fountain into a ‘dreaming pond’, where reflections ripple like portals between reality and imagination." 5. "In Bloom" by Kumquat Lab (UK) was inspired by pollinators visiting flowers: "Touching a flower triggers a
musical note, echoing the dance of pollinators moving from bloom to bloom. The
work turns this natural ritual into a collective and intuitive act of music-making,
celebrating connection and the vital role of pollination." (I couldn't hear music but maybe there were just too many people.) 6. "Aether" by Architecture Social Club (UK) looks like a nightclub. Light beams project onto a suspended collection of fine rods and a black backdrop, and it makes vibrant, shifting shadows on the floor, too! From the guide: "Like a dancer improvising, Aether translates music into hypnotic waves and phosphorescent fragments, stirring something deeper within the audience." (There are two clips of this piece.) 7. At 5:46 we have "Blueprint" by Studio Vertigo (UK), which is inspired by the twisting double helix of DNA. 8. That's followed by "Hulahoop" by Scale (France), a hypnotic light and music sculpture and another favorite of mine. "As the eye follows the lines traced by the installation, peripheral vision melts away, hypnotising the viewer into an almost dreamlike state." 9. At 7:29 you'll see "Sanctuary" by Ithaca Studio (UK), "a tall, almost cathedral-like open structure, designed to immerse the audience in atmospheric light and sound. Enter the Sanctuary and be surrounded by colourful, reflective, illuminations and cocooned in a soothing soundscape, as the lighting transforms from the soft glow of candlelight to the jewel-like, bright tones of stained glass." (Watch for my reflection too! I'm pretty easy to spot.) 10. "Manifestation" by Marcus Lyall (UK) was inspired by Victorian spiritualism. "Loosely based on ‘Thought Forms’ a 1905 book by spiritualist Anne Besant, who believed abstract visual forms could be linked to sounds or spiritual states, this piece delves back into the early dawn of ‘Visual Music’ shows, and their roots in seances and magic." (From the guide.) 11. And finally, there's "At the Hand" by LACROIX (Canada), in which spectators use their own hand movements to trigger a monumental hand made of light.
It was a great show, made better by the cup of mulled wine I bought along the way!
Well, we ironed out the paint choices. Ultimately I convinced Dave that maintaining a neutral beige in the living room would be wise. In return, I let him choose a darker shade for the bedroom than I would normally want -- but I think it might wind up looking pretty good. It's a deep blue, somewhere between peacock and teal, with the mysterious name Woad Walk.
Someone asked yesterday, "Don't you like the paint colors you already have?" I actually do, even though we chose neither of them. The bedroom, a sort of deep gray/brown, was painted by the previous tenants -- just as we lived with their couch for more than a decade, we've lived with their bedroom walls. The living room was repainted several years ago, at least partially, but it's time again.
This will leave only the dining room with its original off-white paint job, and honestly, we're not in that room much.
One thing we're not certain about is how much of the trim the painters plan to do. Are they repainting all the baseboards and molding? When we had the halls, kitchen and bathroom painted years ago, we did not do the trim or the doors or windowsills or any of that stuff. So I'm not sure what to expect there.
Oh! And they're painting our front door. We're going from faded, flaky dark green to bright red. Cranberry Crunch, to be specific.
In other news, I made another batch of squash soup with one of the front-porch pumpkins, which have been sitting in the chilly closet under the stairs. (I forgot about them until last week, to be honest.) This soup wasn't as successful as the last. I used the brown pumpkin, which turned out to be sort of pale yellow inside. It was more like a spaghetti squash and when baked and then blended, the texture wasn't as smooth as I would have liked. I stirred in some spices, stock and sour cream, and I ate it for dinner last night. It hasn't killed me.
Now I only have that green one to deal with.
I also finished a book yesterday, "We Contain Multitudes" by Sarah Henstra, a gay coming-of-age/romance novel about two high school boys who are assigned to write letters to each other in English class and have a relationship as a result. The novel is epistolary, told through their letters, and one of them is a Walt Whitman enthusiast, hence the title. I had to set aside some quibbles -- no high-schoolers would write letters like these, recounting events between the sender and recipient that had just occurred -- but it was interesting and it drew me in and held me until the last pages. I could never make heads or tails of Whitman, and I admire anyone who can.
I finished it on the tube last night as I went to see the annual Winter Lights display at Canary Wharf. More on that tomorrow! (Photos: A healthy-looking teasel in the garden, and our snowdrops about to bloom.)
OK, it's a bit early to be talking about spring, especially with the USA buried under snow and at least another month of winter ahead of us. Here in London we've had some of our heaviest snowfalls in late February and early March. But the sun was bright yesterday, and this little robin was sitting in the Philadelphus outside the back door singing its heart out, and it reminded me that this interminable winter will indeed come to an end.
Just like the interminable administration of Donald Trump will come to an end. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
I think I solved the Alhambra problem, in a completely unimaginative way. I got online and Googled "How to get tickets to the Alhambra when they're sold out." And several private tour companies popped up offering tickets at a slight premium. I guess they must buy blocks of tickets and then sell them to tourists. Anyway, I reserved two and they've been confirmed so if all goes well, we'll get to visit after all. I'm a bit wary because reviews for this company are mixed and some people say their tickets only came through at the last minute or not at all. But I'm hoping for the best, and if not, we'll find other things to do in Granada.
I realize it's incredibly shallow of me to write about problems like this when the USA is in such turmoil. But I don't see how I can help the situation by going off about how repulsive it is to watch federal agents shoot innocent Americans in the street. All I can do from this distance is help elect more opposition to contain that lunatic as much as possible until his term is up. (OK, I had more to say, but I really am stopping now.)
I spotted our first daffodil yesterday! This is usually when we start seeing them -- end of January or so. Dave and I had his co-worker Lorraine and her boyfriend over for dinner last night, so I cut the daffodil and made it our centerpiece. Dave made parsnip and leek soup, beef stroganoff with broccoli on the side, and lemon posset for dessert. He served the posset with a store-bought blueberry tart. I teased him for serving two desserts, and when he brought them out, Lorraine said, "Two desserts!" But Dave insisted that it was one dessert in two dishes, because the tastes went well together. OK then.
We walked up to Leyland (a home improvements store) yesterday morning to get paint samples to make some choices about the redecorating. Unfortunately we are not in agreement about the options. For the living room I want something very similar to what we already have -- neutral beige. Dave wants very light blue or light green, but I think that's going to be too much blue/green, considering that our sofa is blue and our rug is green and all the paint in the hallway is celadon. In the bedroom, I'd like a dark gray-blue, but not too dark -- and the one Dave wants is, to my mind, too dark and too purple. So we still have to sort this out.
I also downloaded the garden cam yesterday, with results above. We see several of our neighborhood cats -- Blackie, Pale Cat and Tabby -- as well as at least three foxes. I don't believe any of the foxes are Q-Tip, unless he/she is the fox whose poor tail has been stripped at the end, but honestly I have trouble telling them all apart. We see one of the foxes bed down several times behind the hazel tree, where it seems quite comfy. I moved the garden cam so that it has a more direct view of that spot -- I'd like to get some clearer footage of it nesting back there. Hopefully repositioning the camera won't scare the fox away.
I've got to get out and take some fresh pictures this weekend. When I started my walk home last night I reminded myself to keep an eye out for anything interesting, but I just wasn't motivated. Bleak January! Maybe today when Dave and I go up to the hardware store for paint samples.
I've had a rude awakening about our upcoming Spain trip. Someone in the comments recommended that we get our tickets to the Alhambra ahead of time. This seemed a little crazy, given that it's almost a month away, but I tried to go online and buy advance tickets, and guess what? SOLD OUT! They have availability the week before and the week after, but not a single day of the week we're in the country. Of course this is because everyone is on a half-term break from school, I imagine.
I wrote our hotel to see if they could hook us up somehow, but I haven't heard back yet. If we can't get into the Alhambra it won't be the end of the world -- I've seen it (albeit 32 years ago) and although Dave hasn't, he also doesn't seem particularly invested. I did buy advance tickets to the cathedral in Córdoba, so at least we'll be sure to see that.
Traveling is not like it was in the '90s, when you could just show up at the front gate.
Blogger was doing more weird things yesterday. I couldn't reply to comments and I couldn't see my entire blog roll, which is how I click back to read everyone else's blogs. The problem seems fixed this morning, thank goodness. (Photo: A plaza off Edgware Road, last weekend.)
