Sunshine State

Well, here I am, safe and sound on the other side of the Atlantic. Above you see the view out my window as we flew over the Florida coast at Cape Canaveral. That's the Kennedy Space Center directly below, where the Apollo moon missions used to blaze upward and hold the country spellbound, where Challenger met its sad fate but many other shuttle missions launched successfully. Back when we did those sorts of things, you know?

It was a loooooong flight -- more than ten hours, I think. Are planes flying more slowly these days? When we checked in, Dave and I upgraded to premium economy seats, which cost us more but gave us more cabin space and little perks like a meal on real china and a glass of champagne upon boarding. It was the smartest thing we could have done. We were much, much more comfortable as a result. I stood up only once during the whole flight, and didn't feel too awfully confined. I did have a rather rambunctious little boy sitting directly behind me, leading to occasional unexpected squeals, bumps and thumps, but you can't have everything.

Of course there was a kid from the school where we work on our flight, with his family. This seems to be de rigueur when we travel.

On the plane I finished "All the Colours of the Dark," which I enjoyed, and watched a very interesting movie called "Nightbitch," starring Amy Adams, about the trials of being a young mother. I was attracted to it because I like her, and I figured she wouldn't make a crappy movie, and indeed it turned out to be smart and surprisingly surreal. I also managed to leave my glasses case on the plane (but fortunately not the glasses themselves). Oh well.

My stepsister and her husband picked us up at the airport, where Phoebe the Flamingo still presides over the terminal:

We drove up to Lutz, north of Tampa, where we're staying in my stepmother's guesthouse. We've seen her and my nephew and we all went to dinner last night. I slept surprisingly well. Today my brother shows up with his family.

At the moment I am, of course, at Dunkin' Donuts, which you will remember is my blogging redoubt while I'm in Lutz. The guesthouse doesn't have WiFi and, more critically, it doesn't have a coffee machine. Fortunately, Dunkin' Donuts opens at 5 a.m. -- which of course is 10 a.m. by my own body clock, well past the time I would normally require coffee!

I do have one more thing to post from London, which I meant to include in yesterday's post but forgot:

This one-minute snippet of garden-cam footage shows both how miserable the weather was last Thursday, and what happened when I put a hard-boiled egg out for the foxes. You see the egg in the first shot, sitting back by the flowerpots and center-left of the screen. It vanishes in the next clip as a fox trots by -- we don't actually see the fox eat it, but I'm sure that's what happened! And then, at 0:35, we see proof that the foxes are making that weird call I've been hearing in the garden -- one trots by and makes the noise as it goes.

I thought about bringing the garden cam to Florida to see what's wandering around my stepmother's yard, but in the end, I just didn't have the energy for that!

Burlington Arcade

Yesterday I went into Westminster to pick up a couple of last-minute things for Christmas. I know I said I wasn't doing gifts, but I decided it would be in poor taste to show up in Florida utterly empty-handed. So I got some swanky chocolates from Fortnum & Mason that everyone can share. I bought a box for my family and a box for Dave's, along with a tiny Christmas pudding for wherever we happen to be on that day -- I think at my stepmother's. The bill was something like £112. Insanity!

Oh well. I'm sure Christmas is what keeps Fortnum & Mason afloat the rest of the year.

Across Piccadilly from the shop was this brightly lit shopping arcade, Burlington Arcade, that runs to Burlington Gardens and thus to Bond Street. I took a look inside.

There's a "Twelve Days of Christmas" decorating motif going on -- I believe those are the "twelve drummers drumming" above. I barely looked at the shops because I wasn't really in the market for any of the finery that's on sale there.

At the other end I wound up on Bond Street and saw...

...a very trendily-dressed woman and her cotton-ball of a dog, who was sporting a special Santa hat and collar. This is the kind of thing you see on Bond Street.

From there I headed to the Tate Britain, because I wanted to see the Lee Miller exhibit currently on show. Miller was a model and surrealist photographer associated with Man Ray in the 1920s, who then became a fashion and war photographer in her own right. The Tate show covers her early surrealism, her fashion work for Vogue, and her years as a war correspondent, including some heart-wrenching images of post-Holocaust concentration camps and the destruction in Europe.

And there, among the wartime pictures, was this one:

Yes, that's the Burlington Arcade, taken during or after the Blitz. I was mesmerized by many of Miller's photos, like the one of four rats sitting on a piece of wood in Paris, their tails hanging down in parallel lines, looking composed and almost elegant as one would expect of Parisian rats. Or the one of René Magritte and his dog LouLou, which reminded me of Paul Simon's song, "René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War." I thought, "That's it! That's the dog!"

Anyway it was an interesting exhibit and I'm glad I fit it into my schedule before we depart for Florida today.

I came home and gave Dave his gift, which I bought on my errand to Covent Garden a few days ago. I got him an Apple watch, largely because I want him to be able to track his heart rate. But it does a lot of other cool things too, like measure the quality of one's sleep and, of course, provide all the communication you could ever want with the world at large. It's right out of Dick Tracy, for sure.

Last night we watched "Being Charlie," the movie Rob Reiner made with his son about addiction. It was modeled on their family experiences and was quite powerful, but as you'd expect, also quite sad. The lead character, Charlie, seemed so angry and nihilistic -- a perception perhaps heightened by recent events. I was struck by a scene when Charlie said to his father, "I don't hate you." Which makes what ultimately happened all the more mystifying.

Ernesto and Peter Arnett

Ernesto, the ceramic skull I bought in Cozumel years ago, is slowly being overtaken by the jungle in the living room. He probably doesn't mind. He's from a pretty jungly place.

It rained all day yesterday, so I didn't leave the house except to go out in the back garden a couple of times. I downloaded the footage from the garden cam and it was boring, so I deleted it all. Once again I didn't have the camera in a good position.

Later, I boiled an egg that had come to us in the carton with part of the shell missing. The only thing between the innards of the egg and the outside world was a sort of thin membrane, which I decided made it risky to eat. So I took it out to the foxes and reset the camera. Maybe we'll get some footage of them having a feast, though the last time I gave them a boiled egg a magpie ate it. (The egg looked fine, once cooked and peeled, and I have no doubt a fox could digest it just fine!)

I hope to take a walk some time today, but maybe not down Billy Fury Way. Remember how Olga and I walked there occasionally, even though it's a fairly grimy footpath? Well, the paper has an awkwardly headlined story -- "Seven-Week Lights Blackout in Drug-Hit Path" -- about how none of the streetlights there are working at the moment. I might go there in daylight, but I think I'd want a dog with me, not that Olga was ever a very fierce protector.

The orchid in the kitchen is blooming like crazy, underneath the yellowish overhead light. You can see the rain on the window. It was that kind of day.

I also saw in the news that Peter Arnett died. I actually have a Peter Arnett story, from my own reporting career in Florida. In the late '80s and early '90s, I worked at the newspaper in Lakeland, east of Tampa. A magazine called the Washingtonian reported that Arnett, who was representing CNN in Baghdad during the first Iraq war, was going to marry his more youthful girlfriend, a fellow journalist who had attended college in Lakeland and whose parents still lived there. So I got sent out to interview the parents.

It was a rather awkward story to write, because 1) It was basically just gossip column fodder, and 2) It's always risky to write about what someone is "going to do," rather than wait until they've done it, and 3) Arnett and his alleged bride-to-be were both in the Middle East, so I couldn't talk to either person directly involved in the relationship. I had to rely on the parents for information. I churned something out and it ran in the paper and that was that...

...except that Arnett never did marry the woman. He wound up going back to his wife, from whom he had been separated. By that time I was gone from Lakeland and the world had moved on. C'est la vie.

Anyway, it wasn't the brightest spot in my journalism career and apparently I didn't even save a clipping of the story. About fifteen years later, when I was working for The New York Times Co. in Manhattan, we paired with Google to have the archives of all of our smaller newspapers, including the Lakeland paper, digitized and made available online. It used to be that stories like this one I wrote would come up with a Google search. But then the Times sold the papers and I believe the new owners took their archives offline, because I can't find any of that stuff out there now. Again, c'est la vie.

Green Man Lover

I just awoke from the most glorious night's sleep. I must have really needed it, because I woke up about 5 a.m. and thought, "Oh, it's break, I don't need to get up now!" And then I fell back asleep and slept soundly another two hours -- and let me tell you, that two hours made a huge difference.

So yes, it's break. Woo hoo! Yesterday was busier than I expected it to be, with several visiting classes and lots of last-minute checkouts. I got a bottle of wine from the head librarian, which I thought was very kind considering I kvetch about her regularly. I really need to just grow up and not be such a whiny baby. I also chatted with a couple of co-workers who are leaving either now or in mid-January, having taken the buyout as I did. One woman asked me if I'd had any second thoughts and I told her none at all. "Me either!" she said. "People keep asking me what I'm going to do, and I tell them, I'm going to museums!" Pretty much my plan too.

I compiled the database stats for November and worked a short shift in the Lower School library, and then left work about 2 p.m. I walked home and spent the afternoon reading. Dave was at a doctor's appointment so it was a good time to catch up on blogs and continue working my way through "All the Colours of the Dark," which I'm enjoying but which is HUGE (576 pages hardback). I'd like to have it done by Saturday so I don't have to take it to Florida.

I found this funny graffiti on Finchley Road. According to Wikipedia, the Green Man is "a motif in architecture and art, of a face made of, or completely surrounded by, foliage, which normally spreads out from the centre of the face. Apart from a purely decorative function, the Green Man is primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that occurs every spring."

There is also a folkloric Green Man: "By at least the 16th century the term 'green man' was used in England for a man who was covered in leaves [and] foliage including moss as part of a pageant, parade or ritual." This evolved into a sort of pagan figure, though the roots and significance of the Green Man in that context are debated. There are lots of pubs called "The Green Man."

I'm not sure which type of Green Man we're loving, here. Could be any or all of them, I guess.

(Top photo: Our white hellebores, blooming away!)

Fog

I got up at about 4 a.m. this morning to get some water, and this is what it looked like out the front window. Remember the estate agent's office that I mentioned in Monday's post, the one that glows blue at the top of the street? You can see it up the hill on the left. That building across the road has been under renovation for some time. God only knows what they're doing to it.

Sometimes when I look out at the street in the silent, unmoving early hours, I'll see a fox running down the pavement. While the city sleeps, the foxes are in charge.

Well, this has been a dispiriting couple of days, hasn't it? To put it mildly. The shooting at Brown, the shooting in Australia, the heartbreaking family tragedy of the Reiners. I loved "All in the Family" when I was a young teenager, though I wasn't permitted to watch it when I was a small child -- my parents thought it was too mature. Rob Reiner, just like his character Michael Stivic, represented a liberal sensibility that I always valued and I will miss him. I can't imagine the degree of parental anguish he and his wife must have felt in dealing with their son's addictions, not to mention the torment and alienation of the son himself. And I hate the fact that Reiner died with Trump in office. He deserved to see the end of this reign of destructive narcissism.

Today is our last day with students -- and it's just a half-day, so I'll be home in the early afternoon. And then we're on Winter Break! Woo hoo! Dave and I have a couple of days to get ready for traveling -- laundry and that kind of thing -- and then we're off to Florida.

I made our end-of-the-year charitable donations yesterday. Same cast of characters as usual: the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center. I'm also going to support Hope Not Hate in the UK, a sort of British equivalent to the SPLC.

And I wore my London Christmas sweater to work yesterday, even though it's overly warm and the lights no longer work. I'm always glad to get another use out of it. Hard to believe I bought it 11 years ago! Here's the little video Dave and I made back then to show it in action, which I apparently never embedded on my blog, though I did link to it:

What a time capsule that video is. Look how tiny our houseplants are! That's the avocado tree in the background by the window, now much taller than I am. And of course Olga on the floor behind me, gnawing on her Kong.

Anyway, I'd say I've gotten my money's worth out of that sweater.

Near-Death Experience

I had to be at work early yesterday, because we did some schedule shuffling so the library could stay open an extra hour and a half. It's time for end-of-the-semester exams, so in theory students need extra library time to study. I haven't heard yet whether any students actually took advantage of those longer hours, but anyway, at least I didn't have to do the later shift. I was out at 4 p.m.

I took the tube down to Covent Garden to run a Christmas errand. That's the big tree outside the central market, above. I can't say what my errand was on the off-chance that the person it was for will read my blog (very, very unlikely). But all will be revealed soon enough.

I walked over from Piccadilly Circus and stayed at Covent Garden just long enough to run my errand and walk around a bit to take in the holiday vibe. Then I got back on the tube at Covent Garden station -- which is never that convenient to use as it involves elevators -- and came home.

Dave was away last night on an errand of his own -- a job interview for a moonlighting gig as the conductor of a community wind band in the City of London. I think I mentioned this before. He's excited about the possibility to work with some skilled adult musicians and program some more challenging music, but he's one of at least four candidates trying for the job, so who knows how it will shake out. Anyway, I was on my own for dinner so I had leftovers and watched "The Ice Storm," one of my favorite movies. I've seen it a couple dozen times and it still makes me cry.

One of our plants, a maidenhair fern that I transplanted from another pot where it grew of its own accord, had a near-death experience a couple of weeks ago. I have been experimenting with slightly altering my plant-watering schedule, from every week to every ten days or so. I always feel like I give the plants too much water in the winter, when they're not actively growing.

Well, all the plants were fine with the schedule change except the maidenhair fern, which loves water and is potted in that terrible compost I bought last spring. It's very porous and the water runs through quickly, and maidenhair ferns like to be damp. So basically the plant dried out and I didn't notice until it was positively crispy.

I watered it thoroughly and kept it watered over the next week or two. I thought I'd killed it until I saw those tiny fiddleheads appearing at the base (above). Looks like it's bouncing back.

There's a second, smaller fern in the same pot, also bouncing back.

Whew!

Olga's Star

This is the real estate office just up the hill from our flat. It's always the brightest-lit place in a little row of shops that includes a small grocery (once a newsagent) and a cleaning supply store (once a mysterious place of uncertain purpose called The White Room). When I look out the dining room window at night, the estate agent's office is there, about half a block away, shining like a blue beacon. It's comforting.

I got out and took a walk yesterday morning. My original purpose was to get bread, because Dave forgot it when he ordered groceries. But I'd spent the whole morning indoors, partly reading a new book called "All the Colours of the Dark" by Chris Whitaker, and I felt the need to get some fresh air. I extended my route to the store by roaming up to the cemetery and then northward through Child's Hill Park and back home -- a little more than an hour of walking.

I found this intriguingly decorated car along the way. I'd love to see it lit up. Is the asymmetrical application of the wrapping paper intentional?

And then there was this weirdness:

Like all my walking routes, this one made me miss Olga, who often accompanied me through the same streets in her younger years. I haven't talked much about Olga on the ol' blog recently, but I feel her absence every day. It's hard to believe it's been five months already, and I still question her last days and whether I could have done anything differently. I'm not sure those doubts will ever go away.

Dave and I are still talking about getting another dog, but now that we're planning our Italy trip for next summer, we may wait until after that. I'm still in a mourning stage, I think. I don't want another dog, I want my old one back! Maybe that's a sign that it's still too early.

I was walking Olga last January on the high street when I found that little light-up star, shown above in our dining room window, lying on the pavement. One of the charity shops had thrown it out, I think -- probably a bit of Christmas decor that never sold. It still worked, so I brought it home and put it on our mantel, and this season I've put it in the window and turned it on. It's quite a sophisticated little thing -- it even has a timer so that it shines only when it's dark out. It's probably supposed to make me think of Baby Jesus, but instead it makes me think of Olga.