Madrid

Well, here we are in beautiful, sunny and very warm Madrid. That's the view from our hotel room, above, overlooking the Calle de la Princesa (which becomes Gran Vía as it bends to the left) and the Plaza de España (the green space on the right). That huge building on the left is the Edificio España, a very fascist-looking 1953 structure that now houses the Hotel RIU. We are staying in the Barceló Torre de Madrid, caddy-corner from the RIU.

I am not blogging from my phone, by the way. Dave brought his computer so I'm using that.

Getting here went smoothly enough, though it was time-consuming. We left home about 7:30 a.m. and got to our hotel just before 4 p.m. (There was a one-hour time change in there as well.) Dave wanted to relax a bit but I prodded him to go with me to the Plaza Mayor, because our time here is short and I wanted to see some sights!

I was last in Madrid in 1994, another lifetime ago. I was in the Peace Corps in Morocco at the time, and I crossed the Strait of Gibraltar on a ferry to meet a friend and tour Spain. I'd never spent any time in Europe up to then, so it was my first encounter with a European city -- cathedrals and narrow streets and historic structures and art, art, art.

I have laughed for years about the restaurant known as the "Museo del Jamon," or Museum of Ham, and I was happy to see this Madrid institution is still going strong.

When I was here the first time, my friend Arthur and I would hang out daily in the Plaza Mayor, so it's the place I most associate with the beauty of Madrid and I was eager to take Dave there. We sat out with a glass of wine and watched the passing throngs. (Including some guy dressed up in a gorilla suit -- definitely not something I saw the first time around!)

We rode the Metro (subway) back to the Plaza España and then walked to our friend Chris's apartment, just across the Manzanares River from the Principe Pio neighborhood. It's about a 20-minute walk from our hotel. 

There we met with our friends Keith and Gordon and Chris and his boyfriend Joan, and had a Spanish-themed meal featuring salted cod, meat-stew croquettes, cheese, olives, and a delicious gazpacho that included cherries, of all things. And a custard-and-cherry tart for dessert. We've been gathering for meals with this same group of friends for years, though usually in London -- this is the first time that Chris, a music teacher in Madrid, hosted us on his own turf.

This was the sunset view from Chris's windows, looking north toward the mountains. The swallows (or swifts? I never know the difference) were swooping and diving all around the building.

I hope to do a little more walking around this morning -- I desperately need coffee, for one thing, but my impression is that Madrid is not an early city, especially on a Sunday. So we'll see how successful I am! And then, back to the airport and home.

Montague Burton

Here's another photo from my walk through Dagenham on Thursday. This old Deco building attracted my attention because, at the top, you can see evidence of its former life.

This was originally an outlet for Montague Burton, "The Tailor of Taste," who -- according to this article about a different Burton building in nearby Barking -- had more than 600 menswear stores by the time he died in 1952. He was an immigrant from Russia who arrived in Britain in 1900 as 15-year-old Meshe David Osinsky. He eventually built a menswear empire by selling ready-to-wear suits, which were less expensive than custom tailored ones, and according to that article the expression "The Full Monty" may stem from his name. He was even knighted in 1931.

Apparently, his Art Deco buildings are known for featuring elephants (I don't see any on this one) and often have engraved foundation stones laid by Burton's family members. More about that here. In this particular case I didn't know to look for those, and it seems they might be covered up by produce shelving anyway.

So, an interesting little glimpse into the past, there!

Dave and I are off to Madrid today. Our friend Warren is staying with Olga, and we had him over for lunch yesterday to re-acquaint him with the flat and with her routines. We had a very American summertime lunch -- steaks, corn on the cob, potato salad and watermelon. But we gave it a British twist with Pimm's!

Warren will only be here for a night, but it's a warm-up for when we leave for South America at the end of the month. Warren will then be on Olga duty for two weeks. We're just happy she can stay here in familiar surroundings, rather than having to go to a kennel or a boarder. She's too old for that.

So, yeah, coming to you from Madrid tomorrow morning! Because it's such a short trip, I'm going to leave my computer behind and try blogging from my phone. We'll see how that goes.

Dagenham

Well, after writing yesterday about the repetitiveness of my summertime days, I really did get the urge to get out of the house. So I took a photo walk to a part of East London I hadn't visited in years -- Dagenham.

I got off the tube in Newbury Park and wound my way south and east through Seven Kings, Goodmayes and Becontree, ending my walk at the Dagenham Heathway tube station. I walked about five and a half miles, I think, and the weather was just about perfect.

I really like these parts of London. Eastern Dagenham was built later than many of the Victorian neighborhoods closer in to the city, so there's more green space, and all along my route there were shops reflecting all sorts of nationalities, from Poland and Romania to India and Pakistan. Just outside the Seven Kings train station I popped into the coffee shop above, and had an Americano coffee and an eclair while listening to lilting Middle Eastern music. "Well, this is very multicultural!" I thought.

Flags of many nations!

As I walked farther east into the more suburban areas I saw more and more England flags. At first I thought, "My, everyone is so patriotic!" But then I realized that while that may be true, they were also rooting for the English football team in the UEFA European Football championship games, which are going on now. (As evidenced by one sign I saw saying, "Come on England!")

I followed a commercial street eastward through Goodmayes that I thought I'd never walked before, but then I spotted a Chinese restaurant that I remembered photographing ten years ago. I guess I really have been everywhere.

Still, there are always new sights!

I got back home around 2 p.m. and had lunch, then sat in the garden with Olga. I managed not to destroy our second folding chair.

Last night, Dave and I watched "Boy Erased" on Netflix, about a gay kid whose very religious parents put him through conversion therapy. It's not a new movie -- it was made about six years ago, around the time I read the book -- but somehow we'd never seen it. Russell Crowe, who plays the father, looks alarmingly like Steve Bannon. Time has not been kind to the gladiator.

The Chair Incident

I apologize if things have seemed a bit repetitive around here lately -- the dahlias, the bird feeder, sunbathing Olga. I guess that's the nature of life during summer vacation! Every day I've toyed with the idea of going to town and doing something cultural, but in the end I always stay home. I just haven't gotten enough of the garden yet.

I realize that may not be true for all of you. When I was Facetiming with my brother on Sunday, he mentioned my blog and said something like -- "The PLANTS! Enough with the PLANTS!" But what can I say? At this time of year the plants and birds, Dave and the dog are my life.

Thanks for the slug-fighting hints. I do realize that I could easily start killing them if I wanted to. I just can't bring myself to do it. As much as the slugs and the snails drive me crazy, I figure they have a right to live too. I just have to do my best to keep my tastiest plants out of their reach. (Though I have been known to throw a slug about as far as I can across the garden, so I can deceive myself that I'm allowing it to survive while probably simultaneously killing it.)

Steve Reed · SummerDay

Having said all that, allow me to foist upon you more bird calls! I recorded this with my Merlin app while sitting on the back garden bench yesterday afternoon. You'll hear the racket from the rose-ringed parakeets, some burbly little robins and a pigeon. There are supposedly also goldfinches in there, though I have no idea which calls are theirs, and there's the distant music of the neighborhood ice cream truck. Ah, summer!

Of course I sat out in the garden reading yesterday, polishing off another hundred pages of "The Running Grave." I also mowed the lawn, cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the house. We have a friend staying here over the weekend while we're in Madrid and I don't want the place to be a pig sty.

Also, I had a bit of drama:

This is a folding chair that came with our flat. We have two of them and they're not super-sturdy. Well, yesterday as I set it up in the garden, I stepped on some uneven ground and fell on it, smashing the chair and causing me to pitch sideways into a flower bed. It was quite a spectacle, I'm sure, and it caused Olga to leap up from her bed and run away. Lassie she is not!

I was completely uninjured, as were (amazingly) the plants in the flower bed. But the chair, as you can see, is toast. I'm amazed it lasted this long, to be honest.

Speaking of honest, that's honesty, in the top photo -- the sunlight coming through its new seed pods shows off the seeds quite well. As you can see, its leaves have also been slug-munched!

Dahlia Carnage

The dusty miller in our flower bed is huge and is overgrowing the stepping stones into the back yard. I have to keep pushing it aside to even get out there. Can you see the little flower bug in the upper left part of this cluster of blossoms?

Yesterday was pretty quiet around here. I sat out in the garden most of the day reading "The Running Grave," the newest Robert Galbraith book, which tops out at 945 pages. J.K. Rowling (who writes under the Galbraith pen name) can really crank out the verbiage. Mr. Pudding might say that she has bloggorhea -- or would, if she were writing a blog. (Is there such a thing as bibliorrhea?) But I don't find her books at all flabby.

My dahlias are still looking pretty sad. At this point, I'm just hoping they keep enough leaves to nourish the tubers through the season. Expecting flowers in this snail-and-slug-crazy summer seems like a tall order. This one has had all the growth points (where flowers would normally emerge) gnawed off. I imagine more will sprout and I am moving these plants around and elevating them onto tables and chairs until I find a place where they can grow relatively unmolested.

I'm having varying degrees of success!

Some of them look pretty good. This one looks like it might give us flowers eventually.

I have nothing else for you today except this video of starlings mobbing our bird feeder and thrashing around in our bird bath, which I'm posting just to show that the Russians' bird ball does absolutely nothing to keep them away. Good!

(As you can see, Olga did not let them disturb her power nap.)

Bird Ball

The Russians have moved their bird ball out to the edge of their balcony railing, directly overlooking our bird feeder. As far as I can tell it doesn't do any good -- the birds still come. I suppose the allure of food is more powerful than an inflatable deterrent. It feels like a big yellow middle finger to us, though, doesn't it?

They have a real thing about birds perching on their railing. They've lined it with pigeon spikes in an effort to keep them away. I mean, birds are going to perch. It's what they do. You can't stop nature.

Not that I don't see the downside. Just yesterday I was sitting in the garden beneath our walnut tree, reading The New Yorker, when a pigeon shat on me from above. And it wasn't a modest little poo, either. It was like being strafed with pea soup. It was everywhere. I had to come inside and take a shower.

In addition to the magazine, I read "The Art Thief," Michael Finkel's book about a French couple who, over several years in the '90s, stole a couple hundred artworks from museums around Europe. Apparently they did it not for profit, but because they loved art and wanted to live with it in their home. It was a good book and well worth reading. What I'd forgotten about the case is that after the man was finally arrested, his mother dumped all the metalwork in a canal and set all the paintings on fire. While the art in the canal was recovered, the paintings -- including a Cranach and a Brueghel, among others -- were all destroyed.

If there's one thing I can't abide, it's the deliberate destruction of art. It's what propelled me all the way through the 900 or so pages of "The Goldfinch" -- the fear that something terrible was going to happen to the painting. (I did love that book, for what it's worth.) I can't imagine why the mother, in this case, didn't simply take her son's purloined art to the police or leave it anonymously somewhere for the authorities to find. Why burn it all? How can she have no sense of the cultural loss, of what she's taken from all of us?

In the afternoon, when Olga went out with her dog-walker, I took a walk of my own around our neighborhood. There are so many places I used to go with the dog, but can't nowadays because she simply can't go as far. So I exercised my legs and revisited some streets I haven't seen in a while, like the one near the cemetery where this somewhat dilapidated garage is located.

Olga, meanwhile, was at the Heath. She goes out daily with a group of dogs in a van. The walker says she plays a bit but I suspect she mostly lies around in the grass, and that's fine. It's good for her to have a social outing. We're keeping up her daily walks even in summer because if we postponed them she'd lose her place, and then they might not take her on again in the fall.

We are finally having some summery weather -- today it's getting up to 70º F (21º C), though still a bit cloudy. Yesterday was sunnier, so I broke out the Pimm's. My former boss gave us a bottle when she moved back to the states last year. Pimm's is a British summertime staple, a gin-based drink that's mixed with lemon-lime soda for a refreshing cocktail. Serving it with strawberries is a must. (Cucumber too, ideally, but we didn't have any.) It was a nice way to end the day!

Do Not Demolish

I had an abdominal ultrasound at the local hospital yesterday. This was a rather bewildering experience, because I went in not knowing for certain who ordered this test or why. I just got a letter in the mail saying it had been scheduled and I was to appear. So I did.

Turns out the gastroenterologists ordered it, though why they wanted it after I'd had a CT scan and an endoscopy I'm not sure. I've already been discharged from their care. I thought it was to take a look at my bumpy spleen, but as it turns out the ultrasound technician couldn't even see my hemangioma (or whatever it is) so if that was the reason it was all for naught.

But the good news is, I'm STILL not dying. At least not any more than usual.

On my walk to the hospital I found this garden wall (top) with a giant gap, a temporary fence and an admonishment NOT to tear it down. I'm not sure what the story is here, but I noticed that some of that Covid poetry is still attached to the fence. Remember, during our first lockdown, when someone posted 40 days of poems on a boarded-up restaurant around the corner from our flat? Well, this seems like the same poet, and given how weathered the poems are I wonder if they come from that same period.

Back at home, I showered off the ultrasound gel and sat out in the garden, reading. The Russians eventually got out some power tools and did whatever they do upstairs, and the neighbors had a lawn service come with blowers and mowers, so the garden was not peaceful. C'est la vie.

I made a fantastic salad out of all the vegetal odds and ends in our refrigerator, and then Dave and I took Olga to the cemetery.

She seemed very happy for the outing, especially with both of us along. She chased her ball and rolled in the long grass. (Dave is wearing my Iceland jacket. Iceland is a frozen-food grocery store here, and I found that perfectly good jacket in a skip many years ago!)

Afterwards we stopped off at Sweet Corner, that new cafe near Fortune Green, where we got a coffee and pastries while Olga lolled on the warm pavement. Dog heaven! We'd never been to Sweet Corner before and it was nice to try it out. I'll probably stop in with Olga from time to time. (The waitress told us dogs are allowed even inside!)

The bathroom had these amazing marble (I think?) walls, gray-blue with vivid white streaks and patches. Being in there was like floating in the middle of the sky.

So far the enormity of summer break hasn't hit me yet because a weekend is just a weekend. But today it's Monday and I DON'T HAVE TO GO TO WORK!

Flea Market Postcards

Mailed from Singapore Airport, Jan. 2, 1964

Caption:
"Malay Kampong, Malacca. The Malay word 'kampong' means village. Picture shows a poor Malay household doing their daily laundering around the community waterwell."

Message:
"Dear Alla: It's too hot, it's running down my back. All I want to do is sleep. It's much too hot to go shopping. We have all been down to Singapore at the week end staying with friends but I couldn't go out in the sun. So haven't done any shopping up to now. Been down the market at ten o'clock at night, the only time I've been comfortable. You ought to see George lying about in his shorts, he's lapping it up. Everybody fine here. When it rains it pours. Wendy lovely only half the size of Steven. Love from all here."

Mailed from TS/S (transport ship?) Stefan Batory, using a Polish stamp, Aug 17, 1970:

Message:
"Dear Mrs. Douglas & John, Enjoying our holiday on the ship very much, although it's not yet sunny enough for swimming or lazing on the deck. We've been dancing every day -- tonight we're going to the cinema. Food is marvellous & drinks very cheap. Hope you enjoyed your holiday. Love, Trish & Dave"

This ship was originally built in 1958 for Holland-America, which operated it for ten years as the Maasdam IV before selling it to the Polish government. It was renamed the Stefan Batory, for a 16th Century king of Poland, and continued operating as a cruise ship until 1990. It was briefly used to house asylum seekers in Sweden before being scrapped in Turkey in 2000. According to Wikipedia, Lee Harvey Oswald sailed with his wife and daughter from the Soviet Union to the USA on the Maasdam IV in 1962.

Mailed August 26, 1960 from Monte Carlo.

Caption:
"Reflets de la Cote d'Azur: Monte Carlo. Le Casino et les terrasses."

Message:
"Dear Mum: Here we are Monte Carlo. They have just changed the guard and the sun is still hot. It was a beautiful drive from Finale. See you next Saturday. Gordon"

Written July 10, 1978, and mailed from Lusaka, Zambia

Message:
"Dear Mum: Two T/chests have gone today with my Polish china etc in. They will be delivered to you, but they are very heavy so don't you try lifting them. Perhaps you could just see they don't 'throw' them through the front door! as they do contain breakable things. I hope when they do arrive John will be there to lend a hand! Will be writing a letter later. Love, Shirle"

Finis

Well, we are done. DONE. For the next two months, I don't have to think about overdue books, or mobs of boys who loudly play "Brawl Stars" together on their phones, or girls surreptitiously nibbling potato chips hidden in their bags, or any of the other elements of daily life in the library. I can just relax and read and hang out with Dave and the dog. Woo hoo!

I finished the year with a five-page list of patrons with overdue items -- eight adults and 25 kids. The adults are no big deal. They'll return their stuff after summer. Of the kids, at least one is leaving the school so I imagine we'll never see that book ("Fahrenheit 451") again, but we have another copy so we'll survive.

Yesterday I spent the morning tidying up the library and then we all went to our big end-of-year luncheon in the gym, when we recognize the teachers and staff members who are leaving and more importantly we GET TO DRINK! It's a rare day when I can have a couple of glasses of wine on school property.

Afterwards, some people from the library and technology department went on to a gathering at a local pub but I didn't go. By the time lunch was over at 2:30 p.m., I was ready for the day to be done. I think it's a tall order to expect people to come to an evening event on the last day of school. So I just walked home and sat out in the garden with Olga.

The top photo shows a crane fly that I found on one of our dahlias. That dahlia, as you can see, looks pretty good and has quite a few leaves. But some of the other dahlias are still just stubs, if even that -- they've been repeatedly gnawed to the ground by snails and slugs. I finally brought two of them inside last night, hoping I could at least get them to sprout and grow a bit before returning them to the great outdoors. Right now they're barely visible above the soil.

Some of this might be because I didn't repot them for the last two years. I know I said this last year, but this fall I really am going to lift them all and clean and store the tubers before planting them in fresh soil next spring.

Ah, summer! When all I have to think about are dahlias!

Still Not Dying

That was the view from the window of the endoscopy unit yesterday. It looks kind of magical, with those rooftops and spires beyond the trees. But isn't that a gloomy sky? I had several conversations yesterday with people whose first impulse was to complain about our wet and chilly spring. It's 55º F (or 12.7º C) this morning as I write.

Today's the last day of school, when we have our annual luncheon with speeches for the leavers and that kind of thing. Normally it's mighty warm -- I've been known to wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts in past years -- and we prop the doors of the gym open for more air. But this year, I'm thinking not! In fact yesterday I wore a sweater and a jacket to the hospital.

So, yes, my colonoscopy went fine. The doctor found four polyps which he removed, and he said they didn't look dangerous. Interestingly, they were all in the ascending colon, the part nearest the appendix, which is not usually where cancers develop. The transverse and sigmoid segments of my colon were clean. He took a few random tissue samples for biopsy to try to see why my calprotectin levels were abnormally high on my recent blood tests. I'll get all those lab results right before we leave for Argentina and Brazil at the end of the month.

So here's what I think all this means. I think the root cause of all my discomfort and inflammation is too much stomach acid, exacerbated -- as much as I hate to admit it -- by alcohol and coffee. I think it has affected my lungs, giving me a chronic cough and the slightly thickened airways (bronchiectasis) we've seen on past CT scans. I think it flares up into acute gastritis at certain times, like when I fly to L.A., forget my stomach medication and drink a lot of martinis, and then takes a while to settle down. I suspect the calprotectin was elevated because of the gastritis.

And of course in my mind I turn all of that into cancer, because, well, I'm crazy.

I have one more medical adventure, and that is an ultrasound on Sunday (!). The doctors want to take a closer look at my spleen, which has been shown by several scans to have some sort of cyst or bump on it. It was the only abnormality flagged on my CT scan from early May -- they called it a hemangioma, a benign growth of extra blood vessels, like a birthmark -- but the bottom line is no one's quite sure what it is. I'm not too concerned because primary cancer of the spleen is rare and everyone seems pretty certain it's benign, but it might still need attention. Such growths usually don't cause symptoms but I suppose I might be feeling it now and then. Who knows.

Isn't this fun? Talking about my spleen?

I spent yesterday morning partly in the garden, when we had a brief period of sun, and partly on the couch. I even got some things done around the house, like vacuuming and laundry. I felt pretty darn productive considering all that was going on with my abdomen!

I did indeed have beef broth for lunch, and I was actually surprised that I felt so normal. I can see why some people like to fast. It was kind of liberating not having to think about food. Maybe I'll make it a habit! (Probably not.)

As you can see, there's still lots happening in the garden, despite the chilly weather. The pink Asiatic lily is just opening, and that foxglove (above) is possibly my favorite out of all of them. If I save any foxglove seeds it will be those.

The actual process of the colonoscopy didn't begin until 4 p.m., but I had to be at the clinic by 3:30. I had a very chatty Italian nurse named Marta who told me all about her most recent pizza delivery in which apparently the drivers ate one of her two pizzas, and then insisted the restaurant had only sent one. "I'm never getting takeaway again," she declared. I told her I'd never heard of such a thing, but come to think of it, Dave's tortilla chips didn't arrive from Chipotle last night. Hmmm...

A Family Story

Another day, another flower. This is one of our peonies. We got varying results from the peonies this year -- the yellow intersectional peony went crazy and had more flowers than ever before, at least ten. The peony above has managed two blooms so far. And the "Bowl of Beauty," which did so well in previous years, has not a single flower or bud. You just never know.

I am in the middle of preparations for my colonoscopy, so needless to say I'm not going to work. I started last night, and the procedure is at 4 p.m. today so basically I have to sit around all day with an empty belly, which I'm not thrilled about. I'm taking Moviprep, the powdered drink mix "cleanse." It's not too terrible if you drink it quickly, but it makes me feel incredibly cold.

Anyway, I'll be glad when all this is over.

I know I seem paranoid about my gut health, but there's a reason: 

These are my paternal grandparents. I never knew my dad's father, who died at age 59 in 1964, a few years before I was born. And I barely knew my grandmother, because they lived in Riverside, California, all the way across the country from where I grew up. When I was a small child I went to California with my parents twice, but then my brother was born and my parents got divorced and my dad got remarried and there were step-siblings and everything was complicated, so we didn't go again until 1983, when I was 16. That's the only time I really met and talked to my grandmother as a semi-adult.

Anyway, people say I look like my grandfather, and I think that's true. I also think I have his body type, and I'll be 58 this year. So I am careful about gut health because of the way he died.

He was a mailman and a Boy Scout leader, and was generally very fit. He didn't drink, he wasn't overweight, he only smoked an occasional pipe (as opposed to cigarettes). So it was a surprise to everyone when he awoke one night in excruciating pain, an ambulance was called, and doctors discovered that his colon had spontaneously ruptured from undiagnosed colon cancer. He lived only a short time after that -- a matter of days, I think. He told my father he'd had no alarming symptoms -- no bleeding, no pain, no discernible weight loss. His only clue that something was amiss was that sometimes, on his mail route, he'd need to urgently find a bathroom -- and apparently that issue was never severe enough to raise a red flag.

Now, all of this is second-hand information from 60 years ago, and almost everyone who witnessed his death is now dead themselves. So who knows what really went on. But still! Scary!

To the best of my knowledge no one else in my family had colon cancer except my great-uncle on my mom's side, and that wasn't until he was a very old man. (And he beat it.) But I have had other family members with cancer, and of course my dad died from it -- though he smoked like a chimney and it was lung cancer, not colon.

So, yeah, I'm paranoid. I keep an eye on things.

I imagine I'll be lying around all day, reading and killing time. I had beef broth for dinner last night and I'll probably have beef broth for lunch today. Unlike my last colonoscopy, when I went out and bought Jell-O and ginger ale and some other stuff to see me through, this time I didn't prepare at all. So I'm just working with what we've got here at home. Clear liquids is the rule, until 2 p.m., after which I can't have anything at all.

Thank god I can still have black coffee this morning!

Mock Orange and a Hail Storm

Here's our Philadelphus, or mock orange, which is flush with blossoms at the moment. We had it trimmed when the tree guys were here in February, but you'd never know it. It's gigantic and it has basically consumed the hideous camellia. Which is fine with me.

I'm glad you all liked yesterday's mystery photos. If you'd like to see the full assortment of images I bought on Saturday, they're here, in an album on Flickr. You'll see I have a weakness for almost any photo featuring a dog!

I made fun of that woman yesterday for being proud of her dead sunflower -- and yes, I realize she was actually showing off the enormous seed head. (I still think they should have taken the picture when it had petals, but whatever.) I'm just as bad, being proud of my teasels -- which would probably continue to grow even if I tried to kill them. I'm just fascinated by these plants. They're almost five feet tall now, and the cups formed by their leaves hold a surprising amount of water -- a whole little ecosystem, as you can see.

The "flesh rose," at the side of the garden, gave us a flower this year! It's not a very healthy rose bush -- in fact at the moment I think it has three leaves -- but it did manage to squeak out a flesh-colored blossom. (And yes, I realize there are many shades of flesh, but that's still the best description I have for that color.) I cut it off so the poor plant can focus on keeping itself alive. We really should have pruned those roses to reinvigorate them.

Finally, we had a rather dramatic hail storm on Monday afternoon -- dramatic by our standards, anyway. I looked out in the garden just in time to see old, loose roses exploding from the force of the falling ice. Some of the other flowers got a bit beaten down but everything has more or less survived, from what I can tell. 

I'm still working on getting back overdue stuff. I'm down to nine pages, including teachers, which is a pretty drastic reduction from last week but still far too many for the last day of school. (Yes, students are done today! Teachers and staff have two more days, though I'm out tomorrow for medical reasons.) Hopefully even more of it will be back today.

Mysteries Not My Own

Here are some of the old, forgotten photos I picked up at the street market on Golborne Road on Saturday. These were all in a box together and it's entirely possible they're all from the same family.

I go through flea market photos pretty quickly, usually glancing at them for no more than a moment before putting them in the "buy" or "discard" pile. (And then I go through the "buy" photos again, and often discard some of those on the second pass. I try to be very selective.) It's hard to say what makes me rescue one picture over another. It's more a feeling I get than anything else. I like a sense of spontaneity -- as in the sunny backyard scene above. I like a photo that expresses liveliness, or seems to suggest some mystery or tell a story.

A successful picture, to me, engages our interest but doesn't need explaining. It stands alone in such a way that we don't need to know who the people are.

I liked these kids' expressions, and also the fact that they're happily eating fruit. So healthy!

This little picture is very mysterious. It's clearly cut from a bigger one, and it's folded in the middle as if it were carried in a wallet or locket. When folded, it's smaller than a postage stamp. And yet that kid looks so glum! Who carried it? Why this photo? Who's been cut out of it? Why is the kid's leg wrapped up that way?

On the back: "Ladywell, July 1926." (Ladywell is a neighborhood in South London -- maybe that's the Ladywell they mean?)

Imagine what these people would think if they knew this photo would be made electronically available to the whole world almost 100 years after it was taken. They'd be gobsmacked.

A typical sunny day on an English beach -- with a blanket and a sweater! I have another photo on a different beach, featuring a different person, with that same blanket. Clearly it was the family beach blanket.

These folks sure look like they're having fun, despite the weirdly industrial background. They appear to be on a boat. Are the women comparing their sweaters?

On the back:

The Chrysler Eight
The farm garage
Myself
Wilbraham Mountains in background

The only Wilbraham Mountains I can find online are in Massachusetts, so perhaps this photo is American. Not sure how it wound up at a flea market on Golborne Road!

"Why yes, I am inordinately proud of my big dead sunflower."

A Casualty

That pretty much sums up life on our bird feeder at the moment -- starlings and parakeets. With an occasional woodpecker, robin or tit thrown in for good measure.

Here's what it looks like when they're all chowing down and squabbling with each other over the food, as they do constantly:

I had to put music with that video because I shot it through a window while Dave was behind me eating potato chips and Olga was sleeping on the couch. You wouldn't have been able to hear the birds, but you would have heard a lot of crunching and snoring. Hence, music.

We had a springtime casualty in the garden yesterday. I was sitting out with Olga, reading my New Yorker while she slept next to me in the sun. The starlings were mobbing the feeder, and I watched one young starling -- so young it was still a bit fluffy and wobbly on its feet -- wander out into the grass and begin preening its new feathers. It was away from the others, and rather oblivious to any danger, it seemed to me. I smiled at how cute it was, but I also thought, "You are making yourself vulnerable."

Then I went back to my magazine, and not ten minutes later Olga appeared beside me with the young starling IN HER MOUTH. I yelled, "No! Drop it!" And she did, but the starling was not in good shape. It seemed whole, and it was breathing, but it was also twitching unnaturally. There was a bit of blood. I set it in a flower pot hoping it would revive, and I checked it over the next hour or so. It was still breathing but it couldn't stand or move much. I called a wildlife rescuer who told me to take it to a vet. I called the vet, and they said they didn't do starlings and I should call a wildlife rescuer.

I moved it to the grass beneath the bird feeder, thinking the other birds would help revive it or at least investigate. No. They ignored it completely and went on jamming their beaks with suet. Birds are cold.

After another hour, it became apparent the starling was suffering. I had to play executioner. Never mind how I did it. I'd rather not relive the memory.

I still can't believe Olga caught it. I mean, she's about 800 years old and arthritic, and although I've seen her go after pigeons, she never pays much attention to the starlings. I knew that bird was vulnerable but I was thinking of hawks and cats, not Olga! The only other time she's killed anything, as far as I know, was when she caught a young squirrel in the cemetery about nine years ago. I guess animals can't help their instincts.

After that rather traumatic morning I mowed the lawn and tried to beat back the jungle a bit. Here's the great hunter on patrol afterwards, looking for her next quarry.

I spent the afternoon scanning my rescued pictures from Saturday, organizing all my other media and reading on the couch. This morning it's cold (50º F) and rainy. Back to work for one final week!

Portobello

I woke up yesterday thinking I'd have a day of rest. I puttered around the house, poured some cereal and sat out in the garden with Olga reading "Under the Banyan Tree," a short, rather simplistic book from our school library about a runaway teenager who moves to (and ultimately helps save) a Key West motel. I checked it out because the Florida storyline appealed to me. It wasn't bad but I read the whole thing in less than two hours. Not a lot of depth.

And then I began feeling like I really needed to get out of the house. After my exhausting week, I wanted a day on my own, out and about. So I decided to head over to the Portobello Road Market to find some old, unloved photos to rescue. I haven't done a rescued photo post in a long, long time!

I took the overground and in short order found a guy on Golborne Road with boxes and boxes of old photos. I bought 26 of them -- including a few old postcards -- and now I have material for some upcoming posts.

I took my time walking down Portobello Road, which was my old stomping ground when we lived in Notting Hill. Many of the shops are different now -- for example, the mysterious Still Too Few is vacant and for rent -- but the market as a whole is the same. I wandered into an antiques arcade where I found a beautiful old print of a moth, which I considered buying until I asked the price -- £95! "It's hand-painted," said the vendor, as if that made it any less insane. (It was not hand-painted. Hand-tinted, maybe.)

I wandered right past our old flat at Longlands Court. Hard to believe we've been gone from there for ten years. I remember romping there with Dave and young, puppyish Olga in the courtyard. In the photo above, Longlands Court would be to the right where the trees are. (Yes, it was crazy living there on Saturdays, which is market day. There was a music dealer who would blast "That's Amore" by Dean Martin at top volume every single Saturday morning, over and over. I didn't see -- or hear -- him yesterday. I guess no one buys music that way anymore. He was an anachronism even ten years ago.)

I went to Daylesford, a restaurant and organic market in Westbourne Grove, for lunch -- another old stomping ground. I had a chopped salad with blue cheese dressing and then walked back to West Hampstead, through Queen's Park and Kilburn. All told I think I walked about seven miles.

This fun little creation decorated a front garden in Queen's Park.

And this little cat was the most affectionate thing I've ever seen -- it raced out of a front garden in Kilburn to give me a head bump and get some scratches, and then briefly followed me along the sidewalk before racing home again. It had otherworldly golden eyes.

Back home again, I organized my photos and caught up on blog-reading. Now I need to go back and answer comments.

Oh, and Dave and I think we've figured out the mystery of Mrs. Kravitz and her unexpected dinner delivery the other night. She and her family now appear to be out of town. We're thinking she gave us her leftovers before leaving on a journey. Which is fine, I suppose!