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.

A Skiing Flamingo

I restocked the bird feeders yesterday morning and the parakeets and starlings were on the suet balls within minutes. In fact, I don't think I made it back inside before they showed up. Maybe it's hard to find food at this time of year. Anyway, I saw six parakeets on the feeder at once, which might be an all time record.

They're quite aggressive with each other and there's always a lot of snapping and jockeying for position. The one above kept nipping the tailfeathers of one of its pals, and held on even when the other bird took flight! Fortunately it promptly let go and the feather didn't come out.

In mid-morning I made a rare trip to the post office to mail a letter. I haven't used snail mail in an age and didn't have a stamp -- didn't even know how much one would cost, to be honest. Fortunately that problem was easily solved with some spare change retrieved from our dusty coin bowl.

There was some kind of holiday market on West End Green and I briefly wandered through, but I'm not really buying gifts this year so I didn't purchase anything. I did, however, stop in at the plant shop to buy...

...a wreath for our front door. Pretty nice, huh? I thought it was festive without all the red-ribbons-and-pine that we traditionally see at Christmas. Something different.

At a nearby bulk foods store I picked up a felted skiing flamingo. Because everybody needs one! Don't ask me why the bulk foods store was selling flamingoes because I haven't a clue. As far as I could see they had no other felted items on hand.

Oh, and I impulsively got both a flu shot and a Covid booster. I happened to walk past a pharmacy that was advertising them, and thought, "Why not?" After all we're going to be traveling soon and I'll be visiting some older and vulnerable people in Florida, so it would be good to take precautions. I probably should have done it weeks ago but I just didn't think that far ahead. Normally our school provides flu shots for staff and faculty but if we were offered one this year I missed it somehow, and the flu is going around.  My Covid arm is sore this morning -- the flu arm less so -- but otherwise I feel pretty normal.

I asked the pharmacist whether it was a good idea to get both shots at once. "It's recommended, actually," he said. OK then.

The rest of the day was filled with minor tasks. I trimmed some dead stuff out of the garden, raked some leaves and filled a yard waste bag. I watered all the houseplants. I cleaned and vacuumed.

And I edited this week's garden cam footage! The resulting video is very short. I had quite a few clips but most of them weren't very good. I'd returned the camera to the back of the garden, but I put it in a bad place -- too close to a pile of leaves, which reflected back so much light that everything beyond it was lost in darkness. Also, there's a very intrusive stick in the way -- in real life it looks like nothing, but on the camera it looks HUGE.

So, anyway, bad positioning aside, here's what we've got:

-- We start out with Pale Cat, who wanders around and then jumps the back wall. This is how all the animals get in and out of the garden, by jumping over the walls or fences.
-- At 00:23, we have a wary fox, followed by a couple more.
-- At 01:18, a squirrel is packing dry leaves into its mouth and running off with them. Building a nest, I guess?
-- At 01:48 we get a great view of a fox. I came out the back door and startled it lurking in some shrubbery. It ran to the back of the garden and stopped right in front of the camera, stared at me for a long while and then jumped over the fence.
-- At 02:08, another fox goes by, then wanders off behind the shed.

Yellow and Blue

See -- this really is the darkest time of the year. Almost all my pictures for the last couple of weeks, it seems, have been taken at night! (Or indoors.)

I took the one above at the beginning of December. I suspect that tree has a lot fewer leaves on it now.

And these people have a bright blue light on their porch. It reminds me of those '70s "black light" bulbs that would illuminate special psychedelic posters. Remember those? When I was a kid, my neighbors had a black light and I remember being told we couldn't look straight at it or it would blind us. Sounds like parental scaremongering but we believed it at the time.

Those neighbors, including my friend Theresa who died several weeks ago, always had the coolest stuff. Anything I learned about pop culture as a small child, I learned from them. They had transistor radios and we listened to "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks, and "Billy Don't Be a Hero" by Paper Lace, songs that were frightening because they were about dying which I could barely conceive of at the time. They had the Parker Brothers game "Masterpiece" which was about art, and which I then asked for (and got) for Christmas. My favorite character was "Bitsy" Rich Wong Dobrowski Keyes. They had stickers and toys and fun stuff and their house was utter chaos, while mine was cool and organized and somewhat dusty. I loved visiting them but I gotta admit I was always happy to get back to staid normalcy at the end of the day.

And here it is, a Saturday morning in 2025, fifty-one years later, and Theresa is dead and Becky is dead and I barely know where all that time went. How did it get to be the future?!

Can You Stand More Holiday Lights?

Yesterday after work I went back to check out the "selfie booth" on the St. John's Wood high street. I was right -- it does light up at night, and quite impressively too.

And as long as I was at it I checked out some other holiday lights in the neighborhood.

Here's the high street from the other end, showing the street lighting and the Christmas tree.

And here's nearby Eyre Court, a large apartment building that has a big ol' decorated tree in the front garden. The tree is a permanent feature. I wonder whose job it is to string up those lights every year? They must have a cherry-picker to get to the top!

I had another busy day yesterday, but I did at least have a chance to write back to the reader who sent me a letter. Hopefully I can get my response mailed to her today. I spent time with two classes in the Lower School, including one where a girl in first grade asked me to read a specific book to her, which was cute. (Usually I'm just the guy behind the desk and the teacher is the reader, but I was happy to comply!)

I also covered and/or put spine labels on about 40 new books, including this one:

I'm imagining the author on a camping trip with a young relative, and the kid making up those characters from what he sees in front of him. I didn't read it to get a sense of the action. Does someone build a new Cabin Head out of Tree Head? It looks like there's also a Bush Head, a Flower Head and a...Rock Head?

Dave and I started the show "Pluribus" last night on Apple. It seems very promising! It's by Vince Gilligan, the same guy behind "Breaking Bad," and it grabbed our attention right away. I'm also slowly watching "The House of Guinness" on Netflix. Dave isn't as impressed by that show so I have to watch it after he's fallen asleep. We finished "Down Cemetery Road," which I liked but I must confess I do not understand the title at all. It's supposedly taken from a Philip Larkin poem. Maybe I need to read the poem more closely.

Killing the Bishop

I got out yesterday for a bit of daylight by taking a walk at lunchtime. It left me with less time to respond to blog comments, but I felt better. I was feeling a bit airless after a whole morning of work, including an hour-long meeting designed to formulate our departmental statement of purpose, or something like that.

I am so ready for retirement.

I found the chessboard above behind the church in St. John's Wood, near the high street. A woman and her much older companion -- her mother, maybe? -- were walking in front of me, and the older woman impetuously stuck out her foot and kicked over the bishop. The other woman set it right again. I thought it was a funny thing to do, but maybe she was trying to see how heavy the pieces are. (Not very.)

Something tells me the time to see this glittery, spangly feature is at night. I imagine people stand in there and take selfies. It's probably elaborately lit. Maybe I'll go back and check it out later.

And LOOK! THE BROKEN-DOWN BENCH IS GONE! It's only been seven months, and after the addition and subtraction of various combinations of warning cones and hazard tape. I was going to post something about it on Nextdoor, hopefully goading the authorities into action, when I found that they'd finally taken care of the problem.

I just joined Nextdoor, which serves as a sort of message board for local news and announcements. I've been reading mostly about missing cats, stolen cars and porch pirates. Yesterday I saw a vigorous debate about foxes and whether they're charming wildlife or hazardous pests. I'm not weighing in on that argument, but you all know I love my foxes.

This Way to Disillusionment

I pass this tastefully decorated house in St. John's Wood on my walk home from work. I'm sure I've photographed it in previous years because I remember the deer, but I can't find that picture now. I don't remember the big bow, so maybe that's new. (Or maybe my memory is questionable -- much more likely.)

Another killer of a day at work. The less said the better.

Here's our library Christmas tree, decorated by yours truly. It's a real tree -- you can see the needles on the floor. Not exactly a wildly innovative decorating job, but I'd call it thorough. I wish the colored lights were working. We do have some lights decorating the shelves behind it to the left, as you can see. I suppose in a fit of creative frenzy (which I am unlikely to have) I could wrap those around the tree, but it's hard with the ornaments already on.

My co-worker Staci had to go to the American embassy yesterday to deal with some passport stuff. When she got off the tube at the station, she found arrows directing pedestrians to various locations:

But wait -- what's that sticker on the embassy arrow?

When Staci came back to the office she showed me her photo and we both had a good laugh, and she gave me permission to blog it. The Instagram account basically shows all the locations those stickers have been deployed. Many of Trump's erstwhile followers are beginning to feel this way, it seems. What happens when cults die?

Flat Quirks and a Mutant Camellia

The hideous camellia has a weird, sort of mutant knot of flowers hanging from one of its branches. This is not the time of year for the camellia to bloom. It has no other blossoms. I wonder what triggered these flowers to go for it at this dark, insectless time of year?

I had a crazy day at work yesterday. I had to cover a couple of stacks of new books -- it seemed like 100 volumes, but about 25 is probably a more reasonable estimate. Many of them were novels-in-verse that are going to be used for Middle School classes today, so there was no time to waste. Do you ever read novels-in-verse? In other words, works of fiction that are written in a poetic style but follow a plot? They're not my favorite thing but they're big right now, particularly among books for young people. The cynic in me thinks they're popular because in this era of fragmented attention spans they can be read rather quickly.

Anyway...I also had to inventory the books for those classes and put them on a spreadsheet (my favorite thing!) and today we'll have to manage checking them out. It will be slightly more complicated than checking out normal books but the reasons for that are uninteresting even to me so never mind.

Plus, of course, all my regular daily duties including lots of re-shelving. When I write it all out it doesn't sound like much. Am I being whiny? Maybe.

I also received an unexpected and thoughtful letter from a blog reader, responding to one of my recent posts. I was so surprised that this person took the trouble not only to write me, but to write three pages, print them out and snail-mail them. It shows their level of passion about the subject at hand. Never mind the details but I will write them back once I've had a chance to compose my thoughts.

The other night I was closing our bedroom drapes, as I always do, and clipping them closed with the clothespin that always dangles from one side. We've done this every night for more than a decade because otherwise the drapes gape open slightly. It made me laugh at the persistence of this silly problem, and I got to thinking about the other quirks of living where we do.

There's our bedroom door, which will not stand open unless propped by some object. We use a pot that I made in pottery class about a quarter-century ago. It fits perfectly into that little space between the carpet edge and the door and holds it just right.

And there's the door to "the hole," the closet underneath the stairs going up to the flat owned by the Russians. It sticks because of repeated paint jobs, and it has a ridiculously small knob -- so small that it's impossible to grip, making it impossible to open the door. So we keep a bread knife handy on an adjacent table, to trip the latch and get the door open.

There are other issues -- the bathroom door that won't fully close because it doesn't fit the frame, and won't fully open because there's a radiator in the way; the sink that's too small to be truly usable.

I suppose every house has little oddities like these -- too minor to repair, but not optimally functional?

Colorful Lights at Harvard and Yale

I noticed yesterday while wandering around the garden (between intermittent periods of rain) that the red hellebores are just beginning to bud. Signs of life in a mostly dormant period for plants!

I had another quiet day yesterday, thank goodness. I cleaned in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day mostly on the couch. I finished a good chunk of "Super Sad True Love Story," which I'm really enjoying. I've already mentioned how prescient this book is, envisioning the United States as an authoritarian dystopia -- where the only civilian job opportunities are in security, consumer credit, retail or media -- at war with Venezuela. Well, the dystopia has morphed into a civil conflict, with the government fighting its own people. It sounds dark, and it is, but weirdly the book is also funny.

One line really stood out for me. A Korean-American character writes to her friend: "This country is so stupid. Only spoiled white people could let something so good get so bad."

Dave, meanwhile, conducted the high school band's winter concert yesterday, so he was busy. I often don't attend the winter concert. I usually wait until the final concert of the school year in late spring.

Oh! We made our summer vacation plans for next year. Believe it or not -- and this will surely mark me as the senior citizen I am slowly becoming -- we are going on a cruise. We've booked a trip that takes us through the lake country of northern Italy and then down the Adriatic coast of the Balkans, around to Sicily and up the west coast of the "boot." Dave has never been to Italy and he loves the idea of a cruise, with his hotel room basically following him around. I chose South America a few years ago, so it's his turn. (I've been to Italy but I haven't seen the parts we're visiting, for the most part, so I'm excited too.)

I thought you might like another "holiday lights" video, this one from our neighborhood. Nothing as grand as what we saw in my earlier London lights video, but still nice, with music once again by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Among other things, we see the colored doorway lights of Harvard and Yale Courts, the apartment buildings behind our flat, as well as "snow" paintings on the windows of the veterinary practice where we used to take Olga, and the Christmas tree on West End Green.

A Dark Season

Well, I am getting a late start this morning, aren't I? Dave cooked some short ribs last night and I made a pumpkin pie, and those activities combined generated more dishes than our dishwasher could handle. This morning I had to unpack the first load and start the second before I sat down to blog. I hate having to clean the kitchen when I first wake up.

I passed the doorway above on my way home from work last week. I loved those colored lamps in the entrance hall. At this time of year I notice light fixtures, lit windows and that kind of thing because it's almost always dark. I realized last week that I was leaving home in the dark every morning and returning home after dark every evening. It's kind of bizarre to go a full week without seeing your house in daylight!

I should show you my pumpkin pie:

Pretty fab if I do say so myself! I did not make the crust. It's a roll of shortbread pastry dough that I fitted into the pie pan because, at least in my grocery store if not in all of the UK, ready-made pie shells are apparently unheard of. The staff members I asked looked at me as if I had two heads, wanting such a thing.

I was inspired to make the pie because, as with our recent cranberry sauce encounter, we had an ancient can of pureed pumpkin to use up. If not now, when?

It turned out pretty well, though Dave overdid it on the whipped cream! The black specks in the pie are cloves. The recipe called for ground, and we didn't have any pre-ground so I put whole ones into our spice grinder. What emerged was a bit more gravelly than powdery, but it works.

Also yesterday, I downloaded the wildlife cam. It's been a rainy week, and you can see water droplets on many of the passing animals, if not outright rain coming down. High points include:

-- First, Guy Fox and then Q-Tip pass the camera.
-- At 00:28, we hear that weird sound that I thought was an owl, but now I'm just not sure.
-- At 00:33, weather.
-- At 00:42, a photo-bombing pigeon.
-- Then various foxes mill around, each on his or her own, until 02:16 when Blackie the cat huddles beneath our garden bench.
-- At 03:16, Pale Cat crosses the screen then comes right back the other way, huddling watchfully atop the bench.
-- At 03:52, a wet cat (Tabby, I think).
-- At 03:58, a daytime shot of Q-Tip back by the fence, scratching and preparing to jump over. (Not sure why the camera didn't capture his jump. When do these foxes sleep?)
-- At 04:19, Mystery Cat is back, also looking rather damp.

Holiday Overload

This sleepy fox, cozied up to a mug of tea, adorns the window of the paint-your-own-ceramics shop on the high street. A suitably wintry image! I'm not sure how any of our garden foxes would react to a snazzy star-spangled sweater.

Every so often this studio puts unclaimed or rejected work out on the street for people to take home. I usually don't take any of it but it always disappears, so someone does. I did snag a plate not too long ago, bearing the obviously smudged image of a stick-figure family, because I figured I could put it beneath a houseplant.

Yesterday was madly busy. We had a steady stream of high-school science classes coming through the library, picking out their winter reads. Every year the 10th Grade students read a science-related book over the holiday break and report back to their teachers in January with a review. They also give us a little sign with a condensed version of their review which we can post on the shelf next to the book. It's always amusing to see the kids trying to find the smallest, least-threatening-looking book possible. As far as I can tell, that's pretty much their sole criteria, even though we consistently try to explain that a small book about a boring subject is far harder to read than a big book about an interesting one.

At about 1 p.m., the school Christmas tree (which was supposed to arrive on Tuesday morning) was finally delivered, and it lives in the library. So I had to whip that thing into shape. I tested our two strands of lights, and both worked, so I wrapped the tree in the lights and decked it out with ornaments. Some high schoolers, taking pity on me, asked if they could help, which I thought was very kind. And then I turned on the tree and one of the light strands simply will not come on. I have no idea why.

After all that plus a stint in the Lower School, I was ready to go home -- but no! It was time for our annual faculty/staff holiday party! The library was cleared, food and drink brought in, and I stayed for another hour or so chatting to co-workers and mingling. (Dave cleared out before the party.)

And then I had a Christmas panto to attend last night. This is something the school's faculty/staff LGBTQ+ affinity group does every year -- we go to a bawdy gay panto down by Charing Cross. This year's theme was "Beauty and the Beast" and it was quite fun, as usual. Let's just say my new mug would have fit right in.

After all that, I'm feeling a bit shell-shocked this morning. I'm looking forward to a quiet weekend of staying home and reading!

Luna and Cat

I woke up about 3:30 a.m. and went out to the kitchen for water, and noticed light pouring into the living room from the full moon.

The back garden was lit up as well. Plenty of light for fox photography with the garden cam if they came around last night! We'll know this weekend when I download the images from the cam.

And of course I couldn't let such a gorgeous moon go to waste without getting a proper photo of it!

Blogger Mitchell posted a video a few days ago that brought tears to my eyes (in a good way!) when I watched it last night. Have you ever seen videos by Playing for Change, an organization that virtually unites musicians around the world to perform together? I heard about them 15 years ago, after attending one of their concerts with my blog pal Barbara, who some of you might remember from Blogland. (I haven't spoken to Barbara in years, not since she stopped blogging, but I still see her husband on Facebook.) Anyway, Mitchell found a Playing for Change version of "Peace Train" that features Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens himself as well as many other musicians, and it's very poignant, considering the state of the world today. When I heard that unforgettable voice again it gave me chills. The video is on Mitchell's post here (below the pictures of his adorable cats).

And just for the heck of it, here's a link to my personal favorite Playing for Change video, the Indian folk song "Chanda Mama." Both of these are well worth watching and show that music really does unite us, in the face of all our other differences.

And Vulgar Hilarity Ensued

This woman was in front of me on the escalator as I came home from my Christmas lights expedition on Tuesday night. Someone's been to IKEA!

Now, you know I usually run a family-friendly blog here at Shadows & Light. I try to keep profanity to a minimum, not because I don't use it in real life (I do) but because I'm a believer in being polite. Some people are bothered by four-letter language, and I generally tend to think it's best to try to avoid offending my readers. Or anyone, for that matter.

This is one reason why I'm so mystified by the right-wing's refusal to respect gender identity, for example. If someone says they're a woman or a man, who am I to argue? Isn't it a simple kindness to acknowledge their truth? At a bare minimum, human rights considerations aside, it's the polite thing to do.

And this is one reason I just can't tolerate Donald Trump. He relishes angering people; he draws power from it. A disturbing number of his followers do too. A huge amount of public policy is being made just to "own the libs" and infuriate Democrats. How is that the way to run a country? How is it acceptable to have a leader who declares any segment of the population "garbage"? (Which, by the way, is Nazi-speak in its rawest form.)

So yes, I like to be polite. That ability is part of what makes us human.

But having said all that, I found the funniest thing on my walk to work yesterday morning:

I'm trying to imagine the circumstances that led to this mug being discarded on the street. Was it a gag gift at a "hen do"? Regardless, I sent Dave a picture immediately and we both had a good laugh.

Reader, I kept it.

Probably not something I can use "in polite society," as my mother would have said.

London Christmas Lights

Yesterday after work I followed up on my vague plans to go out and take pictures of holiday lights. When Dave and I were returning from Gatwick Airport on the train over the weekend, I saw that the top of The Shard was lit up with colorful lights for Christmas. I hadn't seen that before, though it may well happen every year, and it made me think I should go check out other Christmas illuminations.

So here's the result -- a four-minute video of Christmas lights, London-style:

It begins on Bond Street, where we check out the decorations on shops including Montblanc, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Dior. (Don't ask me what the green blob is atop the Dior store because I'm not sure.) We then proceed to Savile Row, the home of high-end tailors, where the lights depict scissors snipping ribbon.

Then on to Regent Street, draped with angels as it was last year, and then to Carnaby Street, which has again used those weird "Skylab" lights. At least this year they're more colorful.

We see an exterior shot of Liberty of London, followed by perpetually-crowded Oxford Street, including a bus offering a Christmas Lights tour! Notice the passengers wearing their Santa hats. Then we take an invisible tube ride to the City, where a bus passes the columned Royal Exchange before we join the hordes on London Bridge, looking out over the river at the illuminated Tower Bridge and the top of The Shard.

Finally, we stop for some mulled wine along the river (yours is virtual!) before taking a look at the Christmas market on the south bank of the Thames. The photo at top shows a pub near the market, beside the HMS Belfast warship.

The music is "Christmastime is Here" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, taken from the "Charlie Brown Christmas" soundtrack. (Fortunately the copyright holders allow its use on YouTube.)

The Red Ribbon

Here's the scene at the cafe on the corner. Very Christmasy! I really should go out after work and take some pictures of holiday lights. That's perhaps the one good thing about darkness falling at 4:30 p.m. -- we have lots of time in the evening to enjoy light displays!

Yesterday was World AIDS Day, despite the refusal of the Trump Administration to recognize it. I've written before about AIDS and the impact it had on my life as a young gay man. Men of my generation, even if we didn't catch the virus, were indelibly scarred by it. (Men just a couple of years older bore the brunt of the plague, with huge numbers of them dying young.) So yesterday...

...I wore my red ribbon on my lanyard at work, as I always do on December 1. I wonder if the kids even know what it means. I did hear one student talking to the head librarian about a project she's doing on HIV and AIDS, so there is still awareness out there, for which I'm thankful.

Last night I re-read the Barbara Kingsolver essay about the Canary Islands that I saved many years ago, from her book "High Tide in Tucson." It was much as I remembered it -- a very evocative depiction of the landscape and the flora and fauna. But she didn't mention those spiny cacti once, and that was my clearest memory of the whole piece! She focused on the moister, more fog-bound environment of the laurel forests on La Gomera. Funny how the brain deceives. (I have since learned those "cacti" are actually a type of Euphorbia, and thus not cacti at all.)

Petrified Cranberry Sauce

This may look like some semi-tropical scene from Tenerife, but as you know by now, it's just our bird feeder with our resident, noisy parakeets. They and/or the squirrels have figured out how to remove the lid, so that top suet ball always disappears faster than the others. I could try to wire it down but I should really just get a new feeder. That one was here when we moved in and it has certainly done its duty over the past 11-plus years.

Yesterday was very quiet. I did laundry, including Dave's new pink shirt. I had visions of it staining everything else in the load pink but it didn't. I don't think that's really an issue anymore, is it? I think fabric and dye technology has improved beyond that. But I do still separate lights and darks, just like my mother taught me.

I pretty much caught up in Blogland and also managed my media, a never-ending task!

We've had an ancient can of cranberry sauce in the pantry for a while now. I have no idea when we bought it, but it expired in July 2024. Still, canned cranberry sauce won't really go bad, will it? I told Dave I was determined to eat it, and I opened it up and put it in my grandmother's special cranberry sauce dish, just as we always did during the holidays at home. Last night I had it with dinner (chicken) and it's perfectly fine.

And I put up our Christmas lights on the fiddle-leaf fig. This is as good as decorating gets around here. Merry Christmas!

Finally, I downloaded the weekly haul from the Garden Cam. We had very few videos this week, possibly because in the middle of the week I moved the camera to film the patio right outside our back door. I thought it would be interesting to see what critters venture close to the house. Answer: both Pale Cat and Q-Tip.

I first had the camera in the garden, where we see a couple of passing foxes and Pale Cat.
-- At 0:41 we get a peaceful garden scene of a pigeon, a flock of starlings and a squirrel rummaging through the fallen leaves. That lasts about a minute and it's my favorite part of this video.
-- After that, more foxes, including one moving very slowly at 1:45. I can't tell if it's injured or just being cautious and smelling the smells. It looks healthy when standing still.
-- At 2:05 the action moves to the patio, where Pale Cat wanders past.
-- At 2:25 a cautious fox spies the newly relocated camera and clearly doesn't like it.
-- At 2:43 an industrious squirrel buries a hazelnut. (Note to self: dig up nut so it doesn't grow!)
-- At 3:02, a daytime "Loch Ness" view of a passing fox's back, in the middle of the afternoon.

Now I've moved the camera back to the rear of the garden. I'd like to get more evidence of just how many foxes we're dealing with, and that's the only place I've ever obtained footage of two at once.

Emergency Vase Delivery

We are back home again, safe and sound in West Hampstead. When Dave originally planned this trip I questioned the wisdom of flying all the way to the Canary Islands for something like 36 hours on the ground. But it actually proved to be a nice little break -- a dose of sunshine and semi-tropical beauty, and lots of time for offline reading in the air! So bravo to Dave for cooking up this idea.

(I know it was terrible for our carbon footprint, and we stayed at a golf resort to boot. But hey, we have no kids and we don't drive, so our overall footprint is still pretty small.)

We left yesterday in late morning, after breakfast at our hotel. I had bought some milk at the Hiper-Dino on Thursday to put in my "cowboy coffee," and I wanted to use it up before we left, so I brought it to the restaurant and put it on my cereal. Dave made fun of me for bringing my own milk and I'm sure the waitress wondered what the heck, to the extent that she noticed. But I used it up.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you about the Emergency Vase Delivery. Dave and I were lounging on our hotel room terrace the afternoon before when a knock came at the door. We'd already dismissed the maid and told her we didn't need cleaning, so we couldn't imagine what this was about. The knock came again. Dave had been sunbathing and had to put on his pants to answer the door (I was still outside because I didn't hear the first knock) and when he opened it, a maintenance man was standing there with a big ugly white vase. "This for apartment," he said in broken English, and came in and set it down on a cabinet in the living room (where we already had at least five other decorative vases and bowls).

"We were missing a vase!" I said to Dave in mock horror.

The maintenance guy just shrugged sheepishly and let himself out. The whole thing was so strange. Why didn't they just wait until we were gone to deliver their completely unnecessary vase?

Sunset from the airplane window, seen off the coast of Morocco or maybe Portugal. Somewhere out there.

The flight back was uneventful. I read about half of Gary Shteyngart's book "Super Sad True Love Story," which is entertaining and weirdly prescient. It was published in 2010 and depicts a near future where the USA is an authoritarian dystopia that has invaded Venezuela! I KNOW! Shteyngart must be feeling like Carnac the Magnificent right about now.

We finally got home about 9 p.m., just in time to order chicken from Nando's and then fall into bed. But after a good night's sleep I feel totally normal, having not changed time zones or disrupted our sleep schedules. I see the appeal of Tenerife as a British vacation destination!

A Look Around Tenerife

Finally -- I can show you what this place looks like in daylight!

Yesterday was our only full day in Tenerife, so we had to make the most of it. I managed to fit in a long photo walk, a swim in the pool, some reading, a massage and a trip into town -- all fun or relaxing activities, it's true. I'm certainly not complaining.

That's the coastline, above, down the hill from our hotel, with the island of La Gomera just barely visible on the horizon. You can see the scrubby native vegetation, just as Barbara Kingsolver so memorably described it in the essay I mentioned yesterday.

But first things first -- breakfast and a surprise (to us) wedding! Dave and I walked to the Atlantico restaurant, which is where our breakfasts are served. We chose a table on the terrace overlooking a small green lawn, and saw that a marquee had been set up below with rows of chairs. I saw the marigolds tumbling from the urns and thought, "This must be a Hindu event." (I saw similar marigolds everywhere when I went to India years ago.)

In very short order, people were showing up dressed in colorful oranges and yellows, the bride and groom sat at the front of the group, and the ceremony began. All of us in the restaurant watched from the terrace above. You just never know what you're going to see, do you?

From there I took a car down to the tiny beach that serves both our hotel and the nearby Ritz-Carlton. (As you can see, I wore the Eastbourne dashiki!) I explored the beach area itself and then decided to walk back. The cliffs and hills are quite steep and there were steps to climb, but it was good exercise and offered some panoramic views.

I saw this dinosaurish-looking flower vine growing up a hillside. The blossoms were huge and stiff or waxy-looking. I thought: "What the heck are those?" Thank goodness for my plant-identifying app, which tells me it's a vine called Cup of Gold, or Solandra maxima, a type of nightshade.

I also passed this ravine containing a little memorial. Intrigued, I got out my zoom lens...

It looks like a memorial for someone who died in 1963 at the age of 20. Surely it's not a grave -- it seems to be on solid rock. Perhaps the scene of a tragic event? Anyway, very curious that the marker is down there all on its own.

I crossed a beautiful shadowy golf course -- inadvertently intruding on the fairway and causing a golfer to scold me, not wrongly, for being in a "dangerous" place -- and eventually got back to the hotel. After all that exertion I was ready for that swim and massage afterwards!

Yesterday evening Dave and I wanted to get away from the resort, so we had a drink at the bar in the Ritz and then took a taxi into the nearest town, Playa San Juan. We found a waterfront restaurant where we ran into two students from our school in London! What are the odds?! We chatted with them and their father, marveling that our paths should cross so far from home.

We had fish soup and I had seafood (shrimp and fish) on skewers, while Dave had pasta with clams. That's Dave above, outside the restaurant after we ate, wearing the new pink shirt he bought so he'd have something fresh to wear.

Back to London today!

Nearly Naked in Tenerife

Well, here we are in Tenerife, a tiny volcanic speck in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Western Sahara. When I lived in Morocco many years ago, I was conscious of the presence of the Canaries out in the ocean -- not that I could see them -- but even then I was farther north than we are now.

Years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver's book of essays, "High Tide in Tucson," in which she wrote partly about the Canary Islands. Apparently she lived here for a while, and although I haven't re-read that particular essay in years I did save it in my file of favorite writing. I should look at it again. I remember her describing the arid, rocky environment, the cactus and low-slung thorny plants. It's a very weird landscape, though to be honest I haven't really seen it yet (except from the plane, above). It was dark by the time we emerged from the airport and the sun is just coming up now.

It's already been an eventful trip. Dave and I got ourselves launched about 9 a.m. yesterday after putting our stuff in a single backpack. I thought we packed amazingly well until Dave said to me on the Thameslink train on the way to Gatwick, "Guess what I forgot?

I was thinking a toothbrush, or deodorant. "What?" I said.

"Clothes!"

Yes, you read that correctly. Dave managed to pack his medicine and some underwear, but he packed no outerwear at all. The only clothes he has are literally on his body. How this happened I have no idea but I can't stop laughing about it. Fortunately we're only here for two nights.

On the plane I plowed through the final 150 pages of "The Old Curiosity Shop" and finished it just as we were preparing to land. I get some of my best reading done on airplanes, when there are no distractions and I'm able to simply sit and concentrate. I didn't hate the book, and there were some good moments and colorful phrases, but it wasn't Dickens' best. It was basically a long meditation on mortality. I still wonder if I'd have felt differently about it had I not read in the introduction that Little Nell was going to die. I still can't believe they gave away the ending.

We're staying in a secluded resort community called Los Jardines de Abama, just up the hill from the Ritz-Carlton. I think these are really residences that are meant to be purchased, but they're used for tourist accommodation until they're sold. We have a swanky, fully-furnished place with a terrace overlooking the ocean and a Hiper-Dino grocery store within walking distance.

There are three restaurants within our complex, which seems mostly devoid of people. Last night, tired and hungry and without any supplies, we tried to go to the one closest to us, which supposedly serves typical Canarian dishes such as seafood. The concierge at the hotel told us with a downcast look that no tables were available. He went downstairs while we contemplated ordering room service, but then came bounding back up and said he had a table after all.

We were taken downstairs to a restaurant that was at least three-quarters empty, and that seemed to have one maitre'd and two servers. There were, I think, four other occupied tables. We sat down, were treated well and had a passable meal, wondering where everybody else was. (Granted, it was about 7:30 p.m., which is probably early for Spaniards to eat dinner.)

Look at those stars! I don't see anything like that in London. As you can see from the top picture, the island was socked in when we landed, but the sky cleared pretty quickly.

Oh, and making coffee this morning was an adventure. The coffee machine is this cheap-looking Nespresso pod thing, so I decided to make "cowboy coffee" with supplies from the Hiper-Dino (whose mascot is, of course, a dinosaur). I got up, boiled some water, added a few spoonfuls of grounds and the coffee promptly boiled over. I pulled it off the heat and let it brew a few minutes before straining it into a bowl, French-style, because our only cups are these tiny little pretentious things that I could empty in three sips. So now I'm sitting with my bowl of coffee looking out the sliding doors onto our terrace and, beyond, the lightening ocean and the neighboring island of La Gomera, which I think is actually the island Barbara Kingsolver wrote about.

Fortunately we have a washing machine. We may need it for Dave's one shirt and one pair of pants!