The Blackpool Tower

I came across this place while walking near my hotel in Blackpool. I wondered what on earth a "giant gut-buster barm" could be. I've heard the word "barmy" to describe a crazy person, but I've never heard of a barm as a noun. Turns out it's this, a big bread roll often served as a sort of sandwich. Apparently bacon, black pudding, chips and even a whole pasty can be used as a barm filling -- that's according to Wikipedia.

Well, yesterday was my last day in Blackpool and I had to make it count. The wind died down, so as soon as I'd had breakfast (an egg sandwich, so not quite a barm, but close) I made my way over to the Blackpool Tower. And it was open!

Look! There are people up there!

I got in line and bought my £18 ticket, skipping all the other related attractions like the circus and the dungeon. I suppose if I had kids I might do those too, but I only wanted the tower (and besides, my train left at 2 p.m. so I didn't have all day to kill.)

The "tower experience" began with a short 3-D film in the "cinema," which involved soap bubbles, getting sprayed with a mist of water and occasional puffs of wind. I went in thinking I'd tolerate it but it was actually very fun. It helped us imagine the tower's construction back in the 1890s, when a Blackpool mayor named John Bickerstaffe -- maybe or maybe not having seen the Eiffel Tower, depending on who you ask -- pushed to have it built. When it opened in 1894 it was the tallest structure in the British Empire!

Not only did I go up in the tower, but I made a video of the experience. You'll see what it's like going up in the lift, standing on the glass viewing platform (terrifying), and being at the very top, where it's open to the air (except for some netting). There's a spiral staircase to a still higher platform that is unfortunately closed.

The song that accompanies the video is one of my favorites, "In a Funny Way" by the band Mercury Rev. It's very cinematic (and it's permitted on YouTube by the copyright holders).

You'll also get a good view from the tower of the "Comedy Carpet," the tribute to British comedians that I mentioned a few days ago. Here it is from the ground. I suppose because yesterday's weather was better there were lots of people out enjoying it. I gotta say, every time I walked across it I saw something else that made me laugh out loud.

Finally, I had lunch and a final pint in Blackpool before heading to the train. I left slightly earlier than I'd originally planned -- I had an all-day return ticket so my time was flexible -- and I got back to London around 4 p.m. I spent my train time editing photos and putting together that video of the tower, which made me feel darned efficient.

Here's a final snippet of Blackpool, a mural I found on a side street incorporating all the local landmarks -- the piers, the tower, the ferris wheel and roller coaster, even the "Albert and the Lion" pub -- into the shape of a giant dragon. Pretty cool!

Everyone Knows It's Windy

Although it's been mostly clear and cool here, this freaking wind will not stop! I haven't been able to go up in the Blackpool Tower because it's been closed the last couple of days. Apparently they close it anytime the wind tops 40 mph. When my weather app said the wind was gusting up to 35 mph yesterday afternoon, I walked over there thinking I might get lucky -- but no, the tower was still closed. I'll try again today.

Having said that, it's been really good weather for walking around town and I've done a lot of exploring.

Apparently my hotel is in something of a "gayborhood" -- there are lots of bars and hotels around me, all flying Pride flags. This one has the added bonus of having pictures of drag queens all over the ground floor, including one named "Bernie de Bra." Points for creativity.

Blackpool, like Brighton in the South, seems to have a pretty healthy gay following.

This Beatles-themed bar unfortunately seems permanently closed, but you gotta love all the Beatles references, from "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" on the underside of the overhanging roof to the "Sgt. Pepper's" costumed mannequins in the glass case. The mannequins are all wearing Beatles-themed Covid face masks, so maybe that's a hint at how long this place has been closed (and why). I believe the building is for sale.

I walked quite a bit around town, in the commercial neighborhoods away from the beach, in order to photograph intriguing shopfronts and buildings. As expected, the town gets a bit more "lived-in" outside the tourist areas.

There's an annual event, quite well-known, called Blackpool Illuminations, which as far as I can tell mainly means all the sparkly lights on the waterfront are turned on after dark. This would be fun to see, but I'm too early for it. The Illuminations don't start until the end of August. (I guess it's too light too late to have them on in the summer...?)

Here's a peculiar construction on one downtown street. It's quite impressive, but it's filthy. Someone needs to give it a scrub-down.

I had lunch at a cafe on this street -- avocado, poached egg and bacon on dark toast -- and dinner (a hamburger) at a waterfront pub next to the tower called "Albert and the Lion." Apparently this name comes from a humorous poem about a family of swells with a mischievous son named Albert, who visit the Blackpool zoo with tragicomic consequences.

I also saw the "Send Them Home" guy (see yesterday's post) several more times, walking around town with his flag. He's very persistent, I'll say that much.

On my walk back to the hotel at sunset, the seafront was looking positively Hitchcockian. (I added music to this video too, but also kept some of the ambient sound so you could appreciate the wind, water and birds.)

Back to London today!

Now Where Am I?

Hint: It's not Paris!

Yes, I am in fact in Blackpool this time. The funny thing is, when I posted from Paris last week and some of you jokingly guessed I was in Blackpool, I'd already planned this trip as well. Apparently I am doing a world tour of large iron-girder towers. Las Vegas next!

I took the train up yesterday morning, and the weather was not looking promising. The skies were gray and somewhere north of Crewe it poured rain. I thought, "This is going to be a very British beach vacation." But then, lo and behold, the skies began to clear just as we neared Blackpool and by the time I got here, there were only wisps of clouds.

There is, however, wind. Lots of wind. Very intense wind and blowing sand. So I have not spent a great deal of time on the beach proper. Even walking around town, I get sand in my eyes.

Blackpool is a very retro vacation destination. It reminds me a lot of Coney Island in the USA, except that it's more self-contained, rather than being a coastal appendage to a larger city. When I texted our friend Gordon yesterday and told him I was here, he wrote back, "The epitome of the British seaside holiday -- in the 1960's!"

But that's exactly why I wanted to come. Blackpool really is famous as a historic holiday resort, from the Victorian era into the mid-20th Century, particularly for working-class people in northern England. And it is definitely not gentrified. There's an air of carnival amusement to the place, particularly along the waterfront, and there are plenty of families and little kids running around. I've seen burgers for £1 -- no word on what's in them -- and 60-piece boxes of chicken for £5.99. (Pigeon?) I've seen at least three bars advertising Elvis impersonators, and wondered whether it's one impersonator with multiple gigs, or is this the land where all Elvis impersonators are guaranteed employment?

On the waterfront promenade there's a huge pavement mural called "The Comedy Carpet" by Gordon Young and Why Not Associates. It highlights great moments in British comedy, including well-known lines and entire skits. Above you may recognize some moments from Monty Python, and there were others, too -- the dead parrot, Spam, the aquarium fish from "The Meaning of Life." Just reading these skits and replaying them in my head made me laugh out loud. Some of the other lines from other comedians I didn't recognize, but they were still funny.

I got a kick out of this family walking down the oceanfront, the man holding a large stuffed animal, the boy sticking his tongue out at his sister. That's Blackpool in a nutshell, right there.

I had lunch at a relatively fancy place overlooking the water called the Beach House, which I really enjoyed -- a glass of rosé, three Scottish oysters and an allegedly Colombian lentil stew. (Okay, so there may be some gentrification.)

Then I checked into my hotel, the Imperial, a vast, ornate red-brick pile north of the tower. It's a nice place and looks much more prosperous than some of the other oceanfront hotels, which seem like they're in a state of maritime decay. I have a tiny room with a view of nothing -- another rooftop and a wall -- but hey, you get what you pay for, right?

I came across this guy in front of another nearby hotel, which I presume is being used by the government -- like many mid-grade hotels in England -- to house migrant asylum seekers. He was conducting a one-man protest, with a sort of musical chant based on the name of a well-known anti-immigrant activist blaring from his boom box. (I'm not writing the name to avoid bringing Googling racists to my blog.)

I wondered, doesn't he have something better to do? And the answer is no -- which is also the problem. I did see an older woman give him a thumbs-up and go over to talk to him, though.

Remember how I rode the ferris wheel in Eastbourne and made a video? Well, I went out on the Central Pier (from 1868!) yesterday and did the same here, so you can get some fun aerial views of Blackpool. Sorry for my not-so-smooth camera work, but it was blowing like crazy up there and I was just trying to make sure my phone didn't fly off into the Irish Sea. Yes, I added music, because otherwise you would have only heard a windy roar.

Dinner last night: Fish and chips with mushy peas and a pint!

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A note about yesterday's post: Some of you asked in the comments that I not discard the knives with the ruined handles. I personally don't want to deal with re-handling them, but if any of you who commented would like to take on that task, e-mail me within the next few days and I'll mail them to you -- for keeps. Seriously!

The Kitchen Haul

When I told the story yesterday of the skip containing Bobo's gravestone, I didn't mention all the other stuff being discarded. Most of it was construction debris, but there was also a wooden box containing a bunch of kitchen utensils. You can see the corner of it in the photo I posted yesterday.

Most of it looked like junk -- scuffed plastic spatulas, a flimsy potato masher, a creaky can opener. I debated going through it, decided it wasn't worth it, and left it all behind.

But after I wrote yesterday's post, I changed my mind. I hoofed it back to that house early in the morning and grabbed the whole box out of the trash. I brought it back to our flat to go through it more carefully.

About two-thirds of it really was rubbish. But some of it seemed more useful or interesting, like the stuff above, which I laid out on our kitchen counter after I'd washed it. There were some big spoons, some weird-looking fish knives, some elegant cake knives. Here's a closer look:

These knives, made in Sheffield, are pretty -- but as you can see the handles are trashed. In fact, after I hand-washed them, they got even more cracked and warped. Are they ivory? I'm not sure, but sadly, I'm throwing them out. No one can use them in that condition.

This vintage cake knife with a Bakelite-type handle, on the other hand, is really nice, if a bit tarnished.

There were "Postman Pat" egg cups from the '90s, which seem too small to hold an actual egg. I wondered if these have any collectible value, but I see that they're listed on eBay for less than £5 a pair.

There was also some souvenir Delft china from Holland -- an ashtray, a small shoe and a knife rest (not pictured).

I found a somewhat mangled old souvenir spoon from Knokke-LeZoute, a Belgian beach resort.

There was a handful of random stainless steel flatware which I ran through the dishwasher and will take to school for our break room, and a few visually uninteresting but useful items like an Ikea serrated knife and a pair of bamboo salad tongs. I saved those too.

So, not a bad haul, all things considered! I'm not sure we'll keep everything shown here -- some of it may wind up going to a thrift store. I think I will definitely keep the cake knife and the Delftware.

And yes, I salvaged Bobo's headstone, too. You knew I would. How could I let that piece of history go out with the garbage? It's on the patio now, under our cast-iron fireplace surround, where it will serve as a conversation piece if nothing else.

I realize the irony in this, considering our own beloved Olga just died and we have nothing commemorating her. We didn't even ask for her ashes back. Dave and I are not very attached to physical remains in general. But instead I have a headstone for a dog or cat or boa constrictor that I never even met?

Bobo

A quiet but busy morning yesterday. I washed our tablecloths, put away some laundry, watered all the houseplants, cleaned and organized some stuff and finished a book -- Brian Selznick's "Run Away With Me," a romantic same-sex teen love story set in Italy. Calling it a "teen love story" makes it sound like a Judy Blume book, but there were also elements of art and history and questions about the nature of time and being, along with Selznick's fabulous pencil sketches. I really enjoyed it.

After lunch I persuaded Dave to go to Sweet Corner with me for coffee. We sat out on the sidewalk just as we did in Paris, watching the parade of humanity, but it was less of a parade at Fortune Green than it was at Notre Dame.

Afterwards Dave went home and I took a walk through the cemetery, where a lot of late-summer insects were still active in the butterfly area:

That first butterfly is a small copper, I believe, but for some reason the color is paler than what I usually see on coppers. Further along you'll see a large hoverfly on thistle -- that's Myathropa florea, the "Batman" hoverfly, with a black mark on its thorax that looks like the Bat Signal. The weird music is an Apple jingle called "Jacaranda" that I chose mainly because it was the right length -- allow it to transport you to exotic lands!

I walked the narrow path (top) from the cemetery to the adjacent sports fields, where some guys were playing cricket, and then through a nearby neighborhood.

There was a rubbish skip in front of one house, filled with debris and topped off by this memorial stone for (one assumes) a pet named Bobo. Who knows what the story is here? Maybe the house sold, or Bobo's owner has passed away or moved and there's no longer a need for a marker. Bobo was 15 when he/she died in 1987, which means he/she was born in 1972, which is kind of mind-boggling to think about. That creature was alive before Richard Nixon resigned, before Patty Hearst became "Tania," before Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were world leaders, before hostages in Iran. Bobo was already a senior citizen when the Challenger exploded!

Last night we watched a documentary called "Active Measures," from 2018, about the depth of Trump's involvement with the Russians and Putin's efforts to influence western elections. It was made during Trump's first term, but it's still timely given more recent events in Ukraine and Trump's insistence that stories of his campaign's collaboration with Russia are a "hoax." Even if there was no direct collaboration, it seems apparent that Russia meddled on his behalf. It's a really good movie and worth watching.

Want a happy dog story? Check out the tale of Trooper, the dog who was rescued in Tampa after being tied to a fence during Hurricane Milton.

Hot Lips, Nicole and Ginger

Here's our Salvia "Hot Lips," which blooms almost all year in our garden. I don't often take pictures of it but it's a stalwart, providing these omnipresent airborne clusters of little red and white (and sometimes solid red or white) flowers. They hover in the background off the patio like moths.

Let's check in with a few other garden plants, shall we?

Nicole the Nicotiana has bounced back dramatically since her bout with bad drainage and overwatering earlier this year. I thought she was dead but some little sprouts appeared at her base, and soon enough we had two new bushy stalks. It looks like we may get flowers again before autumn.

I discovered why she got waterlogged -- in addition to her pot's drainage holes becoming gradually blocked over time, the Russians' automatic plant-watering system (which keeps their terrace plants hydrated) leaks and sprayed a jet of water right down onto Nicole every evening.

"Those people drive me crazy even after they've moved out," I told Dave.

I swapped Nicole's position on the patio with our tomato (at left), which can always stand a little more water. Hopefully now she's in a drier location, in addition to having better drainage.

Incidentally, we have several green tomatoes on the tomato plant but still no ripe ones. This is always our struggle growing tomatoes here in the UK. It's not hot enough for long enough. But we're hopeful we'll get some before autumn encroaches.

Here's the ginger I grew from a sprouting root. It is not a thing of beauty and joy forever. It has a few new sprouts but they're all doing that weird rolled-leaf thing. I'm just letting it sit out there for now but its future is not guaranteed if it doesn't start looking better.

Our avocado tree, on the other hand, is looking lush and healthy. It loves summers on the patio.

And finally, here's the "magenta spreen lambsquart" I transplanted from crack in the sidewalk in front of the house. It's not very big -- certainly not the promised five feet tall -- but it's growing and I love that little blush of purple in the middle. That yellow leaf belongs to the honesty plant at right, which hopefully will be big enough to bloom next year. This pot has a lot of weird stuff in it -- there are also the brook thistles, which have died back to the ground entirely, and several tulip bulbs. And some weeds, because I am not a perfectionist.

We got a beautiful card from former blogger Vivian Swift, who painted Olga's portrait several years ago. She expressed condolences for Olga's death and said "your internet community feels your loss," which I thought was very touching. "The impact she had on people she didn't even know is a kind of magic," Vivian wrote. "Closer to home, I am sure that your girl knew how much she was loved as the heart of your household, just as she knew that her sweet soul will always be cherished."

I think she really did know that.

I still miss Olga, but the pain of her absence has softened to something much more manageable. I'm not outwardly weeping or feeling that physical gut-punch, that almost-panicked gasping, like I was at the beginning. It still seems unbelievable that she is gone forever -- I half expect her to walk in from the garden or to hear the shake of her collar at the front door as she returns with the dog-walker. But I am coming around to the fact that she is truly gone in the physical sense, if not from our hearts.

I mentioned yesterday that I organized a quick trip for early next week, since Dave will be away and I don't really want to hang around the house by myself. Well, wouldn't you know, I am going to be traveling during a named storm -- Storm Floris, which is supposed to bring wind and heavy rain to most of the northern British isles on Monday. This doesn't thrill me, as I'm headed in that direction. Oh well. This should be interesting!

Spots

Here's our "Poodle Skirt" dahlia, which Dave bought pretty much because he liked the name. It is an interesting flower, much different from our other dahlias.

Yesterday was a day for getting organized. The carpet cleaner showed up promptly at 8 a.m. and gave the dining room carpet a steam cleaning. We had a few Olga-related spots in there. Olga was a very good girl when it came to house training, but a handful of times, when we weren't home and she wasn't feeling well, she'd slip into a secluded corner of the dining room to "do her business." Of course we immediately cleaned it up as best we could, but I'm glad to finally have that carpet professionally addressed.

Meanwhile, all the stuff from the dining room is piled in the front hallway. The carpet cleaner said the rug would dry in 2-3 hours. Not even close! When we went to bed it was still damp, and parts of it are slightly damp even this morning. We'll be able to move everything back today, though.

I also had to print some stuff for our citizenship ceremony on the 13th. The invitation letters we got from the Home Office said we had to bring them to the ceremony, and they had to be paper printouts, not in our e-mail or on our phones. So I went to school in the late morning and printed them there, and also took the opportunity to return all my library books. There were a bunch of books in the book return, including a few that were marked as lost at the end of the school year but were no doubt found in someone's closet or locker or office or gym bag, and I checked those in too.

I also made plans for a little trip early next week, when Dave will be gone -- bought a train ticket, made a hotel reservation. Watch this space!

In the evening Dave and I finally watched the Netflix film "Will and Harper," in which Will Ferrell and his trans-woman friend Harper Steele travel across the country and explore both their friendship and the limits of cultural acceptance in the rural USA. I enjoyed it a lot and found it quite touching and illuminating. Definitely worth watching if you haven't seen it already.

Jardin du Luxembourg

Well, we are home. I'm sitting in the living room as a quiet rain falls outside, drinking a big mug of American coffee -- always a blessing after those dainty little café crèmes on the continent. I need about 12 of those things just to stay alive.

We had a good day yesterday. Unlike Tuesday morning, when I was up and about early, I slept in -- so Dave and I left our hotel at the same time and made our way to the same cafe beneath the shady locust trees on the Rue Caulaincourt where we'd had breakfast the day before. We got a front-row table for watching street life and were amused by a guy sitting across the street having a lively conversation with himself -- until he crossed over to have a lively conversation with us. His name was Vergilio, and that was one of the few things he said that I understood, as he was from Portugal but he was speaking French and he was missing a fair number of teeth. Of course he wanted some coins and I had none on me, but he was pleasant about it.

Our train wasn't until 2:40 p.m., so we decided to go to the Jardin du Luxembourg on the Left Bank. I've spent very little time south of the river in Paris, except for the area immediately around the Eiffel Tower. So this was new grounds for exploration. I was amused to find a fancy-looking cafe near the Odeon called The Editors (above) -- editors are used to being mostly nameless, unsung figures in the background of the publishing world, so I'm glad we got our due.

Dave decided to take a seat in the park while I wandered around. The gardens, built by Marie de Medici beginning in 1612, are laid out around a central pond and formal garden overlooked by the Luxembourg Palace. I passed the sculpture above, Arthur le Duc's "Harde de cerfs écoutant le rapproché," or herd of listening deer.

Here's a video showing some more scenery, including the large formal garden, the palace, the pond, Charles-Arthur Bourgeois' sculpture L'Acteur Grec (Greek actor), and the Medici Fountain:

We left the gardens and headed for the train station, where we caught our train without incident. It was very full and it arrived in London around the same time as another Eurostar from elsewhere, so there was a bit of a mob scene trying to get off the platform and through customs, but we eventually managed.

I mentioned the train ticket prices yesterday and my surprise at how high they were. But we did choose midday trains at the height of the summer tourist season, and we bought our tickets not even a week in advance. I guess £180 per person each way, under those circumstances, isn't too terrible. I'm telling myself that, anyway.

Also, you may be wondering why we made the trip so short. Why not stay in Paris a few more days? Well, Dave is going to the states on Saturday, so we had to come back in time for him to get ready for that adventure. I'll be staying behind, no doubt missing Olga, but I'm planning to do some short trips of my own.

When we got home, Dave and I had to move all the furniture out of the dining room because I have carpet cleaners coming this morning to steam clean the carpet. Of course we're also having rain today and tomorrow, so the whole house is going to be damp. Zut alors!

Sexy Pompiers and Gigantic Tiramisu

Now that my location has been revealed -- and it is indeed Paris, not Blackpool -- let me tell you a little about what we're doing here. Dave and I both thought a short break away from home would do us some good. After Olga's decline and death, we needed an escape. So in the midst of my grief I bought a couple of Eurostar tickets and made some reservations.

Looking at the receipt later, I saw that I paid about £720 for these tickets, which seems insane to me. I didn't even realize it at the time. Fortunately we're staying in an inexpensive hotel -- the Hotel Flore in Montmartre -- that has long been a favorite of mine, so that balances everything out.

We got here Monday afternoon and wandered up to the Place du Tertre for some cafe-sitting and people-watching. The place was mobbed with tourists, as you could see in my photos yesterday. But I love this part of town, its scenic streets and steep stairs, and we had a good time.

Yesterday morning I got up early and went back to Sacre Coeur, and it was a much better experience. There was virtually no one around, the sun was shining, and I bought an almond croissant and some coffee and ate sitting on the steps overlooking the city. A group of hunky guys wearing matching running clothes went by (top photo) and I realized they were members of the Paris Fire Brigade. I suddenly felt in desperate need of resuscitation but sadly they were too busy exercising to notice.

After walking along Rue des Abbesses and peeking inside a neighborhood church, I came back to the hotel, collected Dave (who was sleeping in) and we made our way to the cafe above, where we had coffee and croissants beneath the shady locust trees along Rue Caulaincourt. Then we headed into town to see some sights on the Ile de Cité.

I wanted to see the newly refurbished Cathédrale Notre Dame, and Dave wanted to take another look at Saint Chapelle, which he visited with a school group but was unable to see well because of renovations and unruly students. We did Saint Chapelle first -- and it was indeed beautiful with its acres of stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the Bible. (It's still under renovation, though.)

Notre Dame was remarkable (above). You'd never know there was a fire. Some of the walls and ceilings look fresher than they did, but not jarringly so, and the windows and the art are intact and displayed as usual. I'm sure there are differences that people intimately familiar with the building would notice but I was just happy to once again see the rose window I photographed back in 2013.

Here's another view. Pretty amazing restoration!

We had omelettes and wine in a cafe across the street (as you can see there's still scaffolding on the exterior of Notre Dame). This cafe is one that my father photographed on his own trip to Paris as a college student in 1957:

It was much quieter then! (And it had a different name.) Dave insisted I show our waiter this photo. "She's not going to care!" I said, knowing that French waiters are notoriously busy and somewhat curt, but I tried anyway -- and indeed, she did not care.

We walked over to the Left Bank and had a coffee in a cafe with a view of a busy roundabout on the Boulevard Saint Germain. I ordered a tiramisu that proved to be as big as a baby's head. I couldn't begin to eat it all.

Afterwards we went back to the room for a rest. I did some blog reading. I know I'm behind on responding to comments but let me just say THANK  YOU to those of you who identified my mysterious moth on Monday as a common footman! I'm so glad to know what it is.

Last night we had a bit of a fiasco. Soon after booking this trip, while still in London, Dave made a dinner reservation at a restaurant he'd read about online called Benoit. When we checked the location yesterday on Google Maps, I simply typed in Benoit and showed the results to Dave, who agreed that was our restaurant. So we hopped on the Metro and made our way there, arriving just in time for our 7 p.m. reservation. The place was completely dead, and when I said we had a reservation the host simply gestured to the acres of empty tables and told us to sit anywhere. We sat and looked at the menu, and Dave said, "Is this the right restaurant?"

And sure enough, it wasn't. We were expected at a different restaurant Benoit a mile away. So Dave and I bid our host a hasty adieu, explaining we were in the wrong place, and once again hopped on the Metro. We got to the correct Benoit a half-hour late but they seated us and we had a fine dinner and a good laugh.

Back to London today!

Here's Where I Am

I'm going to give you a rare, almost wordless post today, with just a series of photos (in increasing order of obviousness) to reveal where we are. Enjoy!

A Mystery Moth and Desuetude

I found this oblong white moth while walking on Hampstead Heath Extension a little more than a week ago. I'm not familiar with it and I can't seem to readily identify it online.

It's a mystery -- admittedly a rather plain one. I think its elongated shape caught my eye more than anything else. Anybody know what it is?

I returned to the Tate Britain yesterday to see the Ithell Colquhoun exhibit, a sort of companion to the Edward Burra show I saw a few days ago. I didn't enjoy Colquhoun's art as much. She was an occultist and experimented with methods of painting that were supposed to channel the subconscious or universal rhythms or whatever -- some of them seemed frankly gimmicky to me. What she often wound up with were compositions akin to Rorschach blots. Even her earlier, more representative works of flowers or mythological scenes were weirdly fleshy and unappealing, I thought.

Here's one little work I did like, "Diagrams of Love: Marriage of Eyes" from 1940-42.

From the museum I walked up to Westminster and caught the tube back home again.

Not much else of note happened yesterday. I spent the morning reading Guy Trebay's memoir of life in New York in the '70s, "Do Something." I'm enjoying his stories about life in a world of artsy decrepitude during the years of "Ford to City: Drop Dead." In one sentence I read yesterday he used a word I don't recall ever seeing before: "Mostly these are places that, like the city itself, are slumping toward desuetude."

From Oxford Languages: (Desuetude: noun (formal), a state of disuse. "The docks fell into desuetude.")

Speaking of books, I enjoyed this article in The New York Times about a man who habitually kept a list of all the books he'd read over the years -- almost 3,600 of them. When I was young I kept book lists of my own, usually in the back of my paper journals, and in 2003 or so I started keeping one on my computer. It's up to about 830 books now. I occasionally consult it if I can't remember an author or title or (rarely) if I'm not sure I've already read a certain book. In one of my lamest blog posts, in 2008, I published the whole thing. (It was much shorter then.) It's kind of a silly habit but it's interesting to look back and see how many of those books I do or don't remember.

Dave and I are off on an adventure today -- a very brief one. We both need a change of scenery and thought it would be nice to get away. So I'll be coming to you tomorrow from somewhere other than London! Stay tuned!