Oddbins and Some Snowmen

I found this graffiti on my walk home from work last night. Seasonally appropriate!

I was just reading about the demise of my favorite wine merchant, Oddbins. We have an Oddbins shop here in West Hampstead and every once in a while I'd take all the £1 coins we'd accumulated in our change bowl and go buy a bottle or two of wine. It was a good way to get rid of coins.

Oddbins has a sort of legendary status in the UK. It's been around for 60 years, and at its height in the '90s it operated a chain of more than 275 outlets all over the country. It was so well known that "Absolutely Fabulous" made a joke about the hard-drinking, Chanel-wearing character Patsy Stone living in a flat above Oddbins.

But apparently it fell on hard times about ten years ago, something about corporate debt, and then Brexit and the pandemic finished off its high-street shops. Last night I happened to walk by and noticed all the windows dark and the shelves stripped of stock. Apparently Oddbins is still trading as an online presence, but it won't be the same.

Funny thing, though -- I went down the street to our other local wine merchant, a little independent shop, and the guy who used to work at Oddbins is now working there! So at least he landed on his feet. Maybe Patsy can find a flat upstairs.

And since I never use cash anymore, I don't accumulate change. My need to get rid of coins is pretty much nonexistent.

Times are different!

This looks like a picture of nothing, and it kind of is. It's showing our newly painted hallway wall (foreground) which, before our recent renovations, looked like this:

You can see how it's much improved now, though the colors don't show up as well because of course I had to take the post-renovation picture at night. (It's always night at this time of year!) We had saved the paint from our earlier paint job so the contractors were able to use it and match the color exactly.

Today I have to get myself to work early because I'm doing two presentations to Grade 5 classes about the Newbery awards. I've certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of reading all those books a couple of years ago!

Changing Colors

The apartment complex on the street behind our flat has put out its Christmas lights -- these colored fixtures that hang over the doors.

The colors change, which you can see in these two photos, taken a few seconds apart.

This is Harvard Court, above, and across the street (directly behind our flat) is Yale Court. I've written about them before. I still wonder who thought to name them after American universities. I guess we have references to Oxford and Cambridge in America, so it's kind of the same thing.

I got up waaaaaaay too early this morning -- around 4:15 a.m. I just felt like I couldn't stay in bed anymore. I went to bed early, too -- about 9:30 p.m. I think all the darkness at this time of year messes with my internal clock. By the time 9 p.m. rolls around, it feels like midnight.

We're having a crazy week at work. It's exam week in the high school, which means a slightly different schedule with more unstructured time between classes. Ostensibly this is so the kids can study, but of course they all come and hang out in the library, so we are wall-to-wall. I'd say about half the kids are studying. There's also a whole lot of socializing going on, which will probably be reflected in some people's grades!

I spent much of yesterday re-shelving those 400 science books we pulled a few weeks ago. My knees and legs are getting a workout, crouching down to access those bottom shelves. I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to do this job, but then again, I guess doing it probably helps keep me limber.

Directory

This stuffed bear hangs on the gate at a construction site down by the railroad tracks. It's where they tore down that council office building to erect a block of flats. I guess the workers felt they needed a mascot?

It's been pouring rain all morning, although it has slackened a bit now. Olga wouldn't go outside even for a quick pee. I'll have to get her out the door at least briefly before I go to work.

Other than that, I have no news, and this post is about to get as boring as a telephone directory.

And that's because it's about to BE a telephone directory. I was Googling around the other night when I discovered that my alma mater, the University of South Florida, where my parents used to work, has put some of its archived staff directories online. Above is a portion of the directory for 1975-76, and you can see my mom listed, along with everyone who used to work in her office.

This won't mean much to you, of course, but reading these names was like time traveling for me. I remember all those people vividly. My mom used to come home talking about them, and I met them at office parties, or when I was sick and spent the day with her at work. (I'm sure they loved having a sick kid around the office, but I don't think I ever went if I had something contagious. I remember once having infected insect bites on my legs, for example.)

Sylvia K was one of my mom's best friends, and we socialized with her and her kids. Susan F had a ribald sense of humor that my mom loved. Jeff S was a bearded guy with a groovy conversion van, and at the time I was obsessed with the idea of living in a motor home, so Mom and Jeff took me down to the parking lot to show it to me. It had blue shag carpet all over the inside and I remember being specifically told not to open any drawers or cabinets. I'm sure Mom suspected I might find a joint.

Conchita S once told me a story about how, as a little girl (in Cuba, I believe), when she ate fried eggs, she would stab the yolk with a knife and pretend it was blood running around the plate. I have never forgotten that!

Here's the directory for 1980-81. By this time my mom was coordinator of the advising team, a job she hated. She got along with most of her co-workers but did not like managing people. As you can see, there were a few staff changes, and once again I know all these names and can picture everyone. I wonder where they all are now?

Here's a terrible picture of my mom in her office around that time. I have no idea where she got that "Keep Calm" poster but she probably needed it. Isn't it weird to see a desk without a computer?

For some reason, the directory pages that would have shown my dad and his office in the math department are missing from the online directories, along with all the student information (which I'm sure USF deliberately omitted). So I can't time-travel with my dad, but I didn't know his co-workers as well anyway.

Animals, Dust and Otherwise

Since I cleaned so thoroughly beneath the TV table on Saturday, I decided yesterday to tackle the other side of the living room -- beneath the couch. I knew it needed cleaning because when we had Dave's co-workers over for Thanksgiving, Olga's Kong rolled under there, and when I reached in to retrieve it my arm came back -- to my mortification -- with a whole zoo of dust animals clinging to it.

So, yes, I moved the couch, vacuumed up the dust, mopped the floor, and thoroughly cleaned all the crevices of the couch itself. Dave and I were afraid our little mousie friend might have a nest in the couch, but I checked all the seams and they're secure. So wherever mousie was living, it's not there.

And then I set a trap, and this morning, there's a mouse in it. Adios, mousie.

Some of you commented that you're sure I'd be using humane traps. I would if I had any handy. Unfortunately, I don't, so I used a snap trap and mousie is indeed dead. (I would never use a glue trap. Those things are horrible.) I have read that humane traps actually aren't all that humane. Once released outdoors, the mice -- if they don't get inside again -- often die because they're displaced from their nests. I have no idea whether or not that's true but in this case I felt I had to act fast and didn't have time to struggle with the ethics.

Anyway, after all the cleaning, I arranged disposal of our old TV set -- pickup is scheduled for New Year's Day, weirdly -- and then took Olga for a walk.

We found a tennis ball behind a construction fence on Potteries Path. Olga wanted that ball. Never mind that she has about ten of them at home.

We both tried valiantly to reach it, but it just couldn't be done. We had to leave it behind. Fortunately, Olga is the epitome of "out of sight, out of mind," and it was promptly forgotten.

Looking for some reading recommendations? Here are some interesting articles I've come across and bookmarked during the last several weeks/months. Some of them may be behind a paywall, depending on whether you subscribe to any of these publications or have already run out of your allotted handful of free articles for the week or month:

-- A story in The Washington Post looking critically at our cultural obsession with purging possessions. And here's a related story from The New York Times about the positive aspects of clutter. Neither of these are particularly new, but maybe you'll find them timely during the holiday season.

-- A somewhat related Washington Post story about the benefits of decluttering your life goals. In other words, re-drafting your bucket list to create a "chuck-it list."

-- A hilarious (but fairly rude) analysis of the the famous urban myth involving Richard Gere and a gerbil. Again, several years old, but well worth reading. (MEL Magazine)

-- A completely insane story in the Tampa Bay Times about the planned demolition of a gigantic mansion in Tampa (built by former pro baseball player Derek Jeter) by its new owner, who intends to build an even bigger house.

-- A touching story, again in The Washington Post, about a Florida school librarian who quit her job because of the state's crazy fixation on the content of library books.

-- An NYT story that I confess I haven't read yet about tropical parakeets that have occupied the skies over Brussels, Belgium. (I intend to read it, though, because the same parakeets are all over our bird feeder here in London!)

-- An excellent video in The New York Times that explains how the British government has managed to endanger what should be the country's proudest achievement: the National Health Service.

(Top photo: A Christmasy real estate agent's office on our high street.)

Drums and Mus

Some sunlight and blue sky yesterday afternoon, after a rainy morning. Olga and I went to the cemetery, where she romped through the mud.

But before I get to that, let me tell you about the morning. The new TV arrived! Woo hoo! So I removed the old one, along with the Freeview box that we no longer use, and rolled up several cables that no longer have to be connected to anything because all our TV now comes over WiFi. We have finally joined the modern world.

Then I installed the new one, and we set it up, and it looks wonderful -- at least from the standpoint of cleanliness in the living room. Getting rid of that snarl of wires beneath the TV stand (and cleaning the newly exposed floor) makes a world of difference. We got the monitor up and running and more or less programmed, and last night we watched a couple of shows. The picture is going to take some getting used to. It seems quite dark in certain scenes. We found ways to adjust it, but it's apparently a complaint some people have about this particular Samsung television.

I also mopped the rest of the flat, getting rid of that post-renovation dust, and watered the orchids and did some other stuff. And then, after lunch...the cemetery. On the way, Olga and I came across a Christmas market going on in West End Green and a troupe of drummers banging out a rhythm on the adjacent sidewalk. Olga wasn't sure what to make of it. (WARNING: If you watch the video below, you might want to turn your volume down as the drummers were quite loud!)

As you'll also see in the video, Olga had fun in the cemetery, chasing squirrels up trees and then barking randomly when she lost them among the branches.

Muddy undercarriage!

All in all it was a good day, and I feel like I'm getting a handle on things around here once again.

Except, as we went to bed last night, Dave gestured to me, Olga and himself and said, "We three are not the only ones living in this apartment."

"What do you mean?" I said.

Turns out, he saw a mouse in the living room -- a tiny one scurrying along the baseboard. Sigh. I'm not surprised, because a few times I've had that weird sensation of seeing something move out of the corner of my eye and then, when I look, nothing is there. I've got to set some traps today.

A Deep and Dark December

Here's a photo from my walk home last night -- a lost hat atop a fence in front of Snowman House, a council building near Abbey Road. As blogger Andrew mentioned in his comment on my previous post, it gets dark pretty early at this time of year. The photo above was taken at 5 p.m.

And here's a photo of Olga from our walk yesterday morning. Because there's a shadow you may think there's sunlight, but that was actually cast by a street lamp. At 7 a.m., the sky was pitch black.

So, yeah, we are in "a deep and dark December," as Simon & Garfunkel famously wrote -- just a few weeks from the solstice. By the time I walk to work, at 8 a.m., it's light out, so I do get a little bit of daylight on my walks. But even at midday the sun is often pretty weak, filtered through gray flannel clouds. Fortunately I don't have Seasonal Affective Disorder, at least not that I'm aware of. I may have Seasonal Annoyance Disorder, but that's a different thing.

The painter has finished in our flat, which means our bathroom renovation is finally, finally done! After six months! To be honest I'd gotten so used to living with that unpainted hallway wall that I'd stopped seeing it, but I appreciate having it completed. Now we'll see if any lingering dampness damages the paint, God forbid. Today I'm going to mop the floors to do away with any residual film of dust, but the guy was pretty clean and didn't leave behind anything obvious.

I spent yesterday hoisting boxes of books. We're trying something new in the library -- selling our discarded books. There are companies in the UK that will buy used books, usually for a pittance (anywhere from 8p to a pound or two apiece), and I found one that accepts old library books. So I scanned the ISBNs on all the books in several boxes of discards, and got an offer on about 50 of them. I packaged them up and they're to be picked up on Monday. Overall payment -- about £40. It's not a lot of money but it's better than nothing, which is obviously what we get when we pass them on to charity.

Oh, and Dave ordered a new TV last night, which should arrive today. We spent last night watching TV on one of our laptops, which we set up on a chair in front of the couch. There was a lot of squinting involved.

Guns and Televisions

You may have heard we had a shooting in East London a couple of days ago. This shooting made international news, even though there was one victim, and she was not famous. Why the big deal?

Well, it's because shootings are so rare in London. Guns are strictly controlled in the UK. Compare the numbers: there have been 97 homicides so far this year in London, of which 8 were shootings and 62 were stabbings. In Chicago, meanwhile, there have been 522 homicides as of October 31, and 2,110 shootings (obviously not all fatal). In New York, there have been 368 murders and 1,071 shootings as of Dec. 3 -- figures the city touts as good news because they're significantly lower than last year's.

It's not hard to see that gun control works. You can kill someone with a knife, but it's harder and it's nearly impossible to kill as many people or to kill bystanders inadvertently. I'll say it again: Gun control works.

OK, with that out of the way, let's talk about how our flat is continuing to fall apart around my ears. I was so proud of myself yesterday morning for getting our TV sound system mailed off for repair, and then I came home and found that the TV itself has now stopped working! I can only assume that in moving it around to disconnect the sound bar, I somehow caused the TV to fail. Dave has looked at it too, and we've tried different outlets and checked all connections. We can't turn it on at all. It's deader than a doornail.

I swear, I knock down one task and another one pops up in its place. It's exhausting.

Unlike the sound bar, though, the TV is quite old. We got it free when we moved here in 2011, and it was used even at that point. And we watch it EVERY night. It's given us a lot of hours of entertainment. So I think the solution will be to simply buy a new TV. (Why didn't all this happen BEFORE Black Friday?!)

Meanwhile the string-pull light switch in our half-bathroom is acting weird -- the light wouldn't come on yesterday evening, and then it came on all by itself in the middle of the night. I've got to report that to the management company.

And of course everything is chaos because the painter is here finishing the renovation of our big bathroom and hallway. His ladder is propped up in our entrance hall, and there's a fine film of dust on all our surfaces. He should be done today.

I'm a wreck. TGIF!

(Photo: Finchley Road, during my walk home from work last night.)