Unicorns

I came across this nonchalant-looking unicorn in Soho over the weekend. It's called "Uninhibited," by the artists DollyOlli. They have a lot of playful sculptures and sculptural furniture on their web site, including a sofa that looks like a giant derrière (dubbed the "Ass Sofa").

You got to laugh to keep from cryin', right? That's how I feel this morning looking at the election results so far. While most of the big swing states are still in play, it's not looking good for Harris and The New York Times sets Trump's likelihood of winning at 93 percent. When Dave and I went to the pub on Saturday, we were talking with the waitress about the election, and I told her to watch Pennsylvania -- whichever way it swings, so will swing the election. I still think that's true, even if it's not exactly ground-breaking insight on my part.

There's nothing like an election to make me realize that the things I hold dear -- my morals and values, my ideas of right and wrong, my sense of the balance between social responsibility and personal freedom -- are not necessarily the same for a vast swath of my fellow Americans. And every time, every time, that kind of surprises me. I don't know why. I guess I feel like my perspectives are not all that unusual, despite being a childless urban gay man living overseas, which I certainly realize is not the standard American demographic. Of course there are plenty of people who do share my perspectives, so there's that -- but it seems they are often not enough to win an election.

So, yeah, at this early hour when the race hasn't yet been called, I am feeling once again like an outsider.

I do think we Democrats have a long-standing and persistent problem in selling ourselves. For decades we have allowed the right to define us, whether that means Newt Gingrich sneering about "liberals" or Donald Trump talking about "Democrat hellholes." We've never been good at getting in front of our message and our goals, at making people see what we stand for and how we intend to help them. Not since FDR, anyway. Maybe Obama, though the Affordable Care Act is hanging by a thread.

And government often does shoot itself in the foot. Did you all see the sad story of P'Nut the squirrel? The Republicans have touted it as an example of government overreach in a Democratic state, and I gotta say, they are right. This poor guy raised an orphaned squirrel for seven years, and then a bunch of jackboots take it away and kill it?! Come on, now. Be sensible and have a heart. Sheesh.

Anyway, back to unicorns. Remember the discarded rocking horse/unicorn that I photographed lying in the autumn leaves a couple of weeks ago? Well, it has lain there ever since, next to a trash bin in front of an empty house. Yesterday, walking home, I grabbed it. I know, I know -- I am a 58-year-old childless man with absolutely no use for a rocking horse, but I just couldn't stand to watch it lie there and deteriorate. I'm thinking we'll turn it into a plant stand, maybe?

Intrusions

When I was shooting pictures in Soho on Sunday, I twice had bicyclists ride into my frame at the moment I snapped the shutter. It's OK -- it's not their fault, after all, just an accident of timing. I guess it gives an accurate impression of how busy the streets were.

I got a flu shot yesterday -- woo hoo! I got it through work, and I wish they offered a Covid booster too but alas they do not. I haven't suffered any ill-effects.

I had a doctor's appointment in the late afternoon, to get a referral letter to see a gastroenterologist again. I am doing my best to get to the bottom of my gut discomfort (and fatigue and related issues). Many of you have given me hints about probiotics and that kind of thing, and I appreciate all the feedback. But I still feel like I need answers about the cause of my elevated levels of inflammation, you know? We shall see.

Then, in the evening, I had a zoom call with a lawyer in the states in my continuing effort to create some kind of will or trust so if I drop dead tomorrow, all my vast wealth (ha!) doesn't get tied up in probate. This is also an ongoing process that I've been working on for months. Dreary, but necessary.

Olga is doing well and went out with her dog-walker yesterday for the first time since her "episode" a week ago. The dog-walker texted me afterwards: "She did pretty well, slow and steady, bless her! No sign of discomfort." She ate well last night, and this morning she's bright-eyed and chipper. So I guess we're back to our routines.

A Soho Photo-Wander

I decided to get out and do some photography yesterday. It wasn't the best day for it, with a flat gray sky and subdued light, but since I'd spent the whole previous day basically on the couch, I had to get my body moving.

I took the tube down to Bond Street and walked through the fancy shopping area, which I may revisit at night once the holiday decorations are all up and lit. I explored a few quiet side streets until I crossed Regent Street into Soho.

I can never resist a self-portrait!

I saw some interesting characters wandering around, including a big bearded man in black palazzo pants with a bejeweled broach on the front of his stylish turban. I also saw a whole busload of guys dressed like Bedouin sheiks in flowing robes and scimitars, and at first I thought they were Middle Eastern tourists -- but I think they were actually part of a film shoot.

This elaborate sidewalk mosaic commemorates John Flaxman, a British sculptor who lived nearby. Wikipedia says he was "a sickly child, high-shouldered, with a head too large for his body." But he apparently overcame his infirmities, had a distinguished career, married and died at 71 in 1826.

I would like to have taken a photo of the whole thing, but it was too big. You can even see it on Google Earth.

I walked over to Covent Garden, passing the obelisk at Seven Dials. I popped into a shop called Magma that had some interesting photography books -- I bought one by Stefano Samà called "People Buying Plants," which he shot over a year at the Columbia Flower Market. It is exactly as the title describes -- pictures of people buying plants, which I thought was a pretty fun idea for a book.

Finally I made my way via St. Giles and Denmark Street back to Soho, where I walked up Carnaby Street. I suppose those big boxy things are holiday decorations, but they remind me more of Skylab. Maybe I have to see them lit to appreciate them.

Otherwise, I did a load of laundry and plowed through a bit more of "Bleak House." Dave and I started two shows last night, a documentary about the Yorkshire Ripper and a drama called "A Confession" on Netflix, and only after watching a couple of episodes did we conclude that we'd seen them both before. We don't really remember them, though, so I think we'll keep watching! Everything old is new again.

Birthday Report

Well, yesterday turned out to be mostly me lying on the couch reading. I tried to catch up on blogs -- I was so busy late last week that I lost track of pretty much everyone's posting -- and I made progress in "Bleak House." I'm up to page 507 (of 880). I had a flash of desperation while I was reading a scene involving Mr. George, Phil, Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet, the shooting gallery and Grandfather Smallweed when I could not figure out what was going on -- who were the Bagnets again? -- but then I read an online synopsis that distilled it simply enough for me to absorb it. Occasionally I need Cliffs Notes.

Olga got antsy around lunchtime and wanted to go for a walk, so I put her on her leash and we ambled up to the corner. This was her first neighborhood walk since her "spells" on Monday night, and though she was a bit unsteady she did well. I think her senses -- sight, hearing or both -- may have been affected by those episodes. She acts like she can't quite perceive certain things in her peripheral vision, for example. But it's hard to tell. She's eating well and gobbling up treats as usual once again.

Last night, Dave took me out for dinner to The George, a pub near Oxford Circus. I snapped that picture of the All Souls Church, backed by the blue-lit BBC headquarters, as we walked from the tube. Dave chose this particular pub because it reportedly had good martinis. I liked them well enough to have three. (They were small -- that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

I had winter squash risotto for dinner; dave had some kind of meat pie. We also had really good rolls, Welsh rarebit croquettes and Dave got a banana split for dessert. How long has it been since you've even seen a banana split? In our case it had been a long time. Anyway, we were happy with the food overall.

We checked on Olga via the remote dog-cam during dinner:

You can see her at the edge of the frame, lying on her bed and looking expectantly toward the door. She's usually up on the couch, on her blanket. (That's not a video, by the way -- just a screen grab from my phone.)

Anyway, that was my birthday, along with the usual plant-watering and vacuuming associated with a weekend. Fun times!

Another Birthday and a Home Movie

I am having one of those mornings, technology-wise. Olga woke me up at 5 a.m. and as it turns out, it's a good thing she did, because I've been doing nothing but wrestling with the computer since then.

Today is my birthday. Woo hoo! I am 58, which my friend Jennifer would describe as my mid-late 50's (as opposed to 57, which was my early-late 50's, or 59, which will be my late-late 50's). Dave has cooked up some kind of birthdayish plan for this evening but I have no idea what it is, other than that it involves a martini. Which is really all I need to know.

(David Schwimmer is also 58 today -- my celebrity birthday mate.)

In celebration, I thought you all might like to see what my very first birthday looked like, back in 1967:

At least, I'm pretty sure that's my first birthday. Don't I look like a one-year-old? And there's only one candle on the cake. (There's no sound, so do not adjust your speakers.) My great-grandmother gave me that stuffed dog and I had it for about 40 years, before it finally disintegrated into a plastic baggie full of sawdust. I don't remember that pink toy at all so it must not have lasted long, but I do have photos of me wearing the green outfit.

That's me with my dad in our backyard, with our first dog, Beans, in the background. My mom always said Beans was crazy.

Anyway, that home movie clip is what put me through techno-hell this morning. Some of you may remember that I had our home movies professionally digitized many years ago, and they were stored on a thumb drive and on CD. I thought, "Oh, I'll just trim the home movies video file in iMovie -- easy as pie."

Except that when I plugged the thumb drive into my computer, it didn't work. It appears to have died. And I had no way to transfer the CD file onto my computer because of course computers no longer come with CD drives (and haven't for about ten years). And apparently, in my great wisdom, I somehow failed to back up the video file on any other device.

I wound up playing the CD on our television and recording it with my phone. Ridiculous! I'm not worried about losing the movies -- I can transfer the file off the CD at work. But what a pain.

Anyway, in other news, I had another crazy busy day yesterday. I got to school about an hour earlier than usual for my interview with the 7th graders -- they seemed fairly uninterested but I tried to be mildly entertaining -- and then had a busy morning. I raced home for lunch to let Olga out, because Dave had an afternoon medical appointment and we didn't think either of us would get home until 5 p.m. or so, which seemed too long to let the dog languish on the couch. As it turns out, Dave got home early from his appointment, so that was all unnecessary, but oh well.

I spent a few minutes in the garden with Olga, trimming dahlias. The foliage has already died back on some of them, so after cutting them back I put them in the shed for winter. I was going to take them out of their pots for storage but maybe I'll just repot them in the spring.

And Olga wanted me to throw her Kong, which is a very good sign that she's feeling better. She carried it out to the garden and dropped it and barked. When I did throw it a short distance she didn't chase it, but hey -- baby steps!

(Photo: The "Beatles Cafe," which is actually called Helter Skelter, at the St. John's Wood tube station.)

The Sound of a Euro

Yesterday was a bear of a day. I mentioned sitting at my desk and reading on Wednesday -- well, let me add that most days are not like that, and yesterday definitely wasn't. We were processing a bunch of new books, and that involved me labeling, stamping and covering them all. I also put up a new display, worked an hour or so in the Lower School and re-shelved a ton of stuff, in addition to staffing the desk.

At home, our change bowl was filling up with coins once again and I wanted to deposit some of them -- the pounds, anyway. Here in the UK, as I've written (and complained) about before, quantities of coins are put into tiny plastic baggies rather than in rolls. Well, I put twenty pound coins into a baggie and took it to Barclay's yesterday afternoon. The teller weighed it as she usually does, and then she set it down on the desk. She picked it up and set it down again.

I thought something was wrong with the weight, so I said, "Did I miscount?"

She said, "No, you've got twenty coins. You're going to think I'm crazy, but they don't sound right."

And with that she opened the bag, thumbed through the coins and extracted a single Euro. A €1 coin is visually almost identical to a £1 coin, particularly when counting money quickly, so it was an honest mistake on my part. I told her I was shocked she could hear a single Euro in a bag of pounds!

"I've been doing this job for far too long," she said, laughing.

(I was reminded of Lucy Van Pelt in "A Charlie Brown Christmas": "Boy, what a sound! How I love to hear that old money clink! That beautiful sound of cold hard cash! That beautiful, beautiful sound! Nickels, nickels, nickels! That beautiful sound of clinking nickels!")

Anyway, fortunately I had another pound in my pocket, so we switched the coins, I made the deposit and got out of there. I wonder who passed off that stray Euro to us. I guess I'll save it for my next trip to the Continent.

I thought of my mom, who used to get annoyed when someone would slip her a Canadian coin because they weren't worth as much as American coins. Now there's someone who took her change seriously.

Here's Manny Two, producing a brand new leaf. He's got a few of them, actually. He appears to be happy in his new home.

And here's a creepy pumpkin that's sitting on the windowsill across the street from our flat. When I posted yesterday, I didn't think of the fact that it was Halloween until after I'd hit publish. So I forgot to include the Halloween photos I've stocked up.

Better late than never!

(There are more, but since it's Nov. 1 I'll only inflict those two on you. You saw the spider last year.)

As usual, we had no trick-or-treaters here. Dave and I sat in the back of the house and watched TV with the porch light off. Bah humbug!

Now I'm off to speak to a seventh grade class. As I understand it, they're interviewing me. Hopefully they're bringing the questions, because I have nothing prepared.

Sidewinder

This is our garden Buddha, which my former co-worker Joanna gave me several years ago. He's been knocked around a bit and his head's been broken off and reattached -- all before we got him -- so I can never take a very good picture of him. He looks like a Buddha from the wrong side of the tracks. But Waterlogue hides his deficiencies nicely.

I suppose in the true spirit of Buddhism I should take him as he is, rather than hold him to my idea of how he should look.

Oga continues to improve. She got up this morning, went outside, explored the garden and came in for a treat. She seems almost normal, except for a sideways tilt of the head and a slightly drunken walk.

Her nystagmus -- the rapidly shifting eyes -- has subsided entirely. We cancelled her walk again today but we might let her go tomorrow if she seems up to it.

See what I mean? Dave called her "Sidewinder" this morning, which made me laugh. He's got a knack for coming up with the perfect nickname.

Remember the mermaid sticker? Well, here are some more stickers from a nearby pole, all across the street from the South Hampstead overground station. The bugs and bear are amusing, but that blue one intrigued me. It looks like the work of the same artist who did the mermaid, doesn't it?

And sure enough, when I looked up that artist's Instagram account, I found a matching image -- someone holding a bouquet of carnivorous flowers. The colors in mine are faded, as they were with the mermaid sticker, so you don't get the full effect of the blood dripping out of the plants' stems. But it's definitely the same picture.

Someone apparently generated stickers of work by this Korean artist, who goes by Kim Sanho, and plastered them on poles in that neighborhood. There are probably others. Don't worry, I won't photograph them all, but I do find the work interesting.

I had a pretty low-key day yesterday. I sat and read "Bleak House" at my desk during down times. I know my boss doesn't love it when I sit and read, but I argue that I'm modeling the behavior we're trying to instill in our students. And several of them did, in fact, ask me what I was reading. They probably thought it would be something hot and trendy! (That is my vibe.)