A Broken Ring

I spent yesterday morning going through my latest Big Bag O' Slides. I dumped them all out on the dining room table and I'm separating them into three piles. Those that are too dark, blurry, overexposed or damaged go into "Trash." Those that don't thrill me go into "Second Look," which means I'll go through them again more slowly -- some may eventually get scanned but most will simply be stored. And those that I immediately like go into "Winners," which means they're almost certain to be scanned, though on second look some will get bumped back down into storage for one reason or another.

Some of the "Winners" are actually multiple shots of the same thing. For example, I found a funny picture of a woman leaning backwards against the wind on a mountain or cliff top. I set it aside, but then as I sorted I came across two more of the same woman, each one getting closer to her. Obviously I won't scan all three of them. I'll pick the best and store the other two.

I always struggle with what to do when I come across a picture of, say, daffodils in a garden. It's not interesting enough to scan, and it says nothing about its time period -- daffodils now look just like daffodils then. I'm tempted to just throw such pictures away, but I somehow can't bring myself to do it -- so I usually just stick them in the storage pile. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the boxes and boxes of mundane slides I own that don't merit scanning.

And "mundane" is the word for this whole bag, I gotta say. I'm about halfway through and I've only seen two or three shots that have made me go "Wow!" I think the box had been somewhat picked through. There are loads of boring landscapes, and some pictures that I just can't explain -- ocean waves, for example, or dark foliage. ("Trash!")

I still haven't figured out how I'm going to do the actual scanning.

Anyway, that was the bulk of my morning. I took the dog out for a walk in the afternoon. Her incision from her surgery is almost completely healed.

Above is a little DIY project of which I am somewhat proud. Our flat came with this wooden towel ring in one of the bathrooms, and the ring broke. Fixing it wasn't as easy as it looks, because it hangs from a mount that doesn't unscrew from the wall or open up. (In fact I'm not sure how it was manufactured in the first place!) To fix it, I had to glue the ring together while it was hanging from the mount. It has taken me months to get around to it, partly because until recently we didn't have the proper glue. I finally bought some Gorilla Glue and over the weekend I added glue to the broken ends of the ring, slipped half through the mount and attached the other half from below, and held the pieces together for about a minute while they set. Then I put rubber bands around it to hold the two pieces of the ring together for 48 hours or so. Thank GOD that's done now. You can see the seams in the wood ring but I don't care.

The dog is now doing her frantic rolling-around-in-the-blankets morning routine, which means it's time for her walk!

Autumnal Ramble With Ghost Family

I was gone almost all day yesterday on a long, London adventure.

I was supposed to meet our friend Gordon for a pub lunch at 12:30. The meeting was in Islington, and I thought I'd walk there -- a couple of miles. So after Bailey left for her walk with Josh at 9:30, I set out with my camera for a leisurely autumn photo ramble.

As you can see above, there's still a lot of color out there. I walked down through Camden Town and along the canal to Islington, which took a couple of hours, including a stop for coffee in Belsize Park and a stop at the Camden Market where I bought...

...another big bag of old photo slides! I'll have fun going through these over the next couple of weeks. I need to order a new slide attachment for my camera so I can digitize them. The one I have fits my old Canon -- the one stolen in Italy -- but not the new camera. I'll look into that this week.

I passed the Sir Richard Steele pub, which has a new sign. At least the poor guy now has some clothes!

I also passed lots of autumnal scenery. It's a beautiful time of year, even on a gray, foggy morning.

I got to lunch with plenty of time to spare and Gordon and I spent a couple of hours chatting. Dave and I used to work with him at school until he retired a few years ago, so among other things, we compared notes on retirement. He reminded me that I'm now eligible for an over-60 travel card that allows me to travel free on the tube and London-area trains! I completely forgot that this was a thing, but you can bet I'll be applying for that ASAP.

I did not walk back -- instead I took the overground, which deposited me practically back at my doorstep.

Buried in my bag of slides I found this tattered remnant of an old photo. I imagine AI could mend this if I knew where to upload it and what prompts to give. Another project for another day, maybe -- though I also like the ghostly images of these long-lost people peering out of the creases. There are some names written on the back, but I have no idea if they're the people in the photo. The only one I can make out is Mrs. J. Watts.

Almost lost to oblivion!

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Addendum: Here's Chat GPT's restoration of the family photo. It did a good job with the woman and the boy, but the girl looks completely different:

The Bromiges' Neighbors

This is one of the charity shops on our high street. Somehow their front door got broken, and for a while there's been a plain piece of plywood covering up the gap. But I noticed yesterday that someone's given the wood a cheerful paint job. ("Save Teenhood is a campaign being run by the charity to improve the experiences of teenagers in Britain, said to be the "unhappiest in Europe.")

Bailey and I found more freshly fallen leaves on our morning walk...

...and in the afternoon we went to the cemetery, where she drank from a puddle of rainwater in the base of a headstone (not sure where the stone itself went), rolled wildly in the grass and found the remains of a skinned football that she brutalized as if it were prey. It was entertaining to watch. Just the other day, I was telling Dave that Bailey didn't seem as excited about footballs as Olga used to be -- maybe she heard me and wanted to prove me wrong.

(Don't worry -- she didn't ingest any of the stringy bits, and I took it away from her after making the video.)

Here's one of the headstones in the cemetery, for William G. (died 1939) and Ada H. Fraser (1963). It's a modest grave marker, interesting only because it's now in the middle of a footpath. In fact it's very close to the grave of the Bromiges, which I've blogged before.

I can't quite remember if this path existed before Covid, but it certainly became more worn during the pandemic. The cemetery got a lot of use during that period, and around that time some paths were cleared around the perimeter in the rear section. Those are the paths I almost always walk with the dog, through the woods, rather than the paved roads in the center. (The front half of the cemetery is not as woodsy so there we use the pavements.)

Here are some other interesting graves. This is the marker of Elizabeth and John Creemer (died 1881 and 1894, respectively). The figure on the top looks like she's giving the Black Power salute ("Power to the People!") but I think she's perhaps meant to be holding something aloft -- a lantern, lighting the way? Just a guess.

This is a relatively modern grave for someone who died in 1998, just after his 16th birthday. It caught my eye because of the guitar, recently left behind with a note: "Happy 44th birthday, me old mate. You're still truly missed. Love from all the Crayford boys."

And here's a headstone for Charles Henry Webster Millar, a tenor who performed in the early 20th Century under the stage name Webster Millar. His son was also a famous singer. Both the quote at the top of the stone and the musical lyric come from Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha," the basis for a trilogy of cantatas written by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and perhaps performed by Millar. Apparently it was a popular work in that time period, performed regularly at Royal Albert Hall with a cast of hundreds.

You can learn a lot, traipsing around the cemetery with a demented dog.

Pseudo-Military Squirrel Hunting

Remember those brilliant yellow trees on a neighboring street that I showed you less than two weeks ago? Well, this is what they look like now. As you can see, we're getting foggy mornings lately, too. A very November-ish scene.

I kept myself busy yesterday caring for all the houseplants. I took the variegated rubber tree from our bedroom outside and gave it a bath -- it has thrips, I think, and it's struggling a bit. So I wiped every leaf with a dish-soap solution and then gave the whole thing a rinse. I also sprayed down the jade plant, which has persistent mealybugs. This is just a fact of life around here -- one plant or another always has some kind of bug on it, and I just try to keep them tamped down as best I can so they don't go crazy.

In the afternoon I took Bailey to Hampstead Heath. As you can see, she was hunting squirrels in the treetops even before we got there.

That's her new harness. It's a sort of military-looking thing with the brand name One Tigris, which certainly makes me think of Iraq. But it's great for her because it's very secure and has three straps, as opposed to her other one which has two.

I like it, even though she looks like a dog that Pete Hegseth might own.

We found this beautiful Amanita mushroom. I always thought these were poisonous, but Wikipedia says they can be ingested with the proper preparation and can even have psychoactive properties. Darn, a missed opportunity! (Only joking. There's no way in heck I would eat that under any circumstances.)

Bailey loves the woods and goes nuts for the squirrels. A woman walked past as she was barking madly at the treetops and said to Bailey, "You're not going to talk them into coming down!" Which reminded me of the guy who joked about Olga "barking them down" years ago. Maybe this is a common joke.

Last night we watched "Below" with Josh Hartnett, a TV series we recently started. It's about a fishing village in Newfoundland being terrorized by a giant squid and it's better than you might think, given that description. We've also started a show on ITV called "Trigger Point" about a bomb squad, and I'm enjoying that because it's filmed partly in our corner of Northwest London -- I've seen familiar landmarks like the South Kilburn Estate and a mosque up in Willesden Green. Neither of these are new shows and they both have multiple seasons, so maybe you've seen them already. We're a little slow on the uptake around here!

Fireworks

Bailey and I discovered this mural yesterday, tucked into a corner of a housing estate near Kilburn. It's kind of cool but also kind of creepy. Purple, mottled skin is a little off-putting, not to mention the blue eyeballs, though that's probably supposed to be eye shadow. The whole thing is very "RuPaul's Drag Race."

I worked more in the garden yesterday morning, raking up debris from our tree-pruning experience last month. It's remarkable how many stray sticks and branches are still out there. I'm not a super-tidy gardener but I don't want too much mess. I filled two yard-waste bags, and we already had an extra one full from last week, so we now have our quota -- after they're collected on Tuesday I can do more. I wish I could just rake it all into a big pile and light it on fire like we used to do in Florida, but I'm sure that must be illegal here. (It's unthinkable in any case.)

Many of our neighbors still have their jack-o-lanterns out. This one is pretty amusing -- and quite meticulously carved. I wondered if they'd made this up on their own, but no -- it's a Disney-sanctioned pattern, known as the "Cheshire Cat." Still, they did a good job! Looks like they messed up the right eyebrow, but that's minor.

Considering I didn't even attempt a pumpkin, and haven't for years, I can hardly be critical. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, or something like that.

Last night we got a surprise when a barrage of fireworks began going off across the street. I think they were associated with one of the athletic clubs -- there's a tennis club and a cricket club over there. Probably if I were better plugged in to social media I'd know whose they were. Anyway, I went out in the garden to try to see them (see video) but Mrs. Kravitz's house was in the way, so then I stepped out onto the front porch and got a better view. These were much more intense than anything we experienced the night before, but once again, Bailey didn't seem put off. She barked, but she wasn't fearful.

I see from my right-wing "news" source that some extremists are already peddling the fiction that the American election was stolen. They're trying to cast doubt on the numbers -- for example, they ask how so many more Texans could have voted for Talarico than for Kamala Harris in 2024. (Here's an explainer from a legitimate newspaper.) It doesn't seem inconceivable to me that voters might like Talarico more than Harris; also, a different mix of voters shows up from one election to another. They're also questioning why all the statewide California races broke roughly 53-to-46 percent in favor of Democrats.

So in other words, if results aren't consistent, people must have cheated. But also, if results are consistent, people must have cheated!

Honestly, I shouldn't even be amplifying their absurd claims. Democrats were highly motivated to turn out in these midterms, and Republicans weren't.

And now we have Susie Wiles out (because she's a woman and thus expendable in Trump's White House) and the awful Stephen Miller being elevated. Clearly Trump did not absorb the message of the voters.

Sticks and Foxes

As you can see, the Japanese maple in our garden has turned a brilliant red. The leaves were thicker just a week ago -- they're coming down fast now.

Last night was Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night, which meant a zillion fireworks going off around our neighborhood. Most of these were just distant pops and cracks and Bailey, we were happy to see, pretty much slept through them. She only perked up when the family two houses away started sending them up (even though they're Russian). We went out in the garden and I was worried she might get spooked, but she just watched as if thinking, "What are these crazy humans doing now?"

Yesterday I found a stick in the garden and Bailey immediately got excited. We haven't played with sticks much, but evidently she shares this common canine impulse. We tossed it around for a while, until she decided to lie down and gnaw it apart. I'm glad that sticks (obviously plentiful and disposable) keep her amused. Don't worry -- she doesn't swallow the bits.

Meike asked a couple of days ago about the garden cam and why I hadn't posted videos recently. I took it down for several months because it was all seeming a little repetitive, and with Bailey running around out there I was afraid we'd mostly get footage of her. But I put it back out a few nights ago, and yesterday I cobbled together this little video.

At first we see a cat brave enough to enter Bailey's space (though Bailey is mostly inside at night, and maybe the cat somehow knows that). Then we see Bailey herself, followed by not one but two foxes, both at the same time. That was a pleasant surprise, because in my experience foxes tend to come around singly. Apparently they mate between December and February, so my guess is this is a breeding pair. They give birth to litters of four to five cubs in March or April -- I had no idea they had so many, but this is according to the almighty Google, which as we all know is never wrong.

I see that Trump wants to turn the Oval Office into a national monument, presumably so future presidents can't take down all his tacky gold trimmings. If I were elected president (unlikely) that might be my very first step.

Jubilation

I don't think this graffiti is making reference to anything specific. There's nothing dangerous near this bridge as far as I can see. Perhaps it's just someone's street name, their tag.

I'm still processing the election. It's rare that I get to experience such heady triumph, such joy, when reading the news. Usually I'm in a state of despair, or at best, a cautious equilibrium. It remains to be seen how Democrats will exercise their power under this majority and how well they'll be able to get around Trump and his promised vetos, but I'm glad to feel like I'm finally represented somehow in this government. (I live in the UK, but I'm still a US citizen and taxpayer!)

The gifts just keep on coming. No more Lauren Boebert! And the Mississippi senate race is crazy -- at one point yesterday I looked at the results and the candidates were about 40 votes apart. The gap is wider now, more like 1,100 votes, but still incredibly close, with the Democrat narrowly in the lead. In Mississippi!

I spent yesterday reading, starting a new book -- "Sharp Objects" by Gillian Flynn, which I literally picked up for free somewhere. Entertaining so far! And I did laundry and walked the dog. Her new harnesses have arrived, so I'm going to test those out starting today. Hopefully they'll be a little more snug (and escape-proof) than the one she has.

I also bought a new lead, but I'm a little scared to try it -- although it's advertised as strong, Bailey is very strong. What if it's a piece of junk? The last thing I need is Bailey rocketing across six lanes of traffic on Finchley Road. (Or rocketing toward someone's teacup poodle with fire in her eyes.) Maybe I'll stick to her old one until I get somewhere enclosed -- like the cemetery -- and then I'll test it there.