Popeye and Handel

I came across this Popeye mural in Croydon on Sunday morning, across from the West Croydon bus station. I was waiting for a bus and having an interesting high culture/low culture experience, listening to Handel's Fire Music over the bus station's PA system and gazing at Popeye.

Is he knocking the vitamins out of that spinach? What's going on there?

We've had frosty mornings the last few days. I brought in the geraniums -- which badly need trimming -- but otherwise we're going to let our outdoor potted plants do their own thing for the winter. I'm tired of hauling them in and out and frankly some of them need to be culled anyway. Once the fig tree loses its leaves, I'm planning to tuck it into our shed, where it will overwinter. (Apparently it needs to go through a dormant period and shouldn't be brought completely indoors -- at least, that's what I read.)

Sunday was Bonfire Night, the peculiar British holiday that involves setting off fireworks and lighting fires to celebrate the failure of Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up Parliament in 1605. We'd been hearing pops and bangs from firecrackers for several nights, but on Sunday evening our neighbors set off real fireworks that flew up into the sky, showered colorful sparks over the adjacent gardens and flashed on the walls of our house like lightning. I sat on the living room floor and watched them through the windows. Olga, surprisingly, didn't seem fazed. She lay on the couch and half-opened her eyes at the particularly loud bangs, but otherwise took everything in stride.