Grand Ma

I was organizing and archiving some old photos this week when I came across this short video, from November 2019. It's so short it's barely a video at all -- in fact the only reason it's not a still photo is that I couldn't fit that whole piece of text art, by Laure Prouvost, into a single frame. This was at the Notting Hill Gate tube station, and if I'd turned around, I'd have seen on the opposite wall, "Grand Ma loved being carried up the escalator into the naked light."

Poetic, right? Whimsical and yet poignant, given the use of the past tense.

We had another chaotic morning around here yesterday. The fence guys were back to finish the job, and it looks great from our perspective, though I have a real feeling that Mrs. Kravitz will complain whenever she returns from wherever she is. We also had a gigantic moving van parked two houses away (where the baseball players lived -- apparently they've moved), and there was a huge construction lorry noisily threading its way up the street, past the hole in the pavement created by Thames Water.

On the plus side, remember how I said we were going to throw out the shoddily made plant ladder? Well, the fence guys took it with them, along with all the wood debris from the old fence. So it's out of our hair. Of course this was a day after I'd arranged with (and pre-paid) the council to remove it, so now I'm writing to see if I can get a refund.

Oh, and I took my pre-flight Covid test. I had a video call with a technician who watched me unbox the kit, swab my nose, run the test and set the timer, and then I had to send them via e-mail a picture of the results along with my photo ID within half an hour. In return, they e-mailed me back a "fit to fly" certificate, which allegedly will allow me to board my plane to Florida tomorrow.

In the afternoon I finished a page-turner of a book, "People Like Her" by Ellery Lloyd, which I enjoyed a lot. It's a good suspenseful summer read, and it resonated with me because it's about an Instagram "influencer" and the ramifications of putting details about one's private life (in her case, not always truthful) online. I also recently enjoyed "A Children's Bible" by Lydia Millet, an apocalyptic tale about a world threatened by climate change in which a group of children essentially have to fend for themselves. I recommend both of them!