Gezza!

I can't believe I forgot to give you an update yesterday on Olga's nose. Basically, everything is fine. I looked at it the next morning and it looked like it might still be a little swollen, but it was so barely perceptible that I wondered if I'd made the whole thing up. You saw it, though, right? And the vet saw it. So I'm pretty sure it was for real.

Kudos to reader Ellen D. for identifying the mysterious plastic object I posted yesterday that I found in the cemetery (and have found in the past elsewhere). It's a "J-pod," a cartridge used in Juul vaping devices. Apparently they're refillable and often used with cannabis oil. Which, as I told Ellen, explains why someone might have dropped it on the ground rather than reusing it or throwing it in the trash -- they were lost in the stratosphere at the time.

Olga was in a walking mood yesterday morning, so we ventured westward toward Kilburn and through the Maygrove Peace Park. Along Wayne Kirkum Way, which connects the estate behind the park to Mill Lane, we found this graffti:

There's a level of frustration with Boris Johnson's leadership these days, and he's seen as politically vulnerable. "What's it come to," indeed! (I assume "gezza" is like "geezer," which in Britain is a colloquial expression for a man -- not necessarily an old one, unlike in the States, where "geezer" connotes old age.)

On the way home, we passed our neighbor a few houses up the street, unloading two Christmas trees from the back of her car. "Two trees!" I said. "You're going all out!"

She laughed and gestured toward her house. "Well, we may be locked up here for weeks!"

We are indeed facing a possibly intensified lockdown, though not a full one like we experienced in the early days of the pandemic. Apparently Omicron is romping unfettered through the UK population. Yesterday I saw an article that said the Astra Zeneca vaccine, which is the one I had, isn't as effective as Pfizer and Moderna for preventing Omicron infection (though it does help prevent hospitalization). At least I had a Pfizer booster. Maybe that toughens up my armor.

Finally, remember last year when Olga and I came across some hedgehog monitoring cameras in the cemetery? Well, apparently that project determined that Hampstead Heath is a local "hotspot" for hedgehogs, but they're declining elsewhere in London. I've found bits of a dead hedgehog on the Heath but I've never seen a live one. I would think with all the dogs around -- not to mention the occasional python -- they'd have a tough time of it there.

(Top photo: A dark street near our flat on a recent early morning.)