Off to Brighton

I know Olga's going to miss her garden while she's in Brighton. Look at her back there, barking away. You might think she's barking at squirrels, because that would make sense, but she's actually barking at her Kong toy which is somewhere in those bushes. God forbid she should just go get it.

I got a few things done yesterday to prepare for our trip -- mainly washing Olga's pink blanket, which is coming with us but was smelling way too doggy to be let loose upon a nice hotel room. I did a load of our laundry, too, and cleaned the place up a bit. We'll be catching a train right after lunch today. The beautiful thing about going to Brighton is we can catch a direct Thameslink train right here in West Hampstead -- we don't even have to get on the tube.

I did go to the doctor as planned. My chronic cough has been bothering me again, so more tests are in the offing. I think it's related to GERD, and I've started once again taking a generic equivalent of Prevacid. Too many birthday martinis, maybe.

I came across this on the walk back from the doctor. A dog? Looks like a male.

Oh, and I got word from Thames Water that our hosepipe ban has finally been lifted. Makes sense since we've had rain basically every day for the past month. They say even if we have lower rainfall than usual over the winter it should be enough to restore rivers and the local water table after our summer drought. Of course, the last thing we need to use right now is a garden hose. The ground is sodden.

Finally, I got some sad news yesterday. My uncle -- my mom's brother -- died in Virginia from a stroke he suffered just a few days before. Of all my parents' siblings he was the one I knew best. When I was a kid my mom, brother and I used to travel to my grandmother's house in Maryland for the Christmas holidays, and we'd often go to his house in nearby Virginia and spend Christmas itself with him and his family. He was a big fan of old Westerns. I visited him once in the aughts and we stayed up watching a movie starring Sunset Carson, who I'd never even heard of -- but it was surprisingly good, and now I can't think of Uncle William without thinking of Sunset Carson.

My mom may now be the last of that generation still alive, although I'm not sure about my dad's oldest sister, Aunt Jean, who lives in Boise -- I only met her once or twice and if she's still alive she'd be well into her 90's now. (I don't see an obituary online, though.)

Anyway, you may remember that I had our home movies digitized several years ago. That clip above is a very short segment of my uncle playing with me. I think it's Christmas 1968. He seems more into the toys than I am!