Goodbye, Flickery Lamp

I saw this street in Kensington from the bus window on the way home from my walk on Saturday. I had to leap off the bus at the next stop to get some pictures! Aren't those beautiful magnolias? (When I say magnolias, I don't mean southern magnolias, but Japanese or saucer magnolias -- the predominant kinds around here.) The women in the foreground had the same idea -- they were taking selfies and then asked me to take some pictures with their phone. They're examining the results. They don't look too disappointed, do they?

We switched to British Summer Time on Sunday and my internal clock is a little out of whack. On top of that I've had some weird dreams about Florida -- Saturday night I was back in my childhood home, and last night I was living in a mysterious apartment and an old friend came to collect a '60s yellow couch that she'd given me. My friend owned that couch in real life and I haven't thought of it in years. In the dream I was embarrassed because when we moved the couch there were stains all around it, like I'd spilled coffee or wine or both. My carpet never looked like that in real life, I swear.

Maybe I had that dream because I'm on a cleaning and purging binge. Yesterday I put a couple of things on Freecycle -- some random old bottles I'd found here and there, and this lamp:

It was given to us years ago by the parents of one of Dave's students. (This is the flickery lamp, though to be honest I'd forgotten it was flickery because we never used it anymore. When I listed it I said I wasn't sure how well it worked, which is true.) By the end of the day everything was gone. Freecycle is fabulous.

I took out our trash yesterday and found that the Russians had thrown some nice stuff in the bin -- some drapes still folded in a plastic package, and some wine glasses in a box. I took a closer look at the glasses, but they had lime residue around the rim that would never come off, and they were also as big as goldfish bowls. More glass than I need! So I left them there. I am seriously trying to downsize and resist my collecting and saving impulses.

I also took Olga to the cemetery, but we did the short version of our walk, through the back half of the cemetery only. The weather was drizzly and Olga didn't resist coming home early.

Finally, Mr. Pudding suggested several posts ago that we look on YouTube for drone videos of our neighborhoods. And yes, indeed, there is a video of West Hampstead. 

The drone takes off from Kilburn Grange Park and flies northwest over West Hampstead, giving you a good view of the three train lines that run through the community carrying the Jubilee Line, the Overground and the Thameslink regional trains, among others.

You can see our neighborhood most clearly at around the 12:35 mark. The street curving through the center of the frame is our high street, lined with all our shops and with West End Green (looking like a cluster of trees) at center left. Our house is center right, an inch or two in from the edge. To be honest, I'm not sure which one it is. Those roofs all look the same from that height! The houses across the street from us overlook the tennis club, the green lawn and courts you can see at the edge of the frame.

Have fun flying over West Hampstead!