Frost and Circling Pigeons

We are in the deep freeze here, at least as deep as our freezes usually get. It's 31º F this morning, so just barely freezing, but it's enough to put a coating of heavy frost on the garden.

I checked on the avocado yesterday afternoon, just peeking beneath its coverings, and it looked OK.

This was sunrise yesterday morning. You can see the frost on the cars. Not a cloud in the sky!

I took a long walk yesterday afternoon to try to soak up some of this rare sunshine. Of course I was mostly covered, but it still does a body good to get outside and just get sun even on the face and hands. I walked up to Childs Hill Park and over to the Clitterhouse Playing Fields, where I used to walk with Olga back when she was more adventurous.

This area near Brent Cross has undergone quite a transformation. There's a ton of new construction, and remember how ratty that little shop used to look? The colorful mural is a huge improvement. The buildings behind it are all new, having gone up in the area that Olga and I found fenced off several years ago.

This flock of pigeons circled above me while I walked on Cheviot Gardens near the playing fields. Watching the birds was really an excuse to look at that glorious sky! I always wonder why pigeons fly like this, but in this particular case I think they were just like me -- out for some exercise, exulting in the sunshine.

I came back via Fortune Green and had a coffee at Sweet Corner before coming home. And then I had a Thai massage at 4 p.m. The masseuse was quite talkative at the beginning but I didn't respond much -- I like a quiet massage -- and she ultimately settled into the work and did a great job. My lower back has been giving me fits lately and she helped knead it into submission.

We're watching "No Good Deed" on Netflix, with Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano. It's very good! Kudrow, who we all know as kooky Phoebe from "Friends,"  is a good actress when she has a role with a dramatic edge. I remember seeing her years ago in a movie called "Kabluey" and although I had mixed feelings about the movie, she was good in it. Anyway, we're enjoying the show.

Sunshine!

As I write this in the pre-dawn darkness, it's 30º F outside (or -1º C) and the sky is clear as a bell. The lack of cloud cover brings cold, but another thing it brings -- during the day, anyhow -- is sunlight! Yesterday was glorious, seemingly the first bright sun we've experienced in weeks.

I took a walk from Oxford Street down through Soho to Trafalgar Square, where Lord Nelson's column was beautifully lit.

Many of the shops and restaurants still have their Christmas decorations out.

Hordes of the fashion-conscious were lined up to go to the Stüssy shop in the Hammer House building on Wardour Street. They must have been having a sale. Hammer House, incidentally, is so named because it used to be the London headquarters of Hammer Studios. Remember my visit to the Peter Cushing pub in Whitstable? He acted in several of Hammer's legendary horror movies.

Speaking of the fashion-conscious, some interesting looks were appearing on the street as well.

I stopped at Pret for lunch and then made my way to the National Portrait Gallery, where I wanted to see the annual exhibit of noteworthy entries for the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize. Some truly amazing portrait photography was on display, my favorite being this shot. According to the guide, it's part of a photo series focusing on "queer and trans folx in their homes," and I love the image because there's so much to see -- of course the beautifully posed and perfectly side-lit Yves and Banjo, but also the signs and pictures on the wall, the detail in Yves' tattoos, the unexpected row of cowboy boots, the stacks of clothing and personal effects.

Afterwards I made my way home again, via a Pret on Carnaby Street where I had a quick cup of coffee outside even though it was quite chilly. It was fun to watch the passers-by. I heard an obviously American woman ask someone the way to Regent Street. She was practically there already. I don't often hear anyone asking directions these days, since most people have maps on their phones.

Anyway, it was good to get a dose of Vitamin D and I hope to get some more today!

Mother Red Cap

Here's one of the interesting sights I saw from the car window when Dave, Olga and I were on the way to Whitstable. It's a closed Irish pub in Holloway Road, with the intriguing name of "Mother Red Cap." I wanted to photograph it not only to preserve its memory in case some other business takes over the space, but to remind myself to research the name.

It turns out there was a woman known as Mother Red Cap who lived in Camden back in the 1600s. (Not on this spot -- she lived farther south, in Camden Town, on the site of what is now another pub that used to be called the Mother Red Cap but is now known as the World's End.) Her real name was Jenny (or Jinney) Bingham, but she was also known variously as the Crone of Camden, the Shrew of Kentish Town, or Mother Damnable. There are multiple stories about her involving witchcraft, strange herbs that she collected at night, spouses who die in mysterious circumstances (one apparently died in an oven!), and a visit from the devil on the night of her own death. You can read more here and here if you're interested.

Presumably this is the Mother Red Cap for whom the pub is named. Or maybe it's named for the previous pub that once bore her name. There are apparently also other pubs around the country called Mother Red Cap -- are they named for our Camden legend, or is Mother Red Cap an archetypal witch character who appears in other locales?

In any case, it was supposedly a good pub and I hope it reopens. Apparently it closed early last year when the landlord retired.

Dave and I spent part of yesterday on plant protection duty. We're supposed to get freezing temperatures tonight and into next week, at times dipping down into the high 20's (F). At one point there was talk of snow, but that appears to have turned into rain in the updated forecasts. It's still too cold for our poor avocado and Chinese banana, so we covered them. I used a different cover on the avocado this time -- one designed for trees that zips up the side -- before putting on the same outer wrapping and securing it with a whole lot more clothespins than last time. The more times I do this the better at it I'll get. Practice makes perfect!

The smaller tender plants all came inside. I was annoyed because a morning gust of wind blew one of our geraniums pelargoniums off a table on the patio, breaking both the plant and the pot. I've got the poor thing in a plastic bag until I can buy a new pot for it.

I also put the canna lily in the shed.

We're as ready for winter as we'll ever be!

'I'm a Big Mac'

Well, it's 2025. Amazing how the time flies. It seems not so long ago that we were at the turning of the millennium, and that seemed supernaturally futuristic -- and now we're a quarter-century past it! "2001: A Space Odyssey" is now a fictional story about the distant past rather than a cautionary tale of a dystopian future.

That sunrise is actually from yesterday, so it's the last sunrise of 2024. Where I am, the sun hasn't even come up yet in 2025.

Dave had his surgical staples out yesterday, as expected. He said it was a painless process -- he literally felt nothing. Apparently the doctors use a medical version of an office staple remover to extract them. They say his incisions look good and he is recovering well. Here's hoping for a surgery-free 2025!

While he was doing that, I took the opportunity for a long photo walk, retracing some of the route our Uber took through London when we went to Whitstable. We passed some intriguing places and I wanted a better look, so I took a bus to Archway and walked south on Holloway Road all the way to Balls Pond Road near Dalston -- about three miles. You will no doubt see some of the pictures in coming days.

Then I took the overground back to my neck of the woods, and got out at Hampstead Heath, intending to walk through Belsize Park for photos of some things I saw from the bus window. A heavyset older woman and a teenage boy sat across from me on the train having a very strange conversation. They both had luggage and were obviously not related -- not by blood, anyway. The boy was quite insolent to the woman, who was very talkative. He seemed eager to get away from her.

I was reading "My Darling, My Hamburger," a 1969 YA novel by Paul Zindel that I remembered from my own childhood (but hadn't read). As they got up to leave the train, the woman pointed at my book and said, "Oh! We've just come from Hamburg!" I laughed because that is not the connection I would have made, seeing that book title. "I'm pretty sure they're talking about the sandwich," I laughed. "We're the true Hamburgers," she said, adding with a roll of the eyes: "Well, I'm a Big Mac."

In Belsize Park, the local yarn artists have added a holiday-season decoration to the postbox on England's Lane where their fanciful and elaborate creations often appear.

Pretty amazing!

Last night, I had my martini(s) and watched "Absolutely Fabulous," as promised, before Dave and I finished off "Black Doves" on Netflix. It's so bloody and employs such spy-movie archetypes that it's almost a parody, but we really enjoyed it.

And then we went to bed, and...I couldn't sleep. And it's just as well, because the next door neighbors started setting off fireworks around 11:30 p.m., followed by a citywide explosive rumble at midnight. It really did sound like we were under attack.

I got up and made this video, first of the neighbor's fireworks and then of the distant ones visible over the city from our dining room window. In that part of the video, the fireworks on the horizon to the right may be in the vicinity of Hyde Park or Battersea, I think, while the pastel colors reflecting from the clouds on the left come more from the big display on the Thames Embankment. I first started recording through the window, and then had the bright idea to open it and stick my camera outside so you could hear the pops and rumbles. (Fortunately, Olga has never been alarmed by such shenanigans and she slept through it all.)

So I wound up participating in some New Year's festivities after all, in my own dining room!