Lanterns and Pumpkins

Here's a very autumnal sight, spotted in our ivy beds yesterday. I'm astonished the dog hasn't mangled it yet, as much as she runs through there while chasing squirrels, but for the time being it's intact. It's a pretty big mushroom and Google tells me it may be something called a Freckled Dapperling. (British mushrooms, like British towns, often seem to have entertaining names.)

I'm getting a late start today because I was out last night at a concert with a friend. Yesterday was a whirlwind of a day.

Of course I walked the dog a couple of times, in the morning and after lunch. I also took care of some gardening, emptying a flower pot containing a couple of dormant hyacinth bulbs and filling it with this:

Yes! After showing off the neighbor's Chinese lanterns the other day, I decided we needed one of our own. So once again I'm trying my hand at growing this plant. We'll see if it prospers this time. The florist in the shop where I bought it said to give it morning sun but not to let it bake, and good drainage. We shall see.

In the afternoon I went to a pub in St. Johns Wood to see my former boss from the library, Karen, who lives in the states now but is back visiting. It was great to see her again, as well as her husband Rod who also used to work at the school. I was there for a couple of hours before meeting up with my friend Colin and heading down to Southbank for a concert.

Colin bought these tickets last spring and when I agreed to go it seemed so far in the future -- and then BOOM, here we were. The show was an orchestral and choral presentation of The Smashing Pumpkins' album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," featuring Billy Corgan, the leader of the Pumpkins himself. Anyone who was listening to the radio in the mid-'90s will remember The Smashing Pumpkins for their song "1979," their biggest hit. It came from the "Mellon Collie" album, a double-disc magnum opus of youthful angst and wonder. I owned the album, like many of us at the time, and when this concert came across Colin's radar I was excited to go.

We both agreed it was an interesting idea, presenting an alternative rock album in an orchestral form. There were several opera singers who performed some of the numbers, in addition to the musicians and choir, and they were backed by a screen projecting Steampunk-looking animation sequences depicting Chicago, the Pumpkins' home city. But the best moments were definitely when Corgan himself sang. He has a distinctively reedy voice, but he's actually a much better singer than I remembered.

Here he is performing "1979" last night, so you can get a sense of what this experiment was like.

In an ideal world, the screen for the animations needed to be bigger, and Corgan needed to be onstage for more of the songs. But otherwise, I thought it was, as I said, an interesting idea. In my opinion the classical presentation deprives the songs of a certain energy and intensity, but it was worth the experience.

That was a lot of socializing for one day. Today I'm going to huddle inside with the dog! (Who continues to show no ill effects from our recent raisin episode.)