Guy Fawkes and Movember

Last night was Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night, when the English rather zanily celebrate the unsuccessful Gunpowder Plot of 1605, meant to assassinate King James I. Traditionally there are lots of fireworks and bonfires, and figures of Guy Fawkes -- one of the bonfire plotters -- are burned in effigy.

In our neighborhood the festivities seemed fairly tame. There were isolated pops and explosions until about 8 p.m., when suddenly they got quite intense for a short time, maybe 20 minutes or so. Then they died down completely -- until 12:30 a.m., when a neighbor set off several roman candles right across the street. (Thanks for that, neighbor.) We've seen and heard fireworks for the past several nights, but it's been unclear which were in celebration of Bonfire Night and which were for Diwali.

Unlike two years ago, I did not photograph or video any of the fireworks. If you want a Guy Fawkes Night experience, just watch the video from back then. It's the same every year, more or less!

Through it all, Olga seemed relatively unfazed, which was a blessing. Some dogs react very badly to all the hubbub; it freaked out poor Ernie back in 2011.

Incidentally, the BBC reports that the tradition of burning effigies is on the wane. Apparently kids used to trundle their homemade scarecrow-like "Guys" along the sidewalks, collecting money, before burning them. The speculation is that children these days are already too worn out by the increasingly popular Halloween.

So have you heard about Movember? It's a fairly silly annual event aimed at raising awareness and money for problems like prostate and testicular cancer. Basically, men grow moustaches for the month, and become walking billboards for men's health.

Well, a guy at work sent an e-mail last week drumming up support for Movember among school staff members, and lots of guys volunteered to grow moustaches. So, yes, even I, who have never had a moustache in my entire life (except for a few brief months back in 1995 when I had one in combination with a goatee) -- even I am growing a moustache.

So far, I hate it. Hate it. It's coming in frighteningly gray and it just feels very weird on my face. One of my coworkers (a woman) said to me on Monday, "Steve, are you sure this is a look you want?" Which I took to mean that it looks stupid, too.

But you know, this is all about team building and camaraderie. Appearance is irrelevant. All the guys are doing it, so I'm doing it too. (Dave is exempt because he already has a beard -- though he could have shaved the beard and started fresh, I suppose.)

I may show you a picture at some point, and I may not. Stay tuned.

(Photos: Portobello Square, about 5:45 p.m. yesterday. And a moustache eraser that, coincidentally, I found on a table at school and used to decorate my workplace computer monitor for Movember.)

Peace and Autumn

These trees are on Stanley Crescent, a few streets away from our house. I wanted to show you what they look like in the fall, in contrast to their appearance in the spring. They're two of my favorite neighborhood trees.

I read an interesting little tidbit in Eric Schlosser's book "Command and Control," which I am still wading through. (It's quite a tome.) In 1958, an organization called the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament led a protest march through London:

The CND rejected the whole concept of nuclear deterrence and argued that nuclear weapons were "morally wrong." In preparation for the four-day march, the artist Gerald Holtom designed a symbol for the antinuclear movement. "I drew myself," Holtom recalled, "the representative of an individual in despair, with palms outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before a firing squad." He placed a circle around the self-portrait, an elongated stick figure, and created an image later known as the peace sign.

How about that?! I'm not sure I ever knew the origin of the peace sign. From the Wikipedia page it seems the story may not be quite that simple, with others weighing in on the symbolism and its evolution, but it's still a nice little nugget of information.

Have a peaceful day!

Wormwood Scrubs

Can you stand another dog photo?

Olga and I tried a new park yesterday morning. We went to Wormwood Scrubs, northwest of our neighborhood and next to the famous Victorian-era prison of the same name. "The Scrubs" is a more workaday park than elegant Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Rather than lots of stately trees and statuary, it features a vast open field divvied up into football pitches.

Olga, of course, did not mind. As long as she had space to run and chase her Kong, she was happy. (Fewer squirrels, though.) Fortunately despite all the sports activity we didn't have any soccer-ball-related incidents, I suppose because Olga had her Kong to keep her occupied.

I liked the view from the park, a skyline vista including buildings like Trellick Tower (on the left in the photo above) and The Shard (on the right). The ones in between are mostly nondescript apartment and office towers, but if you could see the full-size version of that photo and zoom in, you could pick out a few more landmarks, like Centre Point and the BT Tower.

Anyway, we had a great time making our way over to the park (not that close!) and then romping in the grass. Olga spent all afternoon in recovery mode, sleeping. (Always my goal when we walk.)

Dave got back home yesterday afternoon -- woo hoo! -- exhausted and with his ears ringing from listening to audition recordings from hundreds of students, all hoping to get a slot in an honor band. We stocked up on groceries and dog food, and I think we're ready to start the week.

To make up for the mundane dog photo, how about a life-size doll head in a trash can? Enjoy!

The Park, and Deep Basements

Yesterday was much better than Friday. And that's a good thing, because yes, it was indeed my birthday. Thanks for the good wishes, everyone -- apparently they helped dissipate my bad energy!

Olga and I spent a low-key day around the house. (Dave, you may remember, is away in Norfolk this weekend on band-teacher business.) In the morning we walked over to Hyde Park, where the autumn light was so beautiful it brought to mind English landscape painters like John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. I did not edit the photo above. It really looked just like that.

Olga, of course, could not be bothered with the light. She was busy chasing squirrels.

When we came home I ran out to the post office to pick up a package. My in-laws mailed me some shirts for my birthday and included a card with a coffee theme (they know I like my coffee). I love how Dave's mom labeled the coffee cups on the card with my name and Dave's name!

We have a phenomenon going on in our neighborhood -- and I may have written about it before, I can't remember -- whereby a wealthy person buys one of the historic local houses and proceeds to build a vast basement beneath it. (Because after all, if you're a hedge fund mogul or a foreign quintillionaire you can't be expected to live in a merely large Victorian house.) The problem is, these construction projects are incredibly unsightly and disruptive, and they go on for months and months.

There's a house just a block or so from us where the owner is extending the back and digging out a basement beneath the entire yard. The house right now, as far as I can see from the street, consists only of its front and side walls. The interior is gone and all I can see through the front windows is empty sky. It has turned the block into a complete mess -- and it's not solely to blame, because there are two other big renovations going on there as well.

But that's nothing compared to the guy who bought a hotel so he could turn it into his private home, with plans to build a four-story underground basement with a deep diving pool. (He likes to dive, apparently.) I've often passed this building (really two buildings) on my walks and I wondered what was going on there, because they looked abandoned. Well, they were recently walled off from the sidewalk, and construction appears about to begin. I'm glad I don't live next door!

There's a bit of uproar about these "mega-basements" and indeed some boroughs are taking steps to restrict them. It raises an interesting question, though -- how deep does personal property go? Assuming we had the technology, could a person build a basement to the center of the earth? Or is there some depth at which the earth becomes communally owned, the property of all of us?

Bodily Fluids and Poor Customer Service

Yesterday was one of those days.

I don't know why. Maybe I was giving off bad energy. Maybe the universe was sending bad energy my way. Maybe it was all just a Series of Unfortunate Events, as Lemony Snicket put it so well.

The day started with Olga -- and you might want to skip this paragraph if you're eating -- spewing an unsettling quantity of bloody diarrhea onto the sidewalk on her morning outing. So there I was in utter darkness at 5:30 a.m. trying to clean it up with a plastic bag and a paper towel that I just happened to have in my pocket. I don't know what was ailing her. She gets this way every once in a while and it always scares us to death, and the vet can find nothing wrong, and then it passes and she goes back to normal in a day or two. Can a dog have IBS or Crohn's Disease?

An hour later, she vomited on the kitchen floor. No blood in that, happily.

I set out for work, and made it to the tube just in time to catch a waiting train. I hopped into the car right before the doors closed, and an overly-made-up young woman standing next to me started loudly telling her male companion how she hates it when people jump onto the train, and why can't they just wait for the next one? I shot her a dirty look and was considering saying something snarky and inappropriate (like, "some of us have jobs to get to," which would have been rich coming from until-recently-underemployed me) when her boyfriend (or whatever) said to me, "Is there a problem?" Well, when someone says that, nothing good can ever come from saying yes, especially in a crowded subway car. So I silently shook my head no and turned away from them, and the woman proceeded to jostle and elbow me as much as possible for my entire 15-minute ride.

I got to school and the kids were just terrible. It was Friday and they were excited and probably still hopped up on Halloween sugar. Lots of talking at top volume, lots of disregarding and eye-rolling when asked (politely) to pipe down.

At lunch I went to the bank to deposit a birthday check, but I was told that I would have to come back next week because the bank was out of some silly form that they need to fill out to convert my check from dollars into pounds. I mean, really? A paper form? Can't they just print one off a computer? Barclays, are you listening? So I had to leave with my undeposited check, to try again next week.

Fortunately, things settled down after that. I walked home from work to blow off some steam and Olga seemed much better last night. I bought her a special can of organic dog food and she wolfed it down. (She had also eaten her dry food during the day.) So hopefully this latest episode of canine spastic colon, or whatever, has departed.

Boy, am I glad it's the weekend.

(Photo: A nice color combination in Notting Hill.)

Halloween Sugar

Halloween was a frenzy of activity yesterday, as you can imagine -- all the kids at school were in costume and there were lots of sweets being passed around. My brother contributed to the cause by mailing me a bag of Brach's candy corn from the states. This has been his annual ritual for several years, a sort of inside joke based on my childhood enthusiasm for candy corn. I was appalled to see that this year it cost him more than SIXTEEN DOLLARS in postage. Candy corn is surprisingly heavy! I wrote him a thank-you e-mail and told him next year to put the money into my nieces' college fund, but he insists the joke is worth it.

Anyway, I took his candy corn to school (after eating a handful myself) and set it out in a bowl in the faculty lounge, where it was promptly consumed. I hope everyone appreciated the fact that it was imported.

To add to the sugar rush, one of my coworkers baked me a terrific birthday cake, flavored with orange and with orange rind shavings on top. (Very Floridian, though she said that was unintentional!) We all split that and passed it around and it was pretty much gone by the end of the day.

To work off the sugar I walked home. I was a little afraid I'd be assailed by sidewalk trick-or-treaters like Dave the night before, but I kept my head down and walked fast and I guess I looked somewhat intimidating because no one approached me.

(Photo: A house on a quiet mews in Maida Vale.)

Four Things I've Recently Learned

I walked to work yesterday morning. It was clear and sunny, and I wanted to get some exercise and some photos. I found this guy sanding the metal fence outside a house being renovated in Maida Vale. I love that line of leaves at his feet.

I have learned four interesting things within the past few days:

-- For some reason, I always believed the author Daphne du Maurier ("Rebecca" and "The Birds") was a French man, possibly from the 1800s. Why I thought this I have no idea. Maybe I was getting du Maurier confused with Alexandre Dumas. Anyway, I am now involved in a lengthy project at work to clean up our electronic catalog, correcting typos and providing additional information about books where needed. In the course of this project, I discovered that Daphne du Maurier was actually a woman (as the name would suggest), was actually British, and wrote from the 1930s onward. I'm now wondering how many times in conversation I used a male pronoun to refer to her, thus broadcasting to everyone that I am an idiot.

-- From Eric Schlosser's new book "Command and Control," about the history of nuclear weapons, I learned that after the U.S. developed atomic bombs in the 1940s there was a strong movement to create a one-world government, among people who believed it was the only way to prevent the bombs' re-use and spread. Even some people in the military thought this was the best solution. A book of essays was published to that effect titled "One World or None," and more than half the Americans surveyed in a poll said they wanted the United Nations to become "a world government with power to control the armed forces of all nations, including the United States." The U.S. even considered sharing its atomic secrets with Russia in the 1940s -- when Russia did not yet have the bomb -- as a way to forestall an arms race. But more conservative voices prevailed, and we wound up with the Cold War. Fascinating!

-- I learned that if you have clocks that automatically reset themselves when there's a time change, as many clocks do nowadays, putting them in the window apparently helps them figure out the correct time. This is our faculty lounge at work, where clocks from throughout the building have come for their autumn reset. (We just went off Daylight Saving Time, or British Summer Time as it's called here, on Sunday.) As you can see, some of the clocks have figured it out, and some haven't.

-- I learned that some British kids do trick-or-treat, even though none have ever knocked on our door. Dave took Olga for a walk last night and was approached by two kids in face paint near the corner pub. He said other people were giving them money, but Dave told them, "Go home. You're a day early." Fortunately I don't think they know where we live.