Oh, the Tedium...

My life must just be incredibly boring these days, because I can't think of a thing to write about.

I finished my library display yesterday for World Book Day -- so that's something, I suppose. We asked the kids to tell us which book is their favorite and why, and I color-copied each book cover and pasted their review beneath it. I put each one in a colored frame, laminated them and hung them from string with mini-clothespins purchased from Amazon. (I don't recommend the clothespins, which are incredibly cheap and barely work.) Let's call it a pseudo-laundry theme. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, though like most of our displays it's almost as if the kids are trying strenuously not to look at it. I haven't seen anyone paying it any mind.

You may remember that Dave bought me five massages for my birthday. Well, I've taken two of them so far, and the massage therapist texted me yesterday and told me she's moving out of the UK! She said she'll pass on the remaining massages to a "business associate," so we won't lose them. Still, I hurriedly booked another one for this week, before she leaves. I guess I have been taking them a bit slowly. She probably hates me.

Meanwhile, I've been laying the groundwork for my trip to Florida on Saturday. I booked my rental car, and I'm trying to line up some meetings with piano dealers to sell our family Steinway, which is turning into a long arduous process. You may remember that I'd hoped to have it sold on my last visit, in August. We'll see how that goes.

(Photo: A broken leaded window in a house under renovation in Golders Green.)

Passport to Pimlico

Yesterday I was up in Golders Green working on, of course, Bleeding London. I had a good long walk and photographed 45 streets. The sun was out, which made a nice change from the day before.

Otherwise, it was a pretty low-key day. I think we got Olga's boarding arranged for March, when we'll be briefly out of the country, and I finally watched an old movie that I've had saved on our TV recorder since the beginning of October. It was called "Passport to Pimlico," a black-and-white British comedy from the '40s that imagined a London neighborhood suddenly being declared foreign soil, with all the attendant complications. I liked it.

Last night, leftovers. Skyping with Dave's parents. The usual Sunday night stuff.

(Photo: A latch on a gate in Golders Green.)

Hampstead Heath Extension

It's the weekend, which means the obligatory photo of Olga on a walk. Yesterday we went to Hampstead Heath Extension, where I'd never been before. It's a thumb-like projection of land extending northward from the West Heath and Sandy Heath. She goes there with her dog-walker, and seemed to know her way around. Doesn't she look authoritative?

(And impatient!)

That's a drinking fountain off to the right -- a memorial to someone whose name I've already forgotten. So it goes, to quote Kurt Vonnegut.

I photographed the streets around the park for Bleeding London and then we headed home -- but that short sentence summarizes a couple of hours of activity. It was quite a walk. The area is very posh, and I felt a little intimidated to be standing on tiny dead-end streets with a handful of very grand houses, holding a camera. I was sure someone would call the police or ask me what the heck I was doing. But no one did.

I have completely surrendered one pair of my shoes to muddy dog-walking. They will never be the same.

You can't really read that can, but it's an empty from a Bulldog Power energy drink. Olga seems to think she's in trouble.

Last night we had one of Dave's coworkers over for dinner, along with her boyfriend. Dave whipped up his standard four-course feast of beef short ribs and pretty much spent the entire day in the grocery store and the kitchen -- which of course he loves. I managed to get all the dishes done last night so when I woke up the kitchen was completely clean, which always makes me happy and helps me greet the day correctly!

Henry Miller on Jacksonville

Olga is sticking to me like glue this morning. I don't know what's up. She's literally leaning against the left side of my body so firmly that I can barely type. I wonder what triggered this insecure state of mind?

Maybe it's because Dave and I went out for dinner last night and didn't get home until late. We went to a beautiful restaurant that we both really liked to celebrate the birthday of one of his coworkers. This restaurant is in an old, closed pub that I photographed not long after we moved to London because I was so taken with the building. At the time I though, "What a crime that this place is boarded up!" Well, I'm happy to report, it is now unboarded and quite swank. We all agreed we would happily go back.

I'm still reading Henry Miller as he fumes about the sorry state of America in the early 1940s. He's so strident it's almost comical. And I thought my family was cynical! Yesterday I came across this passage about Jacksonville, where my brother lives:

"Of all the little man-made parks I think the one in Jacksonville, Florida, is perhaps the meanest, drabbest, shabbiest. It belongs in a George Grosz picture. It reeks with tuberculosis, halitosis, varicose veins, paranoia, mendacity, onanism and occultism. All the misfits, the unfits, the has-beens and the would-bes of America seem to drift here eventually. It is the emotional swamp which one has to wade through in order to get to the Everglades. Fifteen years ago, when I first sat in this park, I attributed my feelings and impressions to the fact that I was down and out, that I was hungry and could find no place to sleep. On the return visit I was even more depressed. Nothing had been altered. The benches were littered as of yore with the dregs of humanity -- not the seedy sort as in London or New York, not the picturesque sort that dot the quais of Paris, but that pulpy blemished American variety that issues from the respectable middle class: clean clots of phlegm, so to speak. The kind that tries to elevate the mind even when there is no mind left. The flotsam and jetsam which drifts like sewer water in and out of Christian Science churches, Rosicrucian tabernacles, astrology parlors, free clinics, evangelist meetings, charity bureaus, employment agencies, cheap lodging houses and so on. The kind that may be reading the Bhagavad Gita on an empty stomach or doing setting up exercises in the clothes closet. The American type par excellence, ever ready to believe what is written in the newspapers, ever on the lookout for a Messiah. Not a speck of human dignity left. The white worm squirming in the vice of respectability!"

I know my brother will get a huge kick out of that. It's accompanied by a photo of Miller slouched on a Jacksonville park bench, looking thoroughly down and out under his draped coat.

I'm not sure anyone else has ever described Jacksonville with such...vehemence.

(Photo: Harlesden, London, last weekend.)

Picky Readers

My busy week is continuing. I've moved on from the painstaking computer purge of departed library patrons to making a book display for World Book Day on March 5. We've been asking students to name their favorite books and tell us why they like them, and you would think from their reactions that we wanted to pull their front teeth. They are so reluctant to participate! We finally got enough responses to put together a display.

I'm printing out an image of each book's cover, and including the student's review beneath it. We'll then hang these reviews in the library. Pretty straightforward, right? I think it's going to look good when it's done, but it's taking a bit of work, especially when I keep having to drop everything to check out materials.

There's a gang of fifth-grade girls who come into the library every single day and want book recommendations, but when I make suggestions they either don't want to read what I suggest (and no, I'm not always pushing "Misty of Chincoteague") or they check out a book and return it five minutes later, saying plaintively, "I didn't like it." I guess I finally hit my limit with this group yesterday because when they came in and asked me if I knew any good books, I said, "Off the top of my head, no!"

That got a laugh from one of my co-workers, and my boss chose that very moment to take a picture of me, which she tweeted on the library Twitter account with the caption "Decisions, decisions." Don't I look annoyed?

Fortunately, these kids like me, and I took them back to the shelves where we successfully scrounged up some reading material that they no doubt will return today, unread. I think they mostly like the attention. I'm sure they never sensed that I really wanted to get back to building my book display.

(Top: Bleak February, in front of a bleak house under renovation.)

Harper Lee, Henry Miller and Art

The art students at school have been experimenting with bones. I love this display. I've long been fascinated by Georgia O'Keeffe's famous bone paintings, meditations on life and death and color and unexpected beauty. These are her great-grandchildren!

I don't know how I feel about the news that Harper Lee is coming out with another novel, and one heavily related to "To Kill A Mockingbird." It could be fascinating to see her first pass at telling that story, from the perspective of the adult Scout. But I'm afraid it will be like those "director's cuts" of movies restoring footage that probably should have been left on the cutting room floor. From what I've read, her original idea -- encapsulated in this book -- went on to become "To Kill A Mockingbird" after editors suggested she build on the strongest parts of her narrative. So what does that leave us -- the weak parts? And what will her writing be like, now that she no longer has the benefit of Truman Capote's friendship and editorial ear?

Remember about 10 years ago when Capote's "lost" novel "Summer Crossing" was published for the first time to great fanfare? It turned out to be a rather thin reading experience. Sometimes early efforts are unpublished for a reason.

I'd be much less nervous if Lee's new book were completely different, and didn't involve the same "To Kill A Mockingbird" characters. It's always dangerous when tampering with the legacy of a classic, much-beloved book. But anyway, we'll see.

I've just started reading a Henry Miller book I found on the library shelves called "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," in which he returns from Europe to travel his native America. I can identify with his cynicism about his native land, and although I just started the book I love it so far. He describes his first sight of the "bleak and uninviting" shores of Boston, and the look of the typical American house -- "...there is something cold, austere, something barren and chill, about the architecture of the American home. It was home, with all the ugly, evil, sinister connotations which the word contains for a restless soul. There was a frigid moral aspect to it which chilled me to the bone."

He also takes a dim view of the life of an artist in America:

"The only artists who were not leading a dog's life were the commercial artists; they had beautiful homes, beautiful brushes, beautiful models. The others were living like ex-convicts. This impression was confirmed and deepened as I traveled along. America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still."

Snowy Day

Yesterday's snowfall left Olga sniffing and snorting in the back garden. I'm not sure she understood why everything changed so dramatically. She didn't seem very put off, though -- she still expected her walk as usual.

Poor Totoro was left with a cap of flakes.

There's nothing left of our horseradish at this point. Dave tucked a couple of bulbs into the pot, which are coming up at the outer edge.

Despite the snow -- which left me slip-sliding on the sidewalk in my fancy Swedish shoes that I inherited from Dave because he doesn't like them (and wouldn't you think Sweden would know how to make snow-appropriate shoes?) -- we did have school as usual yesterday.

I finished purging the elementary school library's patron list. In all, I eliminated 555 departed parents -- including a well-known actress and a countess -- as well as 40 departed students and several faculty and staff members. I would love to gossip about who had what overdue books and unpaid fines but I suppose I must remain discreet.

By the time I came home last night, all the snow was melted. We're back to muddy normal.