Chickens, Foxes and Slides

This little restaurant just opened near the Baker Street tube station. I love the name and the window, but I'm a little confused about the relevance of the foxes. If the restaurant is serving up the chickens, are we, as the predators, the foxes?

I realized after I took the picture that I actually know the woman walking past. What are the odds? She's a substitute teacher at the school where I work.

Another day spent mostly at home on the couch, which is not entirely a bad thing, I must say. This cold is still pretty mild but I haven't really felt like getting out and doing much. Still, I complained to Dave about feeling trapped inside, and he responded by getting tickets to hear the London Philharmonic perform Sibelius No. 5 -- one of my favorites -- last night. What a husband! We also heard an incredible percussion piece performed by Dame Evelyn Glennie, whose lively and precise style is doubly amazing given that she has been profoundly deaf since childhood. She performs barefoot to feel the vibrations of the orchestra behind her. Mind-blowing!

This gigantic bag of trash is sitting in front of a house down the street. Do you see all those photographic slides? There are thousands of them -- not to mention old books and notebooks and other stuff, all being discarded. I confess I looked through some of the slides to see if there were any interesting ones. Many appeared to be images of old Victorian-era cartoons and artworks -- looks like research for someone's dissertation, maybe.

I did pick up a little box of 40 slides that seem to be original photos. I'm having them scanned. As a photographer I just can't stand the idea of original photos being tossed out in the trash. Dave is a bit appalled by this, and I'm aware of the ethical considerations, especially given that I have lamented the likelihood that my own private materials will wind up in the trash one day. But after all, there are books based on found photographs and found journals, and I looked long enough at the slides I grabbed to know that they're not hugely private. I don't think they even show any people.

I'll share some of them with you if they're any good.

Just call me Nosey McNoseface.

In any case, the contents of that immense trash bag were dampened by rain only hours later, and we've had lots more rainfall since. By now, everything else there is beyond rescuing.

Garden Photos, with Subtropical Surprise

I swear I will not turn this into a gardening blog. But when you have a cold, and you're stuck at home, there's not much else to write about. (Fortunately, as of this morning, the cold seems to be on its way out.)

Remember that packet of wildflower seeds we sowed last year? We had blue cornflowers, red poppies and some kind of yellow daisy-ish flower. This year, a bonanza of tiny seedlings appeared in and around the pot where we scattered last year's seeds -- so they re-seeded themselves quite effectively! Here's one of our first poppy blooms.

The bees seem to love the nigella, including that vase of blossoms broken off by the dog -- I put it outside, too. The plants are already setting their bizarre, alien-looking seed pods -- even the plants in the vase with no roots! Hardy little devils.

The squirrels are continuing to go to great lengths to get at our suet balls...

...and these were a surprise when they showed up yesterday evening. (It's not the first time, though.)

This is from what I think is our best rose bush, producing big, salmon-pink, deeply scented blossoms. (Strangely, bees don't seem drawn to our roses, though. I wonder why that is?) Anyway, I couldn't resist bringing this one inside.

Stop the Insanity

Remember how I said on Saturday that I seemed to be developing a cold? Well, now I know. It's not terrible, but it kept me on the couch all day yesterday, watching movies -- notably "Her," a very bizarre but visually beautiful film starring Joaquin Phoenix, about a man who falls in love with his Operating System -- and reading the horrible news from Orlando.

I don't know how to say this without feeling like I am fruitlessly repeating the same old mantra, but until the United States reforms its gun laws to make it impossible for lunatics to get their hands on assault rifles, these kinds of things will continue to happen. That's pretty much the bottom line, don't you think? There will always be radicalized, misguided, desperate people trying to do scary things, but if they are legally prevented access to high-powered weapons the damage will be minimized.

I just don't know what it will take for America to learn that lesson.

The fact that this happened in Orlando, so close to my home turf, is especially weird. In the 1980s and early '90s I used to go dancing at the flamboyant El Goya and (later) Tracks in Tampa, and at the cavernous Visage and tightly packed Big Bang in Orlando. I feared a lot of things as a young gay man -- getting beaten up, AIDS, discrimination that no law would prevent. I feared violence from some of the less-enlightened citizenry. But I never, ever could have imagined anything on this scale -- not in sleepy Central Florida.

We took down our squirrel feeder. It seemed to be attracting more pigeons than squirrels and they were all roosting on our upstairs neighbors' balcony -- which I'm sure the neighbors didn't like. (They never said anything to us but they installed pigeon spikes on the railing.) We now put the squirrel food in a saucer at the back of the garden. They can make all the mess they want back there.

(Photos: A hoverfly on our hanging basket near the back door.)

Dinner with the Leavers

I promise not to write another long tirade about Brexit, because I'm sure it's not nearly as interesting to people in other parts of the world as it is to us here. But it's really been heating up lately, with both the "Remain" and "Leave" camps leaving fliers in our letterbox and trying to spread their message.

I see a lot of Brexit signs when I'm walking around London, like this one in the window of this colorful house in Stoke Newington. Interestingly, I have seen only "Remain" signs. I have yet to see a "Leave" sign in anyone's window. (I know they're out there, though, because one of my coworkers said someone on her street has one.)

I've heard that Londoners in general tend to favor Remaining more than people elsewhere in Britain. Perhaps that phenomenon is what I'm witnessing.

Last night, Dave and I had dinner with our friends Chris and Linda, who are solidly in the "Leave" camp. I was really looking forward to our meal, because I wanted to talk to them about their reasons for voting "Leave" -- especially Chris, a former political journalist who is socially quite liberal. (Some of the momentum behind the "Leave" movement has come from right-wing and far-right political leaders.)

At first, Chris argued that Europe is undemocratic, that laws are made by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg and inflicted on the British. But I pointed out that there is an elected parliament, and we went back and forth about its effectiveness and responsiveness. I essentially argued that if the structure doesn't work, the appropriate response is reform, not bailing out.

I also pointed out that the anti-immigrant scaremongering of the "Leave" movement, particularly with regard to the pie-in-the-sky likelihood of Turkey joining the EU, really turned me off. (Being an immigrant myself!)

What became obvious as the evening wore on is that Chris, who is in his 70s, is looking backward -- to the Britain of decades ago, the wartime and postwar Britain that he holds in such high regard. His parents, he said, fought and sacrificed for British sovereignty and the defeat of the Nazis, and would be appalled to know that Germans are deciding laws that affect the British. When he says the EU is undemocratic, what he's really saying is that Britain gets outvoted.

He repeated his mantra: "We are an island nation."

(It seems to me that Britain's status as an island is often emphasized here. The other day I picked up Antonia Fraser's autobiography and saw that she learned to read using a well-known children's history book called "Our Island Story." It made me think immediately of Chris.)

Anyway, it was a fascinating conversation, and I like Chris and Linda because we can all disagree and, at the end, walk away smiling. Which is what we did.

The other night, some "Remain" campaigners came to our front door. We explained that although we support staying in the EU, we can't vote in the referendum. They gave us a "Remain" sign for our window. So we may not be voting at the ballot box, but we're still expressing our opinion!

Summer!

Woo hoo! Summer vacation! "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks!"

(Never mind that I'm the one giving the dirty looks nowadays. The sentiment is the same.)

We had a full workday yesterday and I managed to find enough to do to stay busy in the library. We got all but about 15 books back -- some checked out to teachers who just can't find them at the moment, a couple checked out to students who will settle their accounts next fall, and three checked out to a parent who just couldn't get herself to the library this week. I think we'll get them all back eventually. Meanwhile I'm going to stop thinking about it because IT'S SUMMER!

Olga is ready for the fun to begin! ("But first, where DID that squirrel go?")

Our roses are reaching something close to their peak -- nearly every bush is in bloom, even a few that haven't bloomed before. I mowed on Thursday and weeded the flower beds (the "borders," as they're known in England) on all three sides, so things are looking good out there. We have such an overgrowth of vegetation from some plants that I've had to trim them back to let the others get some light -- I imagine the shaded plants sighing with happiness when the sun hits them.

I can see how Dave gets into this gardening thing.

Last night we watched some very British TV -- an ecology show featuring Germaine Greer talking about the importance of insects, the televised service from St. Paul's Cathedral for the Queen's 90th birthday, and "Gardener's World," which -- as you can imagine -- is one of our favorite shows. It's always a disappointment when late fall rolls around and Gardener's World goes on hiatus until the following spring. And I'm not going to think about that now because IT'S SUMMER!

Well, I have to get ready for French class. I seem to be developing a cold (ugh) but I have to go this week, having skipped last week. Merde!

(Top photo: Daisies in Islington, last Sunday.)

Sad Fox News

Yesterday morning one of our local foxes showed up, loping around our back garden. I had time for just one photo before Olga, lunging at the back door, scared it away.

Then, maybe just half an hour later, Olga and I were walking on nearby Mill Lane when we saw a pair of foxes. One of them had been hit by a car. There was blood in the street and the fox had retreated beyond a locked gate, where it was lying motionless on the ground. The other fox -- apparently unhurt -- was standing over it, eyeing us warily.

There was no way to tell whether these foxes were the same ones we see in our garden, but it looked like an older adult and an adolescent -- which is what we've seen, too. I felt sick about it all day. I had to keep reminding myself that despite what I call them, these are not our foxes -- they're wild animals, leading hazardous animal lives. I've read online that urban foxes usually live just a few years, and I've found automotive casualties before.

And then, this morning, just as I was typing this blog post, look who showed up!

Are we seeing just one or two foxes, over and over? Or multiple foxes? I have no idea. I honestly can't tell them apart. This one looks a bit older than the one I photographed yesterday.

Anyway, it looks like we'll still have garden visitors, despite yesterday's tragedy.

Today is our last day of school before we break for summer -- much earlier than British schools, which (as one of my commenters pointed out yesterday) run into July. Being an American school, we're on an American schedule -- we break earlier, but then we go back in mid-August, while British schools are out several more weeks.

I'm scheduled to work a full day today but, with no library customers, I can't imagine what I'll be doing with all that time. Yesterday we had a year-end meeting and an outdoor food-and-drink gathering, so business is pretty much concluded.

Only Four Left!

I've just spent a half an hour with an online weed identification guide trying to figure out what our back garden mystery plant could be. I've had no luck. Meanwhile, our fox just trotted past the back door and now Olga is on red alert.

Yesterday was our last day with students at school. I managed to get all our library materials back except four books, which is pretty good, I think. (And those four kids will take care of the problem when school resumes.) I was calling parents and sending e-mails and badgering kids in the hallways. And just when I think I'm being such a nuisance that no one will ever be able to stand the sight of me, a student will ask me to sign his or her yearbook or give me a thank-you card or say to me, as one graduating senior did last night, "Thanks for everything, Mr. Reed. You're a great librarian."

Awwww.

Anyway, now I have to start in on the faculty and staff. I have two days to collect materials from them, and a four-page overdue list to work through!

Last night I picked up my newly-elasticized Doris Shorts from the tailor. He did a great job! Now, at least, when I'm walking around the garden in what appear to be boxers, they won't also look like they're about to fall off.

(Photo: A monument to Queen Victoria in Highbury, North London, on Sunday.)