Abstractions and Modern Frustrations

Yesterday I got an e-mail from my American credit card company, asking me to verify a recent transaction -- an attempted $248 purchase from Wal-Mart's web site.

Ummm, no. That was not me.

So I called them and they cancelled my credit card, since someone somewhere had obviously obtained the number. I don't use that card much, because it's billed to me in U.S. dollars -- mainly just when I travel back to the United States. I've been wondering which of my summer purchases in Florida exposed me to fraud. Was it when I bought Oreos at the drug store? When I paid the newspaper for my dad's obituary? When I bought my friend's birthday dinner at a restaurant?

Who knows. At least the fraudulent transaction was declined. I guess someone at the bank knew I wasn't a likely Wal-Mart customer -- especially not from here in England.

And speaking of minor annoyances of modern life, remember when I sent a package from here in London to Florida and it took a month and a half to arrive? Well, I'm having the same issue now, but in reverse. You may recall that when I visited Florida in August, I bought a pair of old drinking glasses from the now-defunct Kapok Tree Inn restaurant. I decided after my return to England to get a third -- in a newer style -- replacing one I got during my visit there in the early '80s. That way I'd have three glasses to display together.

So I got on eBay and bought one -- an identical pair, actually, and why not have a spare -- from a guy in Canada. They were just a few dollars, although shipping jacked up the price a bit. I paid (not with my credit card!), and he shipped them on Aug. 9. He didn't get a tracking number, to minimize cost.

Well, those glasses still aren't here. Who knows where they are -- stuck in Kapok Tree Limboland. (Better known, I suspect, as Customs.) EBay seemed to think they would arrive by Aug. 18. I've let the sender know they are still in transit. We're giving it more time.

(Photos: Top, a footer for scaffolding outside a building in West Hampstead; bottom, peeled paint on a wooden fence panel, Hampstead.)

Evil Queen, Good Queen

I've just been reading Phyllis Schlafly's obituary, and about the nicest thing I can say is that it's amazing how differently some people see the world. I just don't understand her. I feel like a member of an entirely different species.

How could the Equal Rights Amendment have possibly been a bad thing? Clearly a lot of people had misgivings about it, but I don't understand the suspicion that it posed any sort of hazard.

I would have liked to crawl into her head for just half an hour or so -- with the guaranteed proviso that I could get out again -- so I could understand her thought process. Because I just don't. And she was apparently a smart woman, which makes her all the more mystifying.

Anyway, enough of that. I really came here today to share Dave's new gift with you:

It's a Solar Queen!

This will be familiar to those of you who live in the UK, because they're pretty common here. But I had to make this ridiculous video for my friends in the states and elsewhere. (With special sound effects -- you can hear Olga's toenails clacking on the floor as she walks around behind me.) There's a solar panel in the Queen's handbag, which powers the, er, "action."

Here's the kicker -- I got her, new and still in the box, in an Oxfam thrift shop in Herne Hill for £5!

When Dave went into the hospital in April, I tried to find one of these to bring him, but I didn't have any luck. So I told him Sunday that this was his hospital gift, just five months late. Who says I'm not thoughtful?!

(Top photo: A shop in Rye Lane, Peckham, on Sunday.)

Peckham Rye and Dulwich

I went out for a photo walk yesterday from New Cross through Peckham, Dulwich and Herne Hill, all in South London. It was a route I hadn't taken before, and I explored the African immigrant neighborhoods around Rye Lane and the leafy suburban quietude of Dulwich.

The photo above depicts a relatively new arrival in Rye Lane -- a restaurant and pub that opened in February. Some people hate the name (according to the InterWebs) and the sole explanation for it that I could find claims it was "inspired by a magical stuffed childhood toy." Only a rather grinchy personality could object to that. It wasn't open when I walked by, so I didn't go in.

In Dulwich, I went to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, where I saw a show about Winifred Knights, an artist from the early decades of the 1900s who painted somewhat Deco-looking canvases -- and, sadly, apparently not many of them.

I wasn't allowed to take photos in that exhibit, but the permanent collection was fair game. I saw more paintings by my old pal Aelbert Cuyp:

This is "Herdsmen with Cows," from the 1640s. Although it became a favorite in the Victorian era, John Ruskin reportedly criticized the sky for being like an "unripe nectarine."

I also saw an image of a four-year-old then-Princess Victoria by Stephen Poyntz Denning, from 1823, that apparently was so famous in its day that it appeared on biscuit tins:

Poor Victoria was in mourning even way back then. The woman just could not catch a break.

Outside was a sculpture by Peter Randall Page called "Walking the Dog." Hmmmm...

I had lunch at the picture gallery's cafe -- an excellent salmon cake and tomato salad. But I was having one of those unfortunate days when the customer service gods were arrayed against me. The waiters at the cafe seemed to forget I existed (they took the service charge off the bill without my even asking), and not once but twice, someone got in front of me while I was waiting in a queue. At Starbucks, later in the day, the barista called out "Steve" when my coffee was ready and a woman grabbed it and began to walk off. I called out to her and she just kept walking. I had to chase her across the restaurant! "Oh, sorry," she said, half-heartedly, as if it were somehow my fault that she took my order, with my name clearly written on the cup.

My mother used to complain that she became invisible to the world at age 40, and that was exactly how I felt yesterday. Is it middle age, or just the obliviousness of other people?

Anyway, I walked from Dulwich through Herne Hill and northward to catch the tube back home. By this time it was late afternoon. I spotted a sleepy fox lying on a locked, fenced playground in Brixton. At first I suspected it was dead, but then it raised its head and looked around. Funny how it chose to snooze right in the middle of that target -- perhaps not the most preservation-minded fox!

Reflection on a Simple Saturday

Olga and I went to Fortune Green and the cemetery yesterday afternoon. Olga found a gravestone so black and shiny she could see herself in it. Or, she could have if she'd looked -- she's never shown any interest in or awareness of her own reflection. (Apparently she isn't as smart as an elephant.)

We were promised rain in the afternoon, so, like an idiot, I puttered around the house all morning and watched a movie after lunch -- "Garden State," which I loved when I saw it in the theater in 2004 and still love now. Then I took the dog for a walk, and of course, we got rained on.

I got a lot of stuff done, though -- housecleaning, laundry, some gardening and journal-transcribing. (I took about a month off from that latter project, so now I'm just getting back to it.) A productive Saturday, overall!

A Big, Bright Mural

When Dave and I went down to Greenwich last weekend, we passed this colorful mural on a plywood barrier around a construction site. (The British call these barriers "hoardings," for reasons I have never fully understood. Are they hoarding whatever's inside the barrier?) I didn't see the artist's name anywhere -- or I'd give credit here -- but maybe someone else will know whose work this is.

That's the Emirates Air Line in the background, a cable car that crosses the Thames between North Greenwich and the Docklands area of East London. We rode it once, back when it first opened in July 2012. Apparently it's not being used as much as some had hoped, and there's recently been discussion about how to boost ridership -- from lowering fares and treating it more like plain old mass transit to offering champagne during the river crossing. Opposite ends of the spectrum, right?

The sun was working against me, here!

So, in other news, "All You Need is Love" went down just fine yesterday morning. We in the faculty/staff choir had fun singing, the kids clapped along, and everybody seemed to have a good time. Now that's done for another year.

Also, I did give in and sign up for French classes again. I am going to speak this language if it kills me. Or if it causes my souffle to fall or my Hollandaise to separate, or whatever the appropriate French metaphor for tragedy might be. The classes begin Sept. 17. I appreciated a fellow blogger's recent advice to "re-enroll and complain all you want, but visit France often." She's absolutely right. That kind of practice is exactly what I need. Also, I should complain in French.

Finally, my stepmother has indeed booked our family cruise. We're going for seven days from Tampa to Key West, Roatan, Belize and Cozumel, spending Christmas Day at sea. And we'll be back on Dec. 30, so we won't have to re-enact the early moments of "The Poseidon Adventure" (which, as you may recall, took place on New Year's Eve). We have a veranda cabin, or stateroom, or whatever it's called, which means we have a little balcony and big windows. As I told Dave, "Well, that should provide a stunning view as the ship rolls over!"

He's going to get really sick of my Poseidon Adventure jokes.

Used Clothing

That's a dying blackberry leaf on Hampstead Heath. Isn't it funny how, beneath the green chlorophyll, a blackberry bush contains all this purple pigment? I guess it makes sense for a plant with such purple berries. And yet, other parts of the leaf are so pale.

Speaking of leaves, our venus flytrap finally gave up the ghost. Apparently being repeatedly dragged around the yard and urinated on by a fox just wasn't survivable. Oh well -- it lived longer than I ever expected it to when I bought it for Dave more than a year ago.

This morning I read a fascinating article in Newsweek (yes, it still exists!) about the problem of discarded clothing. I've always wondered how charity shops cope with the avalanche of used clothing they receive. (If you've ever had a glimpse into the back rooms of some of these shops, you know what I'm talking about -- towering piles of donations, as close to mountains as they can be in such a small space.) I'm a Goodwill and Oxfam enthusiast, as you know, but it turns out charity shops sell only about 20 percent of those donations. The rest goes into a clothing waste stream that sees it baled up and sent overseas to second-hand markets, or torn up for rags used in auto shops, or turned into carpet padding or floor mats for cars. The problem nowadays, according to the article, is "fast fashion," which produces lower-quality clothing that isn't as suitable for second-hand use. In short, it's an environmental mess.

(As I read the article, I thought of the clothes I salvaged from our neighbor's trash a couple of years ago and took to Oxfam. I wonder how much of that was suitable for resale? Our then-neighbors, a young couple, were likely consumers of "fast fashion.")

I, on the other hand, tend to hold onto my clothes for a long, long time. Probably too long.

Today is the day of our beginning-of-school student assembly, where the faculty/staff choir sings. Hopefully we won't make a hash of it, and the kids will remember the message of the song while evaluating our performance: All you need is love!

A Song Change, and a Potential Cruise

I could not get up this morning. It's now almost 7 a.m. and I haven't even blogged yet, and the dog (who couldn't get up either) needs to be walked, and I need my shower and all that stuff, not to mention breakfast. Dave managed to get himself up and out of here. I don't know why I was so tired!

I feel great, though, I must say. Well-rested.

We're changing songs entirely for our faculty/staff choir performance tomorrow. We've gone from "With a Little Help from My Friends," which you may remember had some lyrics issues, to "All You Need is Love." The latter, though, is a little more difficult to sing. The rhythm isn't quite regular and the verse lyrics come in a rush -- "nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time" -- so they're hard for a group to sing without sounding muddy. And we've had exactly one rehearsal. Oh well -- once again, the kids will know the song.

I met last night with a French teacher at school who wanted help planning a photo book. She and I went through her pictures and spoke French pretty much the whole time -- which I found I could do, surprisingly. Maybe I'm not as hopeless as I thought!

My stepmother is cooking up a plan to take all of us kids and our spouses on a cruise for Christmas. Woo hoo! It really is incredibly generous of her, and I hope it works out with everyone's schedule. Dave and I have a two-week break so we have to squeeze it into that amount of time, and we also need to visit my mom and his parents at some point. So it may be an action-packed Christmas. I've never cruised before! I'll try to forget David Foster Wallace's take on the experience.

(Photo: Islington, Aug. 16.)