A Bad Penny

On a whim, before I'd even eaten breakfast, I started washing windows on Monday morning. I'm not sure what possessed me except I've been looking askance at them for a while, thinking it was high time they were cleaned. This is no easy task, because our flat has about a million windows, and to be honest I only did the ones in the front. But they're the hardest to reach -- I had to stand in the middle of that jungle of landscaping in the front garden, with leaves falling down my shirt and sticks stabbing me in the back.

It's also a multi-step process -- I squeegeed the outside, then cleaned them inside with paper towels, then went over the outside again to get the edges and touch up streaks.

The end result is very satisfying, though. They look terrific. Olga seems happy with them too.

I've also been out in the garden a lot. The seedlings are coming along well. (That's an honesty, aka lunaria or money plant, seedling above.) I'm a little bit crazy about these seedlings -- I've potted many of them up individually and I'm trying to put them outside more so they'll acclimate, but I'm also scared to death that squirrels will demolish them. So I wind up shuffling the pots in and out, which is making me crazy. I suppose I need to just relinquish them to nature and not be so controlling. Some of them are going to die and that's just the way it is.

I found this penny on the street near our flat. Have you ever seen a more battered coin? The Queen has been virtually erased! I'm not sure I'll even be able to spend it -- and once the financial authorities get ahold of it, I'm sure it will be pulled from circulation. There's a fine line between a coin and a useless hunk of metal.

Finally, as I walked Olga yesterday morning, I saw the French flag suspended in the window of a flat on Sumatra Road. It was nice to see an expression of solidarity with France after the tragedy at Notre Dame, although this flag might have been hanging there even before that occurred -- I'm not sure.

It now looks like the damage at Notre Dame may not be as bad as we'd all feared. Despite those huge flames pouring out of the roof, the interior seems fairly intact and even the windows reportedly survived, though their strength hasn't yet been assessed. Fingers crossed that complete disaster has been averted.

Notre Dame

Dave and I were watching "Six Feet Under" last night, as we've taken to doing in the evenings, when Dave -- looking at his phone -- called out, "Notre Dame is on fire!"

"What?!" I thought. "How is that even possible?" It seemed so patently absurd I'm embarrassed to say we didn't turn off our TV show. Isn't Notre Dame made of stone, after all? And isn't it one of humanity's most dearly held and most venerated creations? Surely it couldn't burn down.

I imagined a small fire, something in a broom closet somewhere, that would quickly be extinguished leading only to alarms and inconvenience for tourists.

Instead, as we've all seen, we got an event that seems apocalyptic. Although the building's outer walls and many of its artworks -- tucked into the shelter of the stone vaults -- appear to have been saved, the degree of damage is hard to fathom.

I wonder especially about the windows -- all that amazing stained glass, including the gigantic, 800-year-old rose windows. (That's one of them in the top photo, I believe the north-facing one.)

I've been to Notre Dame twice, in April 2000 and again in April 2013. I don't remember much from my first visit -- in fact I'm not sure I even went inside. I remember being enthralled by all the flying buttresses on the exterior -- having studied them in our Gothic architecture overview in my introduction to humanities course in college -- and of course the famous gargoyles.

I took these pictures of the interior when Dave and I visited on that second trip.

It's hard to believe that fire could virtually demolish something so irreplaceable -- a structure that stood for centuries through world wars and revolutions and coronations and periods of national and international celebration and mourning. But of course, fire doesn't care. Once it gets started, it just consumes.

I can't help feeling a sense of collective irresponsibility. How did we manage to let this happen? All of us, humanity, into whose hands our ancestors delivered the cathedral? It's like being entrusted with your great-grandmother's diamond ring and dropping it down the sink. Except worse.

It seems especially strange to think we just happened to be alive to witness this, considering all the generations of people who have come and gone since Notre Dame's construction, for whom the building stood solid and relatively unchanged. We've experienced something momentous in our history as a civilization -- as a species, even.

I guess it really is true that, as the Buddha observed, nothing is permanent.

A Literary Street, and Sun-Drunk Layabouts

The other day I came across a book at work called "One Thousand Buildings of London," featuring tidbits about architecturally and culturally significant structures throughout the city. I looked up the area where Dave and I live.

As it turns out, our immediate neighborhood apparently doesn't include much of interest -- at least to the authors. But they did list quite a few buildings in nearby Hampstead, including this entire street which Olga and I walk every time we go to the Heath.

"This is one of Hampstead's most beautiful streets," the book says. "It is tree-lined in the center and bordered by redbrick-faced, double-story houses that have changed little over the years. There is elegant wrought ironwork everywhere and neat Georgian sash windows." Famous residents included authors Wilkie Collins, H. G. Wells and George du Maurier, grandfather of the famous Daphne.

"The daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, Anne, also a resident, described it as 'an avenue of Dutch red-faced houses, leading demurely to the old church tower that stands guarding its graves in the flowery churchyard.'"

I didn't know the street's history, and I walk it all the time. Coincidentally, as Olga and I came back from the Heath yesterday, we passed a little tour group with the guide offering up some of those same famous names -- as well as Lord Alfred Douglas, known in his youth as "Bosie," who famously led to the downfall of Oscar Wilde and who apparently also lived there.

Olga, of course, isn't interested famous people. (Unless they're standing nearby and have treats.) She just sniffed her various curbside smells and rolled in the Heath grass. She was even oblivious to the brilliantly blooming gorse.

There's been a huge shed over Athlone House, a formerly derelict mansion on the northern edge of the Heath, for months and months now. It's supposedly being renovated by a Ukrainian billionaire, but I have no idea what the status of the project is. Olga and I found some amazing azaleas in the garden of Athlone House a couple of years ago, but when we checked on them yesterday they weren't blooming yet. Makes sense -- it is a little early.

The Heath was quite busy. I swear Londoners get a little punch-drunk when the sun comes out. Everyone has the urge to just collapse onto the nearest log and soak it in, like this man. (Difficult when it's so chilly you still need a jacket, though!)

After we came home I did a bit more gardening -- put another plant in the ground, potted up my single cosmos seedling. (Well, I have two, but one is very decrepit and I suspect it's not going to make it.) I'm going to leave the empty cosmos seed tray just to see if any more grow. It's not impossible -- yesterday, two new honesty seedlings came up, more than a month after I planted them on March 9!

A Sunny Day, and a Note

This pretty much sums up yesterday's activities. We didn't leave the house, except to walk Olga to the cemetery and to go to Cafe Nero for coffee. (We were out of milk and it seemed easier than going to the store.) Olga accompanied us to the cafe, where she met a Tibetan terrier (or was it a Tibetan spaniel?) with a deformed toe and its foot in an orthopedic boot. The owner explained that the dog only wears the boot on long walks. It reminded me of Olga's vet suggesting a root canal. Will we stop at nothing when it comes to medical care for our pets?

Of course, if your dog is in pain, you'll do what you have to do. You know?

Anyway, I did a bunch of stuff in the garden. The day started cold and it even rained a little but by afternoon it was sunny sweatshirt weather outside, so I got out with a shovel and planted a couple of our potted plants that we decided to put in the ground. We still have a few more to do. We're trying to free up some pots and space on the patio -- basically, we put plants in the ground when we deem them expendable and we're ready to release them to the elements.

I also made progress in the second volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's autobiographical novel "My Struggle." This one's good too, about his growing family, but it doesn't resonate quite as deeply with me as the first -- maybe because I haven't raised a child. I continue to be a little mystified by why he's an interesting writer, considering he's talking about standing in line at the bake shop and other mundane tasks. Yet he is strangely, compulsively readable. Kind of like bloggers, I suppose!

Springtime iPhone Photos

Lots of colorful things are blooming at the moment! I walked home from work last night and saw several trees like this, big fluffy clouds of pink. (This despite the fact that temperatures have been unseasonably cold -- it's 34º F out there as I write this just after 7 a.m.!)

There are some unusual varieties of primroses at the cemetery...

...and speaking of the cemetery, I found these unusual decorations on one of the graves. This jar full of little birds was accompanied, on the other side of the headstone, by one containing a pink teddy bear. The odd thing is, this grave is Victorian. The occupants died in the 1880s or thereabouts, and I didn't notice any children, at least not mentioned on the headstone. (Which admittedly was hard to read because it had been broken.) I wonder who's decorating it, and why?

I found these pathetic chairs at the post office when I collected a package a few days ago. I feel like so many public facilities in Britain look like this. Perhaps "Austerity" is to blame.

I had to take a picture of this ridiculous Fixodent advertisement on television, with a woman perilously balanced on top of a set of wobbly dentures. As I told Dave, "I'm so glad they labeled this 'dramatization.' Otherwise I'd have thought it was real!"

This is one of our neighbor's houses. They always have a terrific-looking front garden. I especially like all the tulips by the door.

And here's another neighbor's garden. I'm jealous of the tulips -- ours didn't do much this year. We have one plant with a nascent bud that doesn't seem to be growing. Otherwise they were all nibbled by wildlife and look pretty ragged.

When Olga and I went to Fortune Green a week ago, we found this tree, decorated once again on behalf of Nazanin Zagari-Ratcliffe, who has been detained in Iran for three years now.

Free Nazanin, indeed!

Ghost Dog in Metallic Green

There's a Fancy French furniture store around the corner on Finchley Road displaying all sorts of improbable, high-end products -- blue sofas shaped vaguely like clams or parentheses, bright sectionals in crazy-quilt patchwork patterns. Olga and I wander past on our walks, and the other day we caught our reflection in one of a series of colorful, metallic stools in the window. If you look very closely you can also see Olga's reflection in the window itself, a hovering ghost-dog.

I'm glad Julian Assange got arrested yesterday. That situation has long been untenable -- him holed up in a tiny embassy, skateboarding through the hallways -- and it's time he face the music for his various transgressions. He had become pathetic, hiding out all these years. As for WikiLeaks, I think it provides a valuable service, but I also think (like any publication) it needs a careful editor to, for example, screen out information that could endanger lives. It lost my respect when it proved itself so easily manipulated by Russian hackers in the 2016 elections. Assange calls himself a journalist, but he seemed to disdain having to make the same sorts of journalistic decisions that real editors deal with every day.

Today's our last workday before Spring Break. Dave and I are off all next week. We have no firm plans, although I hope to walk a little more of the Capital Ring and work in the garden. I'm looking forward to having some time off with no particular place to go.

The Carlton Tavern, and a Siege

Today, we're back in England. I thought you'd like to see what the Carlton Tavern looks like now. This is the pub that was torn down without permission by its owner, on the eve of being historically landmarked. The owner was ordered to rebuild it, brick by brick. The last time I showed it to you, we couldn't see the structure because of scaffolding, but now we have a clearer view.

It looks pretty good, and the basic shape of the building is the same, but I miss the wonderful old tile lettering on the original facade. Maybe that's still to be installed? You can see traces of it next to the window on the far right. (That's the portion of the old building that didn't get demolished.)

I'm looking forward to stopping in and raising a pint to the victorious local residents who campaigned to have this pub restored to their neighborhood -- hopefully sometime soon!

I checked on the Carlton Tuesday morning on my way to work because I had to go to the nearby Kilburn Post Office. I had a package to pick up:

Those of you who follow Vivian Swift's blog may recognize this old book. Vivian wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. She works in a used book shop on Long Island, N.Y., connected to her local library, and came across this volume among some of her donations. The author was a painter, pianist and man-about-town in the Paris of the '20s, where he circulated among Gertrude Stein and her crowd and apparently broke the hearts of many men.

He was described by one as an "exemplary incarnation of these American angels" who fascinate some members of that circle. (MacCown was originally from Missouri. I'm often impressed by Bohemian types who pulled themselves out of Middle America in an earlier, culturally oppressive time and found freedom across the ocean.) "His amorous gifts, no less than his cruel frivolity, seem to merge into a magnetism of which they have been the beneficiaries as much as the martyrs."

He sounds like an obnoxious little chippy.

Anyway, after Vivian blogged about it, I sent her a message saying, "I want that book!" I offered to buy it but Vivian very kindly sent it to me gratis. I fully intend to read it and I'll let you know what it's like. Reviewers in 1950 were not charmed. According to the Saturday Review, the main character is "the dullest young man who ever walked dry-shod through a slough of assorted and fancy sins." In the St. Petersburg Times, a reviewer wrote, "Sometimes I feel the 'Lost Generation' of the 1920s was well lost, and that none of the expatriates should have been repatriated."

I'm especially intrigued by the "15 cents for three days" sticker on the book's front cover -- apparently it was part of a paid lending library at some point. Peculiar!