Billy, Barbara and the Bathing Beauty

There's a lot blooming in the garden of the bathing beauty down the street. As you can see, she's got geraniums, foxgloves, some faded lupines and alliums, and front-and-center a big yellow evening primrose. We had one of those one year -- I think it came from a packet of wildflower seeds I sowed -- but it never re-seeded and, seeing this one, I'm thinking I need to plant them again.

Our front patio got a tiny, tiny facelift yesterday. I walked up to Homebase and bought a couple of petunias and gazanias, which I put in pots for the summer. I was amused to see four more King Zacks for sale -- they've restocked! One is quite enough for us.

There was also bathroom cleaning, vacuuming, blah blah blah.

Olga and I then took a walk along Billy Fury Way, where we hadn't been in ages. It's as colorful as ever. I'm not sure what that amoebic blob is -- it reminds me of a Pre-Columbian earthwork from the Nazca Plain.

Fortunately the path was mostly deserted. We saw only a handful of other people.

Dave and I have spent the last several evenings watching "The Midwich Cuckoos," a new TV miniseries based on the 1957 John Wyndham novel. Now I'm curious to read the book to see how it compares. Fortunately we have it in our library! I also want to try some Barbara Pym novels, having read about her in a recent issue of The New Yorker. (I've been plowing through my New Yorker stack the last couple of days, trying to catch up!) But all that will come after I finish my current stack of summer books.

Sawflies and Dog Bums

This is our Philadelphus, or mock orange, which is blooming in profusion and really does smell like orange blossoms. The scent takes me right back to my Florida childhood. Unfortunately the blooms are already beginning to fade and the garden is carpeted with white petals, swirling like snow flurries with every gust of wind.

Those of you who predicted I would not do "absolutely nothing" yesterday, as I vowed, were correct. I managed to find a few things to keep me busy. One was transplanting and dividing an Astrantia that was buried deep in our rock garden and looking terrible. It turned out to be ridiculously root-bound in its little rock "pot" and now it's planted in a place where it can run free. (Well, half of it is -- the other half is in another pot.)

Anyway, no pictures of that because it looks terrible right now.

These little devils are back -- the larvae of the Solomon's seal sawfly, which are devouring our Solomon's seal plants. In past years I've picked them off and killed them to protect the leaves, but I recently read that the plants don't really suffer and as both the plants and the insects are native to the UK, the caterpillars should be tolerated as part of the natural environment. (They do have natural predators, like birds and wasps.) So this year I've been letting some of them hang around and do their thing.

In the afternoon I took Olga to the cemetery, and here's a video so you can tag along:

You'll see her rather lethargically chase some pigeons on West End Green, sniff along one of the cemetery paths past all the long grass and blooming roses, and you'll see a bee on some vetch in the cemetery's butterfly meadow. Finally, you'll see Olga get a post-walk treat in our kitchen -- I love the little hopping dance she does when she's excited. (It's a subtle hop -- don't expect anything too dramatic!)

A couple of times walking with Olga I've run into some neighbors from across the street -- let's call them M and S. They have a new staffy puppy which is very cute, but these two seem like the helicopter parents of the puppy world. The first time I saw them M asked whether Olga was friendly and vaccinated, and I said yes on both counts. She then explained that they were trying to accustom their dog to others, and would it be OK if she "presented" the puppy's bum for Olga to sniff? Bemused, I said "sure," and she held the puppy out back-end first, and Olga dutifully sniffed. The same thing would have happened if the puppy and Olga simply walked up to each other with no "presenting" involved, but whatever.

Anyway, yesterday I saw them again, and as we chatted M pointed to Olga's hind end and said, "Is she about to make a poo or is that just her bum?" Nothing looked out of the ordinary to me, so I said, "That's just her bum. She always looks like that." And S said, "She's an old lady!"

I was offended on Olga's behalf!

Summer!

Well, we got there. We limped across the finish line of yet another school year. I really did feel like a lame racehorse at the end of it all, though. This year seemed especially long and onerous, and I am ready to put it behind me.

Remember that kid with overdue books from January who simply would not respond to my requests to resolve his account or even come and talk to me? He finally did send me an e-mail of apology, though I suspect it wasn't entirely of his own free will, and then did he turn in or pay for his books? NO! Nor did the girl whose book was due in March, or several of the others. By the time we closed I still had 12 students and 6 faculty members with overdue or lost stuff. Some of that will undoubtedly come back in the fall. In any case, those kids are cut off until they take care of the problem.

Yesterday we had a luncheon recognizing departing staff and faculty in the moderately air conditioned gym, and it wasn't as hot and miserable as I feared it would be. (I did indeed wear a t-shirt -- my Joni Mitchell "Hissing of Summer Lawns" album cover shirt, which seemed appropriate, even though that record is more about suburban alienation than the joys of summer.) Afterwards, Dave and I went to a pub and had a couple of drinks with some of his co-workers, and then we came home, and by golly I am steering clear of schoolwork for the next eight weeks or so. 

Hopefully I'll be better able to stay on top of blogging. I know I've slipped in answering my comments and keeping up with blog-reading. I do usually get to comments but sometimes it's a couple days later and by then people have moved on, so maybe now I can be more prompt without that pesky thing called work hanging over me.

Remember the hollyhocks at the tube station? They're really going strong now. This is the plant that I collected and planted seeds from, so if mine survive they should look something like this.

The garden was unfazed by yesterday's heat wave and now it feels pretty pleasant out there -- 68º F (20º C). We're even supposed to get a little rain this afternoon, which would be a nice change. I'm going to sit around and do absolutely nothing.

White Foxglove

One of the foxgloves I grew from seed has turned out to be rather unusual -- perfectly white, with upward-facing flowers. You're getting two views. Above it's shown from outside in front of the living room window, which is reflecting the next-door neighbor's house. (Not Mrs. Kravitz -- the neighbor on the other side.)

And here it is from inside, with reflections of the afternoon light on the living room wall.

It seems like a pretty normal morning around here at the moment, with parakeets on the bird feeder and temperatures of about 70º F. But it's supposed to get freakishly hot later -- at least for England, a land with virtually no air conditioning. The forecast says it will be 90º F (32º C) by 4 p.m.

Fortunately, this weird blast of heat is only supposed to last for a day. Tomorrow we'll be back down in the 70s. Dave and I went around and watered everything in the garden last night, and I took a big can of water down the street to the struggling street tree to help see it through. That probably seems like an overreaction given that parts of the states are in the 90s -- if not the 100s -- every day in the summer. But as I said, for England this is very hot.

And we will be stuck indoors at a lengthy meeting and luncheon marking the last day of school. Yes, FINALLY, it is our last day before summer break. Our school's air conditioning is notoriously inefficient so I'm dressing light. I might even wear a t-shirt.

Fearmongering

The other day, as I was walking through school and passing the lobby area at the bottom of a staircase where all the seniors hang out, I was surprised to find them listening to ABBA's song "Waterloo." That song was old even in my day, and it's almost a half-century old now! It would be the equivalent of me listening to Marlene Dietrich or Bing Crosby while I was in high school. Once again I was struck by the enthusiasm young people show for older music, though they do listen to current stuff too, sometimes.

They won't be listening to it today, though -- at least not at school -- because yesterday was our final day with students. (The seniors were actually done last week.) We have two more days of work, but there's honestly not a whole lot to do. The library is pretty much organized. I'm not sure how I'm going to keep myself busy.

I finished Rebecca Makkai's "The Great Believers" yesterday. What a fantastic book! It was sad, of course, being mostly about the impact of AIDS on gay men and their allies in 1980s Chicago, but it had a depth and maturity that impressed me. It really drove home the transience of life and love and all our human striving.

As I've told Dave, we will look back on the years we're living right now and think of them as a sort of golden time -- being in London, having our garden, having Olga. We will eventually lose it all, because the garden is rented and the dog is old, and that's the nature of life. Even London won't last forever -- certainly not for us, because we ourselves are finite. "The Great Believers" made me appreciate all that.

It also brought back the fearfulness and uncertainty of the AIDS era, just as the TV show "It's a Sin" did for me when we watched it several weeks ago.

Speaking of fearfulness and uncertainty, I passed this group of protesters on Finchley Road on Tuesday evening while walking home from work. They were out spreading anti-vaccine leaflets about spike proteins and other pseudo-science. I picked one up and I was intrigued to see that nowhere did it say what organization put it together or who paid for the printing. At the moment I took this picture, a passing motorcyclist was arguing with the woman in the middle, telling her to get involved in something more important, like getting rid of Boris Johnson. "This is the most important thing right now," she replied.

It's not unlike the fear and disinformation that swirled around AIDS back in the '80s, come to think of it, except that AIDS served as a sort of fuel to discriminate against specific groups of people. Covid (and Covid vaccines) are a more tangibly universal issue.

Anyway, there's a lot of wackiness out there.

(Top photo: Our beach asters, backed by our homemade stepping stones.)

Clothespin in the Sky

Time for another assortment of random iPhone photos taken on my walks about town. I'm finding that I usually have enough pictures to do these posts about twice a month, so I'm right on schedule.

First, a beautiful cluster of orange poppies, backed by an impressive collection of rubbish bins.

Shipwreck in a planter!

A rather hefty German book, set out for the taking, about the art and culture of the Rhine and Meuse region. It didn't stick around long, so apparently some German art-lover wandered past soon after I did.

Well, that sounds like a fairly serious problem.

I'm not sure which is worse -- rubbish left beside a tree, or a crappy handwritten sign duct-taped to its dead trunk. After I took this picture it rained, and all the ink from the sign ran and eventually vanished entirely. So now it's just a sheet of white paper taped to a stump.

This big discarded photographic print, filthy and peeling off its heavy plastic mount, was leaning against a wall on a street corner. (And still there as of yesterday, in fact.) On the back was a handwritten inscription that read, "To XX and XX: This was one of my favorite places and moments on earth. Losing time and space...floating. We wish you many of the (indecipherable)."

O Great Clothespin in the Sky, we worship thee!

And finally, a discarded birthday card I found on the street. I'm not sure I get it, exactly, or even if there is anything to get!

Crude College Humor

This is a geranium (really a pelargonium) variety called "Vancouver Centennial" that I bought several years ago. It has pretty variegated leaves and these bright red flowers. Ours is looking a little ragged because I've never cut it back and it has a lot of faded old foliage on it. Reminder to self: Next spring I need to cut all our geraniums back HARD. For some reason I always find that so difficult to do.
 

Remember that almost-dead hydrangea I found next to a trash can about a month ago? It's sending out tiny new leaves. It will be fine.

This morning, as I was making coffee, I was for some reason thinking about an episode I experienced in college. This involves a sex joke and there's no way to relate it without bring crude, because we're talking about college guys here, but if you'd rather not read a sex joke (an unfunny one, to boot) just skip down to the next picture.

It was autumn 1984, I was 17 years old and I had just moved into the dorms to start my freshman year in college. The guys on my floor were all in the process of getting to know each other and there was a guy named Marty who lived at the end of the hall who was quite boisterous. He seemed to think he was the life of the party, though now I suspect he was overcompensating.

Our dorm was co-ed, with girls living on the east side of the building and guys on the west side, and hallway doors between the two that were locked at night and re-opened in the morning. One day we were sitting around talking and Marty told us that if we were walking down the hall in the morning and saw a pretty girl we were supposed to shout "BEMHO!" This stood for "Before Early Morning Hard-On." And all the guys just laughed as if this was the funniest thing in the world.

I'm sure I laughed too, but I remember thinking, why is that funny? I didn't even really understand it. I still don't. I mean, I get the biology, but not any inherent humor.

(Incidentally, the Urban Dictionary website has a definition for BEMHO that's similar to, but not quite the same as, Marty's. It replaces "before" with "basic" -- which sort of makes more sense. Apparently this weirdness wasn't original to Marty, but he might have twisted it up a bit.)

Anyway, for years I puzzled over this joke. Which is funnier than the joke itself -- the fact that a minor episode of college life perplexed me so much that I still can't let go of it and I'm nearly 56 years old. I bet none of the other guys in my dorm remember it -- probably not even Marty, wherever he is.

The only reason I'm relating this story now is because I finally had the realization that the sense of otherness I experienced upon hearing it -- that sense of not understanding, of not being part of the group -- isn't because I was not into girls or was otherwise different from the guys in my dorm, as I believed at the time. It's because it was A STUPID JOKE! In other words, this episode was not about me at all. It was about Marty's lame sense of humor.

Which is kind of liberating, in a way.

(If any of you laughed at that joke, don't tell me.)

Well, now I feel like I have to write more for those of you who might have skipped down to this point, but to be honest, I don't have much more to say this morning. Sorry! I brought you all the way down here for nothing!

My list of overdue materials is down to six pages, which isn't terrible but also isn't great, given that today and tomorrow are our last days with students before summer break. I guess some of these library accounts are going to have to linger unresolved into the next school year. C'est la vie.