The Lindy Hop

After two long days of meetings and familiarizing myself with people and policies related to the new job, I feel a little like these two people suspended in midair -- like I've been kept hopping. And the craziness continues today! I'm off early this morning to a staff retreat!

Starting a new job is always tense, even when it's a job that ought to be perfectly manageable. I remember when I started my last new job -- I was petrified the first few days in the office, and that was a job in journalism, my chosen field! This new position is in education, which is a whole new world to me. Yikes.

So far, so good, though. I haven't disgraced myself or made any major missteps -- at least, I don't think so. I've had to speak to two large groups and negotiate one minor snafu, the latter causing me to spend 45 minutes drafting a single, two-line e-mail. I wanted to craft it in just the right way, striking just the right tone, without appearing critical or bitchy or demanding or overconfident. I so look forward to the day when I know enough about my position and the people I work with to let all this second-guessing slip away. (I have to remind myself that not knowing is often the best place to be, or so say the Zen masters.)

On second thought, I'm not experiencing anything like those two in mid-air. They're having fun.

The photo, of two dancers doing the Lindy Hop, is a famous shot by Gjon Mili from a 1943 issue of Life magazine. When I went walking on Portobello Road after work yesterday, I came across the stencil and recognized the silhouettes immediately. When your photo is so famous someone can turn it into a recognizable single-layer stencil, well, that's saying something!

I know this photo because it appears in a book I own called "The Best of Life," which I bought when I was in high school. I memorized every picture. I'm sure it helped me develop my own photographic eye -- not that mine is anywhere near as developed as the average Life photographer's. It definitely helped me see what a photo could do, preserving a fleeting moment, conveying joy or fury, documenting the culture. I own few things from that long ago, but I do still have that book!

That Tchotchke in the Window

This is the shop window at Notting Hill Gate where our onion pot sat, lonely and unloved, for about a week before I came along and opened my wallet. The store looks cool, and they do have some cool mid-century stuff -- the kind of stuff I used to be able to find at Goodwill back in the 1980s. In truth, though, it's a bit overpriced, catering as it does to the Portobello Road tourist.

I check out the window every time I walk by, which makes Dave nervous. But I almost never buy. We have enough stuff to dust/pack/unpack/maintain.

Nearby are a retro men's clothing store, women's clothing store, book store and music store. I think all the shops are related, perhaps under common ownership. I once bought a groovy paisley shirt at the men's store, but I've never even been inside the book or music outlets -- I favor the Oxfam used book store on Portobello Road, which benefits charity, and who buys music in a store these days?

Incidentally, when the proprietors of this outlet say they buy, they're stretching the meaning of the word. When I went to the Alexandra Palace antique show back in March, I bought a German vase from the '70s, burnt orange with turquoise trim. I thought it would look cool and retro, but when I got it home it seemed appallingly ugly. So I took it to this store, and they offered just £3. I agreed, since I'd only paid £10, and I figured getting something back would be better than nothing. The vase appeared in the front window soon afterwards, priced at £15 -- and then promptly disappeared! Some people will buy anything.

Anniversaries and Preparations

Our summer has been so busy I didn't quite register that we'd passed the one-year anniversary of the London riots. Those were such crazy days, especially coming almost immediately after we moved into our flat in Notting Hill. Now that I've lived here for a year and have a better sense of the community, all that insanity seems more surreal than ever.

They caught the rioters who tore up our neighborhood, by the way. You can read about them and their escapades here.

This year, we didn't hear a whisper of violence. The anniversary passed quietly -- here and, as far as I know, everywhere else in London. Thank goodness.

Our next big local event is this weekend's Notting Hill Carnival -- said to be the biggest street party in Europe, attracting more than a million people. The Caribbean-themed event celebrates the immigrant communities that populated this part of London beginning in the 1950s.

You may remember that Dave and I stayed in town last year and watched the carnival, which literally takes place in the street beneath our bedroom windows. I enjoyed seeing it once -- the peacock-bright costumes, the thumping music, the hordes of people on the sidewalks. But this year, we've decided not to hang around. On Saturday we're going up to Norfolk, north of London, to stay a couple of nights in a bed-and-breakfast owned by some former music teachers Dave knows professionally.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood is battening down the hatches, as is typical. Plywood walls and temporary fences have gone up around some of the apartment buildings -- including ours -- and later this week many of the stores will board up their windows. Security teams have been hired. Our neighbors, at least the ones who stick around, will lay in lots of groceries and hunker down!

(Photo: Hats for sale on Portobello Road, on Thursday.)

Arachnopet, Larger Now

Here is our arachnopet, the spider that lives on our balcony. It's older and larger now, about the size of a nickel including its legs. According to what I can tell from various web pages, it appears to be an Araneus diadematus, a common type of orb weaver known in England, rather unimaginatively, as a Garden Spider.

You may recall this spider first showed up a couple of months ago, when it was tiny. I've been watching it grow -- at least, I assume it's the same one. On days it appears it always has a web ready by morning, and it usually stays in the web until midday or until the web is destroyed by the wind (or me, inadvertently). Then the spider may disappear for a few days or a week. I suppose it takes a shady vacation in our boxwood shrubs.

Not as exciting as a fox, I know, but I enjoy my wildlife wherever and however I can.

It's been downright sultry here in London the last few days -- 85 degrees with 50 percent humidity. I took a photography walk through Kensington on Friday and it verged on unpleasant. But I really can't complain, the climate here is so gentle overall -- nothing like the extremes I felt living in New York or Florida.

My new job is cranking up. I went to an orientation meeting on Friday and picked up all my equipment and some paperwork, and yesterday I worked on familiarizing myself with the system. I'll be back at school this week for various introductory activities. And I'm already assigning substitute teachers! That's how you learn, I suppose -- just dive right in.

Real Urban Foxes!

Last night Dave and I were home, watching some TV after an exhausting day, when we heard the barking and squealing of our neighborhood foxes. They are incredibly noisy, especially when they fight. From the balcony, I could see two -- a big one and a smaller one -- running around on the lawn.

I couldn't take a decent photo from the sixth floor, though. So I went downstairs and crept around the edges of the grass.

By this time, the big fox had run off. But the smaller one was still there. He didn't seem to know how to react to me. He'd watch me for a few seconds, and then run to another part of the yard, and then watch me from there.

I think he's very young -- he seems to have a babyish face, and his tail hasn't filled out. (I'm saying "he" for the sake of convenience; for all I know "he" is a "she.")

These photos were the best I could do with the lens I have. Note to self: Buy zoom lens!

Even though they're noisy, and some people consider them pests, the foxes add such an element of excitement to living in London. When we first moved here, I was amazed to find them in our neighborhood, but I've read that they're plentiful all over the city. One was reportedly found sleeping on a filing cabinet in Parliament!

Radiant Baby, with Watermelon

I've already written about my pictorial interest in vacant stores. Here's another one for the gallery. I always meant to check this place out -- that Keith Haring "Radiant Baby" above the door intrigued me -- but I never quite made it. Apparently Dotty Dot sold toys and games, but now even the Web site is disconnected. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

About ten days ago I whimsically bought an entire watermelon on Portobello Road. I thought it would be a funny surprise for Dave and our friend Adam, who was just arriving that day for his visit. Well, you learn something new every day -- even about your spouse. Dave doesn't particularly like watermelon! And when Adam was here we tended to eat out anyway -- and then Dave and I went to Amsterdam, and then his parents returned for the second part of their visit, which entailed more eating out. His mom helped me work a bit on the watermelon, taking a slice here and there, but otherwise I was on my own.

Long story short: I finally finished that freaking watermelon yesterday at lunch.

Yes, I realize that is a first-world problem.

Favorite Morocco Photos

A couple of years ago I posted one of my favorite photos from Morocco, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1992-94. I've been meaning to scan more, and I finally got around to it the other day. Here are some of my favorites.

The guys above were sitting outside a woodworking shop on market day in the town of Ida Ougnidif, near Tafraout in southern Morocco. I still love the cabinet decorated with chickens. I should have bought it.

These boys sold bread on the main street in Ait Baha, where I lived. I was a daily customer! Morocco has some of the best fresh bread I've ever tasted.

A quiet whitewashed street in the northern town of Chefchaouen, in the Rif mountains. At the time the region was said to be a hotbed of marijuana and hash cultivation. I remember being annoyed there because I couldn't find a cup of coffee when I got up in the morning -- apparently no one gets an early start in Chefchaouen.

This kid lived in my village near Ait Baha -- as I recall, his name was Hassan. He came over one day and asked to harvest the weeds that sprouted in my courtyard during the rainy season, so he could feed them to his goats. I said, "Go for it!" During most of the year, that courtyard was dry as a bone and devoid of vegetation.

Fishing nets piled on the docks in Essaouira, my favorite Moroccan city. The Portuguese called it Mogador, and old Portuguese forts and ramparts are still part of the landscape. In summer, when much of Morocco is sweltering, Essaouira is cooled by a brisk wind off the Atlantic.

These kids lived in a village where we built a latrine at an elementary school. (That's the latrine behind them, to the right.) As I took this photo, one of the men in the village said snarkily that the scene, with the dirty and bedraggled kids, was "like Somalia." Kind of sobering to think they're all in their 20s now, maybe with kids of their own.

The market in Taroudant, a city in the south. This looks like a lot of Moroccan markets, known as souks -- I especially love that latticed roof.