Tight Squeeze

The Crowded Brain

Will this week ever end? Good lord.

I have been bogged down in a hellacious period at work, which I won't bother to bore you with. I will say that I wound up literally screaming in frustration on Monday night, right before I went to bed. Let me tell you, getting that hot under the collar right before bedtime wreaks havoc on your sleep patterns. Or lack thereof.

But the things that prompted me to scream seem to be getting addressed, so that's good, and the events that have produced my huge workload are almost over. I don't think this will be typical of the new job. I think this is just an unusually intense period.

Breathing. Breathing.

Despite all that, yesterday was actually a really good day. The weather was beautiful, so I put my new favorite band, Stornoway, on my iPod and went running, which did wonders for my outlook. I vacuumed the house, got caught up on some reading, repotted some bushy purple heather I bought at an overpriced housewares store at Notting Hill Gate.

We've been wrestling with Dave's medical insurance over some visits to the doctor he made in July and August. (Dave has a private insurance policy through his employer, which theoretically will allow him to get certain medical procedures more quickly than he would through the NHS.) We kept getting bills from the doctor, and we had to jump through some hoops to get doctors talking to one another and to the insurer, and now it looks like things are resolving. But yesterday we got a mysterious £20 check (or as the British would spell it, "cheque") from the insurance company, and we have no idea why. It's the strangest thing. I never expected the insurance company to send us money. That never happens!

(I'm sure it will bite us in the behind somehow.)

We've also committed a terrible social faux pas. A few weeks ago our neighbors, Chris and Linda, invited us to dinner at a posh London restaurant. We said sure, set a date, and then Dave and I promptly, inexplicably forgot all about it. We were supposed to go last Saturday, but we obliviously made other plans. Chris came over a few days prior and said something alluding to our upcoming night out, and I'm sure all the blood drained from our faces. He was very nice about it and we rescheduled for this weekend, but still, I feel terrible. There's just too much running through my head at the moment, you know?

(Photo: Worker with shopping cart, North Kensington, Sept. 7)

Spies, Blue Dogs and Back Hair

A collection of fun graffiti encountered on my wanderings over the past week or two!

First, remember "Spy vs. Spy," the Cold War cartoon from Mad magazine in which two weirdly birdlike spies continually try to off each other? Here's an homage by local street artist Diet, who sometimes spells his name Dyet.

And here's an apparent homage to back hair, of all things, signed (I believe) Bronson.

I really like this piece, which I found in a completely unexpected place during my recent walk along the Grand Union Canal. I have no idea who did it.

Yay for Mom!

A couple of shrunken heads and a fractured skeleton by Wilbo and Kesh.

And finally, to bring us full circle, another piece by Diet, the "Spy vs. Spy" artist -- this one featuring a blue dog. I've heard of yellow dogs, but never blue ones*!

* Actually, there appear to be blue ones too. Who knew?!

Neighborhood Funeral

We had some unusual goings-on in the neighborhood yesterday -- a funeral procession!

I'd heard more than a week ago from our next-door neighbors that a man in another part of our complex had died. He was no one I knew. I'm not sure I'd even seen him before. At any rate, I suppose that's who the services were for yesterday.

I was working in our flat when I heard the clop-clop of horse hooves. I thought maybe the horses were back -- but no, these were different horses, clop-clopping up the side street and turning into our parking area with a hearse in tow. They attracted a great deal of attention from the tourists on Portobello Road.

Behind the horse-drawn hearse, which already contained the casket, a line of empty black cars pulled up. A group of my neighbors, mostly in black, stood outside the building near a few dozen bouquets spread on the grass. The drivers collected the chrysanthemums and gladioli and loaded them onto the first car in the procession.

Meanwhile, everyone else climbed into the rest of the cars, and soon enough, off they all went, down Portobello Road. I suppose it's not much different from your average funeral procession in the U.S. -- except for the plumed horses and the carriage with its top-hatted drivers, which gave everything a sombre Victorian air.

In other news:

-- Hours after I posted my Star Trek entry, Mike, Sally and I also watched a few episodes of the old animated Star Trek series, which ran on Saturday mornings in the early '70s. I remember watching it as a kid, and in particular I've always remembered an episode in which the Enterprise flies into an alternate universe, where space is white and the stars are black. Neato! We found that 1974 episode and watched it again. It's a much better show than you'd think for a cartoon, with some of the same writers as the original series and all the original actors doing their characters' voices.

-- Little London Observationist posted a slew of my London storefront photos yesterday, and they're scheduled to use another of my photos tomorrow. Sweet!

Seeing vs. Believing

Dave and I watched a documentary yesterday afternoon called "Islam: The Untold Story." Unlike the recent crude hatchet-job "The Innocence of Muslims," which led to all the unrest across the Islamic world, "Islam: The Untold Story" tries to look at the origins of Islam from a historical, scholarly perspective. Where was Mohammed really from? Did Islam really inspire the expansion of Arab influence throughout the Middle East?

It was an interesting movie, but it made its creators nervous enough that they cancelled a planned screening in London -- and this was just before all hell broke loose in Libya.

In Western culture, it makes sense to question. We grow out of a tradition of inquiry and scholarship, reason and evidence. After all, during and after the Renaissance, reason diminished the influence of many of our own religious institutions. How many documentaries have been made questioning the historical authenticity of the Bible, of Christ's life? Countless.

In much of the Middle East and the rest of the Islamic world, though, you just don't ask. The belief is that Islam comes straight from God in the words of the Koran, and that's all there is to it. You either believe or you don't. Asking questions merely muddies the teachings with human perspectives and frailties. (It's not unlike the approach of Christian fundamentalists, who fervently believe in Biblical literalism and don't like to see the Bible challenged.)

Sometimes I think religion just messes up the world -- at least, religion of the "I'm-right-and-you're-wrong" variety, which sadly seems to be growing in influence. I wish we could all relax our grip on our tightly held beliefs just long enough to acknowledge that others exist with other, equally valid beliefs. Things get dangerous when people get so consumed by their ideas and beliefs that they lose sight of each other, of humanity. The ideas become more important than the people they serve.

This documentary was interesting because it illustrated so beautifully the clash in two approaches to religion -- a scholarly, secular approach of reason and inquiry, and the faith-based belief that supersedes reason. In this case, the secular approach ultimately resolved nothing, because aside from the religious texts, there are no written records to shed light on the origins of Islam. And besides, does that secular history even matter? Isn't what people believe really the issue that shapes the world today?

I didn't object to the movie at all -- not in the way I objected to "The Innocence of Muslims," which is so clearly a trashy piece of anti-Muslim propaganda. "Islam: The Untold Story" at least tries to be respectful, and personally, I find inquiry interesting. But ultimately I don't think it achieved much. I believe in reason and scholarship, but so far, it can't answer all of humanity's questions -- which is what believers have been saying all along.

(Photo: Tooting Bec, last week.)

Trekkie Weekend

I spent last night with my friend Sally and her family, in the south London neighborhood of Charlton, near Greenwich. Ever since Dave and I learned that her husband Mike is a big fan of Star Trek, we've intended to have a Trek-viewing evening. We finally pulled it together last night, and then Dave went and got sick on me at the last minute, so I came down by myself. Sally, Mike, their daughter Sorren and I watched four episodes while noshing on a yummy stew of rabbit and venison. (Not particularly Treklike, but then, what food would be?) I stayed over, and now I'm sitting in their quiet living room, typing away while one of their cats purs and rubs his cheeks on the corner of my computer screen. (Maybe he usually gets fed in the mornings? He's being annoyingly attentive.)

I won't bore you with the particulars of the Trek episodes we watched. I'm a fan of the original series, so we focused mainly on that. Indeed, if there's any upside to Dave's absence, it's that I only had to sit through one episode of Next Generation. (It was about the Borg, so that made it more or less OK -- and I kind of fell asleep anyway.)

Getting down to this part of town was interesting. For some reason, the London Underground people decided to shut down several of the tube lines this weekend. So I had to go a sort of roundabout way using a light rail network and buses, which took about an hour and 45 minutes. Then I had a manic bus driver who seemed to have overindulged in PCP, speeding through the streets, smashing the wheel into the curb at bus stops and visibly alarming the waiting passengers. I was glad I got off in one piece!

Today, brunch this morning and then back to Dave in good old Notting Hill.

(Photo: Fluffy waits patiently in Maida Vale.)

Narrow Boats

I never told you about my long walk on Wednesday. I walked west along the Grand Union Canal, which I've mentioned before and along which I often run. I went farther in that direction than I ever have -- about five miles -- through the industrial grit and cranes and tanks and faceless block buildings of North Acton.

Along the way I saw lots of narrow boats, the ubiquitous canal boats that are built for plying the man-made waterways of the British Isles. I always love seeing how people decorate their narrow boats. There seems to be an unspoken agreement that quirky is the way to go.

You gotta admire someone who uses an old hiking shoe as a planter. But why not?

People live on board their narrow boats, or at least use them as vacation retreats. I've often told Dave we should buy a narrow boat if we ever have to leave our rented flat. I'm kidding -- I think -- but it seems like it would be a cheaper alternative to London housing! (Dave hates the idea, insisting that a narrow boat would be small and damp. Which is probably true.)

Still, they are picturesque, aren't they?