Brighton

We are still cursed with our Internet outage, so I'm back at Starbucks this morning, this time with Dave. We're getting our online fix. It's scary to realize how small life seems without Internet access. It feels a little like being unable to breathe.

We've been on the phone (repeatedly) with our Internet provider, and their diagnostic tests haven't shown any fault with their system. So we bought a new router yesterday and installed it, and our connection still doesn't work. So now we're waiting to hear from the ISP engineers. This is more than just a drag -- I depend on this Internet connection for work!

As you can see, though, being unplugged from the WWW didn't stop Dave and I from going down to Brighton on Sunday as planned. We had a fun day traipsing around town. It's a terrific place for photography, starting with the strange, Moorish-looking Royal Pavilion.

There's a lot of peculiar street art, especially in the back alleys between streets. Dave gamely came along as I scurried down alley after alley.

And of course I found plenty of interesting storefronts...

...sometimes with interesting people walking past.

The beach at Brighton is very pebbly. There's very little sand, and Dave -- always the musician attuned to sounds -- pointed out that the waves make a completely different noise coming ashore on pebbles. I can't possibly convey it in writing, but it is very strange.

There's a huge pier with an amusement park at the end, complete with roller coasters and other rides. We walked out to the end but didn't ride anything. Instead we ducked into a pub and had a pint, watching a passing parade of old and young visitors, including what seemed like a lot of tattooed parents pushing strollers.

The pier included the requisite carnival games. We skipped those too. Even after a pint, I wasn't ready to climb a Loopy Ladder.

We walked back into town and found another pub where we had lunch, and then made our way gradually back to the train.

I'll have to go back down sometime when I have more time to explore -- I think there's a lot more street art lurking in those alleyways, and lots more great storefronts to find.

Sorry I'm not able to keep up with everyone's blogs at the moment. I hope we have this Internet problem sorted out soon!

Internet Outage

I feel like having a tantrum, and sadly I don't have a tiara to go with it.

Our Internet connection inexplicably died yesterday morning, just as I was beginning my standard daily round of blog-reading. It was very strange: One minute it worked, the next it didn't. I shut down my computer and the router, rebooted everything, and nothing seemed to help. Finally I called BT, our Internet provider, and the guy at the call center walked me through some diagnostics that finally revealed we do, indeed, have some kind of network problem. Theoretically BT is fixing it. I'm told it could take 48 hours.

Being disconnected is really not that bad. In fact, in some ways, it's kind of nice -- an enforced Internet vacation. But as is often said, you don't realize how much you depend on the Internet until you don't have it anymore! If there's an upside, it's that we're on a break from school until Wednesday, so for the next few days I won't need a connection to do my job.

Now I'm sitting in a Starbucks a few blocks from our flat, sipping a pumpkin spice latte, listening to Ella Fitzgerald singing "Cheek to Cheek" and being thankful for free coffeehouse wifi.

By the way, here's my beef about call centers in England: Many times, companies and utilities here make you pay to talk to someone at a call center. For example, BT charged me 14 pence per minute to talk to their call center yesterday -- and a good chunk of time I spent on hold waiting to connect to an agent. The same thing happened when I had to call Dave's health insurance company to discuss a claim a few days ago. I think it's fairly outrageous to make me pay to correct a problem caused by someone else, but apparently that's how they do things here.

Last night I went down to Greenwich for a pub outing with Sally and Mike, and the visiting Kim and her friends. It's always great to connect with distant blog pals when they come through town! I also popped into a bookstore and picked up a couple of amusing London photo books by this blogger, and I'm thinking, if he can do it, why can't I? Indeed. Motivational food for thought.

Dave and I are off tonight to see "Looper," the new Bruce Willis flick, and maybe have some Thai food. Tomorrow we plan to check out Brighton, on the southern coast of England. Photos to follow, if and when our Internet connection is restored!

Early Fall Color

I commented on someone else's blog just a few days ago that we weren't yet seeing much leaf color in London. Then I went outside and BAM! Leaf color!

Either I hadn't noticed it before, or it literally showed up more or less overnight. I don't know. Once the leaves start changing it can be a rapid process.

One of the earliest plants to change is always the Virginia creeper (above). It still seems weird to see creeper in England, since I associate it -- of course -- with Virginia. (And the eastern U.S. as a whole.) We also have sumac, another plant I associate with America. I saw some yesterday, in fact, growing along the tube tracks near Earl's Court. It's beginning to change, too.

This is the same grove of horse chestnut trees in Kensington Gardens that I photographed at the beginning of May, when they were in bloom. Now they're lightly frosted with orange like a big Halloween cupcake.

I found this tree in a swanky neighborhood just east of Kew Gardens, where I went walking yesterday afternoon. (I wanted to get a good walk in because it's supposed to rain today, and though I have to go to school for a meeting this morning, I suspect I'll be staying more or less indoors all day.) I walked from Putney, in Southwest London, westward through East Sheen into Richmond, and then north to Kew. Along the way I stopped at a French cafe (run by an actual Frenchman, or at least a guy with a convincing French accent) and had a cafe au lait, and I popped into a charity shop where I got a nearly new Ted Baker shirt for £9 -- a deal I could not pass up! Now I've bought my new clothes for the year.

The Hobbit

This is the storefront that I went down to Soho to photograph on Saturday. How great is that?! I've walked this street a million times, but only noticed this recently -- I suspect an old sign came down and revealed The Hobbit underneath. (Something like The Moonrakers.)

Several little things to catch up on...

-- We bought a new vacuum cleaner. We had an old Panasonic left by our landlords, but part of the hose broke and it was a pain to use because it forced me to clean in a stooped, Quasimodo-like posture. Now we have a Dyson ball, which is just about the best vacuum I've ever owned. Incredibly lightweight and I can vacuum standing up! And no bags! What will they think of next?! The only downside -- we had it delivered on Tuesday, and the store would tell us only to expect it between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. I mean, really. Could there be a wider delivery window? I had to cool my heels and not leave home until it finally showed up at 3 p.m., after which I promptly went running just to get the heck out of the house.

-- Remember the street art photos I posted on Sept. 23? Well, someone on Flickr clued me in on one of the drawings. The green guy looking at his bleeding finger and saying "I like it when the red water comes out" is known as "Salad Fingers." He's the main character in a disturbing series of Internet cartoons from 2004. Here's one. Don't watch it late at night, because it's creepy. But do watch it, because it's also oddly funny and just really bizarre.

-- It's cranefly season again. One or two have made their way into the house, prompting me to catch them and put them back outside. And then they fly in again, probably. I may be wrong but I think I've seen fewer of them than I saw last year. Maybe because of the chilly, rainy summer?

Mr. Styles' Menagerie

On Sunday I took a walk and came across this guy painting a curious mural on a popular graffiti wall near the Westway. I asked if I could take some pictures while he painted, and he said sure, as long as I didn't show his face.

The next day I went back to shoot the finished piece -- one of the errands I had to run Monday morning, despite the rain. (I didn't want to wait for fear the mural would be painted over, which tends to happen quickly.) The artist signed it "Mr. Styles 1985 KLDs." Pretty great! I especially like the duck with the crown and the walking stick -- and all their curious little feet.

Is there a message here? A fox in the henhouse? A wolf in...people's clothing?

Autumn Hydrangea

Autumn is definitely setting in. We've had some chilly, blustery, rainy weather the past several days. This hydrangea down the street is just about played out, going dusky and brown-flowered.

This is what it looked like earlier in the summer -- in early July, to be precise. Quite a difference!

Yesterday I looked for Pat the Balcony Spider and our caterpillar and couldn't find either one. The wind was especially intense on the balcony over the weekend. Maybe they've moved on to warmer locales, though where that would be I'm not sure. A hole in the dirt of a flowerpot? Who knows?

I'm glad I have a comfy apartment from which to view this weather. There's nothing better than lying on the couch in the afternoon reading "Mapp and Lucia" with the wind and rain lashing outside. Especially after tromping around in the rain, as I did yesterday morning, running errands.

"Mapp and Lucia" is a great book, by the way. Written by E. F. Benson and first published in 1935, it's about two very proper British women who become village rivals. It's full of terrific sentences like, "He was almost sorry he had sent her that wonderful Brocklebank letter, for she had been in a very tight place, especially when Miss Mapp had actually seen her stripped and skipping in the garden as a cure for influenza; and had he not, by his stroke of genius, come to her rescue, her reputation here might have suffered an irretrievable eclipse, and they might all have gone back to Riseholme together." There are other books in the series, and I'm going to seek them out, because this is a hoot.

Knife Bin

Here's an interesting discovery I made the other day near Trellick Tower -- a "knife bin." Apparently these have been set up in many locations around London so people can safely discard knives, which in the general absence of guns are the street weapon of choice. The organization that installed these bins says some have collected about 100 knives a year. It's a great idea, but I suspect the people who really need to discard their knives -- those most likely to commit a crime with them -- aren't going to drop them into the bin. It probably does keep discarded kitchen knives from becoming weapons, though.

I had a busy, active weekend. I went running on Saturday morning and then went for a walk in Soho, primarily to take a photo of a storefront that I've been meaning to capture ever since I became aware of its existence. (Photo to come at some point.) I stopped at a cafe, got an Americano with a dash of milk and sat out on Old Compton Street, watching the parade of humanity. That's always such a great neighborhood for people-watching.

(One thing about having a job -- I no longer feel guilty about little frivolous expenditures like stopping at a cafe for a coffee. I used to feel like I shouldn't spend on little luxuries like that, not because we couldn't afford them but because Dave was working and I wasn't. It just seemed wrong somehow. But now, no problem!)

Another little expenditure: I picked up a book called "Inside Notting Hill," about the history of the area, at our corner bookstore. (On sale for just £3.99!) It's been a fascinating read. Did you know that 42 years ago, Jimi Hendrix died in a basement room just a few blocks from where we live now? I went to see the building yesterday -- apparently it was once known as the Samarkand Hotel, but now it's an elegant yet nondescript residential building. I would never have known it as a rock n' roll landmark!