The Daily Haiku

Dave and I often laugh about British television -- its irreverence and unpredictability. For example, last night during a commercial break, out of the blue, the announcer on Channel 4 offered "Today's Haiku":

The cat is wary
Ice cubes jingle in my glass
The day is ending.

Drily funny, is it not? Especially between dreary newscasts on television.

I didn't mean to worry anyone about Olga yesterday when I said she had indigestion. It really was just that. She was eating a little less and being a bit less active than usual, but still hopping up for walks at any opportunity. And then yesterday morning she pooped out a stick, and now she's fine. Problem solved. I have a feeling this is just going to be a way of life around here.

(I did discover that if I take a toy with us when we walk, I can give her the toy when she starts developing the urge to pick up sticks, and she'll gnaw the toy instead. This may keep down stick intake. One hopes.)

She goes to the dog-sitter this afternoon, in preparation for our trip to Bucharest. We won't see her again until Sunday.

I applied for the job I mentioned the other day. Interviews start next month. We'll keep our fingers crossed. I'm honestly of two minds about working full time, so even if I don't get it I'll be OK. That's sort of why I haven't had anything to write about the last few days -- thinking about this potential change is taking up so much of my brain.

(Photo: Hackney, on April 4.)

Below Us, On The Lawn

I don't have much for you today -- just a photo of the trees below our balcony. The one on the right is a magnolia. The one on the left, I haven't a clue -- some kind of ornamental fruit tree, I suppose. These are its leaves in the fall.

Olga is having some indigestion, perhaps from ingesting a few pieces of a soccer ball. (Or, more likely, sticks from one of her walks.) We're keeping an eye on her.

Sunshine On My Shoulders

We had a beautiful day yesterday -- cool but not uncomfortable temperatures, a cloudless sky. In the afternoon I made a quick trip down to Central London for a photography walk. I feel like it's been so long since I've been able to play around with light and shadow.

Sunlight changes everything. Entirely new cityscapes appear.

I hacked my way through about 50 more pages of "The Golden Notebook." I am going to stop complaining about this book, I really am. I'm going to shut up and read it. I looked up more reader reviews on Amazon and so many people purport to find significance and meaning in this bone-dry tome that I am just going to make myself plunge ahead.

Maybe it gets better at the end. Which, at this point, is still 450 pages away.

Yesterday during my wanders I passed a sidewalk used-book sale, where I picked up volumes by Nadine Gordimer and H.E. Bates for £1.30 -- practically free, really.

If yesterday was my day of relaxation, today is the day for buckling down. I have to do my substitute reports for the week and I need to update my resume. I am going to apply for that position, even if in the end I decide not to take it. There's no reason not to talk about it. Right?

(Photos: Top, a street in Fitzrovia. Bottom, a self-portrait near Euston station.)

Olga Wins the Match

Yesterday surely must rank among the most riveting news days of the last ten years. I could not stay away from the web as the story unfolded: the gun battle, the dead suspect, the identification of the brothers, and now the survivor's capture. I am so glad they got him alive. The father seems convinced that his sons were framed. Hopefully the fact that one of them is still here to say otherwise will help dispel that belief. (Depending on what he does say, of course.)

I am eager to hear an explanation. Then again, what could possibly explain all this in any adequate way? Why would a pair of Chechens target the United States, the country that gave them homes as refugees, gave them an education (including a college scholarship), provided space for them to develop friendships, families, jobs? Even if they had extremist religious convictions, how could they justify killing their neighbors -- innocent children, for God's sake?

Needless to say, Doris Lessing did not get read at all yesterday.

By the way, thanks to those of you who left comments about "The Golden Notebook." I'm happy to hear that others also found it difficult. At least I'm not alone in that. I will press on for the time being, but I'll keep you posted on whether or not I eventually throw in the towel.

Olga and I had quite the adventure yesterday. I walked with her to Latimer Road, and there we came upon about six middle-school-aged boys playing with a battered old football. Olga went crazy watching the ball, and I struggled to keep her under control on her leash -- at one point even carrying her -- until we'd walked past them. Problem is, they followed us. They were apparently amused by my crazy dog. After wrestling with Olga for a few hundred feet I asked them to please hang back until I could walk away with her.

Well, one of them decided to kick the ball directly to us, whereupon Olga grabbed it and would not let go. I pulled and pulled and couldn't get it out of her mouth. The boys told me to twist the ball, and I said it would be ruined but did so anyway. She eventually let go and I threw it back to them, slightly deflated. As we walked away, they kicked it toward us again. At this point I got angry, and I let Olga grab it. As far as I was concerned, it was hers. I expected the boys to protest or run up behind me and knife me in the back, but they did nothing. In retrospect I think they meant to give it to her; I think she'd punctured it anyway.

Olga carried that ball all the way home, shaking it every once in a while to make sure it was dead. And believe me, it was.

Am I a terrible person for allowing my dog to steal a toy from children? Probably.

Meanwhile I am wrestling with a different conundrum. I've learned of a full-time job opportunity that sounds appealing. If I apply and get it, Dave and I will both be away from home for nine hours a day. Where does that leave Olga? Even with a hired dog walker, that seems tough for a dog. I'm not sure what to do. I'm leaning toward applying, because I can't let my dog dictate the course of my life, but at the same time, I need to keep in mind what's fair for her.

(Photos: Top, town houses in Holland Park; middle, Olga with her newly captured ball; bottom, graffiti on Portobello Road, apparently including an old cassette tape.)

Flowers and Sticks

What a dispiriting week! Enough already with the bad news, you know? At least the FBI seems to have settled on a couple of suspects in the Boston bombing -- that's a glimmer of good news, I suppose. Well, good-ish. Slightly good.

Olga and I went for a long walk yesterday through Kensington. She was in rare form, grabbing sticks off the sidewalk and running while chomping them up. More than one person got a good laugh from her antics. We had a fierce rainstorm in the afternoon complete with pellets of hail.

Otherwise, I worked and read. I'm reading "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing, which is supposed to be a classic book about women and their lives and social condition in the mid-1950s. So far, it is slow going. I looked up some reviews online yesterday to see what other people think of it, and everyone seems to laud it, so I'll press on.

I've only read one other Lessing book, "The Grass is Singing," an early novel about a woman living in British colonial Rhodesia, and that was years ago. I remember liking it, and getting a sense of how unbearably hot and dusty Africa seemed to the Brits who settled there. For example, the woman in the book desperately wanted a ceiling in her house, to prevent the heat from radiating inward from the metal roof. What a concept!

We may suffer from questionable weather in England, but not quite like that.

(Photo: Blooming trees means it's time for iPhone photos, yesterday in Notting Hill.)

Boots

Boots may be made for walking, but mine, at least, did not walk to Margaret Thatcher's funeral yesterday. In the end I didn't have the energy or motivation to brave the crowds. We did watch an account of it on the news, though -- we couldn't avoid it if we'd tried -- and apparently it was quite a spectacle. Many Thatcher supporters showed up, as well as some protesters who turned their backs on the funeral cortege as it passed. Emotions run high when it comes to Thatcher, even now.

Rather than go down to the funeral, I took Olga for a long, long walk along the Grand Union Canal and through Maida Vale. One of my goals was to take a photo of the windowsill above, which I'd seen on a previous walk. The fact that I'd rather shoot this windowsill than a genuine news event shows why I will probably never make a million dollars.

The weather here has improved considerably. We've gone from freezing cold and rainy to sunny, windy and mild in the space of a week or so. Perhaps optimistically, I've washed my jacket, hat and scarf and put them away for the season.

(Top: Windowsill in Maida Vale. Bottom, boots for sale on Portobello Road.)

Off The Hook

Margaret Thatcher's funeral is today at St. Paul's Cathedral, and I'm trying to decide whether I want to go down and spectate. Given what happened in Boston on Monday I'm not sure I could get very close -- the police presence is going to be huge -- but it might be interesting to see who turns out. Thatcher was such a controversial figure there are bound to be some protesters, as well as plenty of dignitaries, on hand. We'll see how ambitious I feel. I might just stay home.

I bought a Romania guidebook on Monday to begin preparing for our trip next week. (To refresh your memory, Dave is taking a student group to a band event and I'm tagging along on my own dime.) I'm really looking forward to this one, almost more than Paris. I'm drawn to unusual destinations! It seems like there's plenty to do and see in Bucharest, which is where we'll be, but I hope to get out into the countryside a bit as well. It all depends on the ease and speed of train travel.

Remember that lingering web site project I was supposed to do for my former boss? Well, I've been dragging my feet, and a few days ago I finally wrote her and told her it wasn't likely I was going to get to it. I just have too much going on here -- my substitute scheduling job for the school, Olga, photography. My life has moved on, you know? I felt really guilty about it, but she wrote me back and said she's actually quit the site herself, so I'm completely off the hook. Whew! We both had a lot of misgivings about the project from the beginning, and the compensation is not commensurate with the workload. I'm glad to be free of it.

I wish we could get some answers about Boston. I know this is likely to take a very long time to sort out, just like the Atlanta Olympics bombing or the Unabomber, but at the risk of sounding like Veruca Salt, I want to know NOW!

(Photo: Window washers in Notting Hill, on Monday.)