We Bring the World into Our Shower

My god, I am tired. What a week! I don't know why it's been so draining, though I have a tickle at the back of my throat and I think an incipient illness may be part of my lack of energy. (Could also be allergies. There's a lot of stuff floating around in the air now.)

Major triumphs yesterday on the overdue books front! We collected from several recalcitrant students with multiple checkouts. Next week will wrap things up, so hopefully whatever's still out there will come back.

Do you want the completely surreal experience (to me, anyway) of seeing our home in a real estate listing? When I wrote several days ago about cleaning the apartment in preparation for the photographer, and specifically mentioned the shower, one of my blog pals commented that the photographers probably would not photograph the shower. Well, let me just point out that there is indeed a photo of the shower online. When you let a photographer into your house, you have to be prepared for any possibility, right?!

(Photo: Seen on my walk home from work yesterday, on Edgware Road.)

A Big Wall, and Bergdahl

A couple of weeks ago I passed this wall on my walk to work, and I loved the way it virtually glowed in the morning sun, in all its big sandy-brown blankness. I also liked the little rusty street sign that reads Abercorn Place (which is a great name for a street).

Of course, that day I didn't have my camera, and it seemed every morning since has been gray and rainy. Until yesterday, when the sun finally came out. I set out to work armed with my camera and got my shot.

In the news: I've been dismayed by the clamor over the prisoner swap that led to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan. To me it seems like a clear win-win situation. It solves the problem of how to handle several of the prisoners in Guantanamo, who were lingering in a legal never-never land with no clear path to resolution, and it brings home Bergdahl. Whether he was in fact a deserter has not yet been proved, nor has the allegation that his desertion led directly to the deaths of other American soldiers. Furthermore, I'm not sure it matters. He was an American prisoner and the policy is to bring prisoners home.

It's funny that none of the people who have now branded Bergdahl a deserter did so while he was still in captivity. I never saw any account of fellow soldiers arguing that he wasn't worth rescuing. It seems clear that they spoke up only after President Obama's Republican opponents, hell-bent on preventing him from having any victory, cranked up their oily PR machine. The whole thing smacks of politics.

It's a shame that Bergdahl's hometown can no longer celebrate his return. I'm not sure I can think of another situation where a returning POW has been so publicly (and prematurely) vilified. It will be a while before we really know what led to Bergdahl's capture, but on a purely human level I can certainly understand why a frustrated or homesick soldier might go AWOL. It may not be right, but I understand.

It's also a shame that the critics of Bergdahl's rescue -- including those who mourn the deaths of other soldiers in Afghanistan -- can't turn their anger on those truly responsible, the American politicians who sent those soldiers there in the first place.

And So It Begins

Our leases are signed. Our deposits are down. Our new couches are paid for. Apparently this move really is going to happen.

(Did I mention that we're buying furniture from some coworkers, the current occupants of the flat where we're moving? It's not furniture I would have purchased new, dark brown and unremarkable, but it will do for now. Best of all, it's already delivered! Most of our current Very Beige furniture stays with the apartment we're vacating.)

Yesterday, another group of real estate agents came trouping through our current home, asking for more photographs. The first showing is scheduled for tomorrow morning -- and the place isn't even listed yet! I suppose I have to make the bed every day now.

Olga greeted the real estate people with enthusiasm, wagging her tail and licking their hands like she'd known them for years. I've tried to minimize the number of strangers coming into the house when she's alone here by insisting that showings occur when she's with the dog walker. But that's not going to happen tomorrow, when the potential buyer can only visit during Olga's customary morning nap time. In any case, she appears to be a lousy guard dog.

Anyway, none of this is very interesting. Sorry about that. It's just where my life is at the moment. I could talk about trying to collect overdue books before school ends, but that's even less interesting. (Oh, and for those of you who asked, school ends on June 13.)

(Photo: Yams for sale in Dagenham, May 18.)

The Dog Remains Housebroken

Apparently the apartment photography happened yesterday as planned. In the morning I tidied the house once again -- decluttering, cleaning the floors, making the beds, polishing the mirrors -- and left for work, essentially turning everything over to the real estate agent and hoping for the best. I was a bit concerned because Olga's digestion has been wonky ever since our recent trip to the canal, and she was home alone for a few hours after my departure. Would the photographer arrive at our pristine, gleaming, meticulously staged home and find...a turd?

Fortunately, that didn't happen.

(I'm sure the photographer would have handled the situation with aplomb. No doubt someone in that line of work has encountered almost every residential nightmare.)

Last night I paid our security deposit and first months' rent on our new place. Occupancy date is July 8. It's starting to feel real now, though it won't feel completely real until we sign the new lease in the next day or two. (Actually, it probably won't feel completely real until July 9!)

I am trying to edit our belongings in anticipation of the move, taking some (mostly unsaleable) clothes to the corner charity shop and some used books to the book thrift store. Dave never understands my compulsion to do this, but to me, moving is all about taking stock of your stuff and thinning the accumulation.

I'm also thinning my online life. I deleted my Twitter account yesterday, not that I ever used it. I think I tweeted approximately five times, once in 2009 and a few more times in 2010. I said clever things like, "I thought I'd try Twitter -- so here goes." Since then my account has been dormant. Yesterday morning I got to wondering whether it even still existed, so I logged in, and there it was -- hibernating, waiting for me. I read some recent tweets by people I'd "followed," mostly because I knew them. A former co-worker tweeted, "Don't judge us because we love tater tots."

I thought, do I really need this in my life?

The answer is no. Facebook contains enough inanity to keep me busy.

(Photo: Dogs at Kilburn Market, May 16.)

Scheduling Mishaps and an Unexpected Funeral

The photography-of-the-flat thing yesterday was a total bust. It's no one's fault but my own. I cleaned the flat, hand-cleaned the kitchen floor, concealed all extraneous and personal items until we were as decluttered as a furniture showroom, and then waited. And waited. And then I called the real estate agent and asked where the photographer was, and he said, "Oh, that's tomorrow."

I looked at my e-mail, and lo and behold, he was right.

So it looks like I won't be here after all when the photographer comes today and performs her magic, because I can't take another long lunch. The real estate agent has keys. He'll just have to make it work without me.

The frustration of mis-scheduling that appointment was made a tad more severe by the fact that the tube was having major problems yesterday, so getting back and forth between work and home twice was a complex and time-consuming procedure. At one point I spent half an hour underground between the Paddington and Bayswater stations, sitting behind a series of other trains during a signal failure.

On the bright side, being home in the afternoon gave me the opportunity to witness the tail-end of the funeral of Count Suckle.

I didn't know that's what it was when I walked past All Saints Church and found a crowd in black in the street out front, watching a trio of performers on drums and a long antelope-horn shofar. I stopped to listen to the musicians, who were remarkable. Only later, when I did some research, did I read about Count Suckle, a Jamaican-born DJ and sound engineer who died May 19.

It was fascinating, watching that crowd, and I could have stayed longer than I did. But as we enjoyed the music, a besotted-looking guy hurled a glass rum bottle from the sidewalk into the street. The bottle turned end-over-end and shattered, spraying bits of glass at the feet of a woman standing in front of me. She protested, but another man told her, "No, no, that's part of it." Is bottle-breaking an element of mourning?

At any rate, that's when I went back to work. When bottles start flying, I do not hang around.

(Photo: Satellite dishes on Westbourne Park Road, Notting Hill.)

Sitting in a Laundrette

It's been a super-busy weekend, and we're not done yet! I was primarily on Olga duty, as Dave had to conduct his high school students in their end-of-the-year band concert yesterday. I took Olga to Hyde Park on Saturday and to Wormwood Scrubs yesterday, so she had a couple of sunny days out running in the fields and woods.

We also went on a long-ish walk yesterday morning, when we went up to Golborne Road so I could shoot this storefront (above). I wanted to catch it at a quiet hour, with no traffic and no people, and early Sunday morning fit the bill. I love all those gradations of green and blue.

Olga and I found a discarded mirror on Portobello Road. She wasn't wild about being in the picture. She had things to do, places to go.

I also went to My Beautiful Laundrette in the morning to wash our blanket and bedspread. In the past I've dropped them off at a different place, a nearby full-service laundromat, which winds up costing about £20 for each item. But after the rug incident I swore I would never go back there, so the laundrette was my only option. It turned out to be much easier, cheaper (£8 for both!) and more pleasant than I expected. I took my current novel, "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which is a light and funny read, and I sat in a shaky laundrette chair and spent 40 minutes in the company of the rhythmic thrum of spinning laundry. My Beautiful Laundrette may not look particularly beautiful on the outside, but it is a comfy place.

I went to Dave's concert in the afternoon, which went well -- from a slightly rushed, panicked version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" to a confident percussion rendition of "Walk Like an Egyptian." Afterwards the whole music department (plus a few hangers-on like me) went to a pub for dinner.

Today, we have a photographer coming to the flat to take photos for a real-estate listing, which means I have to hide the cereal and the dog food and the other items sitting out in the kitchen, and I have to make the beds and clean the shower. *sigh* I'm going to get a few things done this morning and then I'll come back at lunchtime to supervise it all.

Magazine Man

I've mentioned our Magazine Man -- the older gentleman who roams the stairwells of our building, probing the mail slots with his fingers and asking for magazines. (He has a touch of dementia.)

The other day I came home and he was sitting on a bench in our courtyard, reading. He always looks like this, very dapper, in a jacket and cap. I snapped a candid photo, and then asked him if I could take his picture. He said yes and sat for a few shots, looking straight at the camera.

"Are you a Boy Scout?" he asked me when I was finished.

(Note that I was not wearing anything that would even vaguely suggest Scouting.)

By far my favorite photo is the candid one -- even though you can't see his face, I like its unposed, natural feel.