A Walk Through Ilford

I've been feeling a need to do some exploring, so I took a photo walk yesterday through Ilford, an area of East London that I'd never visited before. It's a busy, immigrant-dense neighborhood, with many South Asians, Middle Easterners and West Indians. It made for some interesting photography, but I wish I had more courage about photographing people directly and at close range. I saw several opportunities for incredible photos but I just couldn't bring myself to take them. Sometimes it just doesn't feel right, you know? And you have to go with your instincts.

Anyway, I started in Gants Hill and walked south through Ilford to Barking. I was out for several hours and I stopped for lunch at the cafe above. I'm a sucker for anything Titanic, even though the theme wasn't hugely evident inside -- just a shelf featuring a model of the ship, some related books and nautical bric-a-brac. (Curiously, this is not the first Titanic Cafe I've found in London!)

While wandering around a residential neighborhood, I found a sad, battered, wilted hydrangea lying on the ground in a damaged plastic pot. It looked like it had come from a nursery and then been run over, stepped on or crushed in transit. I thought, "I bet Dave can rescue that!" So I picked it up, and just as I was about to walk away, a man came out of a seemingly vacant nearby house and stopped me. "Oh, is this yours?" I asked, thinking, "Have I gone so daft that I picked this up out of his front garden without even realizing it?" But he said I could have it, no problem. So I hauled it back to West Hampstead. Dave pruned away the damaged bits and we'll put it in the ground today.

I also chatted with two older gents outside an antique shop who talked at length about the neighborhood and how it had changed. They'd both been there for decades and remembered it as a white and Jewish area. "There are streets here named Bengal, Madras and Khartoum, and when the newer immigrants saw that they thought they were home," one joked. (There are also streets named Britannia, Jersey, Norman and Saxon, but I didn't press the point.) Anyway, to hear these guys tell it, antiques are a hard sell in Ilford nowadays.

Hampstead Heath and Disco

Dave and I were in post-party recovery mode yesterday. We had a day of relaxation, starting with a brunch at a local French bistro where, out of the blue, they comped us glasses of champagne. Good Lord. Apparently it's a champagne kind of weekend! Turns out it was the fourth anniversary of the bistro's opening. I guess we have a talent for being in the right place at the right time.

After we came home I did laundry and then took Olga to Hampstead Heath. Those spiky purple wildflowers are blooming in profusion again, just as they were at about this time last year. If I ever knew what they're called, I've forgotten.

Olga once again seized the opportunity for a mud bath.

And then we found this guy, sitting out on a bench playing his guitar and singing. He had a great view, high on a slope with the skyline of London visible beyond the trees. I took several photos of him and we had a chat, but it was difficult to get the picture I wanted -- of him and the city -- because of the angle of the bench. Olga seemed to dig his music, though.

Speaking of music, I've started reading the most fascinating book about the history of disco, "Turn The Beat Around" by Peter Shapiro. I'm reading it with iTunes by my side, so when the book mentions an obscure pre-disco dance or funk track from the '60s or early '70s, I can look it up and listen to a clip. "Black Skin Blue-Eyed Boys" by The Equals, for example -- it was completely unknown to me, but there it is on iTunes. The wonders of the Internet!

A Success!

Well, now I feel like a bit of a Scrooge, because despite all my complaining and trepidation about hosting our party, it turned out really well! People came, mingled, talked, laughed and stayed much later than we thought they might -- and not in a bad way. The food was eaten, the wine and champagne were drunk. (Well, most of the champagne -- we still have one unopened magnum, which we couldn't fit in the refrigerator and thus was too warm to serve.) Nothing was broken. I'd call that a success!

I get why some people enjoy hosting. There's something very fulfilling about having all your friends over and watching them meet and get to know each other. There's a satisfaction in knowing that you're the catalyst for this meeting, and in seeing everyone have fun.

Plus, hosting a party is a great incentive to get the house cleaned up. All those little surfaces I've been meaning to dust forever are now dust-free!

Everyone suitably and justifiably marveled at Dave's gardening, and I finally learned from our friend Sally what that mysterious orange flower is that appears periodically on our lawn. It's hawkweed. Like our loosestrife, it's considered an invasive species in some states in the U.S. (what is it about our garden?) but apparently it's perfectly acceptable here in England. I like it.

(Photo: An unusually pretty assortment of garden waste in our recycling bag!)

A Party with the Beatles

Today is the day of our little garden party. I've only been up about 15 minutes but already I've Windexed our glass tabletops and made my morning coffee. I've got no time to waste because things have to get done before I leave for French class at 9:30.

(Ooooh -- a parrot is back on our bird feeder right now!)

Dave spent a lot of time working on the garden yesterday, and he ordered the food and the wine. I laundered our sheets, did some basic housework and took the dog to Hampstead Heath, but did very little in the way of party preparation. I feel a little guilty leaving it to him, but as we've established I'm not an experienced host! This is his bailiwick!

At the end of the school year in June, a student gave Dave and two other music teachers each a magnum of champagne. So the others are bringing theirs to the party and we're going to drink them today. One cannot have a bad time with champagne present, although it has been known to give me a headache later.

We had a crazy thunderstorm in the middle of the night. It was sunny when we went to bed and sunny when I got up this morning, but at around midnight there was rain, crashing thunder and howling wind. It seems now like something I imagined, or a bad dream, except that the ground is wet and clearly rain really happened.

(Photo: Graffiti on the wall of Abbey Road Studios in St. John's Wood.)

A Ladybug is Born

This was the scene yesterday in the garden. Dave and I just happened to be checking out the ladybird/ladybug pupae at the exact moment that one of them was emerging!

I wondered what this process would look like. Would the bug leave a case behind? (Yes!)

It retreated to the underside of the leaf. Ladybugs apparently have to harden their shells after pupating, and during that half-day hardening process they gain pigment -- including spots. They also have to hide from predators. So maybe that's what was going on.

I checked this morning and a few more have emerged. Even the shiny, hardened ones still look more or less plain orange, though. We seem to have a spotless variety.

Yesterday wasn't a bad day to be born, temperature-wise. The inferno of the previous day subsided as quickly as it came, and this morning it's even a bit chilly (63º F).

You'll notice that I always report temperatures in Fahrenheit. When we moved to England, Dave very quickly transitioned to the Celsius scale, but I still think in Fahrenheit -- in fact, it drives me crazy when I ask him the temperature on a beautiful, cool sunny day and he says, "23 degrees." I tell him to speak in real temperatures!

Bursting into Flames

I'm not sure exactly what's happened. We've gone from our normal gentle, temperate weather to living inside an Easy Bake Oven. Yesterday was the hottest July day on record for the UK -- 98º F at Heathrow airport. That's just a few degrees short of the hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK.

Needless to say, all the ladybird larvae in our garden that had the misfortune to be in direct sun were standing up yesterday! (But the ones in shade were not, which seems to confirm my suspicion that their behavior is somehow related to heat, or maybe light.)

Dave and I do not have air conditioning, which is typical for the UK, so we kept yesterday's activity to a minimum. I went down to St. John's Wood to pick up some scanned negatives, and then we spent the afternoon in the dining room -- the coolest room in the house. I worked on another photo project, and Dave worked on some music for the next school term.

Once the hottest part of the afternoon was past, the heat wasn't unpleasant. We had dinner outside on the patio, and sat in the garden on our rickety bench. If only we had fireflies in England! That would have made our summer evening complete. I miss fireflies.

One thing that makes hot weather interesting -- everyone's windows are open, so you can hear everything going on in all the neighbors' houses. The kid playing Frere Jacques on the flute. The crying baby. The (probably drunk) guys belting out a pop tune in the garden up the street. City life!

(Photo: Kilburn, on June 11.)

The Window Washer

We're having a party on Saturday. Have I mentioned this? Probably not, because until yesterday I've sort of had my head in the sand. I'm not feeling hugely enthusiastic about it, I must say.

I didn't grow up around parties. Generally speaking, my parents would sooner die than host anything, although occasionally my mom would allow our house to be used as the site of a potluck gathering for people from work. I don't come by party-hosting naturally.

Dave is more excited about it, and in fact the party was kind of his idea -- initially it was going to be our wedding party, back when we thought we could marry in England. (Now, in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, we're thinking we'll get married in Florida later this year.)

So, anyway, yesterday I finally got motivated and began preparing for this shindig. Most dramatically, I cleaned all the windows in the house, which was a long, hard job! At one point I had to stand in a hedge, holding a bucket of soapy water, leaves dropping down my shirt, to squeegee the front windows. They all look great now, though.

It was a beautiful day, so Dave and I had lunch on the high street -- we sat out in a little cafe and watched the passers-by -- and then went to a local garden center. It was a peculiar little place we'd never been before, tucked behind the parking lot for a construction site. I wanted to buy a hanging basket for a forlorn-looking vacant hook near our front door, but they didn't sell finished baskets -- so I bought some petunias and bargained for an old, slightly rusty empty basket, which I brought home and planted. The hook is no longer forlorn!

We also bought a few more plants for the garden -- because if there's one thing I've learned from Dave it's that you can never have too many.

I know you're probably sick to death of me writing about ladybirds/ladybugs, but check this out -- yesterday afternoon several of the pupae were standing on their heads (or tails?) in this fashion. I'm not sure what was happening. I tried to find the answer online, and one commenter in a thread on a gardening site said it's a defensive posture to keep away predatory wasps. That seems unlikely to me -- why would a wasp be any less likely to attack a "standing" pupa? The standing ones all seemed to be in direct sun, so my theory is it has something to do with heat.

If that's the case, they'll all be standing today -- it's supposed to get up to 92º F!

(Top photo: A cafe in Kilburn.)