Moon Street, a Film Crew and a Big Green Cat

I was feeling a bit cooped up yesterday morning. The sky was gray and although I briefly walked the dog, I'd resigned myself to spending the day more or less inside. But as the morning wore on the sun came out weakly, and I decided to take a walk through Islington.

I started at King's Cross and walked east on Pentonville Road and north through Barnsbury. One of my goals was Cloudesley Square, a neat little neighborhood of white townhouses surrounding a square with a church in the middle. Unfortunately what I took to be the front of the church is under construction and covered with scaffolding -- so here it is from the back.

I came across this street art of Tina Turner, which is pretty cool. I especially love the little hand-written message above the art itself: "Why did Obama go?"

I found a tiny street called Moon Street -- this is pretty much all of it. Doesn't that sound like a great address? I'd love to be able to tell someone I lived at 9 Moon Street in London. It's very Harry Potterish. (And it has the added benefit of sharing a name with Ms. Moon.)

As I walked north near Upper Street, I passed this peculiar group. The man and woman in front (not recognizable to me) were being followed by a film crew including a cameraman and someone carrying a long microphone boom. Then there's that guy in a high-vis vest with a blanket on his head (?) and the guy walking dogs and wearing headphones. It's not a great shot -- I only had time for one -- but you get the point.

For lunch, I stopped at a Starbucks near the Highbury and Islington overground station. I wouldn't normally go to lunch at Starbucks but we have gift cards given to us by Dave's students, so I'm trying to use them. The cashier was a young man, I would guess of Eritrean or Ethiopian descent, who heard my accent and asked if I was on holiday. When he heard I'm originally from Florida he said, "Seriously, man. Why would you move here from Florida?"

Florida's mythology still carries a lot of weight.

(Side note: Dave and I just watched a four-part British TV show called "Dale Winton's Florida Fly-Drive," in which the well-known British TV host travels around Florida, from St. Augustine to Miami to St. Petersburg and even Weeki Wachee. He was a funny guy, quite camp, and I got a kick out of seeing Florida through his eyes. I was shocked to read just now that he died last April -- I had no idea when we were watching the show that he was no longer with us. I probably saw news of his death at the time but didn't know who he was.)

Anyway, back to my walk. I couldn't resist photographing a shop whose URL is "webuyanyporn.com"!

I walked north through Holloway and finished up in Archway, passing a rendition of Dick Whittington's Cat covered in sempervivum plants -- they're called house leeks here in England, but in the states I knew them as hen-and-bitties or hen-and-chicks. Pretty creative!

All in all, it was an excellent day out. As usual, I felt much better engaging with the city and getting some exercise!

Days of Darkness

I always forget how little we see the sun at this time of year. The days pass in a kind of twilight gray, especially when the sky is overcast. The low light leads me to seek out other sources of photographic inspiration!

Olga and I came across the lighting store above when we walked to Childs Hill Park yesterday morning. Wonder what their electricity bill is like?

The park and the landscape are looking very wintry too, and I've been paying more attention to some of the plants. The gardening shows always advise planting species that provide "winter interest," which usually means tufts of grass or colored stems. These shrubs at Childs Hill definitely show off the latter.

We've been thinking more about our own garden, in preparation for pruning and getting it ready for action in spring. We have a tree-trimmer coming on Wednesday to give estimates for some trimming jobs we need done -- nothing too major.

Our daffodils and crocuses are sending up green spiky shoots!

Some of you asked to see Dave's new chair. Here it is, with the loveseat that it displaced pushed into the corner behind it. I suppose we need to call the council and arrange for that thing to be removed. It's not worth giving away -- part of its internal framework is broken. It's landfill-bound. (Or wherever furniture goes to die in London -- besides the street!)

Oh, speaking of debris on the street, I asked my neighbor about the abandoned Christmas tree in front of our house. He said it is indeed theirs and he'll take it to the recycling spot. I asked if he needed help and he said no, that he'd do it this weekend. As of this moment it has not moved.

Last night Dave was making dinner and he had an amazing little blue Le Creuset pot on the stove. "Where did you get that?" I asked him. "You found it for me," he said. (!) I had no memory of this pot at all, but he's right -- I found it walking the dog a couple of years ago.

I must be losing my mind.

The Right Chair

Olga has an upset stomach this morning. There's lots of gurgling going on, and she demanded to be let out at 5 a.m. She probably ate something mysterious, as is typical for her. She seems better now, having spent twenty minutes foraging for grass in the garden.

Do you remember our wayward recliner? I'm sure you don't, because I barely remembered it myself. Last year, I ordered Dave a La-Z-Boy recliner for his 50th birthday. I placed the order in May, with his birthday at the end of June. I thought it might come in time. (Ha!)

It finally arrived at the beginning of September, and when it did, it was the wrong chair. (Click the link above for the whole story.) So we sent it back in exchange for the correct one. And we waited some more.

To be honest, I pretty much forgot about the whole thing. Every once in a while I'd think, "Oh, I've got to find out where that chair is." And then life would intervene and another week or two would pass. In late December I got an e-mail from the furniture company thanking me for my order, which seemed odd, since I hadn't recently been in touch with them.

I finally called early this week, and lo and behold, the chair was finished. (I guess that's what I was supposed to infer from that thank-you e-mail?)

The delivery guys showed up yesterday, parked illegally across the street, carried the chair past our neighbor's discarded Christmas tree and up our front steps, and through the house to our living room. They unwrapped it and set it up and voila, Dave finally has a recliner.

Last night, he ooohed and aaaahed as he sat down and reclined, and then he fell asleep during "The Romanoffs" (which I love, by the way) and he wound up sleeping in the chair at least part of the night. When I went to bed I tried to wake him up and he wouldn't budge. I guess he likes it!

(Photo: A windowsill in the library as I was locking up last night, around 4:58 p.m.)

Trash Rage

I often pass this street corner while walking Olga in the mornings. It always looks like this -- piled high with trash bags and boxes and various pieces of discarded paraphernalia. There were fax machines here for a while, and hubcaps, and now there are bags of what looks like roofing material.

This is just one of the problem areas in our neighborhood where trash seems to perpetually accumulate. I think some of it comes from nearby businesses and/or the apartment dwellers who live above the shops. They don't appear to have trash bins. Instead, they set their bags out on the sidewalk. The problem is, they don't just set them out on trash collection day. They're out there for days and days at a time.

I know I've complained about our trash collection, or the lack thereof, in the past. I maintain that London, as a whole, doesn't manage solid waste disposal very well. I realize millions of people live here in close quarters, and that's got to be a challenge. But I lived in Manhattan for a decade and I didn't see nearly as much loose trash as I do here.

A local magazine, the Hampstead Village Voice, recently did some articles about the problem. (They headlined that issue of the magazine "Dumpstead" -- you can see its front cover taped to the pole in the top photo. I didn't put it there, I swear.) The contractor responsible for trash collection in the Borough of Camden -- which includes Hampstead -- told the magazine that "Camden's approach is to use less on-street bins as they attract fly-tipping." (Fly-tipping means unauthorized dumping.)

I don't understand that rationale at all. Seems to me like we have fly-tipping now. It's not just businesses and residents lacking their own bins -- there are very few public trash cans, too. In New York there was a can on every street corner. In London, you sometimes have to walk long distances to find one. A lot of people give up, and dump their drink cups and dog poo bags and fast-food wrappers beneath the nearest tree.

It sounds like the borough doesn't want to be responsible for having to empty bins, so they resort to an almost Soviet desire to redefine reality by pretending the trash will simply not appear.

But appear it does. We're all living with it. We wade through it every morning and every evening.

At this time of the year, to make things even more exciting, we have discarded Christmas trees to step around. The council has set up tree-recycling locations throughout the borough, but many people apparently can't be bothered to carry their trees there. Instead they abandon them on the sidewalk. One has been abandoned directly in front of our house, in fact. (Perhaps by our upstairs neighbors?) Dave and I will probably wind up carrying it to the recycling collection point ourselves.

It makes me nuts that people can't dispose of trash more responsibly, and why does the borough make it so difficult? Each problem feeds the other. What we're left with is an omnipresence of filth.

In a Rush, but Well-Rested

I went to bed well before my bedtime last night, slept solidly, woke up when Dave got out of bed at 6 a.m., then fell asleep again until 7. So now I'm feeling a bit of urgency, shall we say, to get up and get moving because otherwise I am going to be seriously late to work! I'm not sure why I was so tired.

I did have a busy day yesterday. The eighth-graders are launching their interviewing project, which means I'm doing my annual dog-and-pony show -- drawing on my past as a journalist -- about how to conduct a good interview. I spoke to two classes yesterday and I'll be facing two more today. I'll be so glad when this is over. I always feel a sense of dread when I have to get up in front of a group of students, which makes me all the more impressed that teachers do it every day.

I also had a meeting of the mission review committee. But still, it's not like I was doing anything requiring that much extra exertion.

So, who knows? Sometimes I think the conditions are just right and we catch up on our rest, even when we haven't noticed that we're behind. And now, off to work!

(Photo: A Chinese restaurant in Kensington.)

Retro Goodies and a Doomed Apple

Since yesterday's post was so long and wordy, let's have a visual one today -- photos from the ol' iPhone!

First, a monstrous early-morning shadow on the windshield of our borrowed car in Florida. Creepy yet tropical, kind of like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I came across this sticker on the street in West Hampstead. Having once received a hand-poked tattoo, I'm not sure what the advantage is -- except that like film or vinyl records, it has a sort of retro romanticism. (I've mentioned my tattoo a couple of times before.)

Merry Christmas from the dog statue on Broomsleigh Street!

I came across more discarded cassettes the other day while walking Olga. This was an interesting assortment, everything from Simon & Garfunkel, The Rolling Stones and The Cult (whoever they were) to Doris Day. Someone had eclectic tastes!

This '50s dinnerware was on display in the V&A. I actually used to own a few pieces of this pattern, called "Homemaker," which was British. I bought mine at a thrift shop in Plant City, Fla., of all places. I don't have it now -- I think I gave it to some friends. Museum pieces! Who would have believed it?!

Speaking of museum pieces, I found this phone waiting for a taker on a garden wall near our flat. I didn't take it, but I bet someone did. (Actually, I don't think it's that old -- it has touch-tone buttons. It's just made to look old.)

And speaking of finding things, I came across this apple on a sink in a bathroom at work. I felt sorry for it, because although it looked fine, it was as good as garbage. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants an apple found in a public restroom.

Finally, this was the view yesterday afternoon in our library reference room, with a blazing sun lighting up our west-facing windows. In England, a sunny day in winter is always a thing to be appreciated!

The World's Worst Record Reviewer

One of my blog pals, the esteemed Mr. Yorkshire Pudding, just wrote a post about the Internet and the many ways it has changed our lives. For better or worse, it has made a wealth of information quickly and conveniently available, in ways that could only have been dreamed of 30 years ago.

Here, in roundabout fashion, is an example from my own private files. When I was in college in the '80s, I was a writer on the student newspaper. The great thing about writing for student publications is that you wind up doing everything -- writing and editing news, features, headlines, editorials and columns. In my three years on the paper, I worked on every section except sports.

One day in early 1987, a colleague suggested I write a record review. I don't remember what prompted the suggestion -- I was probably enthusiastic about a new album that arrived in the office mail. What followed was an uninspired, sporadic foray into music reviewing that lasted all of about four articles.

My first outing was with Peter, Paul and Mary's album "No Easy Walk to Freedom." I began by asserting, quite incorrectly, that social comment in music was "coming back into vogue after a lengthy hiatus." Where I got the idea that it had ever left is anyone's guess. (My editor, with whom I had frequent political disagreements, snidely headlined the article "Social Comment Returns." Somehow that succinctness made my premise seem doubly ridiculous.)

I followed that up with a thumpingly idiotic review of Suzanne Vega's album "Solitude Standing," which I blithely pronounced was "unlikely to garner her any new fans." (It went on to become the biggest success of her career.) I called "Tom's Diner," one of the better-known tracks, "too long" and "irritating." The song "Luka," which became a top-ten hit and earned Grammy nominations, I called "commercial and nondescript" and I professed to be unable to tell what it was about.

In what was probably my most accurate review, I wrote glowingly of Carly Simon's album "Coming Around Again." But here's where I could have used the Internet. I suspected that Simon, singing about believing in oneself and in love, might have been inspired by her own healing after her divorce from James Taylor. I tried and tried to find out if "Coming Around Again" was her first record following that divorce. I called the record company's publicists, and they flatly refused to tell me, saying they wouldn't discuss Ms. Simon's private life.

Finally, after enduring my multiple phone calls and repeated pleading, a publicist confided on the sly that it was not Simon's first post-divorce album. Not to be daunted by mere facts, I slipped my theory into the story anyway. Now I see -- online, of course -- that she and Taylor divorced in 1983 and she released an album called "Spoiled Girl" in 1985. She did, however, remarry in 1987, the year of "Coming Around Again," so I suspect my assessment was correct.

Finally, I reviewed Tuck & Patti's album "Tears of Joy," which I called "a jazz-vocals album that deserves accolades." I wasn't wrong about that.

I went on to do occasional entertainment writing (but not reviewing) in my professional career. Let me just say, writing this blog post was so much easier than getting background for any of those articles. Album names, dates, awards, chart positions, movie casts, an actor's previous roles -- it's all there at the touch of a button. Of course, the Internet also exploded the whole concept of a music "album," and we have to worry that what we're finding online isn't true!

(Photo: A covered walkway in Knightsbridge, near the Harvey Nichols department store.)