The Failed Dog Pajamas

I saw in the newspaper the other day that Richard Foreman died. He was an avant-garde theater director in New York, and my friend Christopher took me to St. Mark's Church in the East Village to see one of his plays back in the early 2000s. It was without a doubt one of the weirdest things I have ever seen on stage. I think the play was "Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty!" and I don't remember much about the specifics, but I loved how bizarre it was.

Work yesterday went pretty well. The all-school staff meeting wasn't as dreary as I expected, because we wound up having a scavenger hunt. We got into small groups and had to take photos representing some of the key concepts that we try to instill in students -- well-being, for example, or thinking critically. It was kind of fun and it took me to parts of the school I had never visited, believe it or not. Yes, I've worked there 13 years, and there were still distant reaches of the building I'd never been in -- mostly in the Lower School, since I rarely work with our youngest students.

In the afternoon I went to the doctor. I've been having twinges of pain in my back and side and wanted to get checked out. It would be an inconvenient time to come down with appendicitis but I guess there's really no good time, is there? The doctor didn't think I was in any serious danger but told me to go to the hospital if it gets worse. Apparently there is something called a "grumbling appendix" which is basically one that's mildly or chronically inflamed, and I wonder if that's what's happening. Maybe that's even why my calprotectin levels have been elevated? Can an appendix "grumble" for months?

And that reminds me that I still haven't heard from the doctor regarding the results of my capsule endoscopy. I need to call him to find out what's up with that. I'm assuming no news is good news, but don't we still need to have a conversation?

Remember how I bought Olga her first sweater just a couple of weeks ago? Well, little did I know that Dave, just a few days earlier, had also ordered her some dog pajamas! They came soon after we got back from Whitstable and last night I put them on her so she could give them a try.

(The pattern is called "breakfast.")

The pictures make it look like they were a hit, but actually, Olga didn't seem sure about them. Even though they're stretchy, I think they're a little more restrictive than her sweater, since they have four leg holes and cover more of her body. She seemed to feel a bit bound up and reluctant to walk around. A couple of times she just lay down, as if unsure what to do. Here's a picture that more accurately captures her feelings:

So they were cute, but we took them off her. I think she's more happy with her pink blanket.

(Top photo: A building on Holloway Road, Islington, about a week ago.)

More of the Same, With a Smile

V.V. Rouleaux, the fancy ribbons and trimmings supply store in Marylebone, has a sort of Norwegian Wood thing going on with its facade. The exterior walls are paneled with squares of tree bark and clustered pine cones line the windows. They can always be counted on to do something interesting, but this seems an unusually rustic approach. (Maybe it's because this year is the 60th anniversary of the song "Norwegian Wood"?)

Aside from some minor housekeeping, I was a complete slug yesterday. I mostly read The New Yorker. I've worked my stack down to only two magazines, which is pretty darn impressive, if I do say so myself. The New Yorker is the literary equivalent of the chocolates on the assembly line in "I Love Lucy" -- enjoyable, but man, you've got to keep up or you'll be buried. I even read a couple of the fiction pieces, which I usually skip -- stories, in this case, by David Szalay and Lauren Groff, both of whom I really like as writers.

Now maybe I can finally move on to my next book -- "The Bee Sting," by Paul Murray, which I've been meaning to read for ages.

Our cold weather has diminished for the next day or two, but now it's windy -- which is also a problem for the avocado, draped as it is in all that billowing fabric. I keep expecting the whole thing to launch into the sky like a box kite. I went out this morning and wrapped some twine around it to try to contain it a little, but I probably should have staked the tree in the pot to give it a little more strength. Oh well. Learning experience. I have to keep it wrapped for now because we're getting more freezing nights this week.

When I went to Pret in Belsize Park several days ago, I amused the woman at the counter by asking to take a picture of their very '70s "Have a Happy Day" service bell. I guess if a customer has to ring a bell to get someone's attention they may already be a little cranky, so the bell counteracts that?

Anyway, I'm going to need that picture as I go back to work today. We have an all-school meeting in the morning followed by various training sessions focused on technology. I just need some time to get the library into shape with some fresh displays, get the new periodicals checked in and on the shelves, that kind of thing. Daily routine beckons!

Fox in a Tree

This gigantic holiday ribbon arches over the doorway to the BoTree Hotel in Marylebone. Subtle!

We got some snow last night, to my complete surprise. I got up this morning to about half an inch dusting the ground. The forecast said rain, and the temperature was only 35º F so not even freezing -- but apparently it was cold enough at cloud level to create snow.

Of course I took the canna lily out of the shed yesterday, while repotting that geranium with the broken pot, and I forgot to put it back. Hopefully one light dusting of snow won't be enough to kill its roots, but if so, oh well.

Here's what our dining room looks like at the moment. Only two of those plants are from outside, seeking sanctuary from the cold. The rest are houseplants that always live there. Yes, we have too many.

Yesterday was very low-key. I walked the dog twice, stayed in and read some New Yorkers, caught up in blogland and edited the latest video from the garden cam.

This one starts with me doing yardwork a few days ago, dumping leaves I'd raked up. The animals promptly move in to check out the pile and mark it as their turf. Then there's the usual parade of foxes and cats, with these highlights:
1. At 1:52, some excellent footage of two foxes together.
2. At 3:02, a fox jumps into a tree! I didn't even know they could do that. Admittedly, it doesn't go very high.
3. At 3:23, Olga is getting excited about the foxes, which presumably she can smell. Yesterday morning she was barking so much that I had to interrupt my blogging to come out of the house and get her, a moment you'll see on the video. And the fox showed up three minutes later, so clearly it was very close the whole time.

This is our last day of Winter Break. Back to work tomorrow! (The kids don't show up until Tuesday, though.)

Frost and Circling Pigeons

We are in the deep freeze here, at least as deep as our freezes usually get. It's 31º F this morning, so just barely freezing, but it's enough to put a coating of heavy frost on the garden.

I checked on the avocado yesterday afternoon, just peeking beneath its coverings, and it looked OK.

This was sunrise yesterday morning. You can see the frost on the cars. Not a cloud in the sky!

I took a long walk yesterday afternoon to try to soak up some of this rare sunshine. Of course I was mostly covered, but it still does a body good to get outside and just get sun even on the face and hands. I walked up to Childs Hill Park and over to the Clitterhouse Playing Fields, where I used to walk with Olga back when she was more adventurous.

This area near Brent Cross has undergone quite a transformation. There's a ton of new construction, and remember how ratty that little shop used to look? The colorful mural is a huge improvement. The buildings behind it are all new, having gone up in the area that Olga and I found fenced off several years ago.

This flock of pigeons circled above me while I walked on Cheviot Gardens near the playing fields. Watching the birds was really an excuse to look at that glorious sky! I always wonder why pigeons fly like this, but in this particular case I think they were just like me -- out for some exercise, exulting in the sunshine.

I came back via Fortune Green and had a coffee at Sweet Corner before coming home. And then I had a Thai massage at 4 p.m. The masseuse was quite talkative at the beginning but I didn't respond much -- I like a quiet massage -- and she ultimately settled into the work and did a great job. My lower back has been giving me fits lately and she helped knead it into submission.

We're watching "No Good Deed" on Netflix, with Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano. It's very good! Kudrow, who we all know as kooky Phoebe from "Friends,"  is a good actress when she has a role with a dramatic edge. I remember seeing her years ago in a movie called "Kabluey" and although I had mixed feelings about the movie, she was good in it. Anyway, we're enjoying the show.

Sunshine!

As I write this in the pre-dawn darkness, it's 30º F outside (or -1º C) and the sky is clear as a bell. The lack of cloud cover brings cold, but another thing it brings -- during the day, anyhow -- is sunlight! Yesterday was glorious, seemingly the first bright sun we've experienced in weeks.

I took a walk from Oxford Street down through Soho to Trafalgar Square, where Lord Nelson's column was beautifully lit.

Many of the shops and restaurants still have their Christmas decorations out.

Hordes of the fashion-conscious were lined up to go to the Stüssy shop in the Hammer House building on Wardour Street. They must have been having a sale. Hammer House, incidentally, is so named because it used to be the London headquarters of Hammer Studios. Remember my visit to the Peter Cushing pub in Whitstable? He acted in several of Hammer's legendary horror movies.

Speaking of the fashion-conscious, some interesting looks were appearing on the street as well.

I stopped at Pret for lunch and then made my way to the National Portrait Gallery, where I wanted to see the annual exhibit of noteworthy entries for the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize. Some truly amazing portrait photography was on display, my favorite being this shot. According to the guide, it's part of a photo series focusing on "queer and trans folx in their homes," and I love the image because there's so much to see -- of course the beautifully posed and perfectly side-lit Yves and Banjo, but also the signs and pictures on the wall, the detail in Yves' tattoos, the unexpected row of cowboy boots, the stacks of clothing and personal effects.

Afterwards I made my way home again, via a Pret on Carnaby Street where I had a quick cup of coffee outside even though it was quite chilly. It was fun to watch the passers-by. I heard an obviously American woman ask someone the way to Regent Street. She was practically there already. I don't often hear anyone asking directions these days, since most people have maps on their phones.

Anyway, it was good to get a dose of Vitamin D and I hope to get some more today!

Mother Red Cap

Here's one of the interesting sights I saw from the car window when Dave, Olga and I were on the way to Whitstable. It's a closed Irish pub in Holloway Road, with the intriguing name of "Mother Red Cap." I wanted to photograph it not only to preserve its memory in case some other business takes over the space, but to remind myself to research the name.

It turns out there was a woman known as Mother Red Cap who lived in Camden back in the 1600s. (Not on this spot -- she lived farther south, in Camden Town, on the site of what is now another pub that used to be called the Mother Red Cap but is now known as the World's End.) Her real name was Jenny (or Jinney) Bingham, but she was also known variously as the Crone of Camden, the Shrew of Kentish Town, or Mother Damnable. There are multiple stories about her involving witchcraft, strange herbs that she collected at night, spouses who die in mysterious circumstances (one apparently died in an oven!), and a visit from the devil on the night of her own death. You can read more here and here if you're interested.

Presumably this is the Mother Red Cap for whom the pub is named. Or maybe it's named for the previous pub that once bore her name. There are apparently also other pubs around the country called Mother Red Cap -- are they named for our Camden legend, or is Mother Red Cap an archetypal witch character who appears in other locales?

In any case, it was supposedly a good pub and I hope it reopens. Apparently it closed early last year when the landlord retired.

Dave and I spent part of yesterday on plant protection duty. We're supposed to get freezing temperatures tonight and into next week, at times dipping down into the high 20's (F). At one point there was talk of snow, but that appears to have turned into rain in the updated forecasts. It's still too cold for our poor avocado and Chinese banana, so we covered them. I used a different cover on the avocado this time -- one designed for trees that zips up the side -- before putting on the same outer wrapping and securing it with a whole lot more clothespins than last time. The more times I do this the better at it I'll get. Practice makes perfect!

The smaller tender plants all came inside. I was annoyed because a morning gust of wind blew one of our geraniums pelargoniums off a table on the patio, breaking both the plant and the pot. I've got the poor thing in a plastic bag until I can buy a new pot for it.

I also put the canna lily in the shed.

We're as ready for winter as we'll ever be!

'I'm a Big Mac'

Well, it's 2025. Amazing how the time flies. It seems not so long ago that we were at the turning of the millennium, and that seemed supernaturally futuristic -- and now we're a quarter-century past it! "2001: A Space Odyssey" is now a fictional story about the distant past rather than a cautionary tale of a dystopian future.

That sunrise is actually from yesterday, so it's the last sunrise of 2024. Where I am, the sun hasn't even come up yet in 2025.

Dave had his surgical staples out yesterday, as expected. He said it was a painless process -- he literally felt nothing. Apparently the doctors use a medical version of an office staple remover to extract them. They say his incisions look good and he is recovering well. Here's hoping for a surgery-free 2025!

While he was doing that, I took the opportunity for a long photo walk, retracing some of the route our Uber took through London when we went to Whitstable. We passed some intriguing places and I wanted a better look, so I took a bus to Archway and walked south on Holloway Road all the way to Balls Pond Road near Dalston -- about three miles. You will no doubt see some of the pictures in coming days.

Then I took the overground back to my neck of the woods, and got out at Hampstead Heath, intending to walk through Belsize Park for photos of some things I saw from the bus window. A heavyset older woman and a teenage boy sat across from me on the train having a very strange conversation. They both had luggage and were obviously not related -- not by blood, anyway. The boy was quite insolent to the woman, who was very talkative. He seemed eager to get away from her.

I was reading "My Darling, My Hamburger," a 1969 YA novel by Paul Zindel that I remembered from my own childhood (but hadn't read). As they got up to leave the train, the woman pointed at my book and said, "Oh! We've just come from Hamburg!" I laughed because that is not the connection I would have made, seeing that book title. "I'm pretty sure they're talking about the sandwich," I laughed. "We're the true Hamburgers," she said, adding with a roll of the eyes: "Well, I'm a Big Mac."

In Belsize Park, the local yarn artists have added a holiday-season decoration to the postbox on England's Lane where their fanciful and elaborate creations often appear.

Pretty amazing!

Last night, I had my martini(s) and watched "Absolutely Fabulous," as promised, before Dave and I finished off "Black Doves" on Netflix. It's so bloody and employs such spy-movie archetypes that it's almost a parody, but we really enjoyed it.

And then we went to bed, and...I couldn't sleep. And it's just as well, because the next door neighbors started setting off fireworks around 11:30 p.m., followed by a citywide explosive rumble at midnight. It really did sound like we were under attack.

I got up and made this video, first of the neighbor's fireworks and then of the distant ones visible over the city from our dining room window. In that part of the video, the fireworks on the horizon to the right may be in the vicinity of Hyde Park or Battersea, I think, while the pastel colors reflecting from the clouds on the left come more from the big display on the Thames Embankment. I first started recording through the window, and then had the bright idea to open it and stick my camera outside so you could hear the pops and rumbles. (Fortunately, Olga has never been alarmed by such shenanigans and she slept through it all.)

So I wound up participating in some New Year's festivities after all, in my own dining room!