Domestic Saturday, with Alcoholism

Our petunias are still hanging on, amazingly, after blooming all summer. But they're looking a bit spindly and as the temperatures drop, their days are numbered.

Speaking of low temperatures, I can now cross defrosting the freezer off my to-do list. Woo hoo! It's really a terrible job, messy and tedious, and I'm so glad to have it finished. Yesterday morning I stacked the freezer drawers on the counter, one on top of the other to keep the contents as cold as possible, and I put a towel at the base of the freezer unit. I turned off the freezer, opened the door and put pans of warm water on the glacial shelves inside.

And I waited, and waited, and waited, occasionally replacing the pans or picking out chunks of fallen ice, and mopping meltwater from the freezer's interior. It took about three hours before every morsel melted, and now I can pull our freezer drawers in and out quietly and with ease.

I also mowed the lawn. (I know I've shown you pictures like this a million times but I'm always so proud of how good the lawn looks after I mow!) You can see my poor pathetic dahlias in the pots. Some of them I've already cut back for the year to contain the powdery mildew. In another couple of weeks I'll cut the rest down to the ground and put them all in the shed, and that will be that until next April or May. I'm ready for this dismal dahlia season to be over.

We're already starting to see some autumn color -- in this case on our orange azalea, which unlike many azaleas is deciduous.

I spent the afternoon finishing "The Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking," an excellent book by Olivia Laing. She discusses the careers of six famous writers -- John Cheever, Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver and John Berryman -- and the role that alcoholism played in their writing and their lives. Meanwhile she travels across the USA and visits the former homes and haunts of many of them, from Cheever's New York to Williams's Key West and Carver's Pacific Northwest. (It's interesting that the writers she chose are all white men -- she could just as easily have thrown Dorothy Parker or Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings into the mix, to name two alcoholic women writers off the top of my head. Or James Baldwin, for a person of color.)

Having finished that cautionary tale, I turned right around and made a martini, and Dave and I watched the original "Pink Panther" movie from 1963, as a sort of tribute to the late Claudia Cardinale, who died last week. She plays the princess who owns the fabulous panther diamond. It was hardly her most noteworthy screen role but I didn't feel quite up to tackling a Fellini movie.

Weekend Tasks

The weekend at last, after this crazy week of home repairs and work! Despite the fact that I spent two days this week sitting around waiting for repairmen, I feel like I haven't had enough home time. So I'm looking forward to relaxing.

We do have a few tasks on our agenda. Tomorrow we have to move our gigantic old couch out to the street for the council to carry away on Monday. This is going to be an adventure. Stay tuned.

I'm also thinking about defrosting the freezer, which is once again so icy that the drawers don't easily pull in and out. I don't understand how I managed to go seven years before doing this the first time in 2021, because I had to do it again in 2023 and it needs it again now. We have somehow switched to an every-two-years defrosting cycle! I guess I just waited that first time until it was really, really, really bad.

And finally, I gave Dave a gift certificate to a local cookshop for his birthday back in June and he hasn't used it yet. I'm getting nervous that we'll never use it if we don't do it soon -- it's been hanging on the refrigerator so long it's basically become invisible to us -- so I'm going to apply some gentle, loving pressure to get him to redeem it.

Some graffiti on Finchley Road. "To infinity, and beyond!"

Someone has tidied up the broken bench, removing the rather useless warning cones and sweeping around it. But whoever is responsible still can't bring themselves to remove it entirely.

(Top photo: Colorful balconies on the Barbican estate, last weekend.)

Garden Antics

Remember how I said I wasn't seeing the starlings on our bird feeder anymore? Never mind.

Yesterday's drain adventure went more smoothly than Tuesday's boiler adventure. The guy still took half the day to get here -- he showed up about 1:30 p.m. -- but he handled the problem quickly and I was able to go to work for the last two hours of the day, so that's something. My boss had planned in my absence to close the library half an hour early, but in the end we didn't have to.

I spent the morning reading and catching up on some other things. We're going to buy a new rug to go with our new couch -- which arrives next week -- so I narrowed down the choices on those and Dave and I made a selection in the evening. I'll show it to you when it arrives, hopefully around the same time as the couch. It's a little sad to get rid of the old rug, which we call the "purple grass" because Olga spent so much time lying on it just as she would the lawn outside. But we've had it since 2012 and it's looking pretty tired.

Our canna lily has sent up a new cluster of flowers! It got a late start but it's not letting up, even though the temperatures are dropping.

I also backed up my computer and downloaded the footage from the garden cam.

Key moments from this tranche (I love that word) of video clips:

1. We start with all four of our regular feline visitors: Pale Cat, Bell the Bengal, Blackie and Tabby. As you can see, I did not put a whole lot of energy into those names.
2. At 0:54, the fox shows up and discreetly does his business behind some bushes.
3. At 1:15, squirrel antics.
4. At 1:33, Bell sniffs at three pieces of leftover sushi I put out for whoever wanted it. She doesn't eat it, but a couple of magpies appear and polish it off.
5. At 2:35, magpies and a squirrel.
6. At 2:53, a very weird shot of an animal's back as it walks extremely close to the camera. It looks a bit like a furry Loch Ness Monster sliding by. I can't tell if it's a fox or a cat.
7. At 3:12, an especially crazy squirrel.
8. At 3:32, Bell the Bengal ambles leisurely past, and then trots quickly in the opposite direction. Something alarmed her!
9. At 4:03, the best shots of the fox -- or possibly foxes. The clip from 8:19 p.m. shows one animal, but I think the last clip, from 2:30 a.m., shows another. The tail doesn't look the same -- no white tip. What do you think?

You'll notice that the camera moves around a bit. I've been experimenting with different locations, but I still think the vantage point shown at the beginning of the video is the best so far.

Begonia and Fireworks

Our angel-wing begonia (or whatever kind of begonia it is) is blooming once again. This plant is remarkably durable. I pruned it several months ago, cut up the stalk and stuck the pieces in another pot of soil, and darned if every single one of the cuttings didn't take root. So now I have a second pot of little begonias. Nature is amazing -- that life force.

I am home once again today, waiting for the drains repair guy. The universe owes me an effortless visit from a repair person, given what happened on Tuesday, so let's hope this goes more smoothly. I'm even optimistic that I might be able to get to work at some point. My boss was a bit gruff with me yesterday over unexpectedly being out all day on Tuesday -- but what could I do? We have to have a working boiler, and someone has to be here to get it fixed. Ditto the drains. These are not optional things. It's not like I'm taking time off to buy new lampshades.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping to read more and hopefully get caught up on blog comments. I know I've been falling behind on those. I usually use my lunch hour at work to answer comments, but yesterday I had to go to the post office to get Dave's passport documents mailed, so I didn't have a chance. Thank goodness both our passport applications are in, though. That's another thing off the list.

My brother sent me this photo the other day -- it's a shot of his phone screen as he plays a suite of games called "Card Shark." Recognize that background photo? It's Olga on Hampstead Heath.

"I set the 'table' with a custom picture instead of the standard ugly green felt and casino markings," he wrote. "It looks like Olga is watching me play cards and when I win and the fireworks start then she is watching those too. It's a good peaceful fall picture."

The photo is a bit compressed vertically (or stretched horizontally) but I still like the many ways that Olga lives on in all of our lives.

The Window Shatters

I'm  not talking about a literal window. I'm talking about the "window" of time set aside for the boiler repair guy to show up yesterday. It was supposed to be a simple day: boiler repair in the morning, a quick trip to the post office to mail Dave's passport documents, get to work around lunchtime.

Instead, I waited all morning from 8 a.m. to noon, when the repair window expired. No boiler guy. I called British Gas and was assured that although he was on a "longer than usual" call he would arrive by 1 p.m. I called again at 2 p.m. and was assured that he really was on the way this time. He finally showed up at 3:45, grousing about how terrible his day had been. No doubt he and my boss, who was all alone in the library, could have shared their perspectives about that.

On the plus side, I was able to get a lot of reading done. But sitting around waiting for a repairman isn't relaxing or enjoyable. You're constantly aware of your phone, aware of the door, and you can't go anywhere -- not to the store or, ahem, the post office. I was even afraid to go out in the garden for fear of missing his knock. It's like house arrest. (Or like I imagine house arrest to be!)

He did finally get the boiler repaired, but then the comedy of errors took an unexpected turn when we discovered we had no water! The taps were bone-dry. This is a problem because we were unable to test the newly repaired boiler. I went out in the street and found Thames Water on the next block, repairing a broken water main. The water would be out for about three hours, they said.

So the repair guy left and Dave and I hoped for the best when we turned on the boiler later. We're getting hot water, thank God, but there was a lot of scary banging in the system because of air in the pipes, and now the valve that lets us top up the water levels in the boiler doesn't seem to be working. ARGH!

And of course I have to go through all this again tomorrow, when the drains guy is coming.

Have you heard about Nigel Farage's latest crazy plan, to do away with Indefinite Leave to Remain? IRL is an immigration classification for people who want to remain in Britain to work or for some other purpose. Dave and I, for example, were required to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain when our initial work visas could no longer be renewed -- as I recall, four or five years into our residence in the UK. It's actually quite a demanding step, in which we had to pass an exam on British history, culture and politics -- but afterwards we were permitted to stay as long as we wanted, before we ultimately applied for and received citizenship.

Now Farage wants to put people on visas indefinitely, rather than granting IRL. This would be a tremendous hardship for our school and many of the teachers there. I know people who have IRL but not citizenship -- in some cases people who have lived in the UK for decades -- and asking them to submit regular visa renewals forever seems absurd. Failing to submit or receive a renewal would lead to deportation.

According to The Guardian, these renewals would come "with stringent salary and English language requirements and tougher rules around bringing dependents...(Farage) left open the possibility that families in the UK could be broken up and that Ukrainians and Hongkongers who moved here using special resettlement routes could have their rights to remain revoked."

Ah, dystopia. Coming to theaters everywhere, including one near you!

(Photos: Islington on Sunday, and the Hebe in front of our flat in full bloom. This is one of the plants that Mrs. Russia had trimmed to within an inch of its life, and wanted to remove entirely. Fortunately we prevented that!)

Repair Window

This morning I'm going to be hanging out at home waiting for the boiler repair engineer. Our boiler has mysteriously started leaking. For a while I'd find a puddle of water on the counter beneath it. Lately the puddle has disappeared but the system still isn't holding water -- I have to refill it every few days. If it gets low the hot water gets wonky and my shower turns cold right when I need to rinse off, and is there anything worse than that?

So, anyway, British Gas is coming to hopefully get that repaired. And then they're coming again on Thursday because our drains at the side of the house are blocked up again. It's not sewage, just wastewater from the sinks and washing machines, and from upstairs as well. Obviously we need to get that flowing, and because of our landlord's home care policy, that responsibility also falls to British Gas.

Meanwhile my boss is probably annoyed because I'm missing work to get all this done. The repair people give a "window" of time when they're going to show up -- today I'm just missing the morning, and how much of it depends on how early the guy gets here. Thursday is an "all day" window -- and what the heck is the point of that? -- so I could be out a lot of the day or a little, once again depending on arrival time and ease of repair.

We also have new couch delivery next week, so I'll need to be home then. Job? What job?

I moved around some of the plants in the living room, to prepare for winter and the need to bring tender plants indoors. I shifted the yucca -- which is almost too tall for the ceiling -- to the left of the door and the little rubber tree to the right. That's a sunnier spot, and it's also where the mandarin orange will eventually go when it moves inside. Other than that, it's just a matter of protecting a few geraniums, and I can find space for those.

The rubber tree has come along well since I rescued it from a dumpster many months ago!

Yesterday I was working in the library when a tired-looking little girl came in toting her books. She sat down at one of the tables in the otherwise empty room. I asked her why she wasn't in class, and she said she had to leave to do something or other, but now she was done. There were still five or ten minutes to go before the next class, so I said, "Well, maybe you should go back?"

"Oh, I just couldn't!" she said. Something about the way she said it struck me as so funny. I let her sit there and gather her wits.

(Top photo: Islington, on Sunday.)

On the Wild Side, Part 2

If you read Sharon's blog, which normally hosts pictures of Phoenix, you may have seen this sculpture -- which is not in Phoenix but here in London. Sharon visited recently and took pictures of it in Paternoster Square, near St. Paul's Cathedral, and blogged them a few weeks ago. I've been meaning to go down and see it myself and yesterday I finally had the opportunity.

It's called "Go Widlife Go!" by the artists Gillie and Marc. These artists have done a variety of animal-themed sculptures to call attention to the threats facing our planet's biodiversity and specifically its wildlife. (You may remember one I blogged several years ago based on orphaned elephants.)

"Jumping on the scooter and joining the ride is a simple act designed to encourage the public to become part of the journey with endangered animals," according to a nearby explainer. There's a gap between the animals for visitors to pose for pictures (although there are also signs saying "please do not climb," which I guess means don't go higher than that).

This is part of a larger public art and social movement called "Love the Last," to bolster efforts to save animals. Gillie and Marc also have their own web site here, and I see that they have several other sculptures on view in London. Maybe I'll eventually catch up with those.

As long as I was out and about, I decided to get some exercise. I walked 2.5 miles up through Islington to the Caledonian Road and Barnsbury overground station. The weather was beautiful and I had the opportunity to take a few more pictures along the way, which you will no doubt see in the coming week.