Dog Day Afternoon

Finally! After more than three months apart, we've been reunited with Ernie and Ruby. They were delivered less than an hour ago, and now they're both sound asleep. The poor things are probably exhausted after their bewildering experience in the bowels of an airplane and being poked and prodded through customs.

It seems that everything went without a hitch. Ruby seems lively and happy, and Ernie is his usual dopey self. I was so relieved when I got the call about 8 a.m. that they came off the plane in good condition. Kudos to Continental Airlines and Airborne Animals, our animal importer, for all their hard work!

I'm so glad that when we started the process of preparing them for the move, back in late March, we decided to prepare Ruby for the trip, even though the vet said he didn't think she'd live that long. Imagine if we'd decided against getting her rabies shot and $600 blood test? Where would she be now? Let's hear it for blindly plunging forward on some kind of crazy faith.

(And just to look back, it's been a year and a half since we were first told she might be fatally ill. For part of that time her illness went undiagnosed, but as I understand it now, she has right-side heart failure, exacerbated by the presence of a lime-sized growth inside the pericardial sac. No one's looked at that growth in more than a year, so I don't know if it's grown or shrunk -- but her heart is definitely still impaired, based on the fluid accumulation in her belly.)

I'm also glad that we hired someone to ship the dogs and do the last-minute preparations. It was the smartest decision I've ever made. I would not be happy right now if I were all jet-lagged from a red-eye flight.

Nigeria Scam #2

While we're waiting for the dogs to arrive, I thought I'd share another Nigeria Scam e-mail I received recently. I can't help it -- I find these things hilarious.

I mean, why would the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund send me a joint e-mail to notify me that I'm being "compensated" with a $4 million ATM card? And why do I have to stop communicating with anyone else on three continents?

Do people really fall for these things?

----
UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION
In Conjuction With
INTERNATIONAL MONEYTARY FUND
I.M.F. ( www.imf.org )
ADDRESS (Redacted)
TELEPHONE (Redacted)
TELEFAX (Redacted)

Attn:

RE : YOUR $4M USD COMPENATION VIA MASTERCARD ATM CARD .

Dear Beneficiary .

This is to notify you that THE UNITED NATIONS in collaboration with BRITISH AND AMERICAN GOVERMENT has made plans with MASTERCAR for a Commercial Restructuring and release of your compensation payment in the sum of US$4,000,000.00 Via An ATM CARD With the information on my desk, I was made to understand that you have been going through hard ways by paying a lot of charges to see to the release of your funds which has been delayed. Please, from now hence forth stop further communication with any person(s) from any part of Africa,Europe or Asia.

You are advised to communicate with us immediately you read this email regarding your $4million. Your ATM card will be shipped via a Courier Company and would get to you within 48 hours at most.

Payment via Automatic Teller Machine (ATM Card): This where you will be sent an Automatic Teller Machine card also known as ATM card (Debit Card issued by MasterCard). Upon receipt of your ATM card you will be allowed to withdraw $70,000.00 per day by default and you are given the option to increase the withdrawal limit of your card to a range of $90,000.00 as the case may be.

Please reconfirm your details as follows.

Your full Name......................
Your Address:.......................
Country Origin......................
Present Country.....................
Home/Cell Phone.....................
Occupation..........................
Age.................................
Sex.................................
Fax if any..........................
Preferred Payment Method (ATM):.....

Thanks yours sincerly

(Name redacted)

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE LONDON
ENGLAND.

------
(Photo: Piccadilly Circus, yesterday.)

Kew Gardens

Yesterday I set off on another walking adventure, this time to Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. The gardens are located to the southwest of us, a little more than five miles away. I started walking thinking I might not have much energy to explore the gardens by the time I got there!


This is roughly the route I took. (Click the map to enlarge. I'm kind of into this mapmaking thing, as you can tell!) And actually I still managed to see about a third of the gardens -- which are huge. (Slogan: "Plants People Possibilities.")


Because Kew Gardens is hundreds of years old, some of the plants have been in place a long time. The palm house (above) contains a sago-type palm dating from 1773 -- older than the United States! It was so big I couldn't get it all in one picture. I also saw an Italian stone pine planted in 1846 and a Chilean wine palm that reached to the rooftops of the largest greenhouse. (That's the greenhouse in the top picture, called the Temperate House. It dates from Victorian times.)

I resisted the urge to bow down in tribute to the coffee plants, and I saw huge Brugmansia trumpet flowers, a relative of the Datura plants known to induce hallucinogenic trips in enterprising Florida teenagers. (Not including me, of course. I didn't hear about that phenomenon until long after I reached adulthood. Which is just as well.)


As you can see, fall is coming to London. A part of the gardens I didn't see includes an elevated walkway through the canopy of a stand of trees -- the garden's literature suggests coming back to see that later in the fall. Dave will definitely want to see Kew Gardens, as much as he likes gardening, so that sounds like a good outing in upcoming weeks!

Unrelated updates:

-- Sorry to hear about the death of Steve Jobs. It's certainly an illustration of the axiom that wealth, fame and intelligence can't stop the inevitable. I can honestly say that Apple products have transformed my life, and God knows they're easier and more pleasant to use than PCs. My mom bought our first Apple computer in about 1983, and I remember using it to create my own world atlas, writing blurbs about the countries and little programs that would draw their flags. (Never mind that the computer screen was limited to shades of green.) I can't believe I was ever that ambitious.

-- Our dogs are in a kennel in New Jersey, and scheduled to board their flight today. They passed their last-minute vet checkup, but the vet and the animal mover both expressed concerns about Ruby's heart condition. We all agreed to go ahead and ship her, because really, what other option is there? I did not sleep well last night, and I suspect tonight I'll be nervous too!

Ealing

Late last week I took a long walk out to Ealing, a region of western London about five miles from our apartment. I wasn't sure what I'd find out there, but I wanted to take a look, so I set out on the Uxbridge Road through Shepherd's Bush and pretty much walked in a straight line all the way to Ealing Broadway.

It was a nice day -- beautiful sunny weather and relatively cool. I bought a cheap egg salad sandwich at Tesco and ate it in Ealing Common, where I took the photo above. As you can see, fall is coming! The horse chestnut trees are always the first to lose their leaves, it seems.


The neighborhoods around Ealing become more suburban, with freestanding homes or small apartment houses separated by gardens. In Ealing I popped into a charity shop and bought a couple of used books for cheap reading. Then I got on the tube and came home. It was a fun day! The map above traces my path.

In other odds and ends:

-- We had a busy weekend of socializing. I've already written about my walk with Liz and Sally. On Friday, we went to the home of the chairman of the music department at the school where Dave works. (This is the same guy, Gordon, we had over for dinner a week or two ago. We like him and his wife, Donna.) Then, on Saturday, we had a progressive dinner with a couple of Dave's coworkers, Pete and Keith, going first to their apartments for appetizer and soup and then to ours for the main course. Dave made boeuf bourguignon, and I made banoffee pie, which I keep hearing about on "Come Dine With Me." It's basically a banana-and-toffee pie that's assembled cold. I thought it was a British thing, but when I mentioned it to Sally and Liz, they weren't so sure.

-- I've started applying for a few jobs here and there. No luck yet, but I am aware that I can't remain unemployed forever!

-- There's a lot of construction going on in our apartment complex at the moment. Someone is renovating a downstairs apartment, and the local government is excavating part of our courtyard for some mysterious improvements that seem to relate to wastewater. The result is lots of drilling and jackhammering during the day. More incentive for me to walk!

-- Two days until the dogs arrive! I went out and found them a big bag of good-quality dry food (at the shocking price of £62, or about $95!) plus a few special cans of wet food as a treat. Hopefully we'll find a less expensive supply route for dog food in the future. It's surprisingly hard to find large bags of food in the city. The dogs will be picked up today in New Jersey, kenneled overnight after their final vet appointment, and then flown out late tomorrow for arrival here on Friday. Stay tuned!

Protea

Last week I went to see "One Day" with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess at the Odeon Whiteleys on Queensway, our local movie theater. Hathaway has taken a lot of ribbing in the UK for her attempted English accent, which unlike her character is not particularly northern or even consistent, but I thought she did a good job nonetheless. I enjoyed the movie, even though it is ultimately a tear-jerker and definitely a chick flick.

(I've been trying to keep up with movies. I also saw "The Skin I Live In," Pedro Almodovar's newest with Antonio Banderas, which was interesting but perhaps not as compelling as some of his earlier films. And as I already mentioned, Dave and I went to see "The Inbetweeners" last month. Next on my list: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Contagion," which hasn't yet opened in the UK.)


Anyway, as I came out of the theater, I stopped at a florist and picked up these great flowers. They're called proteas, and apparently they're something of a national symbol of South Africa, where most of them originate. I've seen them in the states -- in fact I once found one on the sidewalk in New York -- but I don't think I've ever bought any.



Apparently proteas are held in such high regard in South Africa that the national cricket team is named for them. I think that may be the first time I've ever heard of an athletic team named for a flower!

Shad Thames

Remember what I wrote recently about the coming of autumn? Well, we've had a slight change of plan. The weather gods decided to give us another week of summer, and the last few days have been sunny and unseasonably warm, with temperatures in the 80s. It seems like everyone in London is out and about, sunbathing in the parks and strolling around in t-shirts.

I was among the hordes of wanderers yesterday, when I met up with Sally and Liz for brunch in Bermondsey, on the south bank of the Thames. We then walked through the neighborhoods around Tower Bridge including the curiously named Shad Thames. It's an area of old spice docks and warehouses that have been turned into gourmet restaurants and such.

We wondered about the origin of the name. I thought it might have something to do with shad, the river fish, but according to the always-reliable (ha!) Wikipedia it may be a corruption of "St. John-at-Thames," a reference to a church once located in the area.

We found an interesting fountain, which my Googling tells me is called Waterfall by the sculptor Antony Donaldson, from 1991. It features cavorting water nymphs, with everyday items like books, a watch and a camera -- all cast in bronze -- seemingly scattered at the fountain's edge. I especially liked the hands of the nymphs and the way their lime-crusty fingers dipped into the pool.



The pigeons liked them too.


After exploring Shad Thames, we had coffee at Borough Market -- a huge outdoor food market that was mostly closed on Sunday -- and wandered slowly westward all the way to Waterloo Station. Along the way we stopped in at the Tate Modern (mostly for a quick bathroom break), had a late afternoon beer at Royal Festival Hall, and watched skateboarders in a graffiti-plastered skate park on the riverbank.

It was great to finally see Sally and Liz, who have been my blog pals for years. We hadn't yet had a chance to meet up since I moved to London. And being outdoors was ideal -- everyone tells me to take advantage of the summer while it lasts, because winters in London are long and dark!

Rudolph & Laurita, London, 1968

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a scrapbook that I inherited by happenstance from my Aunt Laurita. She and my Uncle Rudolph, who as my maternal grandmother's brother was really my great uncle, traveled through Europe in the spring of 1968. They took a three-week American Express "Priceless Connoisseur" tour through England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal. Aunt Laurita kept photos, receipts and other souvenirs in the scrapbook -- like the photo above of their tour group, with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

Aunt Laurita and Uncle Rudolph are on the left side of the picture:


The other day I got out the scrapbook to read about their stay in London. I thought it might be fun to revisit some places they'd photographed. Unfortunately, most of their photos in the scrapbook show tourist destinations -- Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London. Comparing them "now and then" just wouldn't be very interesting.

If anything had changed in the past 43 years, I thought it might be their hotel. So I went to check it out yesterday.

They stayed at the St. James Hotel, which is now the Crowne Plaza St. James on Buckingham Gate. My aunt preserved a brochure from the hotel, noting that they'd had to wait in the lobby when they arrived because their rooms weren't yet ready. (Oops!)



She also praised the beauty of Hyde Park, where she liked listening to the gadflies at the Speaker's Corner -- "my favorite place!" -- and noted that elsewhere in London "some Germany bomb damage can still be seen." Here's my uncle in front of the hotel:


In every photo from this trip, he's wearing a suit.

Here's my aunt outside the Tower of London:


Anyway, here's what their hotel looks like today:



It's quite an edifice. (I think the fountain shown on the brochure is in the courtyard, which is accessed through that open arch in the lower photo.)

What's even funnier -- when I visited London in 2000 with a friend, we had a few drinks in a great bar called Zander that I have always remembered fondly. Turns out Zander is still in this very hotel. It was a coincidence I didn't realize at the time.

In her scrapbook, Aunt Laurita saved her ticket stub from "Robinson Crusoe" starring Engelbert Humperdinck. She declared it a "good stage production."


And she and my uncle kept Easter programs from services at both Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, though I don't see any evidence that they actually attended the services. They were only in London for two days and their schedule was pretty well booked, so my guess is they just picked up the leaflets.


Aunt Laurita and Uncle Rudolph lived in Miami, where in the '60s they were probably seeing an influx of Cubans but not a lot of people from elsewhere in the world. In London, my aunt noted "many different nationalities in our hotel. Those from India wore their native dress, turban and all."

She also wrote, "We saw a massive protest march against the government taking over bus transportation, down Park Lane from Hyde Park toward Buckingham Palace." It probably had something to do with this.

I wish they'd gone somewhere really swingin', like Carnaby Street, but I suppose that wasn't quite their scene!