Barking Mad

I read an article yesterday in which a conservative member of the British Parliament spoke out against "barking mad" government plans to allow churches to perform gay marriages. According to the article, the MP said "most parents would prefer their children not to be gay."

It was an interesting article for a couple of reasons. This guy said he does support full equality with married couples in civic ceremonies, so that's something. But then he raised the same old bugaboo that conservatives in the states bring up when arguing against gay marriage -- that it would be taught in schools.

I don't doubt that he's right about parents. If given a choice, I suspect most would rather not have gay children. Even in today's improving climate, growing up gay is no picnic, and parents wouldn't choose that difficult path.

But what's the link between allowing gay marriage and having gay kids? Is he saying that a more tolerant society will encourage kids to come out? That might be true, but the alternative is to have them stay in the closet and be miserable. It's not like they would otherwise be straight.

His attitude illustrates the bizarre conservative idea -- apparently prevalent in some circles here as well as the states -- that being gay is a choice. I've got news for this guy. Parents who have gay kids will have them regardless of whether marriage is available. Marriage might just make them happier!

In commemoration of these bananas lawmakers, here's another banana sticker for the online collection. Seems like all our English bananas come from Costa Rica. In the states I think they came from Colombia -- but maybe that was just back in the old days, before the rise of the coca plantations!

(Photo: A tile on a pub in Crystal Palace. The pub is closed and boarded up, and I hope the building is preserved. The tile walls are incredible.)

Winter Concert

People are so strange. "Hey, I have an idea. Let's combine our ironing business (?) with a party supply store!"

Doesn't it look unbearably steamy in there?

Yesterday was the big holiday concert for the music department at school. I went, as usual, and as usual it was interesting to finally hear the students play the pieces Dave has been talking about for weeks. This year's concert was a bit more of a challenge because it got moved up several weeks on the school calendar -- the students lost three or four weeks of rehearsal time. But they did a good job anyway, tackling some serious music including Handel, Mozart and Shostakovich.

It also gave all the music department teachers (and me) a chance to get together for a pub outing afterwards, which was fun. Not as fun as getting a tattoo at Tattoo Tec, maybe, but you can't have everything.

Yesterday morning was a day of catching up -- on sub reports and payments, on vacuuming, on random household tasks. And today is a teacher planning day at school, so the students aren't there and I haven't had to find any subs. Day off! Woo hoo!

Jurassic Park

There are dinosaurs in London -- and I don't mean of the political or social variety. Actual, imitation dinosaurs.

Yesterday I met up with erstwhile bloggers Sally and Liz, as well as Liz's husband Andy, for a walk around Crystal Palace, a large park and neighborhood in far south London. For me, getting down there involved a lengthy tube and train ride -- as you can see below, we were a long way from the city center.

We started our day with a light lunch at a pub, then set out to explore the neighborhood. Crystal Palace is so named because it was the home of the Crystal Palace, the Victorian-era glass pavilion that was originally a highlight of London's Great Exhibition of 1851. It first stood in Hyde Park, but a few years later was relocated to south London, where it became the centerpiece of a large public park until it was destroyed by fire in 1936. (It was made of glass and metal, so one wonders what there was to burn -- but apparently it was full of combustibles.)

Today, Crystal Palace park has a large athletic facility where we saw these guys watching a game of field hockey. The guy with the plaid shorts, pink shirt and orange socks is definitely cultivating a look.

The shadows are terrific at this time of year -- but the downside is that the sun is so low, it's in my lens all the time.

While we were walking through this part of the park, some guy ran past on the telephone, loudly exclaiming to someone (police?) that his son had been mugged. Turns out a couple of kids stole another kid's phone. We found the phone cover on the ground and pointed it out to the mother, who like the father was rampaging through the area trying to find the offenders. They were both so angry we all decided it might be better for everyone if the offenders weren't found.

But back to the dinosaurs. They were originally built in Crystal Palace park in 1854, the first dinosaur sculptures in the world. They are historically protected structures and were refurbished about ten years ago. You can't touch them -- they're on an island in the middle of a murky, prehistoric-looking pond.

They're pretty great, even though they look nothing like any specific dinosaur I know.

We left Crystal Palace Park as the sun set and went to Liz's house, where we enjoyed a terrific pork dinner prepared by Andy. Then I began the long trek back to Notting Hill and Dave, who couldn't join us because he's in the middle of holiday concert season. (After dealing with middle- and high-school kids all day, he wouldn't be fazed by even the fiercest dinosaurs.)

Adventures in British Dentistry, Part 3

As I expected, my photo book proposal was rejected. Here's the editor's sobering and slightly rambling verdict on my submission:

"While it's always great to take a look at the work of an avid image maker such as yourself, the fact is that there is an abundance of work out in the world that has shots of shop fronts, street signs and what I call the 'fun and the found' in the urban environment. The commercial prospects, from the point of view of a publisher such as (this particular company), of books based on those visual themes is simply too challenging for us to consider taking such books on. For those reasons, and with regret, I will not be taking the opportunity to pursue your proposal further. My own personal opinion is that such books are an entirely different proposition using a self-publishing model, such as the one you are already using as the work will be seen and find an audience that follows you. I urge you to continue in that vein."

Perhaps he's unfamiliar with "The Elements of Style" and its emphasis on economy of language.

Bitchy sour-grapes crankiness aside, I appreciate that he was nice about it. And as several of my readers reminded me the other day, I'm really shooting pictures because it's fun. I can't lose sight of that. Life goes on!

In other news, my gold dental inlay fell out again. You may remember I dealt with this back at the beginning of September. This time, because it happened on a weeknight (while I was eating salmon, hardly a dentally challenging food), I was able to simply call the dentist across the street and get an emergency appointment to have it reinstalled. I did have to pay a whopping £17, but I'm fine with that. I think this guy used more cement than the last dentist, which may be a good thing, although the filling doesn't seem to fit quite as well -- perhaps because there's more cement. I don't care. I just want it to stay in.

(Photo: Mayfair, last week.)

A New Lens!

A new lens -- that was my birthday present from Dave this year. For a few weeks now, it's been only a theoretical present, as we didn't have a chance to shop and I wasn't sure which lens I wanted. But yesterday I went to the camera store and finally chose one -- a 400mm zoom.

It's a huge thing, with its own carrying case. How I'm going to lug it around alongside my camera remains to be seen!

I immediately took it over to Covent Garden and experimented with photographing people there. As you can see, it's a nice sharp lens, though I overexposed the photo above just a bit. (What is it with Asian women and those paper face masks? I see that a lot.)

It was freezing cold, so everyone was huddled and bundled and trying to stay warm. Not the best day to stand outside with a camera. My hands got so cold they hurt!

Of course, this lens raises all those ethical questions about the fairness of photographing complete strangers unaware, and then posting their photos on the Internet. That's street photography, and it's perfectly legal -- but is it right? Do people have an expectation of privacy when they're standing in the middle of hundreds of other people on a public plaza?

The law says no, because otherwise there would be no journalism. You have to be able to photograph people in public, even if they're not aware.

I have a few personal rules. I don't take any photos specifically to embarrass people. I try to put myself in the position of the person being photographed, and I only use the picture if I think they would approve. And I always avoid kids.

I'm not sure how much people photography I'm going to do anyway. It's mostly experimentation at this point!

One-Day Deadhead

I just read Nick Paumgarten's article in The New Yorker about the Grateful Dead, the nature of their music, their fanatical followers and their vast body of archived concert recordings. It got me thinking about my own experience with the Dead.

I was never much of a fan. In fact, like Nick Paumgarten, when I was young I thought they were a heavy metal band -- I suppose because of the name, and all those skulls.

But I did go see them once, in Orlando, Fla. I don't remember the date, or even the year, but after doing a bit of research I concluded it had to be one of three shows they did at the Orlando Arena in April 1991.

At the time I was working at a Central Florida newspaper, and one of my coworkers was a devoted Dead fan. Some of the others were casual Dead listeners, and I -- well, I was merely curious. (I seem to remember owning a copy of the "Skull & Roses" album around this time -- or maybe I borrowed it. I don't think I listened to it much.) At any rate, a group of us decided to attend the show.

The night of the concert, I wound up working a bit later than everyone else and driving to Orlando with an intern at the paper, an attractive young woman whose name I don't remember. She struck me as the kind of hippie-ish person who might follow the Dead. We barely knew each other, but talking on the way to the show, I confided that I had never done LSD. I said I was curious.

She exclaimed, "Oh, we can do some tonight, if you want!"

I suppose I kind of wanted her to say that -- but nonetheless, my blood immediately ran cold. My curiosity and adventurousness retreated like a turtle into its shell. I asked her how long an acid trip lasted. Hours and hours, she said.

"Well, I have to go to work tomorrow," I stammered.

Thus revealed to be a complete square, I think I dropped a few notches in her eyes. When we got to the show, she met friends and promptly took off -- I didn't see her the rest of the night. I don't think she even joined the rest of my coworkers.

I did find them, though, and we strolled the arena's parking area, where I seem to remember buying a dinner of vegetarian mash of dubious quality and cleanliness from a woman in a camper. We found our seats in the arena, and here is what I remember about the show: Purple lights and the smell of pot.

I do not remember the music. Not one bit. I don't remember what the band looked like, or even if they were any good. This was obviously toward the end of their long career, a period that Deadheads regard as inferior to the band's earlier years -- and after their tedious song "Touch of Gray," ironically their biggest radio hit. They probably played that.

Not being a Dead fan, I wouldn't have been in a position to appreciate their improvisational playing, so it's no wonder that didn't make any impression. Maybe I forgot everything because I had a contact high from sitting in that crowd. (I don't think I smoked -- at least, not deliberately.)

Last night, I looked in my 1991 journal to see if I wrote anything about the concert. There was a gap in entries around that time -- they jump from March to May -- and from what I can tell, I never mentioned it.

So there you have it: my one forgettable, and mostly forgotten, day as a Deadhead.

(Photo: A heron in Hyde Park on Sunday.)

Window Repairs

The window repair man finally came back yesterday. Sheesh, what an odyssey that's been.

I think I mentioned a couple of months ago that we called the local government council -- which maintains our building -- to fix some broken hinges on our windows. The repairman came, assessed the situation, and told us we had extremely unusual hinges that they would need to special order.

(My mom is fond of saying that whenever you call a repair person -- or a call center, or any similar service provider -- it's always as if you are the very first person in recorded history to have your type of problem. This is a good example. Apparently no one else has hinges like ours.)

The repairman went away and came back a few weeks later with three replacement hinges. By this time, through sheer bad luck, we'd had two more break. (Attention landlords: we are not abusing the windows. I swear.) I'd hoped the repairman would have some extras with him, but no. He said I needed to file a new work order for the additional two hinges. But he added that he would watch for my work order, and would order parts so he could install them promptly when they arrived.

I filed the new work order. But this time the council, for some reason, sent a different repairman. He insisted that the council's regular maintenance staff (in other words, he himself) could not fix my windows.

"But," I protested, "another council worker fixed three of them just a few days ago."

Well, he shouldn't have done that, the new guy said. He called a subcontractor -- a special window-repair company. Several days later, they came and did their own assessment.

Unsurprisingly, they agreed with the first guy -- our hinges are very weird. They needed to be special ordered.

So finally, yesterday, the sub-contractors came back with new hinges. They fixed our two remaining windows. As far as I can tell, all our windows now work, though I'm increasingly afraid to open any of them.

(Photos: Oddities from around Knightsbridge, yesterday. Yes, that's a Christmas ornament in the gutter.)