A Heath Outing, With Built-In Relaxation

Another sunny Saturday, another walk on the Heath. Frankly, it was a good place to be given the craziness going on in other parts of London.

Olga took it easy on this walk. We made our way there slowly, stopping to sniff every possible smell, and once on the Heath a lot of this occurred (above). There's nothing wrong with a little rest stop, I suppose.

We visited some areas where we'd never been before, including a wide path on the Kenwood estate that runs between some wooden palings.

We saw the backside of the weird shelter that sits above one of the Heath's major paths. Turns out there's also a bench on the side facing Kenwood (above). I have no idea why this structure was even built. It's basically just a magnet for what the British would call "anti-social behaviour" -- in other words, graffiti.

More lying down. It's a good position from which to survey, if not chase, squirrels. (She did her share of chasing too, though.)

"I'm SO HOT -- but I'm happy!"

The Body Snatchers

I had a novel experience yesterday -- a Zoom call with more than 260 people! I didn't even know such a thing was possible. Every year, on the last day of school, we have a big assembly of faculty and staff where we wrap up the year and recognize people who are leaving or retiring. This year, obviously, we had to do it virtually, and I must admit it was kind of cool! Every participant was shown, 20 people to a screen, and you had to page through 13 screens to see all of us. It was like a gigantic "Brady Bunch" extended family reunion. We even sang "Happy Birthday" to one of our teachers -- not that anyone could hear it, really.

It's so funny how Zoom has become such a part of all of our lives.

So, yes, the school year is now over. No more Zooming. I know Dave is relieved.

We're still uncertain how the next school year will look. Apparently there are several possible plans, and what we do depends a lot on the government and the course of the virus. We could have only certain grade levels back at school, or certain kids on certain days, or everyone or no one. As for my job in the library, I have no idea how or whether it will change, but considering that so much of it focuses on circulating objects among lots of people, I imagine it's inevitable. I've been assured that I will still have a job, at least.

Speaking of books, I'm reading a fascinating non-fiction book, "The Italian Boy" by Sarah Wise, about a criminal case of body-snatching in London in the 1830s. It could almost be a farce, with three or four drunken protagonists stumbling in and out of pubs all day and in between lugging around the body of a 14-year-old kid, which they're trying to sell to one of the hospitals or anatomy schools for dissection. The crux of the story, of course, is where this body came from and whether or not they killed the boy.

Apparently this really was a business in London at the time -- procuring bodies for medical study. The practitioners were known as "resurrection men," and widely reviled. They sometimes dug up fresh graves to steal the corpses, and were known to linger outside the houses of dying people, waiting to make a deal with relatives.

The book is especially good at describing the filthiness of the city. This was the London of Dickens, before the Victorian sewer system was installed, and everywhere in the streets was poverty, stench and offal. Orphaned or abandoned children slept by the hundreds in doorways and beneath peddlers' carts in the markets. The cemeteries were so crowded they emitted fetid smells. Here's a passage describing James May, one of the body-snatchers, seen by a witness at a neighborhood pub:

 "Later in the evening, shortly before nine o'clock, May went up to the bar of the Fortune of War, poured some water over something he was holding in a handkerchief, and began rubbing it. Henry Lock, the barman, took a look and saw May was cleaning blood and flesh from a set of human teeth. Lock remarked to May that they looked like the teeth of a young person and would no doubt be worth something, and May boasted he expected to get two pounds for the set."

That passage alone shows how inured people were to grisly sights. When a guy can stand at the bar and clean stolen human teeth -- which he'd removed from the boy's body, by the way, with an awl -- well, let's just say I don't want to go to that pub.

On to happier topics. Olga says hello, from a cozy spot beneath her favorite pink blanket!

(Top photo: The Regent's Canal, near Primrose Hill. The big red boat is a floating Chinese restaurant. I've never been there, but every time I see it I think I should go!)

Garden, Good and Bad

Our garden is enjoying all the rain. (And I am too, I must admit, since it gives me an excuse to hang out inside and read.) Here's an update on what's happening out there at the moment.

First, our disconcertingly beige rose (above) has sent up three buds this year, more than we've seen from it in a while. We call it the "flesh rose," because its petals are similar in color to Crayola's old "flesh" crayon. (Which is now called "peach," apparently.) It's not my favorite rose, but I still cut one of the blossoms for our bud vase.

The beach asters are blooming next to our new stepping stones...

...and the red verbena in our hanging basket has arisen from he dead and sent out bright flowers.

Our Chinese lantern also has lots of little flowers, which hopefully will lead to lanterns later this year. (By the way, remember how I planted two lanterns, trying to grow the plant from seed? Well, that was a failure. Nothing ever sprouted.)

Not everything is rosy in the garden, though. Our hollyhocks, which I grew from seed last spring, look something like this -- and only about half of them survived the winter. I was under the impression that hollyhocks grew easily and monstrously, but ours have never taken off. I'm not giving up on them, exactly, but I'm disappointed they haven't done more.

Also, our geraniums are being gnawed to within an inch of their lives. I believe this is some type of sawfly, although I haven't seen the caterpillars themselves, so it could be something else. Apparently they don't kill the plant, but we haven't had any flowers yet this year so I'm not sure it's exactly happy. I'm just going to let nature take its course.

Finally, here's Dave's present for his birthday later this month -- a tree fern! He's wanted one for years, and I finally got around to ordering it. Those little devils are not cheap, and you have to be sure to get one from a reputable dealer so you can be certain it was sustainably harvested. (Apparently they are sometimes poached in their home countries of Australia and New Zealand.) I ordered this one straight from the Royal Horticultural Society, and it arrived Wednesday.

In other news, we finally received word that our Brazil trip next month is cancelled. This doesn't surprise either of us in the least, of course, but we've been waiting for the official verdict. We're being given a voucher to use any time within the next 12 months on another trip, and whatever we don't use during that time period will be returned to us in cash.

How We Used to Be

I spent the entire day yesterday on the couch.

On the plus side, I finished "Swallows and Amazons," which I enjoyed much more after I finally got into it (around page 130). I can see why it's so popular, appealing to a nostalgic sense of what it was like to grow up in Britain in the 1920s. As blogger John Gray commented on my last mention of the book: "Swallows and Amazons -- how we used to be." Outdoorsy and adventurous, but also polite, law-abiding and capable. I'm sure this is idealized in the common memory -- surely there were people in interwar Britain who were couch potatoes and drunkards, just as most Americans weren't cowboys or Pa Ingalls. But I get the appeal. As for the plot, it was surprisingly mild -- I kept waiting for something disastrous to happen, for someone to drown, or sink the boat, or set the island on fire. But it never did.

My main objection is that there's an awful lot of sailing lingo. Sentences like, "Roger, run forward to coil down the painter." I have no idea what that means. I suppose I could look it up. If I cared.

Anyway, I didn't do anything else of consequence. It rained much of the day.

Olga's dog-walker, Francisco, sent me some photos of our girl out on her daily walk. (Obviously, given the sunshine, these weren't taken yesterday!)

It's nice to see her out with other dogs. I sometimes doubt her ability to socialize, living in a one-dog household, but Francisco says she's fine with the others.

I've been getting more bizarre spam e-mail. Lately someone's been trying to get me to apply for a concealed carry permit so I don't get arrested for carrying my handgun (!) in the state of Massachusetts, where I have never lived. Why on earth am I on that mailing list?!

(Top photo: A colorful house near Willesden Green, last week.)

Regent's Park and Three Macaws

I had to drop by school yesterday to pick up a book, so as long as I was down that way, I figured I'd go to Regent's Park. I don't often visit Regent's, one of the eight Royal Parks, which was named for the Prince Regent (aka the "playboy prince") who later became King George IV. Even though it's the closest Royal Park to our neighborhood and not far from school, it seems I always have somewhere else to go. But not yesterday!

The park has two circular roads, one inside the other, and the formal Queen Mary's Rose Gardens inside the concentric rings. There are ponds and statues and, in the rest of the park, wide-open grassy areas. The London Zoo is located in the northeast corner -- I didn't go there, and in fact I'm not sure it's open at the moment.

The photos above and below show the formal gardens. There are so many roses blooming that they scent the air. Can you see the delphiniums, the blue spires in the background of the top photo, at the right? They were huge.

I have no idea why those traffic cones are in the fountain. They look like weird, futuristic koi, don't they?

I thought this was humorous -- a bird perched on top of a bird.

Speaking of birds, I stopped and sat on a tree stump and ate lunch I'd picked up at a nearby take-away shop. I heard a rustling sound behind me, and turned to find two big crows sneaking up to steal my potato chips. The nerve!

The BT Tower is easily visible from the south side of the park. As you can see, the scrolling message -- which used to read "Stay Home > Protect the NHS," has been changed (in line with government recommendations) to the comparatively vague "Stay Alert > Control the Virus."

There was some excitement while I walked down the Broad Walk, a tree-lined avenue on the east side of the park. I heard a helicopter close overhead, and watched as an air ambulance landed nearby. I have no idea what was going on. I didn't stick around to find out.

Instead I crossed out of the park and went to adjacent Primrose Hill...

...where I came across this guy and his brother, exercising their beautiful macaws. The birds above are named Sonic (on the ground) and Phoenix. He'd send them off in flight and they'd fly a wide circle around the park and then come back and land on his shoulders. 

They looked amazing in flight, but unfortunately I could never get an ideal shot. They move fast!

This bird, Rio, is a rescue whose wings had been kept clipped by its former owner. Rio was wearing a long lead while being trained to fly free as its wings grew back.

So the day just kept getting stranger -- from a pleasant picnic and a rose garden to an air ambulance and brilliantly colored macaws. To cap it all off, as I was walking home, an Eastern European woman beckoned me over to a bus stop in Belsize Park and asked haltingly if I spoke English. When I said yes, she pointed to another woman sitting next to her, a Japanese tourist who apparently left her phone on a bus and needed assistance. (I thought, "We have tourists now?!") We tried to call the phone, and when that didn't work, I explained the situation to the driver of the next bus that stopped. He said he'd take her to the end of the line and try to locate the phone on the previous bus. The Japanese woman seemed doubtful but went with him, so fingers crossed.

Maybe Too Much Trash

Yesterday was very domestic -- I made it to the grocery store and the butcher, and otherwise stayed home all day. So it's time for another assortment of random iPhone photos, taken over the past few weeks. Even more of them than usual seem to involve rubbish on the street!

First, though, these brightly colored tulips on a grave at the cemetery are made of wood.

Found this posted outside one of our supermarkets. What's the backstory here?! (I blurred out his face.)

This colorful label was on a box set out with other trash on the high street. Manastirka is apparently a Serbian plum brandy. The name means "from the monastery."

This was also set out with someone's rubbish -- a colorful photo of a cityscape, printed on canvas. I Googled it, and it's Seattle. I did not bring it home.

Someone got a little too wild partying with the soundtrack from "Hairspray"! The Turnblads have sung their last.

A neighbor got a delivery contained in perhaps the biggest box I have ever seen. (Kettler sells garden furniture.)

This nice engraving was on the wall at the hospital when I went for my blood test on Friday. I can't read the artist's name, but it seems to be titled "Adrift."

And this engraving -- of sorts -- was scratched into the sand at Fortune Green. It's nice to see that the USA still enjoys an international reputation for space travel and rockets, since our reputation in so many other ways seems to be sliding downward.

Finally -- there's something funny about a big ol' box of sliced cheese. And it found a second life as a rubbish bin. Waste not, want not!

The Activist and the Aliens

Our foxgloves yesterday morning, in the aftermath of the previous evening's rainstorm. Look at all that moisture! Some of our plants got a bit knocked around by the wind, and I had to stake some of them up, but overall the garden is much happier.

I summoned up my courage and went to the Royal Free Hospital for my medical appointments on Friday. You may remember that I'd put them off because they were fairly routine and I was nervous about stepping into the coronavirus-ridden maw of our health care system. But I decided to just go ahead and get them done, and indeed, everything went fine. (As far as I know -- ask again in a week or two, when the incubation period is over!)

I was surprised that even in the hospital, many people -- both patients and clerical and support workers -- weren't masked. As I've mentioned before, this country takes a fairly low-key approach to masking. We've never been publicly advised to wear one (other than on public transport, where they're now required) and although I do see them on the streets, most people forgo them. I must admit I have still never worn one myself. I am diligent about hand-washing and keeping my distance, though.

Anyway, thank goodness those tests are done. I have one more to do at my doctor's office.

I took Olga to the cemetery yesterday afternoon, where I sat for a while and called our friend Chris, who complained about the tedium of this lockdown. (Chris is over 70 and not in the greatest of health, so he's pretty much staying home. I told him he needs a hobby!) While sitting on a bench where I don't usually sit, I happened to notice this headstone with a peace sign on it. How groovy! The woman buried there, Peggy Duff, who died in 1981 at age 71, was a well known activist who "inspired and organized so many in the struggle against injustice, oppression and war," according to the headstone. If she were still with us (and of a younger generation) she'd be out on the streets now, wouldn't she? It really is an endless struggle.

I also heard the turaco calling from one of the trees, but try as I might I could not see that darned bird.

I'm reading a book called "Swallows and Amazons." Have any of you heard of it? I hadn't before my library job -- I don't think kids in the states read it much -- but in the UK it's considered a classic. It's from 1930, about four kids who sail and camp out on an island in the Lake District.  I must admit I am finding it tedious. There's a lot of talk about masts and halyards and keels and whatnot. I think its appeal to children may be rooted in the fact that the kids are on their own, having an adventure with no adults around, but I wonder how many parents would allow their children (as young as seven) to be out on a lake for days at a time with no supervision.

Dave and I recently watched an Amazon movie called "The Vast of Night," about UFOs visiting a small New Mexico town in the 1950s. Clearly inspired by Roswell, it was really enjoyable. It made me think about Betty and Barney Hill -- do you remember them? When I was a kid, the Hills were famous for their assertions that they were abducted and experimented upon by aliens. I remember hearing about them and being a bit freaked out about whether something was going to descend from the sky and take me away. (They also made an impression because, of course, they have the same first names as the Rubbles.) Apparently a TV movie was made about them in the mid-'70s, which is probably why they were on my radar at that time. People in the '70s loved their UFO stories!