watching the workers

Gramsci is completely riveted by whatever construction work is going on outside: who knows what his ambitions and fantasies of masculine labor may be like.  Me ... I just want to be able to wander outside and be able to go and admire the California poppies that are just starting to bloom, and not to be living in an endless chaos of things that we've had to move around from one spot to another ...

 

campus transportation

Bicycles are a benign form of campus mobility, relatively speaking.  That is, one gets the occasional speeder, the occasional person riding along and looking at their cell phone, rather than at the person they're about to run into.  But compared to electric scooters, they are - well, one can hardly say pedestrian, but they do a wheeled equivalent of ambling along.  Those scooters are truly terrifying, driven/ridden by maniacs who, despite half-hearted attempts at campus policing, and even more half-hearted banners and signs exhorting Trojans to be courteous, seem to have as their one ambition the running down - or at very least the terrifying - of mere pedestrians.

 

How one doesn't think of Los Angeles

I don't know quite what city this looks like - but not, to be sure, Los Angeles.  It was another very wet morning, and we had to drive over to mid-town to talk to our TIAA adviser (that's the company that looks after the funds that will provide for us down the road - well, not exactly as a pension, because they fluctuate with the markets, but this is the common organization used in lieu of pension schemes by most US universities.  Essentially they're investment brokers, I guess).  We have a very enthusiastic and apparently efficient adviser there, but all the same, it always feels a bit like going to the financial dentist.

But the view from his office!!  Pretty wonderful at the best of times, but with the clouds blowing in from the sea, it was spectacular.

 

somewhere out there

Yes, it's due to rain again tonight and tomorrow, so our fortifications are once again shrouded in black plastic.  However, somewhere beyond there, in the grass, I could just about make out our first orange California poppies.  I'm really missing being able to wander out into the garden for some fresh air - because of all the work, the earth moving - I mean, the substantial terrace construction is taking forever ... I'm sure, eventually, something will emerge ...

 

some surprising flamingos

Driving down Sunset this evening, these rather stood out in their pinkness, neatly matched by the little bit - the very little bit - of pink blossom in the tree above them.  I'd seen the tree shadow, of course, but that small, perfectly placed pink flower had passed me by completely until I downloaded and enlarged the image.  Did my eye register it unconsciously?

Anyway, why the flamingos, in an apparently empty store?

 

looking down our stairwell

It's not easy choosing between these two pics - I prefer the composition of the top image; the bottom one shows Gramsci's face looking winningly upwards.  They both, however, show off his long, elegant form as he plays with his (thankfully toy) mousey.  He can amuse himself for hours, batting it down the stairs, chasing it, catching it, repeat.  Or if we're particularly busy with something else, like eating dinner, he'll drop it at our feet, expecting us to drop it all the way down through the stair railings so that he can rush off and fetch it.  Repeat.  Then sometimes he just stretches out to enjoy his capture.

 

watching

Gramsci, watching birds; Moth, watching Gramsci.  He's on top of the armoire in the bedroom, and seems to have found a comfortable stretching position from which to observe all the little birdies in the Asian pear.  And Moth?  She's on top of the kitty palace, muttering that he's ridiculous.

But.  This evening, after dinner - there was unquestionable Play - the two of them were bouncing and pouncing and rolling around on the rug in the front hall - just as Moth used to play with LucyFur.  This was a huge breakthrough ... And Moth has taken to licking him, even if he's a bit indifferent to that.  I'm impressed.

 

sky

\

It was really quite dramatic this morning.  It felt as though it should portend something - but it doesn't seem to have done.

 

jasmine, post rain

It's a bit crumpled and wrinkled, and water drops are still hanging off it, but it smells pretty good, all the same.  Given that much of the rest of our garden resembles - no, is - a sodden building site, it's good to have a sense of what this can be like at its best ...

 

still stormy

I suppose it'll stop raining sometime?  This was the rather spectacular view from the top of the car park this afternoon - downtown against the clouds.  It felt so good to be back - even if I don't know that this was exactly the weather that we would have chosen for the departmental visit from prospective graduate students, it was a wonderfully affirming experience sitting in a room with them whilst we - including our very newest colleague, who was there via Zoom - were talking about who we are and what we do, and generally trying to persuade them to come.  They seemed a great bunch - I hope we managed to talk them into it.

 

from one house to another

He's back on my shoulder!

It made a lot of sense getting a bit later a flight than usual in the morning ... but that makes it very late now ...

Hard closing that front door...

 

not entirely believable

Well, I'm not going to get the garage looking any better - I've run out of time - run out of time with everything.  But that was the last impossible zone, and it's certainly an improvement - as anyone who remembers its appearance from earlier posts will surely acknowledge. Acknowledge? I want a whole round of applause, and balloons.

But - it hurts to see the house now listed on line, as of this evening, not least with the ominous words "development potential" very prominently displayed. I'll be both glad, and devastated, to close the door behind me tomorrow morning, and leave it, for now, to its fate.

 

a trip to St Albans

To St Albans, where my cousin Jon (who is a very talented printmaker) had some works on show at The Collective Gallery (scroll through the link for one of his).  Lunch first with him, his son Alex and Alex's wife Ella - who both work for ShedKM, which does some terrific architectural projects (I'm showing off the family, today).  

And then I was scurrying back to the station, with every intention of making more headway on the dreadfully uphill work of clearing out the garage, and realised that St Albans Cathedral - usually called the Abbey - was on my way - I hadn't been there since maybe 1985 or 6.  Essentially it hadn't changed much, though the Welcome Centre certainly made it snazzier - it's one of those buildings that's a complete patchwork of styles.  It has the longest nave in England, with essentially 11th century architecture at one end, and what looks like a Victorian parish church at the other; it's the oldest continuous site of Christian worship in England - built on the site where Britain's first Christian martyr had his head chopped off (according to St Bede).  I wish it hadn't been so chill and grey - it's a lovely setting (not that I suppose St Alban took that in, particularly) and grounds.

And then - genuinely on my way to the station - here's a pub named after Garibaldi, who supposedly stayed here (not, probably, in the pub) when he was in exile.

 

evening camellias

Alternating showers and sunshine - and then an evening in which the birds were singing late as I walked up from the bottom of the road - after escorting a friend to the station, and the camellias were hanging heavily on the bush across the street, and it began to feel, at last, like spring.

 

giving back to Battersea

How - just how? - did my parents accumulate so many towels, and blankets, and sheets - and why?  I mean - why did they hold onto them for so long?

I was so pleased today to enlist the help of my cousin Peter and to drive this whole pile to Battersea Dogs and Cats home, to be used for the comfort of shelter animals.  Well - almost the whole pile - at the last moment I rescued that blue/green blanket, which had been mine as a girl, and I couldn't quite relinquish.

Simba, who gave my parents years and years of companionship (and a few bites) came from Battersea, and this (as well as the bequest they'll eventually receive) seemed a very suitable way to honor his memory.

 

staging ...

By now, I have tidied this house so much that it's almost stopped feeling familiar - and it was even less so when the photographer commissioned by the estate agent came round - the kind of photographer that hides the bath mat and soap in the bath, so such messy household details don't appear to the world.  It was his good idea to open both sets of French windows in the dining room: they seemed very surprised.  Indeed, I don't recollect ever seeing the ones on the left open before, and it was a bit of an effort getting them to budge (I was a little worried that the entire back wall would disintegrate in the process, but it held firm ...).  I'm sorry that I won't be here to put out fresh flowers all the time, as I've done for other places, other times, but it's well decorated with them right now - I might as well enjoy it for all I can.  It was gracious of the sun to emerge for a while, during picture taking time.  

 

morning, with parakeet

and with plenty of condensation on the window, because it was very cold outside.  Indeed, I was woken with a start at around 5.58 by a weird sound - somewhere between a dragon and a blow-torch - so strange that I spent a minute or two listening to my breathing in case it had turned heavy and labored and I'd dreamed it into dragon breath, but after I looked out of the window, I could see that it was the neighbor scraping frost off his windshield.  Then the rattling noise began - like a woodpecker using an amplifier.  That was the parakeet, who I strongly suspect was mimicking a woodpecker.  At that point I gave up and got up, for a day of various kinds of frustrations around house stuff, and the inability of buses to move through traffic caused by the Tube strike...

 

things I didn't buy today

... but rather wish I had:

a) sticky buns.  Actually I don't especially like sticky buns, but these looked so delicious I wished that I did.

b) an ammonite - particularly this first, polished ammonite.

c) a fossilized fish

If anyone thinks that it would be completely delightful to surprise me with something, an ammonite or an ancient fish would be very welcome ...

Of course, anyone who knows where London's major fossil shop is - Museum Street - would suspect that I might have been there to go to Abbott & Holder, and to pick up a painting that I had very much bought.  That served as a very welcome antidote to meeting with the estate agent, signing lots of bits of paper (or rather, pdfs), verifying my identity, ordering an inspection for an Energy Performance Certificate (without which one can't sell a house here - all these surprise expenses!) and all the rest of it.  I am feeling a little shell-shocked - most likely this will go on the market formally a few hours after I leave, next week ...

 

tick tock

My father loved clocks - but this doesn't really explain why, in a smallish house, I've been able to gather together five cheap alarm clocks.  I had to round them up - some of them have distractingly loud ticks. Now it just sounds as though the bathroom is full of rhythmic woodpeckers.  

And this isn't counting the larger, extra-loud alarm clock we bought him when he started to complain that he couldn't hear one of these going off in the morning - an alarm clock that sounded from downstairs as though there was some kind of dreadful emergency going on when it rang.  Nor the two clock radios; nor the two carriage clocks; nor the larger nineteenth century gilt ornamental mantel clock, nor the rather fine ormolu Empire clock with Diana the huntress, and a greyhound (picked up cheap in Cumberland in the late 1950s, and still without its original hands), nor the nineteenth century painted American clock, nor an assortment of Victorian pocket watches, nor, of course, the grandfather clock in the hall.  And then there's the tin, in the garage, of spare clock parts.  

 

more attempts at spring

It really made a valiant attempt to be springlike today - until it rained, and even then it was warm.  So this was a good background for a day's filling of trash cans - trash, and paper recycling, gets picked up every two weeks - and it's their turn tomorrow - then garden waste and bottles/cans next week, and food waste every week - so I took the opportunity to clear just about everything from stray corners of the freezer.  There were a lot of curled pieces of plaice, which might be ok, but I'm not gambling my digestive system on them, so I think they're destined for the foxes (who are getting sausages tonight - no way I am eating sausages at the best of times, but certainly not the pale pink British variety).

 

a late spring in Wimbledon

All through this last week, FaceBook has been taunting me with "seven years ago" - or whatever - pictures, many of them showing this garden and, above all, the magnolia tree in full, magnificent bloom.  I have been irrationally excited about the prospect of seeing the tree - sadly anxious that it could very well be for the last time - thinking of it as a symbol of this garden's beauty.

It looks to be weeks off flowering.  It's miserably cold and damp here - and at some point, the central heating boiler in the house went off (I guess that will be good for fuel bills?), and so it's chilled all the way through - despite the heat now being on; despite my deployment of electric fans.  The house itself - I'd underestimated how tidy and sparse I'd left it, so although it's good to be back in some ways, it quite definitely doesn't look like "home" (although it sounds like home - the doors still squeak in the same ways.  But there's still a way to go - back to the tidying and clearing tomorrow ...

 

churu, anyone??

I swear this stuff is like Kitty Crack.  The mere rustle of a tube of Churu, and these two move as one - any hint of rivalry or animosity forgiven (though of course, Gramsci grabs it off your finger twice as fast, sometimes forgets that he's not meant to get his very magnificent long teeth involved, and then tries to make a grab for wherever Moth is licking).  So far as Moth is concerned ... it's a very good job that this is a very low calorie treat.  Goodness knows what's in it, but they absolutely love it.

Off to Wimbledon (hence the early post) - this will be a strange Spring Break ... And I will miss everyone left behind in LA, including these two ...

 

library reflections

Literally, of course - Doheny Library in the Reflecting Pool.  But also figuratively ... Doheny is the undergraduate library, which means that it's more full of Study Pods than books - that is, lots of sofas where students can fall comfortably and soundly asleep.  Like most of USC's libraries, its actual book supply is ... limited.  I go in there periodically to pick up books that I've requested from the Grand Depository.  It was a day of sad disillusionment when I realised, belatedly, that the Grand here did not signify something magnificent, like the Library of Celsus at Ephesus before it burnt to the ground in 262 CE - rather, it's some warehouse on Grand Street.

 

celebrating the ceanothus

First - I never knew that an alternative name for Ceanothus is Californian Lilac, so it makes a lot of sense that we have a great deal in magnificent bloom at the moment.  But we're lucky to have it in bloom at all.  At some point last year, it was looking miserable - wilting, covered in tiny bugs, sticky.  Spraying it with soapy water did nothing.  So we cut it right down to the ground, expecting that it had reached the end of its days.  But rapidly, over the last few months - and with all the rain - it's burst into blossom, and is really looking quite spectacular.

 

a sunset junction guy

This is on the side of a building in the same block as the Black Cat - a bar (now a restaurant) which has been through a number of incarnations even since I've lived in or around the 'hood; which opened late in 1966, and which became the site of some of the very earliest protests for gay rights - not least after the police, in January 1967, beat up a woman behind the bar, Lee Roy, because they thought that she was a man called Leroy wearing a dress.  We're only - what? - 56 years further on, now.  We were walking past, post dinner, this evening - I just don't recollect taking in this guy's hairy chest and hairy arms and droopy hairy beer belly before ... he looks like a gay raccoon (the raccoons were out again last night, partying in our construction site).

 

blossom and bee

On a very chilly day, here's a tree in full pink regalia outside the Music School on campus, with a bee in full flight.  The pink and the very pale yellow make this look like some late eighteenth century "oriental" wallpaper design.

 

fragments of rainbow

... from outside our front door early this evening.  Not, perhaps, truly dramatic - but since we don't see rainbows all that often, certainly worthy of note, and on a much wetter day than we'd bargained for.

 

progress report

Honestly, it's hard to tell exactly how this is going - only the excavations continue, and are impressive, and maybe one day we'll get a new terrace and a back yard that doesn't look like it'll fall down the hill.  One day.  If you look very closely here, you'll see a thin orange line snaking into the foreground.  That's making an electric pump work.  At the lower level is another thin orange hose - that's conveying the water - well, who knows where, because we can't clamber over all of this, in the mud, to find out.  For down in that left hand corner of the diggings - as far away as it could be from where they dug down to get the soil samples - is - guess what? - a spring.

Of course, I have fantasies - maybe we could bottle this, and make a fortune - Los Feliz Water! - or, better and more alliterative, given our street name, Shannon Spring Water!  In the meanwhile, we're waiting to hear what the construction company propose, and, more to the gloomy point, how much it will cost.  It's not quite at a stage when one can say - oh, you know, maybe it's not worth it, after all.  Maybe we could build a fountain?

 

ferns at night

In our front yard, this evening.  I can't ever, truly, get enough of ferns.  If I'd been around a hundred and fifty years ago, I have a strong suspicion I'd have been a Victorian fern collector, peering at banks in Devon and the Scottish Lowlands, and probably the Himalayas, looking for perfect specimens.  I hope the Himalayas, anyway: I love the thought of myself as an intrepid plant gatherer (or unaware pillager), even if the reality would more likely have been Sunday afternoons in Leeds Zoological and Botanical Gardens - an ultimately failed venture that attempted to accumulate specimens from the British Empire.  There's still a remnant on Cardigan Road, in Headingley, that used to be the Bear Pit - ten minutes walk from where my paternal grandfather grew up.  The Zoo and Gardens were well gone by then, however: they were only - and only just about - functioning from 1840 to 1858: a relatively rare example of a municipal public space that never raised enough funds, and never managed to get going, despite the lonely bear, that would climb a tree to eat the bananas that were offered.

 

Jupiter and Venus

They may look alarmingly close together, but trust me, Jupiter (on the left) and Venus (brighter, and on the right) aren't going to bang into one another: they are 400 million miles apart.  I heard a piece on NPR about this planetary conjunction, claiming that witnessing them in the sky this week, and allowing them to make us feel very very small, is to experience Awe - and it struck me that the current interest in awe (see, for example, Dacher Keltner's new book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life) is really a reworking of the Sublime for the C21st.

 

it's Moth's turn

Unquestionably, it's Moth's turn to be the subject of a portrait.  Your guess is as good as mine as to the bond that she's building with that ancient gourd - a hangover from Halloween, it seemed about time to say goodbye to it.  Or maybe she wants to send it with me to England to help out with the supermarket vegetable crisis?  Or maybe she thinks that she would have made a good subject for Vermeer?  She is, whatever is running through her mind, a very fine cat.