sheep may safely graze

Here's an endearingly ludicrous installation in the British Library forecourt, offering a gloss, I guess, on the Georgian style exhibition.  I didn't go to that - too busy reading autobiographies by early C20th news photographers who had various anecdotes to tell about using flash ...  As you can see, it's damp, but not actually raining.  Depressing pictures of very widespread flooding in Somerset in the BBC TV evening news (from which animals, sheep included, have been rescued wholesale) - lightened, considerably, by the subtitles for the Hard of Hearing (e.g. my parents).  The local pilot of a helicopter flying in reporters opined of the Government that "they couldn't run a piss up in a brewery" - the captions, alas, read "couldn't run anything."  On the other hand, a little later, when someone said that they were "pissed off," this was transmuted into "a piece of."  I guess they had their fingers burnt the other night, when they miscaptioned - alas, I only saw a screen shot that was posted to FB - the Chinese "Year of the Horse" as the "Year of the Whores."

an ancestor

And no, I don't know who she is.  Paternal side of the family; taken in a studio sometime in the ?1880s (maybe after they moved from Norfolk to industrial Sheffield).  Showing the far-flung reach of Oriental design in England in the period, if this wallpaper or screen material has made it to a rather humdrum photographic business.  Great-great granny, if that's she, didn't stay very still, either.  But that's an unmistakable family forehead and eyes - and I find her not a little scary.

rainbow web

Here's a large rainbow web suspended over an inner courtyard at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX.  I swear - this brand new terminal is the only place I know where the general lounge area is preferable to the airline lounge - quiet, airy, free wifi that works AND ... is that a Umami burger outlet in front of me ...? (or there's a Border Grill branch, or or or ...).  I am fortifying myself against the tube strike, gales and floods that are lying in wait for me 6000 miles away ...

La piragua

This mural defeats my ability to read Central American politics (and slurs).  La piragua - the canoe - well, I can read and understand that bit.  But what is it with the sow and all those piglets?  And the mermaid?  Yes, it's the El Salvador flag.  But the invocation of "salvatruchas - maybe "peasant guerrillas" (literally Salvadorean army ants), "chapines" - Guatemalans; "catrachos" - Hondurans; "chochos" - I am not translating *that,* in polite company - and "mejiquillos" - maybe Southerners - and then I give up - ah, this defeats me.  It's almost opposite the bodega from the other day, on South Rampart. One of the things that I love about Los Angeles is that I can have all the stimulus, some days, of being a long way from home.  Home being -?

choices

Having been in our new house very nearly a year - we've owned it for a year and two days - it's time to get serious about what it actually looks like, in part.  We were very good at moving in, emphatically, right away, and then somehow stopped - I certainly have (tucked away, in our copious storage spaces) shamefully unpacked boxes, and so on.  So some new bookcases will be on their way, soon, and maybe a new sofa, or two.  We like the idea of lightening the living room as much as possible, so it'll end up being a no-red-wine-at-parties zone, at this rate.  Which color?  The trouble is that the one I prefer - the one on the right - is decidedly pricier.  And then - which will hold up better to the ravages of kitty claws?  You see the problem, highlighted in all its glory by the morning sunlight ... And yes, obviously, this bears a tag, #firstworldproblems.  

building in LA

Apparently the big builders (and big buyers of apartments, once built) in Los Angeles at the moment are the Chinese, who are casting their eyes on sites in the rapidly developing downtown, and thinking that this is a more secure destination for their money than China itself.  This plot, or crumbing building, though - which isn't in downtown - more like Koreatown - doesn't look as though it's going going going any time soon.  But it does give a sense of today's mounting clouds - one of those days (rare recently) when one feels as though yes, one is on the Pacific Rim, and yes, perhaps China is over on the other side, out there.

bodega

One advantage of going into work on a Saturday?  When I stopped outside this little store, at lights, there wasn't a car, for once, drawn up in the lane between me and the shop.  So here's a small slice of transitional LA - it doesn't know if it's a Latino store, or what its relationship with the encroaching Korean-ness all round it might be, or whether to play safe and opt for notices in English ...