the end of 2013 ...

We keep our (very small) Christmas tree outside, on the patio table ... inside, it's just tempting fate with the Younger Cats (baubles, chain of shiny beads, variegated what-would-be-seen-as-kitty-toys).  So here's the star, silhouetted against the final sunset of 2013.  I was lucky: though 2013 was a crap year for very many people, for me there were some definite highlights (buying a new house! getting married - thank you, Supreme Court!) and the only real, if sustained low was in the spring, when various aspects of chairing ground me down into a low and exhausted state.  Curiously, it was teaching a Bread Loaf course on British Poetry that rescued me: a good reminder of the benefits of being shaken out of one's comfort zone.

For 2014?  I'd like some rain, please, here in NM, and in Los Angeles.  

This picture, as always on NYE. was taken at around 5 p.m., when sunset here coincides with the New year in England - an attempt at seasonal synchronicity.  So - whether it's already past, or yet to come -

HAPPY 2014, everyone!

flopped

Handsome though Walter Gomez may be, no one could ever accuse him of being an over-active cat.  Give him a new, catnip flavored Christmas toy, and he'll spend five minutes getting quietly stoned, and then - flop.

broken elephant

In Wimbledon Village, there's a grocery store called Bayley and Sage.  Going there is always something of a guilty pleasure - my father refuses to countenance its existence (he's a Waitrose man), since he thinks that everything is outrageously overpriced.  So it is, I guess - but there are a lot of things that aren't too easy to find anywhere else by way of treats (and they sell very good cheese, too).  So this time, inter alia, we stocked up on various cookies, including this gingerbread, decorated with an elephant that looks almost like a reverse henna tattoo.  Unfortunately, it cracked on the way back here, but I'm sure it'll still taste good, when I can summon up the courage to engage in such aesthetic desecration.

back in the closet

We're home!  And the cats are so happy that we're back.  Let me re-phrase that: three of the cats are very happy that we've returned, and the feral orange fluffy Bitzi is - well, she quickly excavated a hiding place in the cupboard by my side of the bed, and is in there, glowering.  By contrast, Moth is leaping and bounding around, LucyFur (whilst continuing to claim Superiority over Kittens) is re-establishing her relationship with us, and Walter Gomez is happily sniffing our feet.  And other parts - as a special treat, he sat on the side of the bath with me in it, dipping his paws in the water, and linking my leg.  There was an interesting moment in London when we had to disabuse my mother: I'd thought that she was having an odd difficulty on Skype in pronouncing his name - it turns out that she thought his name was Walter Gropius ...

albuquerque, mexico (Dec 27th)

The flight from LHR to DFW was uneventful (apart from the screaming children, and the rather pregnant woman in considerable discomfort in the seat in front of us, trying to recline her seating as far as possible).  But at DFW it was an unwelcome surprise to find that no longer can those of us in possession of a green card go through immigration alongside American citizens: no, because of new machines, we have to line up with very, very, very many other foreigners, together with their imperfectly filled forms, lack of English ("French interpreter needed at Booth 12," etc).  The only people with relatively tight connections who were being allowed to jump the line were those with international flights.  All the same, I flourished my boarding pass for DFW>ABQ, all the while texting Alice, quickly through and at baggage claims, about What To Do Next.  Ah, said the TSA official - "Albuquerque - Mexico!" and ushered me into a rapid-process line.  Thank goodness for US geographical ignorance...

Unfortunately, even though I made that flight, my suitcase didn't ... it caught the next one ... by this stage, we were safely in the ABQ Sheraton, and as I went to collect it from the airport, I was barely, barely awake enough to roll it back, let alone to struggle with recalcitrant internet ...

boxing day

two Boxing Day vignettes: my father eating his lunch (peeled fruit, a few chunks of cheese) as he writes an email (my mother resting upstairs; me baking chocolate chip cookies for tea; Alice on her way  over from our hotel); and a wall from Cannizaro Park, behind the hotel - sodden in a dank early morning mist, but, as ever, somewhere I've known for many many many decades, having been pushed round it in a pram.  And this had me wondering today (tiered gardens, balustrades, etc) whether this induced some kind of liking for Italianate gardens and architecture, way before I could have been aware that such things existed.

christmas 2013

Christmas at 20 Hillside ... my parents in their living room;

my father posing with a glass of champagne;

my mother extremely happy to find that my father has taken the trouble not just to buy her a new wooden spoon, but to saw and smooth down the handle so that it's usefully short;

and my father opening a present from the neighbors - rather clearly marked "FRAGILE - Please Keep This Way Up" - upside down.

Somehow, this all manages to look like a series of stills from a particularly British TV comedy show ... the appealing-to-the-upper-middle-class kind that doesn't have people whooping and falling flat on their backs when wearing paper hats.  Comedy almost always has some base in reality, or maybe it's the other way round.  We have retreated to our hotel room (early morning image follows below) to drink from the thoughtfully provided flask of sweet sherry - thus almost certainly falling headlong into another comedy stereotype.