Greetings from Old Blighty

Here I am, back in London. In Belsize Park at the moment, using Spooner's macbook, which is a bit of a challenge. I'm getting a slow start today on account of jet lag and a very tiring arrival day. But I got up at 9 a.m., so my internal clock is half way to being adjusted.

The trip over was uneventful, but LONG -- 15 hours from door to door, using every mode of transport but boat. First the drive to the Massport lot in Framingham, then the Logan Express bus to the airport, then the flight (landed around 7 a.m.), an hour and a half on the tube to Belsize Park and a short walk to Spooner's house. The only good thing about the flight (it sure wasn't the food -- this time I tried the Hindu meal, and it was the same as all the other alternatives that Virgin Atlantic serves up, i.e. rice, overcooked veg and mystery sauce -- which upset my digestive system something wicked) was the inflight entertainment. I watched the film Somers Town, which I'd wanted to see while I was in London but it had just left the cinemas in Swiss Cottage and Finchley Road. It's by the same director who made This is England, and stars the same kid, who is about 15 now. There's really not much of a plot -- it's mostly vingnettes about a kid from the Midlands who's come to London, and his new mate, a Polish immigrant boy whose dad works in construction at the new St Pancras International station. It's quite charming, and I always like when I recognize places in Brit movies.

So, after my nap yesterday, I hopped on the 168 bus down to Camden Town, bought a bagel at Fresh and Wild, and headed for Regent's Park to wander around. It's a vast place -- not as big and wild as Hampstead Heath, but it took me longer than I'd guesstimated to make my way past the zoo to the Victorian drinking fountain, around by the bird sanctuary to the west side where the London Mosque is, over to the band shell which was blown up (killing 7 Royal Green Jackets in the band) by the IRA, around the Inner Circle -- with a wander through the secret garden at St John's Lodge -- and out the York Gate to Marylebone Road.

As I was walking down the Marylebone Road to the tube station at Baker Street, a tourist from South Asia stopped me and asked how to get to Oxford Street. This was a first -- it's always been me reluctantly asking someone for directions. Maybe I finally look like I know where I'm going (that's only semi-true). But I was able to quickly show him on my map where he was and how to get to Baker Street for a bus to Oxford Street. Once I was in the tube station, I had to ask someone on the platform if the train for Plaistow (wherever that is) would stop at Aldgate East.

I met up with my mates Helen and Judy in Whitechapel High Street, the beginning point for a guided walk about Jewish radicalism in the East End from 1881 to 1905. Jet lagged as I was, I think I was able to take in most of it at the time, but I can't remember any of the people we learned about at the moment, except for Samuel Gompers, who we learned attended the Jews' Free School in Bell Lane (building destroyed in the Blitz). We saw the Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune Street, the former site of Mossy Marks' deli in Wentworth Street (I have to find out if that's the place that James Mason visits in The London Nobody Knows), and ended in Princelet Street. Afterwards, Helen and Judy and I had dinner in a restaurant in the newly renovated (read: soul sucked out of it) Spitalfields Market. (Rosenbeans, you wouldn't recognise the place -- it looks nothing like the funky market we went to four years ago.)

Pedometer reading for yesterday: Over 20,000 steps, 8.5 miles.

Expenses:

• £20 to top up my Oyster card (I'll need to add more later)
• 69p for the bagel
  
• 7 quid for the East End walk (it costs £3.50 if you're non-waged)
  
• £1.05 for postcards
• a tenner for dinner
  

Cardigan - Finished!

I started this sweater in March, when it was still cold out and I could picture myself wearing it as we transitioned into spring. Nice plan. Spring moved into summer, and the sweater (knit from the neck down all in one piece) got too heavy to have on my lap on hot days so I put it aside. Now we're in another cool spell and I finally finished it. And I wore it yesterday. It's comfy and stylish, and I got several compliments on it. The yarn is South West Trading Twizé bamboo and has a nice shine to it. Love it!

Last night, I cast on another pair of fingerless mitts for one of my Flickr pals who didn't get a pair in the previous Mitts for Mates gift giving. No pix of that until after the gift has been given.

Another trip, another plan

It's time for me to start planning my September trip to London. My loyal readers (all four of them) will think that this blog is sounding like a broken record. The main focus of this trip is London Open House Weekend -- two days when over 600 buildings, usually not accessible by the general public, will open their doors to the hoi polloi. I've placed my online order for the booklet (5 quid) detailing all the buildings that will be open so that I can start making my plan of attack.

I'd actually given some thought to going over without having made a spreadsheet for the trip. Who am I kidding? As if. But the spreadsheet is looking mighty empty right now, and I've got to get cracking. I reckon the weather will be much better in September than what I've had in my previous April and October visits, and so I'm thinking of doing some walks along the Thames, weather permitting. One might be in Chiswick, and another from Tower Bridge to Rotherhithe. I'd also like to go back to Southbank Mosaics to volunteer again. I'll post more as the plan takes shape.

My Wordle

I made this at Wordle.net, but I can't figure out how to make it look bigger on this page. You'll just have to click on it. Wordle makes a graphic representation of the words you use in your blog. It's pretty cool.

Mother Nature

I really don't know squat about nature. Agriculture, yes, but nature, not so much. When I was a kid, my mother used to take us for evening drives in the country, and she'd point out all the different crops in the fields, so I can identify squash or beans at 55 mph, but I hardly know the difference between a crow and a pigeon. I prefer my flora cultivated and my fauna domesticated. But now that I have a digital camera, and work on a campus with lovely lakes and gardens to look at on noontime walks, I've been trying to pay more attention to it all.

Last year, I saw dragonflies and damselflies, cedar waxwings and a great blue heron, and I've learned the names of a couple new plants like fernleaf peony, Spigelia marilandica and Eryngium. I often took pictures of things and then posted them on Flickr and asked people to tell me what they were.


This year, I've been watching tadpoles turn into froglets in a little artificial pond near the Mount Holyoke greenhouse. Here are two tadpoles as they looked back in April. You'll probably have to click on the photo and view it large in order to see them. They're the grey blobs with eyes in the middle of the photo.


Nothing happened for weeks and weeks. The tadpoles swam around in the pond, but didn't seem to be morphing. Then, in June, they quickly got legs and came out of the water to sit on the lily pads. If you look closely, you can see that one still has a long tadpole tail, one has a stumpy tail, and the others have tailless bums.


Here's Big Mama (or Big Daddy) watching over all the little guys in the pond. Two weeks ago, I could see twenty or so of the froglets at any given time. Now I only see a couple. I think the rest have learned to hop and have left the pond to explore the natural world around them.