Land Shrimp

We're having quite a crazy morning, weather-wise. I was awakened about 4 a.m. by thunder and lightning, and I got up early to take a video -- which isn't very exciting, but lightning is such a rarity in our part of the world. (Compared to Florida, where it's practically a daily occurrence at certain times of year.) It's become more intense over the course of the morning. We got a crashing clap of thunder a few minutes ago that made Olga sit straight up -- and she usually ignores thunder! The rain is coming down in buckets.

I'm not thrilled about this because I have to catch a bus at 7:30 to go get my CT scan. My appointment with my GP this week wasn't very illuminating -- she just told me what I already knew about my blood work. In fact when she saw I was already following up with the specialists she basically admitted she hadn't really needed to call me in at all. Oh well. I got an hour or two off work. This CT scan should be more telling, but I don't expect immediate results.

That's a wood louse, above, on one of our lupines. You may also know them as sowbugs or, as we called them when I was a kid, roly-polys. (The ones in Florida roll up into a spherical ball, which I just learned is called conglobating.) Apparently there are lots of different types of these critters, and according to Wikipedia, they're crustaceans whose ancestors emerged from the ocean in prehistory and colonized land. Land shrimp! Who knew?

Of the several honesty plants that grew successfully in our garden this year, this one is probably the nicest. It's big, robust and covered with flowers. I have found that both foxgloves and honesty do best when they grow in place from seed -- as opposed to being sprouted in a seed tray and then transplanted. I have pretty much stopped messing with seed trays. I just sprinkle the seeds around the garden and hope for the best.

I finished "Prequel," which I really enjoyed. I'm trying to talk my boss into adding it to the library, because it really is a very straightforward historic account of right-wing American politics in the years leading up to World War II. My boss is wary of adding a book by someone as outwardly opinionated as Rachel Maddow, though -- she's concerned about courting accusations of political bias. So I may just give it to any colleague who wants it. Now I'm trying to catch up on my New Yorkers -- as usual, I have a small stack!

Let the Sunshine In

Finally, FINALLY, we had a day of bright sunshine yesterday. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it until I was walking to work and seeing those dramatic shadows everywhere, tree branches spidering across the pavement. It was fairly warm, too; I was able to wear a short-sleeved shirt with no jacket. Woo hoo!

Apparently food production in England has taken a nosedive because of all the rainfall we've experienced over the past couple of years. Since October 2022, we've had 67 inches of rain, which is a record for an 18-month period in England. (It doesn't seem like that much spread over such a long period of time, but I guess it is.)

Olga was missing the sun too:

This is where she goes on sunny mornings -- the dining room. The windows face east and get a dose of direct sun until about noon, and she can usually be found in there on the carpet. Sometimes we go in and find scratch marks in the rug, where she's been "digging" to make her "bed." (It doesn't damage the rug, at least not visibly.)

When I came home from work Dave and I sat out in the garden, which we haven't been able to do in a couple of weeks. As we watched TV in the evening, sun streamed in through the patio doors. I love sitting on the couch and feeling its warmth, even though it's hard to watch the TV with the sun in my eyes.

Now, this morning, it's gray and foggy and more rain is due this afternoon and for the next several days.

Did you hear about the sword attack in East London? Apparently some guy went on a rampage and attacked random strangers in the street with a sword, killing a young teenager and wounding several others. One of the witnesses said he was ranting about God, which sounds like a sure sign of mental illness, but we don't know much about him yet. Last year, a mentally ill guy killed a couple of uni students and another man in Nottingham; in New York City we've recently seen several people pushed onto subway tracks by mentally ill suspects. Our society is failing people with acute and/or prolonged mental illness, which potentially endangers all of us. Our method of providing care is often to do nothing, thanks partly to the elimination of public mental hospitals and the underfunding of programs to serve those people. Something must change. At least here in the UK they don't usually have guns.

Dave is taking the morning off because he doesn't have a class to teach until right before lunch. I have a doctor's appointment this morning to talk about my recent blood tests, which I don't expect will be very illuminating, but then I'll be going in to work as usual. Remember how I inventoried all the books in our library? Well, I'm supposed to do the same for the Lower School library over the next couple of weeks. Should be fun!

Kosher Fish

I can't believe I've never photographed this kosher fish place in Temple Fortune, north of Golders Green -- but I can't find any pics of it in my archive so I guess not. I've definitely noticed it before. It has some great old signage.

On Saturday, on the way back from my Dollis Valley walk, my bus passed right by the shop -- so I got off for a few quick photos. Although it was closed that day, it's apparently still a functioning business.

That is not, however, a functioning clock.

Prequel

The candytuft is blooming again, doing its annual thing. This plant was in the garden when we moved here, an astonishing 10 years ago, and it has held its own even though we've surrounded it with asters and a big lavender, and several dandelions have moved in too. It's durable!

Yesterday was an indoor kind of day. It was raining all morning, and it was chilly. I took the dog out at 3:30 p.m. and it was 48º F (or 9º C). I made the mistake of leaving the house in shorts and a sweatshirt and fortunately the dog didn't want to go far or I would have suffered hypothermia. I habitually under-dress for cold weather; I think it has something to do with growing up in Florida. I've never been good at warm clothing.

We walked past the traffic island where I left the abandoned road sign. The junk is gone, but the sign is still there. Mickey and Minnie have moved on, hopefully to a new home.

Here's a quick video of the rain in the garden. If you forget about the chilly temperatures it looks and sounds quite idyllic:

 
April showers bring May flowers, right? According to the forecasters the weather is supposed to warm up soon. I'd love to sit outside and I know Olga wants to lie in the sun.

I spent most of the day reading "Prequel," Rachel Maddow's book about the American flirtation with fascism in the years leading up to World War II. We like to pretend that we all opposed Hitler from the beginning with all our might, but the fact is, there were plenty of people -- even within our government -- who admired Hitler and wished for a similarly draconian strongman for our own country. Hitler had the backing of some religious conservatives who saw him as a defender of Christianity, much as Putin is seen now by the ardent right. So many of these people spouted the same poisonous anti-semitism that we hear today, about government having been hijacked by "internationalists" (now they say "globalists"), communists and Bolsheviks, which are all code words for Jews. And of course there's the same claptrap about how Hollywood and the media are controlled by those interests.

I swear, reading the beliefs of these right-wingers from 85 years ago is just like perusing the reader comments at The Gateway Pundit. (Which I don't recommend anyone do.) Among a certain segment of our population, nothing has changed. Where do these people come from, and why don't they evolve?

Maddow hasn't mentioned modern politics in her book; she's never uttered the names Trump or Putin or spoken of anything going on now. But she's clearly showing that many of the forces that were at work in our government and public life then are still with us today. We overcame them once -- can we do it again?

That's the question.

Dollis Valley Greenwalk, Part 2

Yesterday was a rather gloomy day, but it was fairly dry in the morning so I decided to take a walk. I wanted to finish the Dollis Valley Greenwalk, which you may remember I started at the beginning of the month.

I'd already walked the first half, from Golders Green to Totteridge & Whetstone. So I took the bus and tube up to where I'd ended, picked up the trail again and kept heading north. Almost immediately it became a very grassy walk through parkland and past uninteresting housing estates. I encountered damp dog-walkers, frolicking muddy canines and kids on bicycles.

I didn't find much to photograph -- even Dollis Brook was narrow and unimpressive along this stretch.

Eventually things got even more rural and I wasn't seeing any houses. The path turned westward and I was walking through fields and along hedgerows. The Greenwalk joined the London Loop, the large circular path around outer London that I walked several years ago. So I'd been on this section of the path before, and I kept waiting to recognize something familiar -- but I never did. There just aren't many landmarks.

This is a cuckoo flower (Cardamine pratensis), also called lady's smock, mayflower and a bunch of other names. I found clumps of them all along the more rural parts of my walk. I also came across a field of yellow-blooming cowslip, and saw lots of buttercups, wild garlic and other spring flowers.

Eventually the section of Dollis Brook I was following was mostly buried in shrubbery and hedgerows, and in the rare moments that I saw it, it was no more than a rivulet. I came to the end of the walk at the edge of Totteridge Fields, and crossed some busy roads and adjacent farmland (on a public path) to reach The Ridgeway in Mill Hill.

The Ridgeway, as you might have guessed from the name, runs along a high point and offers expansive views across North London, including Wembley Stadium in the distance. (Similar to the view I got from nearby Sunny Hill Park a couple of years ago.)

In Mill Hill I came across an inviting-looking pub called the Three Hammers, so I stopped in and had a pint and a hamburger for lunch. They have a "Psychic Night" on Wednesdays -- an interesting alternative to the typical pub quiz for bringing in patrons! I predict I won't go.

From there I caught a bus to the Mill Hill East station. I thought it would be fun to take the tube from there, thus passing over the arched brick viaduct I walked beneath on my first leg of the Greenwalk earlier this month. My plan was to make a video to share. But to be honest, the whole thing was such a non-event -- I was over the viaduct before I realized it, and it didn't seem that high up from the train. Oh well.

I took the tube to Finchley and then caught a bus home from there. Altogether I think I walked five or six miles. Dollis Valley done!

Mickey and Minnie

On our walk yesterday morning, Olga and I happened to wander past the traffic island where I deposited the abandoned street sign. It's still there, along with a growing assortment of other stuff -- an old frame, a sheet of glass, Mickey and Minnie.

We humans are so funny. We surround ourselves with so much junk that we don't know what to do with it all. We don't want to throw it away because it's still "good," so it winds up sitting on a traffic island waiting for someone else to take it. Meanwhile, we're churning out more and more, burning up the planet's resources, because people's jobs somewhere on the other side of the world depend on making Mickey and Minnie dolls. It's insanity.

That was a cold walk, by the way. It was 41º F (or 5º C) at around 7:30 a.m. It's been chilly overall, here. I keep waiting for spring to start. We have flowers but we don't have warmth.

Work was uneventful yesterday. I heard back from the hospital regarding my endoscopy, or gastroscopy, as they're calling it. (Basically the same thing but more specifically in reference to the stomach, I guess?) It's scheduled for next Sunday, a week from tomorrow. I'm surprised they do gastroscopies on Sunday, but there you have it.

On the way home I noticed this sticker. According to Google translate, it's Italian, and if the M is lower-case it means, "You're kidding me." If the M is upper case, it means, "Jokes on Mars." Given the alien hands I'm inclined to the latter translation, but I still don't get it.

Something Called Calprotectin

I had my consultation with a gastroenterologist yesterday. It was a phone appointment, so I didn't see her face-to-face, but I got some feedback on my test results and we made some future plans.

My blood work, from blood counts to liver enzymes, was all normal. So that's a good sign. My infrequent but beloved martinis haven't harmed my liver, apparently, and I don't have anemia or anything like that. There is also no blood where blood shouldn't be, if you get my drift.

The only abnormal test was for something called calprotectin, which is apparently a marker of gut inflammation. Mine was just below 300, and a normal range is 0 to 50. The doctor didn't seem too concerned about this, but we're going to repeat the test. Apparently high calprotectin can indicate almost anything, from transient infection to IBD to cancer.

I'm also getting an endoscopy and a CT scan of the abdomen. You may remember I had a couple of CT scans in recent years, but those were both of the lungs -- this will look lower. The scan is already scheduled for next Thursday. Still waiting on a date for the endoscopy but it should be soon.

So that's where we stand. I'm somewhat encouraged but also somewhat wary of the calprotectin thing. Dave's calprotectin can sometimes be in the thousands, given his Crohn's disease. He wasn't very impressed with my measly 300.

As for how I feel, well, I think I'm slightly better than I was last week. I'm sleeping soundly and for the time being I've laid off alcohol entirely. Still persisting with my regular coffee, though -- I need some pleasure in my life!

We're watching "Baby Reindeer" on Netflix, about a comedian and bartender who winds up being stalked by a troubled woman and sexually assaulted by an older man. Apparently it's based on a true story. It's very good, with good performances. We have trouble turning it off.

Recent fun reading has included:

-- This story about the rediscovery of the original U.S.S. Enterprise model used in the opening credits of the first "Star Trek" series

-- This story about a nautical buoy from the Florida keys that washed up on a beach in Scotland

And of course there was the alligator hiding in the airplane landing gear at MacDill Air Force Base in my hometown, Tampa. Never a dull moment in Florida! I was so happy to read that they released the alligator into the Hillsborough River. Often when trappers capture an alligator they kill it, but that's usually after it's been dubbed a nuisance or a danger to people. I guess this one was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

(Top photo: Colorful crabapple trees outside a pub in Hanwell, West London, a couple of weeks ago.)