All posts by Abi

Politics

Serious Thoughts 1: Rights

I am an American, and proud of that fact. My nation was founded on a set of philisophical principles which I share. They were revolutionary at the time. Actually, they’re pretty controversial now, if you take them seriously.

I believe that all men – and women – are created equal.

Note that I didn’t say all Americans there. People in the Third World, who don’t speak English and aren’t as wealthy as I am, are my equals. Their suffering matters, and their lives matter.

I believe that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Again, that means all of us, including people who will use those rights in a way I don’t approve of, and people who will voluntarily relinquish said rights. I will address the issue of liberty, and the missing link to responsibility, another time.

This does not mean that the United States has the right to, for instance, protect these rights for citizens of other countries. But it does mean that any American foreign policy that takes these rights away is a bad idea.

I believe that sovereignity derives from the consent of the governed, and that governments are accountable as a consequence.

This is the one I want to talk about right now, in the light of some reactions to my comments on September 11.

If sovereignity derives from the consent of the governed, then any ruler – monarch, parliament, dictator or president – who is not in power because the people want it that way is a tyrant. This applies whether they are in place because of a coup or are installed by a foreign power. And any society that advocates the displacement of a legitimate ruler, uses its funds to influence foreign elections or civil wars, or directs its efforts to the overthrow of another country’s rulers is participating in tyranny. This is true no matter how much we dislike the ruler in question or his politics. (Note that assisting in making peace, arbitrating between disputants, and keeping the peace with the consent of the people affected are not tyranny.)

This also means that my government is my employee, answerable to me. I have the right to question and even criticise it if I think it is doing the wrong thing. Actually, I have a responsibility to do so. Historically, of course, this right and responsibility have been more honored in the breach than in the observance. Governments don’t like criticism, and when the national mood is particularly fervent, neither do ordinary citizens. That does not dilute the responsibility.

On a more pragmatic note, criticising bad government policy is the only way to get good government policy. No one’s ideas are universally correct; good ideas are developed by discussion and concensus, and bad ones killed by the same process. Writers know this – submitting your work to criticism is the only way to hone and improve it. Government is no different, and it is the duty of responsible citizens to participate in public debate to help improve policy. The most pernicious trend in US public life today is the stifling of this debate, the denial of this responsibilty, and the relentless kowtowing to the government.

But surely, comes the answer, in the national interest, we have to do things that are incompatible with our Constitution? They are unpleasant, but they are necessary.

I believe we cannot write straight with crooked lines. The ends do not justify the means.

Not even desperate times. This is when we need to cling to our principles more tightly than ever.

Politics

One Year On…

…and we have failed.

The world is not a safer place, as our politicians promised at the time. It’s, if anything, a worse place for most people.

Before I go on, let me say something to those who will be offended and stop reading halfway. Just because someone is critical of, say, your nation, does not mean they’re wrong, or biased. It could mean your nation is on the wrong track. Getting in a huff won’t solve the problem.

Back to the facts.

Palestine, the goad that drives the Islamic world to terrorism, is in a worse state than ever. Israel, driven by the same fears that drive the US, has not taken the terrifying, courageous and necessary leap toward co-operation, and after some brief gestures in that direction, their strongest backers have not pressured them to do so. America, by the way, should take a good look at how dreadful everyday life is for Israeli civilians. This is where the US’s current foreign policy is taking our nation.

The impetus toward war in Iraq continues. Americans seem to want it, and George Bush wants it (to finish what Daddy started, maybe?). Tony Blair, perhaps trying to be more “presidential”, is trying to persuade a skeptical British public that such a war is a good idea. I don’t think he’ll succeed. Will he commit the UK anyway?

Climate change continues, unabated, because the worst polluter has yet another reason not to care. Yesterday it was floods in France and the drought in Africa continues unreported while the richest nation in the world drives its SUVs with the flag at half-mast.

And (lower on the list, since it kills no-one directly) my native land, blinded by fury, has lost hold of its guiding principles. Where is the liberty and justice for all? I await the trials of the people in Camp X-Ray, currently in a most unpleasant legal limbo. I await the restoration of genuine freedom of speech, where the right to say what you like even if it is unpopular is protected. I await the return of the mindset that made America a true beacon of liberty to the world, before she became obsessed, before she discovered that she could do so many things and forgot to ask if she should.

I am filled with sadness for the thousands who died a year ago. But I am also filled with sadness for the thousands who died offscreen, getting up not in comfortable, secure homes but in refugee camps and sun-scorched farms. These people mattered too, and were beloved of their families too. They were innocent, and they were heartbreakingly brave in the face of terrible adversity, but where are their parades and their memorials?

Personal

Do we LOOK like Batman and Robin?

Lindsay (one of my colleagues) and I went off to do some cache maintenance at lunchtime. We wanted to find out who had logged The Other Leith Walk, put a travel bug in it then come back within our lunch hour. A chance to have a nice walk, a pleasant chat, nothing much.

On our way, we passed a little girl sitting on a bench with her mother kneeling in front of her. I only noticed them because the mother was being very affectionate, stroking the girl’s hair. Their bikes were beside them.

So we get there, but there are pedestrians. We’re standing by the tree, looking up at it & trying to figure out what species it is to kill the time, when a lady stops. “Excuse me,” she says, “but is there something going on up in that tree?” She’s peering into the branches. “Some kind of rare bird nest or something? I’m sure I saw people here yesterday too, and one of them had a camera. Or maybe it was further along.”

Uh, oh, I thought. One set of cachers, who found it yesterday, had a camera. Were they indiscreet? Does she suspect?

We said that we were just trying to figure out what kind of tree it was, and that we didn’t know anything about any rare birds round there. She seemed convinced that it was just coincidence, and went on. Then I inspected the cache, found out that Silver Fox and crustyloafer found it, and left the travel bug in. Reading the log, seeing how enthusiastic the other cachers (crustyloafer and his brother), I was encouraged. Maybe we’ll get another active cacher in Edinburgh.

I’m not really that worried that the cache will be plundered. It is very well hidden, actually, despite how close it is to the path. Still, I think I shall do another visit fairly soon just to be sure.

Then we were walking back when we come across an elderly gentleman trying to hold two bikes (an adult’s and a child’s) upright while leaning on his cane, looking anxiously up and down the path. He was just past the spot where we’d seen the mother and daughter, and he stopped us and asked for help. Apparently, the daughter had fallen quite badly off her bike, and the mother had called an ambulance. He had been passing by, and had offered to take their bikes to his house for safekeeping, but his offer had been more chivalrous than practical. He would have struggled to get one home, let alone the two.

So we walked the bikes back to his house nearby, and carried them up the stairs and into the common hallway where they would be safe. We all nodded smugly at each other, conscious of how good of citizens we were, and Lindsay and I rushed off, coming toward being late back to our desks.

But there must have been something about us – some indefineable Batman-and-Robinishness. We were walking up the hill past Canonmills, debating where to get food, when a Spanish woman stopped us because she couldn’t get her key to turn in her front lock. Neither could we, though we both tried (I think she was at the wrong house).

Good things come in threes, they say. We managed to avoid that. We were just about back to work when a confused-looking Japanese woman tried to cach our eyes. But then another woman passed her, and got ensnared instead. We passed them as the local was explaining that there wasn’t a Texaco anywhere nearby, but that Tesco’s was right over there…

After all that, we were only 5 minutes late back.

Family

“Bye”

Originally entered as a daylog on E2 on July 18, 2002.

He left me today.

We were hanging out the laundry in the back garden. Or rather, I was hanging out the laundry while he explored the principles of clothespegs. At fifteen months, such things are very interesting.

Then, quite calmly, he closed the clothespeg bag, picked it up, and stood up. He slung his burden over one shoulder (it still nearly dragged on the ground), then turned and gave me a solemn wave. “Bye,” he said, exhausting his vocabulary. He waved again and turned, still clutching the clothespeg bag. Then he walked to the back door.

Sadly, he was too short to reach the handle, so I never saw how far he was determined to go.

It was a cute game, however abortive. He’s exploring the ideas of separation and departure in his own way. His ability to control his movements, to leave at will, gives him the power to flirt with these difficult, dangerous notions.

Watching him, I saw the shadows of future departures – off to school, leaving for college perhaps. Driving away with all his things in the trunk of his car. Walking up to the altar with his true love.

A cloud seemed to cross the sun as I thought of another departure, me from him or him from me, more final than any of those bright futures. That’s the leave-taking he dreads, looking back so anxiously as he goes, just to be sure that I’m still there. He doesn’t know about death, of course, but he fears loss nevertheless.

The sun came out again as he came toddling back. He threw his arms around me and gave me a soggy, open-mouthed kiss. The shadows of future departures, both good and bad, vanished in the delight of the present.

I love you, Bobo

Personal

Signs and Secrets

Originally entered as a daylog on everything2 for July 8, 2002

Spent lunchtime today double checking the GPS co-ordinates for my second geocache. I am mildly hooked on caching (insofar as I can be in this city, avec toddler & sans car). Cachers tend to be drivers, and even those caches in a town are almost completely devoid of public transport information. So my caching activities are pretty much restricted to Edinburgh, which has three caches in town (by next week, there will be four). I’ve visited one, and will be looking for another on the 11th.

I constructed the third one myself over the last four months. I’m actually quite proud of it. It maps out a six-stage walk through Edinburgh’s Old Town in the footsteps of Burke and Hare. As the searchers go from place to place, they have to look for numbers carven on gravestones, into buildings, and on plaques. The numbers then assemble to make up the GPS co-ordinates for a final location where there’s a grim historical relic. The cache has an E2 connection as well. One fellow noder, nine9, helped me pick some of the locations, and two others (fuzzy_and_blue and Jongleur helped Mom test it. Only one other person has hunted it thus far (Silver Fox, Edinburgh’s only other geocacher), but I’m hoping people will come up for the Edinburgh Festival and spend an afternoon on it.

This second cache is less public — it’s on a footpath that is not at all obvious from the streets nearby. I think non-locals will have trouble finding their way onto the path. Martin and I didn’t realise it was there when we first moved to a flat three blocks from it. Once we found it, I used to walk home from work that way in the summers. It was a secret place, hidden from the main flow of Edinburgh traffic, and I was sorry to abandon it when we moved again. It’s also the gateway to other secret places, such as Warriston Cemetery, with its population of, erm, romantically inclined men.

While I was out scouting for the cache location, I saw my first warchalking mark. Martin told me where it was. I’d walked right by it on July 6, and would have done again if I didn’t know what it meant.

It all makes me wonder what other things are stashed along the path, in holes in the walls and under rocks. What else is hidden around Edinburgh? What of all the graffiti and scribbling on walls is more than it seems? It’s the fascination of spying, of tradecraft but there’s something deeper.

I partake, to some extent, of those family characteristics that get diagnosed as Asperger’s syndrome when they occur in full measure. Some of that is an inability to read the signs, to find the secrets of other people. After all the trouble I have with social interactions, I’ve come to like secrets I can unravel. I wish I could find the GPS location of a hidden agenda, or a glossary of the markings that advertise the truth.

Family, Personal

June and lovin’ it

I’m aware that I don’t blog enough. Martin’s always got something new up, and my last log is from March. Sheesh.

The thing is, when it’s winter, I’m struggling to cope with the ordinary demands of life. Commenting on the way things are going, or even standing back far enough to observe how they’re doing, is low on the list. I’m just too tired.

Then summer comes, and I’m doing all the things I couldn’t do during the dark time. And somehow, I get so absorbed in all the things that are going on that once again I can’t step back and describe them. I seem to be too busy.

Now is a good example. My mother’s over for a fortnight, getting her Alex time in. As with my Dad’s visit in January, Martin and I aren’t taking any time off. But we’ve taken Alex out of his nursery for the time she’s over. So I’m being a working Mom, a daughter, and a hostess all at once.

Plus I’m binding her a blank book as a birthday present. We’ve already been to the tannery to pick out the leather for the covers, and I’m most of the way through the bind.

But even when we don’t have visitors, we’re pretty busy. Not that I’m complaining – I only “work” (for pay) 3 days a week. Martin works 4. We both get to spend a lot of time and energy on Alex. On the one hand, it can be hard work – he’s well into toddlerhood, walking all over the place, demanding things to play with, and throwing the odd (brief, mercifully) tantrum when he is denied. On the other hand, time with Alex is tremendously rewarding, whether he’s sitting at his little table typing on a spare keyboard (just like Mom!), or sorting pebbles in the front garden. And he socialises well, riding in the backpack as I go around town or do lunch with family and friends. He’s even helped me with a geocache I’ll be posting soon. There’s a lot of hard work in there, but when he turns to me and gives me a huge kiss, I can’t seem to mind.

The days I spend at work are rewarding as well. I’m in a department I like, working with people I enjoy dealing with, on a steep learning curve. I can even wear black – unlike my previous department, where I felt too gothic, I’m rarely the only one all in black now. There are stressful times, but all in all, I find the work days flying by.

My current hobby – bookbinding – takes up a good deal of time as well. I’m entirely self-taught so far, and after six months I’m finally producing things that I’m willing to give away without apology. They’re still not perfect, but I no longer feel my recipients are being charitable by taking the books I bind. I bind for the pleasure of making things, of creating something beautiful. Being able to give them away is a bonus, and keeps me from drowning in blank and rebound books.

And somewhere in there, in hugs at the sink and long chats after the lights are out at night, I still have time to be amazed at the man I married. We spend a lot more time as comrades in nappies rather than smitten lovers now, but watching the way he delights in Alex is just another way of falling in love with him.

So this is a busy time, but every aspect of it holds some reward. And I have to get my joy in quick, like a grasshopper, before the winter pares me back to the bare minimum.

Family, Personal

All change

It’s the beginning of March, and life looks so different than it did in December.

Not the politics. Don’t even get me started on politics. No, it’s the rest of life that has changed.

First of all, it’s getting lighter. The weather may still be wintry, but the days are longer. The difference in my energy levels is dramatic; it’s like the difference in a coffee addict between waking and finishing the first cup. My brain no longer feels wrapped in cotton wool, and I can think again. The payoff is all around me, in my relationships with Martin and Alex, in the way I run the house, in my work.

Work. There’s another area of change. I’ve been back at work since the new year, but I haven’t truly settled in. I’m doing a three-month stint in my old department. After Easter, I’ll be changing divisions within the Bank, moving to a team I worked with during Y2K. It promises to be a challenging time, with a steep learning curve. I should be intimidated, but every time I think about the work, and the people, I smile. I feel like a runner at the starting gate.

Going back to work has changed the shape of my life enormously. I’m only working three days a week, Monday – Wednesday. But those days are really tightly scheduled. My focus has to be on getting everything done that needs doing, getting enough light to stay sane, then going to bed early enough to get the sleep I need. It’s like being a hamster on a wheel. How do full-time working mothers do it?

Still, the working time has its rewards. Martin has Wednesdays off, so Alex is in day care for the first two days each week. He is has settled in well, but he does miss us while we’re away. So every day he’s at nursery, I pick him up (Martin does the dropoffs, I do the pickups) and take him home, and all he wants to do for the first half hour is cuddle me, flirt with me, and play with my earrings. It’s an enormously rewarding time, like having a whole day’s attention in a short spell.

One of the real pleasures of the last two months has been the learning curve with my bookbinding. Martin got me a couple of books on the topic for Christmas (at my request), and since then, I’ve been binding non-stop. (See the previous entry for a list of what I’ve done) In addition to the books themselves, I’ve made a lot of the hardware I need, including two different types of book press.

I can hardly wait to see what spring will bring.

Bookbinding

Bookbinding (old)

8 Comments

This is old news – for my current bookbinding work see the Bookweb

Since Christmas, I have been learning about bookbinding. I have bound the following items; each has been a learning experience in its own right. All but four of them have been hollow-backed case bindings, usually kettlestitched or sewn on tapes.

I have destroyed some of my initial work, particularly the binds of three sections of an English law book I bought used some time ago. Other volumes have been sent to various friends. I only have about a third of the binds I have done in January – February 2002.

Finished Works

  1. Cream card notebook sewn on external cords, with embroidered cover.
    Now used as a needle book in my bookbinding kit.
  2. Cream Coptic-stitched notebook with gold signature guards
    Still unused.
  3. Kettlestitched binding of 1/3 of an English law book, covered in ochre fabric.
    Destroyed.
  4. Tape-sewn binding of 1/3 of an English law book, covered in ochre fabric.
    Destroyed.
  5. Tape-sewn A6 notebook in cream laid, covered in blue paper.
    Sent to (darsi), a friend from my online community.
  6. Flexible-bound 1/3 of an English law book, covered in ochre fabric.
    Destroyed.
  7. Binding of editions of “Sirius Moonlight”, the fanzine from the St Andrews Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, for Martin’s four years at university. Tape sewn, covered in brown paper. I tried to trim the fore edge, but tore the edges as a result. The book was labelled with computer-printed titles on the spine and front cover.
  8. Grey leather and black wool quarter bound cover for the “Forma Urbis Romae”, a map of ancient Rome. Labelled with a computer-printed title on the cover.
  9. Tape-sewn A4 lined notebook, quarter-bound in grey leather and blue fabric, for Martin‘s role playing game, Edelvain.
  10. Tape-sewn A4 lined notebook covered in blue paper to use at work.
  11. Tape-sewn A5 blank book with false bands, quarter-bound in grey leather and rose fabric.
    Sent as a gift for my younger sister Kathleen.
  12. Tape-sewn A6 blank book with false bands, quarter-bound in grey leather and rose fabric.
    Sent as a surprise to Gritchka, a friend from my online community.
  13. Tape-sewn edition of Sherlock Holmes short stories, covered in brown leather with false bands. The endpapers are green marbled paper. I decorated the cover of this book with an outline of Sherlock Holmes, drawn in permanent ink. I then deepened the colour of the leather cover with the application of red-brown shoe polish.
    Currently retained, but may be given to the daughter of a colleague.
  14. Tape-sewn A5 blank book of white laid paper, with false bands and red-brown leather cover. Green marbled endpapers. I deepened the colour of the leather with black shoe polish, and added texture by pressing the covers with crumpled aluminum foil.
    Sent to Teiresias, from my online community, as part of a Secret Santa arrangement.
  15. Kettlestitched binding of Edgar Allen Poe’s humourous stories, covered in leather, with false bands. Blue marbeled endpapers. The cover is made of two colours of leather, in an abstract design loosely based on a vertical arrangement of the letters “EAP”. Sized approximately 147mm x 215 mm. (Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version)
  16. Tape-sewn blank book with guards, intended to hold materials and project notes from sewing and bookbinding projects. False bands, plain endpapers, and ribbon ties. Sized approximately 144mm x 213 mm. (Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version)

    This project was not entirely a success. The pattern was too interlaced, and too interdependent, and as the leather strips were pasted, they stretched. The result was poor joins at crucial points.

    In addition, there was not time to define the false bands well enough before the paste dried, due to the time it took to arrange the pieces of the design. Definitely more of a learning experience than a triumph.

Future Projects

  • Re-bind Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which was bought with a ragged spine and is getting worse
  • Two Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries (Strong Poison and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club)
  • An edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, currently paper-bound
  • An edition of Pride and Prejudicecurrently in flexible covers.
Personal, Politics

Time flies; we fly

Sheesh. It’s been over a month since I’ve written anything. A busy month.

We’ve been to the Marott AGM in the north of England, just of Hadrian’s wall, and we’ve been back to California for a fortnight. Then we had the delights of dealing with an 8-month old with jet lag (a highly recommended experience for all masochists). Now we’re going on the separation anxiety rollercoaster, introducing Alex to the nursery where he’ll be spending 2 days a week.

The trip to the US was the strangest, and the most stressful, of all these things. Living abroad has really changed my perspective on my native country and its role in the world. I am becoming an expatriate not simply by location but by conviction as well.

This is not a result of September 11, although those events highlighted, and are a result of, the things that make me feel so much less at home in the States. America is a nation founded by idealists, on ideals such as individual liberty, justice, and freedom. Sadly, though, the dominant culture seems to think that simply believing in these things is enough; they are not a basis for action. Certainly, they are not principles informing American foreign policy, and have not been for some time. To most of the world, America is the emblem of selfishness, might makes right politics, and economic exploitation.

I have brought these topics up to Americans, and seen others bring them up. The usual response is to deny that America should be answerable to the rest of the world…Son of Star Wars and the abandonment of Kyoto, for instance, are just the US looking out for its own interests. The basis of that argument is that the US is too powerful, and too self-sufficient, to have to take the consequences of its actions, which would be irresponsible even if it were true.

What worries me most is that most Americans don’t really want to know why anyone would think the US was not the best country on the planet. They don’t want to hear that America is feared and hated, or that it is looked upon as arrogant and self-centered. Why would anyone hate us?, they ask, wanting only insanity as the answer. They never ask why the terrorists chose the World Trade Center, not the Statue of Liberty. They still see America as a beacon of hope and liberty to the world.

And America could be a beacon of hope and liberty. But it would require hard work and sacrifice for the principles that the nation was founded on. It would mean valuing the thousands who will starve in Afghanistan because food aid didn’t get in while the bombing went on as highly as the thousands who died in the World Trade Center. It would mean that we couldn’t all have a car, because our grandchildren will want a climate they can live in. It would mean the US Army couldn’t block landmine treaties because they want to use landmines, and that US chemical weapons facilities would be as open to inspection as Iraq’s. It would mean enforcing justice in areas where it has historically taken sides (the Middle East), and acknowledging its own past of supporting terror (the refusal of San Francisco courts to extradite convicted IRA terrorists comes to mind).

Of course, in the land of free speech, saying things like this will get you lynched, conversationally at least. That’s the worst of it…the US is straying from its principles in order to defend them. Fair trials? How will any member of Al Quaeda fare? Any other trial where elected officials had publicly proclaimed a defendant’s guilt and the press had systematically biassed all potential jurors would get a change of venue. Bin Laden won’t even get to hear the evidence against him, since its revelation would compromise classified material and agents.

But if the US would wake up and listen to its allies, act in accordance with its principles, and become the good global neighbor it thinks it already is, what could it not achieve? America could build a world where no one was so robbed of opportunity that he wants to blow himself up for a cause, where terrorists have no network of supporters and are reduced to carrying sandwich boards to spread their views, where peace was the norm. That would be a place worth living with, and in.

I’m not holding my breath. Maybe, in time, the US will sink back into apathy. Until then, I don’t think I’ll move back. It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Family

Sutherlands Hit London; London Survives

So here we are in London.

M, as he has indicated in his daylog, is here for a web usability conference. B and I just came along for the ride. And what a ride it’s been. We’ve been relentlessly social.

  • On Saturday, we arrived at Stanstead and made our way to London. To my astonishment and amusement, the hotel we’re staying in (Jury’s in Kensington) is right opposite the hotel where I once had a course (the Regency in Kensington). To B’s astonishment and amusement, the elevator has mirrors on all sides, producing an infinity of B’s to flirt with.
    Jules arrived just as we were settled into the hotel room. After some dithering, we all went out to the Science Museum, just up the road from our hotel. It was disappointing in places – it could have done with more interacitvity. But B loved the working steam engine, big as the ground floor of our house, red, hissing and clacking!

  • On Sunday, B and I met up with James (M was at the first day of his conference). At my suggestion, we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, “the attic of the Empire” (James’ term). Amazing place. They have full-sized plaster casts of the fronts of cathedrals. There’s a plaster cast of Hadrian’s Column, in two pieces (upper and lower). The plaster casts take up only two rooms; the rest of the museum is full of equally grand, disassociated things.
    I was worried about how James would react to B. He’s not automatically charmed by babies and children, from what I hear. But B took one look at him and gave him a huge grin, after which James was his devoted slave.
    M joined us for dinner, as did Guy (after some dithering). We had a wonderful time in the pizza restaurant, talking about the good old days (and telling Guy all the embarassing stories on James) for ages.

  • Yesterday, Monday, B and I went to Highgate to meet up with Gritchka, a friend from my online community Everything2. The three of us had a great time: we wandered around Highgate cemetery, where Gritch pointed out the graves of obscure but interesting people. Then we went on to Hampstead Heath, peering at an 18th century house on the way. The weather was bright and crisp, the scenery good, and the company excellent.
    We had planned to go visit Jules in the evening, down where he lives in Guildford. But it became clear that B was overstimulated, after 3 days of constant interaction with half of London. So we stayed at home and let him roll around on the hotel room rug.

  • Today, B and I took advantage of the fine Tuesday weather to go to Hyde Park. I had noticed that there was a horseriding trail marked on the map, and I thought the bunny might like to see some horses. We were most of the way there when M called; he was on an extended lunch break, and could he meet us? We got sandwiches and went to the park.
    B saw a whole menagerie’s worth of animals today:

    1. Ducks, gannets, seagulls and pigeons, when I distributed the bread from my sandwich by the Serpentine
    2. A parrot, two rabbits, and three rats in the pets department at Harrod’s
    3. A horse, from a distance
    4. Numerous dogs

    Of all of them, the horse made the least impact.

The days have been great. Good weather, Bunny a comforting weight in the backpack, a virtuous soreness in my legs and feet form all the exercise. The nights, on the other hand, have been difficult. He isn’t sleeping well. I don’t know if its the hotel cot (rickety; if he could stand in it it would be unsafe), the room (occasionally too hot), or the overstimulation, but he wakes up crying loudly in the middle of the night. Repeatedly. Last night wasn’t too bad; the deliberate choice to spend an evening in seems to have had a good effect.

It worries me, because the trip to California is going to be a series of day-long meetings of the Alexander Beowulf Fan Club, what with all the residents of the Piedmont house. He may very well wig out under the excitement; we shall have to allow decompression times to compensate.