Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Ivy
One more from the London bunch: Highgate Cemetery.
Tomorrow: Hobbling No. 5 continues on to Prague.
VOX POPULI » 3 sagacious observations
One more from the London bunch: Highgate Cemetery.
Tomorrow: Hobbling No. 5 continues on to Prague.
St. Stephen's
Up the road from Biped's.
Looks old, but in fact it's 19th century Gothic Revival.
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DIA
The roofline of the Denver Airport always makes me think of circus tents.
It's especially nice at night when it's lit from inside and glows.
It's especially nice at night when it's lit from inside and glows.
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Monday, July 24, 2006
Mind the Gap
Monday, July 10
Destination: Denver Airport, where a British Airways jet is waiting to whisk me off to the land of Jaffas, gin tonics, and curry take-out. Later, Colorado.
Tuesday, July 11
I arrive at Biped's office around 3.30-ish and amuse her with my newly-procured Oyster card. Shiny.
She leads me on a two-hour tramp over the beautiful greenspace of Hampstead Heath, at the end of which I am rewarded with ice cream. Such hardship.
She even takes me to her super-secret-Sunday-morning-hideout, an enticing terrace cafe alongside a manor house-turned-museum, perched atop a rise overlooking the Heath. Biped seems immensely pleased that I've made it thus far without collapsing. I don't tell her that being back at sea level makes me feel 10 years younger. Yay for oxygen.
Dinner at a curry joint. They bring a plate of orange slices and what looks like seed and spice garni. Biped says it tastes like potpourri. That's how I like to finish up a meal.
Wednesday, July 12
Decide to be a lazy slob and visit Highgate Cemetery, which is barely a mile up the road from Biped's. Once a posh Victorian resting place for the well-heeled, the cemetery is now a lush overgrown jungle of ivy and brambles.
They charge me 2 pounds entrance fee for "maintenance and upkeep". So glad they're putting it to good use.
A dog pops out of the undergrowth. A very red dog. With a rather long body and big bushy tail. Thankfully, no Tories on horseback to be seen.
Highgate has a reasonable number of luminaries reposing here. Most people come to see the father of the Manifesto, but I primarily wanted to pay homage to one of my favorite writers.
It's a good place for a shady wander. Sometimes a name, or a stone, catches my eye, like this one: Caleb Pink. Really.
I wander back over the Heath on the way home. I could live in Hampstead with a park like this at my garden gate.
Along the way I watch a couple practicing Tai Chi under a huge English oak.
Thursday, July 13
Skipping right over Thursday (I guess everyone knows by now what I was doing...).
Friday, July 14
Biped and I seem to also share the architectural fantasy gene (which the Human Genome Project has yet to identify). We discuss knocking out her walls and glassing over her terrace.
Indy takes a half day and drives up to London. We spend the afternoon having a coffee on Biped's terrace and then drinks on the pub's terrace. It was a really pleasant, relaxing day, which is sometimes far nicer than running about doing the frantic tourist thing like a headless chicken.
I was bummed that we missed seeing Hampton Court, but I threaten Biped with a second visit and she surprisingly doesn't make noises about moving to Burma. Which I might have done had some strange foreign Hobbling come chuck in my toilet for a day.
Ain't Biped the Best?
And thus ends Hobbling No. 5's stay at Chez Biped, a.k.a. Florence Nightengale, whom I shall evermore fondly associate with flat coke and potpourri. (Num!)
Destination: Denver Airport, where a British Airways jet is waiting to whisk me off to the land of Jaffas, gin tonics, and curry take-out. Later, Colorado.
Tuesday, July 11
I arrive at Biped's office around 3.30-ish and amuse her with my newly-procured Oyster card. Shiny.
She leads me on a two-hour tramp over the beautiful greenspace of Hampstead Heath, at the end of which I am rewarded with ice cream. Such hardship.
She even takes me to her super-secret-Sunday-morning-hideout, an enticing terrace cafe alongside a manor house-turned-museum, perched atop a rise overlooking the Heath. Biped seems immensely pleased that I've made it thus far without collapsing. I don't tell her that being back at sea level makes me feel 10 years younger. Yay for oxygen.
Dinner at a curry joint. They bring a plate of orange slices and what looks like seed and spice garni. Biped says it tastes like potpourri. That's how I like to finish up a meal.
Wednesday, July 12
Decide to be a lazy slob and visit Highgate Cemetery, which is barely a mile up the road from Biped's. Once a posh Victorian resting place for the well-heeled, the cemetery is now a lush overgrown jungle of ivy and brambles.
They charge me 2 pounds entrance fee for "maintenance and upkeep". So glad they're putting it to good use.
A dog pops out of the undergrowth. A very red dog. With a rather long body and big bushy tail. Thankfully, no Tories on horseback to be seen.
Highgate has a reasonable number of luminaries reposing here. Most people come to see the father of the Manifesto, but I primarily wanted to pay homage to one of my favorite writers.
It's a good place for a shady wander. Sometimes a name, or a stone, catches my eye, like this one: Caleb Pink. Really.
I wander back over the Heath on the way home. I could live in Hampstead with a park like this at my garden gate.
Along the way I watch a couple practicing Tai Chi under a huge English oak.
Thursday, July 13
Skipping right over Thursday (I guess everyone knows by now what I was doing...).
Friday, July 14
Biped and I seem to also share the architectural fantasy gene (which the Human Genome Project has yet to identify). We discuss knocking out her walls and glassing over her terrace.
Indy takes a half day and drives up to London. We spend the afternoon having a coffee on Biped's terrace and then drinks on the pub's terrace. It was a really pleasant, relaxing day, which is sometimes far nicer than running about doing the frantic tourist thing like a headless chicken.
I was bummed that we missed seeing Hampton Court, but I threaten Biped with a second visit and she surprisingly doesn't make noises about moving to Burma. Which I might have done had some strange foreign Hobbling come chuck in my toilet for a day.
Ain't Biped the Best?
And thus ends Hobbling No. 5's stay at Chez Biped, a.k.a. Florence Nightengale, whom I shall evermore fondly associate with flat coke and potpourri. (Num!)
VOX POPULI » 9 sagacious observations
Friday, July 07, 2006
Shiny!
Narrisch got a new camera. Hoo hoo!
Playing with the macro setting. Learning how to focus.
Pineleaf Penstemon
Ornamental Oregano
Scarlet Gilia
Playing with the macro setting. Learning how to focus.
Pineleaf Penstemon
Ornamental Oregano
Scarlet Gilia
VOX POPULI » 8 sagacious observations
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Colorado
I still remember the first night I set eyes on Colorado Springs. For a moment I thought I'd overshot and hit Kansas by mistake.
"Ehh, we're not in California anymore, Toto".
Colorado Springs was anything but how I'd imagined Colorado. This wasn't the alpine wonderland I'd signed on for. This was industrial. And brown. Where were the trees? the mountains? the bears?
Most people equate Colorado with the Rockies. Aspen, Vail, chichi après-ski cocktails and log-built alpine chalets. But this was nothing like that.
And that is something that surprises the first-time visitor: the eastern half of the state is flat. Colorado is the end of the Great Plains. Grass and scrub and yucca. And the odd cactus or two.
Unless you find 20th Century Strip Mall to be the height of chic, Colorado Springs itself is ugg-LEE. Compared to some of the other places I've lived [1], Colorado Springs ranks right down there with landfill, trailer parks and rural Mississippi. The region has been in the throes of a construction boom, throwing up neighborhood after neighborhood of identical, drab, cheaply constructed houses which possess neither detail nor character. The arts scene is ... *cough*... nascent, and shopping is ... *coughs harder*... stylistically challenged.
In short, moving here was depressing.
But Colorado Springs IS where the plains meet the peaks. The western side of the city butts up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. And at 8-9,000 feet, those hills are already twice as high as the highest peak in Britain. [2] Even if I don't live in the Rockies, I can see where they begin from my backyard.
In a way, it's one of those magical lines of demarcation: where this begins, where that ends. As a child at the beach, I liked to stand in the water, exactly where the wet met the dry, and think, "This is the end, the very very end. There are 4,000 miles of land behind me, but this very inch of sand is where it ends." Colorado Springs may be the end of the plains, yes, but I stand in the shadows of the greatest mountain range in North America. Here is where it begins.
1. Prague, Tübingen, Galway, and Edinburgh: admittedly a hard crowd to beat.
2. Ben Nevis, 4,406 feet, and a real bitch of a walk.
"Ehh, we're not in California anymore, Toto".
Colorado Springs was anything but how I'd imagined Colorado. This wasn't the alpine wonderland I'd signed on for. This was industrial. And brown. Where were the trees? the mountains? the bears?
Most people equate Colorado with the Rockies. Aspen, Vail, chichi après-ski cocktails and log-built alpine chalets. But this was nothing like that.
And that is something that surprises the first-time visitor: the eastern half of the state is flat. Colorado is the end of the Great Plains. Grass and scrub and yucca. And the odd cactus or two.
Unless you find 20th Century Strip Mall to be the height of chic, Colorado Springs itself is ugg-LEE. Compared to some of the other places I've lived [1], Colorado Springs ranks right down there with landfill, trailer parks and rural Mississippi. The region has been in the throes of a construction boom, throwing up neighborhood after neighborhood of identical, drab, cheaply constructed houses which possess neither detail nor character. The arts scene is ... *cough*... nascent, and shopping is ... *coughs harder*... stylistically challenged.
In short, moving here was depressing.
But Colorado Springs IS where the plains meet the peaks. The western side of the city butts up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. And at 8-9,000 feet, those hills are already twice as high as the highest peak in Britain. [2] Even if I don't live in the Rockies, I can see where they begin from my backyard.
In a way, it's one of those magical lines of demarcation: where this begins, where that ends. As a child at the beach, I liked to stand in the water, exactly where the wet met the dry, and think, "This is the end, the very very end. There are 4,000 miles of land behind me, but this very inch of sand is where it ends." Colorado Springs may be the end of the plains, yes, but I stand in the shadows of the greatest mountain range in North America. Here is where it begins.
1. Prague, Tübingen, Galway, and Edinburgh: admittedly a hard crowd to beat.
2. Ben Nevis, 4,406 feet, and a real bitch of a walk.
VOX POPULI » 7 sagacious observations
