tooting broadway, tennis balls, long vowels, bright nights

oh what have i done?

i can't help it. it's been two weeks and i freely admit to abandoning this blog entirely. complete and utter neglect. and now i feel stupidly pressured to come back to it. freedom! there's simply so much to DO! in the best possible way! i almost never want to sit down and write about it. that makes it seem somehow over and done with. and it couldn't be more immediate, more overwhelmingly wonderfully RIGHT NOW!

i have a friend here who's going through the same sort of blah-blah-blah with his blog. he said he tries to solve that problem by writing, when he does write, only about one very specific thing. a tiny detail, a little moment, one phrase, one small circumstance from the day... no straining to cover every single thing, which is as impossible as wringing out every individual drop of water from a soaking sponge. but, as my scenes teacher bridget would say, "a vertical experience" instead of a "horizontal one." depth rather than breadth.

so perhaps i'll try that? perhaps i'll try...

today i will tell this story: Scones With Bridget and the Tale of the Rueben and Naked Boy

SO.

on saturday i had tea with bridget, my scenes teacher as mentioned above. bridget is a lovely, silver-haired, deceptively delicate looking woman with beautiful skin and water-blue eyes. she went to school with judy dench, vanessa redgrave and maggie smith when she was 16, and is friends with ian mckellen and augusto boal. her home is full of old photographs of her as a radiantly beautiful young woman, as well as yellowing victorian prints of her ancestors, and tilted snapshots of her children and grandchildren. and books. books everywhere.

lucas, one of my best friends here, and i went to camden market in the morning -- walked through the stalls of ironic hipster t-shirts and hemp & henna hippie things, past the stores full of huge spiked industrial boots and custom-made corsets (Fairy Goth Mother is a favorite), then in between the stalls of food. fooooood. huge lovely vats of goat curry and rice, bubbling in the heat -- piles of fruit and sizzling crepe pans, bowls of cous-cous and wooden carts covered in homemade doughnuts. we ate lunch (mmmmmmm!) and then proceeded, via the 24 bus, to bridget's house, a little north of camden near the belsize tube station -- in a lovely neighborhood of narrow fronted brick and white houses and hydranga bushes.

bridget's house has a beautiful, disorganized backyard garden -- a little stone pool full of water plants and newts (used as weapons of intimidation by the grandchildren), a rusting black trellis covered in ivy over a little stone path, a plastic swing, a variety of childhood lawn furtinture toppled about, a hammock, a wide stone back stoop from which to view it all. when we arrived (me, lucas, mike, mayumi, lars), she began baking scones and letting us explore her house. we brought her bread (still warm) and cheese and strawberries, and the tea was laid out in the "conservatory" connecting the house to the garden -- earl grey and english tea, milk, sugar, scones, strawberry jam, chocolate, yogurt, brown bread, strong cheddar cheese, and a kind of special bread made with one egg, hardly any flower, and a great many raisins soaked in tea.

we watched her grandchildren collect newts and comandeer mike ("who's the giant man?! will you fix our swing?") before rueben (9) declared that we were now playing "It." aka, tag. a long while of dashing around the garden and through bridget's house, chasing and stalking each other, ensued. reuben called me "quite fast for a grownup", which i consider to be one of my finest moments thus far.

we watched england fall out of the world cup after two overtimes and a shootout and amused ourselves with a rather hilarious piece of literature called The Dangerous Book for Boys. a work purporting to hold everything a growing lad needs to know, from how to build a tree house to how to talk to girls ("do not try to impress her with your knowledge of morse code and games that involve wizards"). and then the climax of the evening:

the other grandchild, benjamin, almost 7, had been wearing absolutely nothing the entire time. a fact that immediately made me judge bridget and her household favorably. of course he soon became known simply as Naked Boy, which is as it should be. late in the evening he demaded that mike ("giant man") pick him up. mike did, and then Naked Boy/Benjamin (no longer naked at this point actually) changed his mind and said "ow!" (apparent translation: "put me down i don't like you anymore.") this command was also obeyed, but the minute the kid touched the ground he burst into tears and screamed, "YOU BROKE MY SPINE!!!!" ...i have never seen someone look so shocked, so horrified, so reduced to a frightening combination of tears and giggles, as mike in that moment. bridget bundled both the boys away at that point and eventually the melodrama ceased. but oh my. YOU BROKE MY SPINE. a golden, golden moment.

that is for now. there is, of course, much much more.
there is the summer solstice at stone henge for one -- there is jess heyman's visit and the midnight titus at the globe for another. the south bank at four in the morning, the wonderful Jane Eyre at Trafalgar Studios during my mother's visit, the beauty the romance the clamour the rush the roar!

i am changing, and i am happy.