Yellow fog

The other day I awoke to an eerie muted yellow glow that was neither street light nor sun light, but could only be the remnants of the famed yellow fog of Prufrock fame.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By T. S. Eliot

Vote!

Today I received and returned my ballot. Nothing like voting by absentee ballot for a list of unopposed candidates to make your electoral participation feel inconsequential. I should have moved to New Hampshire before leaving the country. On the bright side, I got to vote for an initiative to remove criminal penalties for marijuana possession in Massachusetts.

At the post office, I asked the clerk about the probability of my ballot making it past the local postal service. When I voted two years ago, they kept returning my ballot to me, because the printed address on the envelope doesn't look at all like an address. He assured me that it shouldn't be a problem, as they have so many US ballots going through that post office every day now. He said he alone had already processed four or five this morning before mine.

Living here in the UK makes me feel really privileged to vote in the US election. So many people I talk to point out the huge consequences this election will have on their lives. I think folks here are hopeful, if still a bit anxious after the last go-round.

Verde's

Today I finally got around to really visiting Jeanette Winterson's shop Verde's. Last week we passed it on the Jack the Ripper walk, and Lauren and I stopped by briefly before having dinner on Brick Lane.


It's a wonderful little haven and I plan to return as much as I can. (It's rather out of the way for me though.) Before going to Verde's we had tacos at a little Mexican festival within a farmer's market near Russell Square.


Yum. The Mariachi band was great -- they'd sing two or three songs and then go eat some tacos, and then sing two or three songs and then go eat some tacos, and so on.

After Verde's we did some window shopping around Spitalfields, and had a glass of wine along the way. It was a lovely afternoon overall, especially because we had a rare sunny day.

Ren!

Lauren came to visit me last weekend. We were busy:
Belgian beers at Lowlander
National Gallery
Chinatown
Tate Modern
more pubs
mass at St. Paul's
British Museum
fish & chips
National Portrait Gallery
Jack the Ripper walk
lunchtime recital at the Royal Opera House
curry on Brick Lane
"The Sound of Music" at the Palladium

She also went to the British Library without me, and we did a bunch of walking around besides. On the Jack the Ripper walk, we got to see a big chunk of the old Roman wall around the original city of London: