I visited the Henry Moore Studio and Gardens in Hertfordshire last week. Such a beautiful, park-like setting! The property was studded with towering, flowering trees.
Posting for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
I visited the Henry Moore Studio and Gardens in Hertfordshire last week. Such a beautiful, park-like setting! The property was studded with towering, flowering trees.
Posting for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Everyone knows that when I am in London, I stay in only one place: Bloomsbury. And I go to only one bookstore: the London Review Bookshop. I usually linger by the front, examining what’s new. But I spend most of my time below-stairs, sometimes sitting on the orange couch, examining books about science, exploration, nature, and so forth.
This month, Becky’s Squares Challenge is about MOVING. Her latest post is called “Let’s Stride.”
Here are a collection of books from the lower level of the London Review Bookshop that have to do with explorations and wanderings (in nature):
Yes, our intrepid hero, Shelley (he has Americanized his Chinese name), has a girlfriend. A girlfriend he met in China, the niece of his English teacher. Her name is Lisbet, and she lives in southern California.
When he’s been a few months in San Francisco, he plucks up his courage and pays for a bus ticket south.
She takes him to Zuma Beach and he recites her a poem he made up on the spot.
“It was a good poem,” Lisbet said. “Short but sweet.” She leaned in and kissed me. A second kiss was long and lasting . . . We went to the empty lifeguard tower, but it was locked, so we took up our things and walked a long way, past Point Dume and around to the other side. At the far end of the beach, tucked among the rocks, Lisbet spread the blanket. “Come here,” she said, lying back. I panicked trying to unknot my swim trunks, but Lisbet waited calmly, unpeeled from her own suit and elegant in the sun. When I finally freed myself, Lisbet handed me protection — City College standards, yes means yes — and that was another challenge. The sand, you see, and my fumble. Lisbet helped me put it on with practiced hands, which made me swoon harder. I closed my eyes against the dazzling light. Finally, there was something in Peach Blossom Land that was better than I’d imagined.
We returned to the car in the late afternoon and discovered that the backpack I’d left under the seat was gone.
“Damn,” Lisbet said. “I forgot to lock the car. I’m sorry.”
— The Chinese Groove, pp. 157 – 158
I bow, Kathryn Ma. I bow.
Home from a trip, still studying how the garden held up.
The front yard is speckled with color — nothing full on, but bits here and there. The Australian firecracker bush has the most fiery red flowers, they glow in the heat. Would love to take close-ups of them, but they’re close to the street and I get enough stares taking pictures of my roses.
Posting for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
As regular readers know, I’ve just returned from a glorious trip. Trying to adjust to the realities of American convenience food (and thinking, every day, about how much I miss the food of Spain).
In thinking about this challenge, I came across photos of Mexican and Filipino food, all heavily influenced by Spain (because colonization). The largest picture is of a wee Filipino bakery, in a wee island, smack dab in the center of the Philippine archipelago, and it survives by selling only one product: bread.
Posting for Jez’s “I’m a Fan of . . . ” Challenge!
The Main Character has landed on the doorstep of a grieving aunt and uncle in San Francisco, whose nine-year-old only child has been murdered during a grocery store robbery. Barely able to cope with their grief, they can only offer the Main Character two weeks in their home. (This is such a good read, dear blog readers. I started reading it in Madrid — and despite all the distractions of travel, continue to savor the writing)
The MC reflects on how San Francisco’s Chinatown both is and is not home.
I stood and looked out on the street. Chinatown wasn’t home, but the tea shops and vegetable markets and the near-countrymen shouldering their way down the crowded sidewalks brought me back to Gejiu. I listened again to the player’s plangent song and as I let it flood me, I decided that homesickness, too, was a kind of pleasure, a countryman’s ache for what’s known.
— The Chinese Groove, p. 111
Woman’s Torso, Henry Moore Sculpture Park
Love the antic spirit of this novel, the refusal of its main character to succumb to self-pity. It’s not easy to find a fresh take on the immigrant, fish-out-of-water, stranger-in-a-strange-land story, but find it Ma does. Her novel is immensely entertaining.
The main character, a young man who his family in San Francisco call “Shelley” because it’s easier to say than his Chinese name, becomes an unwanted guest in his immigrant uncle’s home. His uncle, Ted, wants to help, but Aviva, his uncle’s wife, is a little less enthusiastic.
Ted lost his job as a journalist some time back, and his Chinese father, Henry, has been trying to pull strings to get him another job. Ted feels humiliated that Henry asked a man named Hungtington to help him.
Ted’s mood sours when Aviva brings up Huntington at a family gathering to which they’ve taken Shelley. On the drive back, they argue.
“Are you not going to talk to me?” Aviva demands.
“Did you have to bring up Huntington? Can’t you keep anything quiet?” Ted said.
“Let’s not do this in front of Shelley. No offense,” she added.
None taken. A sponger couldn’t afford.
— The Chinese Groove, pp. 72 – 73
This trip to London had many “firsts.” Such as: “my first time to see a play in London since 2019” or “first time back at the Harold Pinter Theatre since 2019” or “discovering there’s a TKTS in Leicester Square,” which led to my watching a Jez Butterworth play for the first time since I saw The Ferryman several years ago.
This was also the first time I tried Poppies fish and chips (thanks, nephew!). We ate at the branch in Old Compton Road. That was my first time to eat in London’s Chinatown since I stopped for a quick meal at Hung (restaurant specialty: Peking Duck) before seeing a production of The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime.
This is a post dedicated to the idea of moving forward. Thanks, Becky, for reviving the Squares Challenge this month, and for allowing me to document this trip! So fun!
Posting for Becky’s Squares Challenge: May 2024.
Being in a new place always recharges my batteries. That, and staying away from the news from America.
Below: The lobby of the V & A; the park at the end of Marchmont street