20 Questions

Because everybody likes talking about themselves, a questionnaire that I copied from elsewhere, customized and made my own.

Q. What are you listening to right now?

A. Crispin Hellion Glover’s The Big Problem. Specifically, Selected Readings from Oak Mot Part I.

Q. Who was your first crush?

A. Simon Le Bon. The Union of the Snake video is very exotic indeed when you’re 12 and he has aged rather well I must say. And here I am wearing my two Duran Duran buttons upon my very pink and very 1980s shirt, trying my hardest to pout like John Taylor even though I was with my family camping up in Banff, Canada and had just tumbled out of a sleeping bag moments earlier.

Q. Which genre of music do you dislike the most?

A. Easy question. That would be rap, hip hop, heavy metal and country music. Also, let us not forget the droning, nauseating voice of Tori Amos and the other Lilith Fair  females that follow in her clown-haired, relentlessly annoying footsteps.

Q. Tattoos or body piercings?

A. Abhorrent. The only reason my ears are pierced is because my mother had them done when I was 3. But I did scream bloody murder and remember copious amounts of blood being present.

Q. Favorite actor?

A. Alan Rickman, without a doubt.

Q. Favorite politician?

A. Boris Johnson, of course. Who else could write books with lines like these: “There was the man who threatened to beat me up in the Welsh village of Ruabaon, where I was canvassing for votes in 1997. It would have been rather cool to have been beaten up, as a Tory candidate, except that my potential assailant was eighty-two and blind in one eye.” Or “I once went on Question Time and said that if gay marriage was okay — and I was uncertain on this issue — then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog. Is that the remark which cheesed them off?”

Q. Political party?

A. Independent, but mainly Libertarian with a healthy smattering of fiscal conservative beliefs.

Q. Books you’re reading?

A. I always have several books in tow and right now I’m thumbing through two books on Pompeii as I’ll be studying its history come September. This is all paving the way for me and a glorious Ph.D. in the future.

Q. Middle name?

A. Noelle. Can you tell that my parents liked Christmas? I was wrongly baptized as Jill Noelle, as the Catholic priest presiding over my baptism somehow managed to get my first name mixed up with someone else’s baby. Does this mean that the baptism didn’t take? And, if so, will I be forever in Limbo as an unbaptized heathen because of this?

Q. Favorite beverage?

A. Chilled bottled water.

Q. Alcohol?

A. I don’t drink, save the occasional glass of merlot with dinner once in a blue moon. Never really found alcohol very inviting or interesting, although I did have many interesting excursions with absinthe in the past and found White Russians refreshing if I was going to see a band play someplace like the Crocodile Cafe.

Q. Heritage?

A. Oh, just about everything, I’ve even got Spanish blood flowing through my veins from a century and a half ago. But mainly Irish, German and Austrian with some English, Scottish and French thrown in for good measure. I’m also the umpteenth granddaughter of King John and so can claim lineage to many people through him, including emperors living in Constantinople eons ago. But then so can millions of other people. One of my ancestors ran an inn in Austria in the 1600’s which is still in use today which I would love to visit someday. I’ve noticed that most of my German/Austrian female ancestors had the first or middle name of Magdalena also, which I really like a lot.

Q. Favorite poets?

A. Coleridge is my favorite English poet and Charles Baudelaire is my favorite French poet, followed closely by Rimbaud.

Q. Place you would like to visit that you haven’t been to yet?

A. Venice.

Q. Religion?

A. I’m spiritual, which means that I’m interested in Buddhism (Zen Master Seung Sahn Soen-sa), Hinduism (especially The Uddhava Gita) and Paganism.

Q. Chocolate or vanilla?

A. Vanilla

Q. Coffee or tea?

A. Only herbal teas like peppermint or chamomile and only vanilla soy lattes on the coffee front.

Favourites of the Moment

• A show that I’ve been really enjoying over the past four weeks has been the BBC drama series Desperate Romantics. I’m already a sucker for Pre-Raphaelite art as it is and upon moving to London immediately purchased a gorgeous framed print of Millais’s Ophelia painting straight from the Tate, which holds the original. This website is a treasure trove of information on Elizabeth Siddal.

• 4,000 years before laying the first rock at Stonehenge, hunter-gatherers were alive and well and living on the Isle of Man. And when it comes to jewelry, it seems that humans liked their necklaces even 90,000 years ago. This stuff fascinates me to no end and ties in nicely with the course I took at Oxford last Spring.

• On the homeschooling front I’ve been researching various math programs, and so far love Singapore Math the best. Homeschoolers have been using it for years, and California must’ve been taking notes as they appear to be using it in their schools now. Lucien will of course be the final judge of math programs, however, but it’s still fun doing the research. For mathematical concepts, these cuisenaire rods look fab.

• I am loving the reading room of this homeschooling family and the very creative use of rain gutters for bookshelves. This blog also continues to inspire me as it’s done for years now.

• This footage that Thomas Edison took during the Paris Expo of 1900 is just breathtaking, as is the music that was added to accompany it. It’s wild watching the horses and wagons going up and down the Champs Elysees and the French men of yesteryear having a laugh in front of the camera, not knowing that 109 years later people would be watching it on youtube.

• I’m such a geek that I downloaded the second week MIT lecture entitled The Universe: Questions You Were Afraid to Ask and put it on my little purple iPod. And yes, I’ve even watched it on my iPod while lying in bed first thing in the morning.

• I’ve been listening to lots and lots of Kraftwerk lately — especially Autobahn and Computer World.

• I love that there is a Whole Foods in London. I especially love all the specialty items I can only buy there like coconut water (this is truly delicious, but then I’m a coconut fiend too, so I’m biased), New Chapter Organic Prenatal Vitamins which I’ve become strangely addicted to and will probably take forever now, and pink guava coconut ices which are perfect for a summer’s day, even if that summer’s day really isn’t all that warm.

The Magic Wardrobe

My magic wardrobe now contains many new things from Violet Folklore, including this top, which I just love. This really and truly is the cutest pattern ever!

Gardens Galore

I’ve always been quite fond of Elizabeth I, especially after reading the historian Alison Weir’s book Elizabeth The Queen. Since it had been a good couple of years since we’d been to Hatfield House, Elizabeth’s residence as a child, we decided to celebrate the fact that the glowing orb in the sky had decided to grace us with its presence over the weekend and headed back to Hatfield House. Legend has it that Elizabeth was sitting under one of the trees outside the house when she was given word of her sister Mary’s death and her accession to the throne as the next Queen of England.

These days Hatfield House is now the home of the 7th Marquis of Salisbury and his wife, and they kindly permit visitors to enter their abode on a limited basis and explore the grounds of Elizabeth’s once beloved home.

City of Dreams

London weather is just so darn variable. But I love it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Such a precious and pretty little pond.

Behold, the City of London skyline.

Montessori toys galore and one very happy little emperor.

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

Mistress of the Underworld,

When you’re back in the country give us a bell and we can arrange a trip to some romantic hideaway in a country cottage where the fields roam for miles and the pleasant brooks sparkle in the sunlight.

Sweet Princess, I bow before you and kiss your beautiful hand.

So sayeth my husband’s first letter to me. Happy birthday to the world’s most amazing, wonderful husband and father that this planet has ever known.

Happy birthday to my gorgeous double-Leo, Mauritius-born (which only happens when your dad is abroad as a diplomat), globetrotting, English boarding school educated (yikes!!), angelic Mediterranean husband.

Happy birthday to the man with the largest eyes I’ve ever seen before and the darkest, blackest hair that always reminds me of the Charles Baudelaire prose piece A Hemisphere In Your Hair.

Your hair holds a whole dream of masts and sails; it holds seas whose monsoons waft me toward lovely climes where space is bluer and more profound, where fruits and leaves and human skin perfume the air.

In the ocean of your hair I see a harbor teeming with melancholic songs, and ships of every shape, whose elegant and intricate structures stand out against the enormous sky, home of eternal heat.

In the night of your hair I see the sheen of the tropic’s blue infinity; on the shores of your hair I get drunk with the smell of musk and the oil of coconuts.

Long, long let me bite your black and heavy tresses. When I gnaw your elastic and rebellious hair I seem to be eating memories.

Happy birthday to the greatest musician, painter, writer, samurai sword-wielding and karate-stomping man alive. All hail my perfect dark angel!

Here is the birthday boy as an adorable baby, reclining on monkey fur that was given as a gift to his dad by none other than Haile Selassie.

Elizabeth Siddal 25 July 1829 – 11 February 1862

One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-green,
A saint, an angel –every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

~ Christina Rossetti

I’m afraid I couldn’t snap any shots of the copper-haired goddess’s grave at Highgate Cemetery as the Rossetti’s are buried in no-man’s land and guides don’t generally allow people to venture near it, but the other graves at Highgate are just as beautiful I’m sure with gnarled tree roots caressing them.

Meadow Allegory

I play with my Mac’s Photo Booth feature during yet another heavenly thunderstorm today.

I’ve been contemplating some of the things that make London so wonderful. One of them is that we have the world’s best Mayor, nay, the world’s best politician, living in our midst. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Boris Johnson, the man who so rightfully deserves to be running the show everywhere: Prime Minister, President, King, Emperor — well, you get the point.

But back to the topic of thunderstorms — I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many over the course of the summer as we’ve been having this year. It seems that several every week pop up, and they’re not just your garden variety thunderstorms either. No, they’re rocking and rollicking ones that make the ground shake and tremble beneath your very feet and you never know just when they’re going to strike, very similar to English rain showers.

Case in point: yesterday we were enjoying another day at a park and lo and behold, what should appear in the sky but very dark charcoal-coloured clouds hovering above us.

Considering we were literally knee deep in the middle of a vast and endless sea of gold, there was very little we could do should the heavens decide to open up and pour upon us.

And pour upon us they did. Fortunately, the very astute husband found a nice little island of trees to take shelter under right in the center of the field and to the direct left of the large tree in this picture.

After just narrowly escaping a very thorough drenching, we stood under the almost strategically-placed circle of trees and giggled like children at our lucky escape. There being no lightning this time and merely a very large rainshower, we were very grateful indeed for the trees.

Once the heavy onslaught of rain finally abated, we made our way down to the bottom of the field.

We took a delightful walk through some woods and wound our way back to the car afterwards, having had another lovely English outing.

Innocence

I was 21 months old, precisely the same age Lucien is now. I may have been the picture of innocence, yet already I was harboring strange desires in my little mind. These included wanting to get rid of everything else and cover the entire house from floor to ceiling with books and gaze longingly at them (thank you grandparents for buying me a huge library of books and engendering me with the love of words, sweet words). This would one day culminate in me wringing my hands that I was born in the wrong century and wasn’t able to be J.K. Huysmans or Oscar Wilde’s muse and swim around darkened rooms in long, flowing dresses. Makes me wonder what kind of thoughts swim around Lucien’s young head.

Walking with Shadows

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” ~ Oscar Wilde