In an effort to avoid cleaning, I re-arranged my books by colour

Ironmongery

I am struck, as I walk around in the UK, by the real investment in fences and doors. Its called ironmongery and its like wrought (sp?) iron at home. There is not much of it anymore in the US - at least where I'm from in Florida. There's some in the spanish/cuban influenced areas like Ybor City in Tampa or possibly on balconies in New Orleans but I cannot think of a modern development that has such beautiful metal work.

This gate is from an old school yard and I really thought the pattern was beautiful. You get the security and beauty at th esame time. Much more successfull than chain link fence with barbed wire across the top which seems to be the default method of security in my home land.

On th eother hand domestic fences are really bad here in the UK, when it stops rainging I'll get out and take some pictures of that. So maybe its just that commercial fences are better and budgeted for with longevity in mind.

Store names

Across the Street from each other in Hatton Garden, In London, are these two shops. I've always wondered about them. Why, if you are setting up a shop in London's diamond district, would you name your shop after another city? Manhattan's of London and Beverly Hills London; do you suppose in Manhatton and Beverly Hills there are shops named after London?

By the way, I work in the Diamond District I'm not shopping for Diamonds, just in case you are wondering.

AUGH! The perils of new cultures...

This weekend I found a petshop. Yay! Perhaps I should have looked for one before the cats arrived but I didn't. A friend told me about one in Highgate Village.

I won't bore you too long with the transit details but will tell you that the Northern line was partially closed, the 260 runs only on weekdays and C11 is not the most direct route to Highgate from Hampstead. I found the shop and had a little exploration of the village. After a nice a nice lunch I took my cat supplies (2 collars, a pet hair brush and a litter scoop) I returned home.

Don't read further if you are not a cat person...

Cat litter in the UK is like everything else, not quite the same as the US. On the plus side they sell it in packaging that it is possible to carry, even in SF they sold it in 309 pound bags - not transit friendly. The downside is that my first choice was really bad, it consisted of something called fullers earth. Which basically is dried clay. When you add cat pee to dried clay you get cat-pee-mudd. Which seems to be a very stupid idea: impossible to clean up and really useless even with the nice new litter scooper. So now I'm into crystals. The cats have been home by themselves all day and I hope the switch to crystals was not to sudden.

OK I promise no more cat-talk back to the city blog.

Cats finally join the household

My cats finally made it into the UK. It took six months, microchips, multiple blood tests, 2 new crates, Pet passports (who knew those existed?)and a long suffering friend in San Francisco. But my two cats (17 and 15 years old!) finally arrived at my London flat on Wednesday. I found cat food but need toys, scoopers and the correct cat litter. Long week ahead.

Dylan

Morgana's too freaked out to come out from under the bed but Dylan is always up for a walk around. So far so good.

He looks like he's saying, "Where the heck am I now?"