Undergraduates (bless them, the young, the untainted (not), the unbismirched):
Why do they shout like animals? Primal youth or just plain bullshit behaviour?

things on the autumn breeze

• The trees have begun to turn. Outside my office, in the sunshine (the glorious, glorious sunshine!), there is: a golden tree, an emerald tree and a silver tree. There is a peridot tree set in silver bark (a birch?). But that golden tree puts them all to shame. It is burning, burnished, old gold. With silver bark. Like in Lothlórien. If I could stand under it and banish the sounds of undergraduates, of workmen, of chainsaws (they are building something next door. Even less space for the rabbits next year), I would cry for joy at having found Middle Earth.
• Near the park, by the mill, in the raging sunset yesterday, there is a tree that is turning left and right at once: green green deep green on some branches, like the brightest days of summer. And deep, deep crimson on others, like a stain, like a heartburst, like a pinprick from the intuition of coming snow.
• On the grass, tiny yellow daffodils, still.

The summer shines down, yes, but the earth seems to drink it right up, and the honeyness seeps out slowly, slowly, richly, thickly. I want to go out! I want to breathe it in! I want to find someone with whom I can drink in the light of these trees.

Paws off London

I don't know London well, but if I did, I have a feeling I'd love her. The city is like one of those people at the end of the line in a cafe - the one who looks stunning, looks at you from the corner of their eye, smiles, you smile, and then that's it... until the next morning, when it happens again.. and again, ad infinitum. Until one of you is run over by a truck, or reality intervenes and you ask him to join you, he opens his mouth and you discover he is... well... not someone who will co-inhabit your future (no no this has never happened to me before).
But to return to the point: I would have a crush on London if I could ask her to join me.
So.
It this statement by the American Ambassador to Great Britain is particularly revolting:
"This has been a long and careful process," Ambassador Robert Tuttle said in a statement Thursday. "We looked at all our options, including renovation of our current building on Grosvenor Square. In the end, we realized that the goal of a modern, secure and environmentally sustainable embassy could best be met by constructing a new facility. I'm excited about America playing a role in the regeneration of the South Bank of London."
(Quoted here, emphasis mine)

Far as I'm aware, the South Bank could do without a big shiny building that screams about the Land of the Free, yeeeeehaw!! (Apologies to the zero yeehaw-ers who read my blog, no disrespect intended, you obviously have excellent taste.)