It's true...

I'm the father of a fairy princess.

The Sun rears its head

For a few hours at least...this was the sight out our window at 3:15 yesterday afternoon; and what a glorious sight it was! It's been almost two weeks since we last saw the sun. Low clouds and fog have been our companions this Christmas season. But not yesterday! We even went to the park to celebrate.

Cold Weather Shelter

Looks like I'll be helping out this winter at a rolling cold weather shelter for homeless people in Camden. It runs from January through March, and is "rolling" in that it is hosted at seven different sites throughout the borough - one each night of the week. I think I'm helping at one of the morning sessions, helping to make and serve breakfast to the guests who have spent the night. More details later...I went to a training day yesterday, but still don't really know what my involvement will look like.

Drum Lessons

Andi and Jodie loved the African drum lesson. It wasn't really a lesson, so much as a jam session with one of the women in the shop. She started trying to teach the girls how to hit the drum properly, but they were shy and didn't want to do anything she was telling them. Then she said "I'm going to play, and you improvise when you feel comfortable." That did it. The girls had a really good time playing the instruments and then dancing to the beat while other people drummed. It really fascinates them that the drums are made with animal skins. They keep asking if different kinds of skin would work..."what about Lions, Daddy, do you think they use Lions skin? Or maybe dogs? Or Zebras, what about Zebras Daddy?" Since I have absolutely no idea what kind of skins are actually used, I make it up and say in my authoritative voice "Goats, they use goat skins. And maybe Antelope."

Party Update

Our housewarming party went really well last night. We had a few people from our building who we hadn't met before. Someone brought us flowers, and a guy stopped by to say that he couldn't come to the party, but he wanted to introduce himself. Pretty cool.We all forgot to take pictures during the party (lame, I know) but here's a shot before people got into all the cheese.
After the party, Oli and I went and checked out this new place that has finally opened up across the street. It's a bar called 55. We've been watching them renovate for the past two months, and were interested to see what it's like. It's a really nice cocktail bar owned by a guy about my age. I'll post a few pictures if he lets me. Tomorrow Somer and I are going over to see some of the old tables he's getting rid of to see if anything will work for us as a TV table.

Housewarming Party

Tomorrow night we're having a housewarming party. Somer and Kathy are cooking up a few things , but they left me in charge of the most exciting part: the wine and the cheese! The wine's already taken care of, as we had to buy a whole case for Thanksgiving and only used two bottles, but the cheese required a special trip to Neil's Yard Dairy in Covent Garden. Selections for tomorrow night include Montgomery's Cheddar ('the best cheddar in England'), Childwickbury - a fresh goat's cheese especially for John, Colston Bassett Stilton ('the best stilton in England'), and my favorite: Gorwydd Caerphilly - a traditional cheese that tastes a lot like Camembert, but with a texture more like a smooth cheddar.

In fairness to Somer, the things she's making will be far more interesting to most of you than my cheese obsession...check them out on her blog.

Tomorrow before the party I'm taking the girls to open drum lessons for kids at a stall in the market that sells drums from Ghana. They are VERY excited about it...woke up talking about it this morning. More tomorrow, I hope.

Volunteer, anyone?

So I'm not really a big fan of the advertising that is ubiquitous in the city. Billboards, shop signs, and people handing out leaflets vie for your attention as you walk down the street. The view out our window is dominated by the sign for Viacom Outdoor (which is, ironically, a billboard company) and for Holiday Inn, the lights of which light up our bedroom in the middle of the night.
So it's with some amazement that I tell you that a sign on a bus had the desired effect on me yesterday. I saw an advertisement for the Camden Volunteer Day on the side of the number 134 bus. So yesterday afternoon, I went along with teammate Kathy to see what opportunities for volunteering were available in Camden. There were fewer groups than I expected...mostly smaller, less-well-known groups that probably have a harder time recruiting volunteers than the big-boys like Oxfam and RSPCA do. Still, there was a good variety, including a group called The Gorilla Organization that needs volunteers to put on a Gorilla suit and ask for donations at tube stations. There's also a group that works with HIV/AIDS patients that may be looking for someone to do computer training.
I went hoping there'd be opportunities to volunteer in our neighborhood, and while most of the groups were based in Camden burrough, it's a large burrough and none of them were very close to us.

Spotted in Team Leader's kitchen...

Christmas Tree

We got our Christmas tree! Friday we were walking back from Camden market when we passed some trees at the Morrison's. Ten minutes later we had picked out the "tallest tree ever" according to Jodie and were walking home with it. Ray is a friend from the States who was visiting and kindly agreed to help carry it. The best part of the tree is that it came with it's own stand...it's been nailed into a slice from a larger tree trunk that serves as the base. It works great, and there were no issues of getting it straight or stable once we got it in the house. I'll admit, it's not quite the same as Ryan, who cut his own tree from a forest, but it still makes it feel like Christmas around here. Which is good, since we're having a housewarming/Christmas party this weekend.

Teacher leaving

We just got a letter from Andi's school, saying that her teacher is leaving at the end of this term. We're really sad about this. I'm sure the new teacher will be great, but we really like her current teacher. Somer has started to get to know her a little, and has been going into the class to help by reading individually with the kids. So a little uncertainty right now for Andi and her class, and a little sadness too.

Glass

I've been here for nearly three months now, and have yet to find any glassblowers working in this area. Now I'll admit, it's a pretty small pool of people - not everyone has a hot shop in their basement. But I've been surprised at how hard it is to find people working in glass here in Camden.
So yesterday I went to the market determined to find someone. I went to a stall that sells small jewelry - rings, necklaces, etc - that are made from fused glass. The attendant was not himself the artist (he said the artists only come on weekends), but he sent me to a little place called Lead and Light.
Lead and Light is off the beaten path, tucked back in an alley behind a row of houses. A cool place with more sheets of glass than I've ever seen in one place. But sadly, only a very small kiln in which to do fusing (layering pieces of glass and melting them together in the furnace). No glassblowing.
There is a glassblower who has a stall in the market, but he does most of his work in Italy because the gas for the furnaces is much cheaper there.

So...I'm still looking. If anyone happens to know anyone doing glassblowing in the Camden area, or know of a school that has a hot shop, let me know.

Oil On Canvas

My friend John plays in like 4 different bands. I recently took my other friend John along to one of his gigs. He was playing with Oil on Canvas at the Purple Turtle in Camden. When we got there it was pretty dead, and the first band to play was some pirate/sailor themed band that drew about 6 people total to watch. But, we got to hang out with John for a good part of the evening and talk about life.

One of the things we talked about was how the church used to be a big supporter/patron of music (and other forms of art as well). I would like to see that practice revived, and we talked a little about how to make that happen. Even though John isn't big on "church" or "religion" himself, he said he'd be very open to having a local church as a sort of patron, as long as they didn't try to control his music.

Any of my readers have any experience or ideas for how to pull off something like church-sponsored patronage for local bands/artists? I'm not just talking like "open band night" for the youth - am I totally ignorant of history, or did musicians used to make their living producing music for the church?

Thanksgiving

Yes, thank you Jeremy. We all know I haven't posted much lately. Let me try to catch you up on our lives.

We celebrated Thanksgiving on the appropriate day last week. John and Kathy hosted the dinner, and we had a number of our British friends over, plus a couple of other Americans. The English/Welsh contingent wanted to know why we celebrate Thanksgiving, and to our shame, non of the Americans knew why, we just knew that we all eat turkey and watch Americann football.

Now I don't know who won the real Thanskgiving day games (and I don't want to...at least not yet). But I can tell you that our Thanksgiving game was won by the Baltimore Ravens, who blocked a Titans field goal at the end of the game to hang on and win by 1.

Anyway, we had a great time. Kathy's turkey was incredible, as was Somer's pumpkin pie. There were 13 of us all crammed around the table, and it was a sweet time of being with friends. Somer's got some good pictures over on Daily Offerings.

More to update about, but that'll come in another post.