Surviving 65 Degrees

The fact is cool weather feels cold in the Keys. Perhaps it's the proximity of the salt water or the lack of geographical, impediments for the wind but even outsiders feel cold here when the temperatures seem absurdly high. Most people from temperate climates would say 65 Fahrenheit or 17 Centigrade would be quite reasonable when I fact it just feels downright cold. Heavy gray clouds don't help and didn't help yesterday morning.

Cheyenne relishes the cold and, unfortunately for me gains youthful vigor from the chill in the air. This time of year she loves the urban paradise that is the avenues of Big Pine Key which is where I took her yesterday morning, four miles by car from my house to a grid of semi-urban streets.

The streets are long and straight, lined with homes of snowbirds who winter here but have not yet arrived for this cold season. Locals like this place as it puts them conveniently far from the lure of Key West, the big city, at least an hour away, yet close to the supermarket and small stores and basic services at Big Pine Plaza all within cycling distance.

Yesterday was a two hour extravaganza that failed somehow to satisfy Cheyenne who strode off briskly searching out smells and leaving me far behind as I chased her big yellow tail. It had been trash day and there was enough spilled garbage and abandoned food that she was in literally in hog heaven. She didn't even avail herself of the fork she found in this abandoned lunch.

She loves the hunt past trailer parks filled with garbage cans and dogs and barking and Key deer grazing and all of it is background only to her silent hunt for whatever it is that tens her on. We met a number of dogs yesterday and it always makes me laugh to see how other dog owners struggle to contain their yapping hounds.

There was the young woman dressed to kill at that early hour holding a spaniel tight as the dog swayed at the end of its leash like a loudly barking pendulum as it tried to attract Cheyenne's attention. The dour Hispanic dog owner who strode by, eyes down, his dog eyeing Cheyenne from behind the mans striding legs as he walked rapidly by, no eye contact. One old guy smacked down his cute portly corgi who wanted tI greet Cheyenne. That was my turn to hurry by in order to save the dog more slaps which it seemed to ignore with equanimity. The packs of nasty littler at dogs are the worst, eternally trapped behind fencing yapping at any slight thing that passes and breaks the boredom for a moment.

That lot in the photo above was a pack of five so frenzied I couldn't capture them all in one frame. What a nightmare! Eventually I managed to persuade Cheyenne to stump back to the car and we rode home by 8:40, me tired and quite ready for bed, she panting and happy and ready for a proper nutritious meal.

In the afternoon when I crawled out of bed onto a cold hard wooden floor I was quick to spot that cold gray cloud layer pressing down on the islands. It looked like rain that never materialized. Washing the cars with cold water was a chore, even though I accomplished it wearing shorts and and a t-shirt. Cheyenne was stillperky, as though she had never been walked and all I wanted was tea and exercise to warm my blood.

The rest of the day, until I went to work just after dark, I stayed close to home laying out my uniform ad adding a warm vest as protection agains the night vapors. Perhaps my excuse that I was tired was the reason I took the care and not my wife's Vespa, perhaps I just miss the Bonneville still in Jiri's shop waiting for him to order the shims needed to adjust the valves. I enjoyed the empty highway, watching the headlights coming at me in a stream as te late commuters rushed home. It's cold enough Christ,as lights won't look out of pace this week. Summer is long gone even here in the sub tropics.

West Summerland Key

I like walking my dog up here on the heights of West Summerland Key as its the only more-or-less natural spot from which one can look down on the water. I was playing idly with my phone until at some point I realised I had a series of not too bad pictures. With my telephone!

Cheyenne was busy ignoring me and my Android looking for unconsidered trifles deposited by eager anglers who come here to spend the night fishing.

The phone does a remarkable job with very little effort on my part. The pictures make a nice pocket back up for my "proper pocket camera.

I resisted getting an intelligent phone for a long time as I always felt and feel that to some degree a pocket tool with a locating device embedded is a rather unpleasant tool to be carrying on one's person. I wonder if in the future our phones won't be sending surreptious messages up to the drones overhead that will be keeping a friendly eye out for us.

The Phone's Achilles Heel lies in the digital zoom. As ou can see in the picture below fuzziness rules! Which is a relief, knowing this gadget isn't perfect.

But a panoramic afternoon view looked quite nice.

I am amazed by modern phones. The tiny little box calls people, texts people, takes photos and sends photos to people. It has a flashlight which blinks like a lighthouse o shines like a star. It shows movies and reads newspapers from around the world. My phone is a calendar, a secretarial note taker and an alarm clock. It slices and dices and serves up my life on a platter. I am put in mind of a quotation by Stanton Delaplane the nattily dressed columnist of the pre-Internet San Francisco Chronicle who popularized Irish coffee in the US. He once remarked, early in the electronic era, "The computer is down. I hope it's serious." I used to feel that way but...now perhaps I don't. I move with the times. And take pictures with them too, sometimes.

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Testing the Blogger App

This is the blogger application for iPad. A brilliantly dysfunctional way to blog. Whoever dreamed this page up gets a gold star for not having a clue. Because here I cannot post a picture and then write a paragraph. All the words have to go at the top of the page and all the pictures at the bottom. Geniuses at work at Blogger, for very high pay I expect!

Little Palm Brunch

We had ourselves a brunch yesterday, on a tropical island which happens to lie not in the south seas as may appear to be the case judging from the palms lining the beaches around the resort.

It's a fifteen minute ferry ride from Little Torch Key at Mile Marker 28 and that's the only way you can get to the rather exotic brunch offered at Little Palm Island. Only overnight guests can tie up their own boats at the Little Palm docks.

We ate our meal on the outside deck overlooking the water, after we were greeted atthe dock by a young shapely hostess wins fixed smile. The is something of the Stepford Wives about the staff who are used to waiting on the one percent and thus act subservient to a degree that is unnerving to ordinary mortals.

They offer a champagne and vodka bar with all the fixings needed to mix your own cocktails.

And there are several cold buffets around the indoor dining room, including seafood, meats, cheeses, fruit and pastries. A Falstaffian abundance of oysters!

The hot menu includes a dozen dishes of tasting meats and seafood. Beef churrasco:

My wife liked the shrimp wonton better than I did, while I preferred the beef benedict seen in the background.

we both liked the only vegetarian offering on the menu, a delicious French toast of unique appearance.

Our buddy Phil has been tickling the ivories for twenty years at Little Palm.

We ate with the lovely view you would expect from such a dining room, recorded for posterity in lots of home albums no doubt.

 

And then we caught the two o'clock ferry back home to the real world.

 

I think the full price for the brunch is around a hundred bucks, but we ate with a local's discount which was nice for us. On top of that my wife had a voucher from a local charity auction and so our meal was actually quite reasonable for the three of us, $140 including the obligatory twenty percent tip after all the discounting and stuff. Great fun and a great day out.

 

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Schooner Wharf Bar

I went to Schooner Wharf. I was at a loose end and wasn't ready to ride home so I thought: how about a drink in the last little piece of old Key West.

So there I was squeezing myself between sweating drinking patrons asking myself why is it that I don't much like bars when so many other people love them... I remember a comment on a TV show I used to like (Northern Exposure for the record) wherein the character Chris in the Morning muses on his lifetime appreciation for bars that some people are destined to own and other people just to drink in them. A few are us were genetically modified to sit on the sidelines and wonder about bars.

I like this picture of the musician so near and dear to the hearts of patrons of Schooner Wharf. Feel free of course to use it. His music was okay but I wanted to see the view so I climbed the stairs to the deck overlooking Key West Bight. Okay so the crowds below freaked me out but this was lovely.

The big gray lump is GarytheTourist's home from home, the Galleon Resort, whence one presumably enjoys a similar view across the open water as well. Schooner Wharf's beer selection is a bit behind the times frankly. The best of the draughts was Samuel Adams and the best of the bottled was Red Stripe which is frankly inadequate in the age of craft brewing.

People watching was okay if you enjoy watching people crane their necks looking for fish swimming.

They do a lot of this sort of thing.

The helicopter flying over the power boat races was noisy. But so were the boats, so I guess they were even.

It was a pretty afternoon on top of the bar, made bright by Haiti's flag on the left and Cuba's on the right.

 

Lots of big boats cruised through the harbor for a while. The racers have inboard engines, the local boat had outboards.

These strange vessels draw aficionados to sit and stare. I guess I look as weirdly absorbed whe presented witna. Parade of interesting motorcycles, of all things. I just got to look at a friend's collection of pictures of an exotic car show Up North. Internal combustion rules.

But then reality intervenes and we are reminded that we live In a cool little resort town with lots of water sports possibilities even though I think the waters are too cold for swimming in November. I like watching the oat loads of eager tourists going out on these beautiful waters. I have had a crappy year for bowing this past summer but I will be here next summer, if I'm spared, and 2013 will be my year to go boating, perhaps.

The deck started to fill up and felt like a proper bar so I thought perhaps it was time to beat a retreat, before the pigeons let loose.

They do love their bar, don't they?

Key West sunshine, live music and swirling crowds of people lubricated with beer and animated conversation.

Schooner Wharf, a last little piece of old Key West, since 1987.

 

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Around Geraldine Street Of An Evening

Words by Sir John Betjeman, the poem: A Subaltern's Love Song, set in the quintessential Betjeman turf of middle class southern England land of rigid routines and hopeless mediocrity. Why Bahama Village came to mind I couldn't be sure but the quality of the dying light of the day reminded me of some of the lines in the poem evoking the long dusk of an English summer evening, land of the engagement described.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light’s in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing’s the light on your hair.

By roads “not adopted”, by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

 

From Wikipedia:

Joan Jackson (née Joan Hunter Dunn) (13 October 1915 – 11 April 2008) was the muse of Sir John Betjeman, best known from being the subject of his poem "A Subaltern's Love-song".

Jackson was the daughter of Dr George Hunter Dunn, a physician from Farnborough, Hampshire. Her grandfather, Andrew Hunter Dunn, was Bishop of Quebec from 1892 to 1914, and her uncle Edward Dunn was Bishop of British Honduras (Belize) and Archbishop of the West Indies. A great-great-grandfather was William Hunter, Lord Mayor of London in 1851-52 (the grandfather of both of her father's parents). Her mother, Mabel Liddelow, died in 1916, and Joan was educated from the age of six at Queen Anne's School, Caversham, near Reading, Berkshire, where she played tennis, became captain of the lacrosse team, and was head girl.

She studied for a diploma at King's College of Household and Social Science, and joined the catering department at the University of London.

Betjeman saw Jackson for the first time in December 1940. He was working for the Films Division of the Ministry of Information, based in the Senate House of the University of London, where she worked in the canteen. Although married for seven years, he was struck by her beauty, he fell in love, and composed a 44-line poem fantasising about them being engaged and playing tennis together in Aldershot.

Sir John Betjeman

The poem was published in Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine in February 1941. He invited her to lunch, and presented her with a copy of the magazine containing the poem, begging her forgiveness. In an interview in The Sunday Times magazine in 1965, illustrated with photographs by Lord Snowdon, she said: "It was such a marvellous break from the monotony of the war. It really was remarkable the way he imagined it all. Actually, all that about the subaltern, and the engagement is sheer fantasy, but my life was very like the poem."

The poet and his muse as colleagues 1941

She married Harold Wycliffe Jackson, a civil servant in the Ministry of Information, in January 1945, at St Mark's Church in Farnborough. Betjeman was invited, but was unable to attend. The poem was republished in Betjeman's book New Bats in Old Belfries in 1945, and was later mentioned in Flanders and Swann's "Tried by Centre Court".

Jackson accompanied her husband to Malaya after the war, where he ran a radio station. They then lived in Singapore, before returning to the UK in 1957. Her husband worked for ITV and then for the BBC in Rhodesia. He died of a heart attack in 1963.

Jackson returned to their home, in Headley, Hampshire, to raise their three young boys. Despite straitened finances, all three attended Winchester College. She attended the memorial service for Betjeman at Westminster Abbey in 1984. Her letters from Betjeman, contained in a bureau, were stolen in a burglary in 1996.

She was survived by her three sons.

 

 

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