Our flat is being visited today by a professional visitor. This is actually how she signs her letters: “Susan Watson, Visitor.” I would like to imagine that, before landing the job, she had to undertake intensive studies in tea sipping, biscuit consumption, and mantelpiece-photograph commenting. Sadly, the truth of the matter is that her workday consists of visiting flats on behalf of their owners, to ensure that the roof is not in danger of collapse and the walls are not covered with mold.

Particularly for an American, London is a breathtakingly old city, packed with history. Lest you forget this fact, the city is filled with buildings adorned with plaques that tell you when Samuel Pepys lived there, or which novels Charles Dickens wrote while residing at that address. There are plaques not just for obvious London suspects like Gilbert & Sullivan and Winston Churchill, but for foreigners like Frederic Chopin (who gave his last public performance at #4 St. James Place) and Karl Marx(who lived at 28 Dean Street while writing Das Kapital). George Frederick Handel has a plaque at 25 Brook Street, and next door at 23 Brook Street is a plaque to Jimi Hendrix–as if some cosmic force has ensured that musicians in London are arranged in strictly alphabetical order.
Even amongst this distinguished company, there is one plaque in London that is unequelled for the pleasure it gives to all who behold it. It is a tribute to a great American patriot, and it cannot help but stir the noblest feelings in all those of my countrymen who have the privilege of gazing upon it.

As I have mentioned in a previous entry, I’m not normally a fan of organized athletics. However, there is one sport that is so thrilling, so keenly competitive, so rich in complex tactics, and so seeped in macho glory that I cannot help but be seduced by its siren thrills.
I refer, of course, to pancake racing.

Lately, I have begun seeing advertisements around London for a novel that, according to the blurb, is “funny, wise, and sentient.” Frankly, I am not sure I like the idea of a sentient novel lurking about my flat.

The BBC recently tackled one of the great questions of the modern world: do Americans get irony? And, no, they weren’t joking. Or, at least, not as far as my feeble, irony-deprived American brain can perceive.

(Continued from Part I)
When I discover that my film is not on the screening schedule, I write a panicky note to the event organizers. They respond by telling me that a number of films failed to follow one of the challenge’s few rules–all films must begin with a title card featuring the assigned film title and the team name. If my film wasn’t included, I must have disqualified myself by leaving off the title card. I write back to assure them that I did, indeed, include the title card. I ask them to check again.
To be honest, though, I am beginning to wonder whether I want my film screened at all. I have now had the chance to watch it again with a good night’s sleep, and it is, frankly, pretty crappy. Everybody else’s contribution is just as good as I remember–the acting, the music, and the backpack wrangling all hold up extremely well. The only problem is the writing and the directing. The first 30 seconds of the film are nothing but a slow pan over a still image of a garden. That’s 11% of the film’s entire running time, taken up with the dullest possible image. The next 30 seconds aren’t much better; it’s not until a full minute into the film that one of my actors actually appears on screen. And once the action starts, the shots I’ve chosen often aren’t the best ones to tell the story.