Erik Ledbetter

Oil painting1 of a Weimar German journalist on a sidewalk, in front of a Cafe, posters behind him.

Rudolf Schlichter (German, 1890-1955). “Portrait of the journalist Egon Erwin Kisch” (1927). H/t @adamtooze.bsky.social

My God, the set and costume designers of Babylon Berlin really did nail the look and feel of urban Weimar.

Hanging on my dining room wall:

You totally held out on me on this one. And, really, who among us would not immediately want to make a chariscuro Euro film noir when presented with an art nouveau police station like this?

SWOON.

Sunset after a storm at North Point State Park.

Goodnight, Park.

Corner by St. Mary's Church, palimpsest of 150 years of architecture.

Huge paper flowers and print dresses in a shop window at night.

Night travellers at Marylebone Station archway.

Victorian canopy from station to grand hotel, Marylebone. Doorman in tophat talking with two young boys.

Marylebone a la nuit, one last stroll.

Flower market in front of Gothic arch, Kensington High Street.

One moment of beauty snatched from the hellscape of LVMH Parade. Uh, I mean, Kensington High Street.

Spare ribs and dear friends.

St. Mary's Church, Bryanston Square. Neoclassical portico and Italianate spire.

Pizza smotor. Night, with delivery drivers by the curb on motos.

Arabic grocery storefront at night, with patrons and passers by, Edgeware Rd.

Night stroll around Marylebone and Edgeware Rd.

Metropolitan Police anti-social behavior special enforcement zone placard on a council housing estate back of Marylebone Station.

Is being American enough to qualify? Asking for a friend.

I'll see what I can do.

Oliver Spencer at Lamb's Conduit, purveyors of lovely clothes.

Friends: old and new. Also the trio of devils who somehow persuaded me to buy a shockingly nice, and shockingly spendy, linen jacket at Oliver Spencer.

Former art deco petrol station, sensitively adapted to new use.

One of London's last remaining timber cab ranks. From the horse-drawn hansome "Black Beauty" era of cabbing.

And they're off! Waiters carrying trays of glassware in a footrace along Lamb's Conduit.

Finishing in style, a waiter waves while carrying her tray to the finish line in the Lsm's Waiters' Race.

Out and about in Bloomsbury, including the inaugural Lamb's Conduit Waiters' Race.

Street facade of 1899 Marylebone railway station. Later HQ of Brtish Rail.

Art nouveau Russell Square tube station.

More railway stations: Marylebone, loveliest, least altered and most overlooked of London's great termini, and Russell Square on the Tube, an art nouveau classic. Lynn is giving me side eye for more station facade pictures. Reader, she married me anyway.

Lynn is re-reading Pattern Recognition. I'm wearing a pair of well-worn Buzz chinos. As one does when you're back in Gibson's London. @greatdismal.bsky.social

Hardly at all. I'll tell you about it in a few weeks.

Deserted plaza on Grand Canal, early evening.

And a bit more Grand Canal. Still life with bench.

Fruit stall near Paddington.

Mews in Bayswater.

Bar, Grand Canal.

Pub life, Leinster Arms in Bayswater.

Out and about in Marylebone, Bayswater and the Grand Canal.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Paddington Train Shed. As a onetome history of technology major, this is one of the industrial cathedrals of my secular religion.

Victorian townhouses, later hotels, now condos. In Bayswater, London.

The first night I ever spent in London was behind one of these stucco porticos in Lancaster Gate, Christmas 1986. It was stuffy and dusty and caught somewhere between Fawlty Towers and Margaret Thatcher. Now, apparently, being refitted as luxe condos.

London rooftops, looking from Edgeware Road toward Canary Wharf in the far distance.

London skyline.

Eurasia Coot mom and adolescents swimming in Paddington basin

Coots! And cootlings!

Paddington Basin warehouse, Westminster, London

When I first saw Paddington Basin in 1984 it was all stygian old warehouses, basically a good place to be murdered in a Le Carre novel. Now it's all steel and glass, except for this lone survivor.

Returning to our common gene pool.

London called. I came.

Apologies for misspelling your name, Heidi.

This is another very thoughtful reflection on the military parade, focusing more on the perspective of the troops involved. Col. Urban (ret.) is a veteran (I am not) and brings a soldier and a scholar's persective.

I very much agree with Heidi. This is a deep subject, worthy of a book not just a skeet thread.

Oh Dolly, I absolutely hate to have to say this, but I don't remember meeting you. I was paddling so frantically to keep above water back then that my memories of it now are patchy. But it is lovely of you to reach out. Shoot me a message, I'm very curious about your work. I went post-ac too.

yes. And he didn't get it. As I read about the parade itself I'm starting to think the staff officers who planned this thing delivered their values -- the Army's real values -- a celebration of a citizen Army -- not what the White House wanted. If so, all hail those unsung O4s and O5s.