Day 34: Look familiar?

This, my friends, is how you do a backyard:

Man, what a great coffee table book: backyards from all over the world. I'd call it "Function over Form: The Urban Forest". I'd probably put Henrique on the cover as well.

Henrique feigns modesty

 Something I'd taken for granted in Paris: Shit can be apart. Far apart. Most of London, in fact, is laid out as such. Our morning began with the decision to get breakfast at a nearby restaurant and ended sometime during the hour long walk to that restaurant. Breakfast itself would have to wait for early afternoon, which would itself ultimately terminate at a train station where we spent close to two hours being lied to by British Rail. With an eerily Orwellian resemblance our late train would unceremoniously redefine itself as cancelled, only to vanish without any mention mere moments later. We passed the time in characteristically Parisian fashion, complaining about the State and talking about women.

I don't believe you

 Eventually, in characteristically British fashion, we decided to forget about the train and take the bus instead, ending up in fabulously hipster-soaked London Fields. Barbeque and beer in the dying sunlight? Men in linen shorts and tank tops? Women in lime green tights with boots? At last, my friends, I am at home.

Looks about perfect

I learn a lot while sitting on the grass, drinking a surprisingly terrible beer and listening to Tom (Henrique's roommate) talk about the British body politic. The role of the queen, for example, apparently has less to do with looking pretty and garnering affection and more to do with hanging over all of Parliament like the sword of Damocles. I was not aware that the queen would be fully within her power, for example, to saunter into the House of Lords, stroll with calm conviction to the center of the room, hold up a single, regal hand and announce, "Enough." The whole of British government, it appears, is still technically her little experiment that she could technically call off at any moment. Whether that could happen is probably as likely as the President convincing the army to attack North Dakota all by himself, but it remains interesting to note that so much power still sits with one person, at least on paper.

Our evening winds up back at the studio, playing music for each other, drinking beer and eating stale cheese. A few highlights: