Summer - part 1 - May through June

Strutting into one of the first sunny days of the season, in the courtyard of our building, 10 May.

Highbury Fields is a big park near our house. This curved street along the park's edge is called Highbury Crescent. We all like the stately old houses along the crescent. In this photo, Bob, sporting his jean jacket from his cousin-in-law Beth, is strutting toward the Highbury Fields playground, where we passed many a sunny (and not sunny) summer morning. 11 May.

The FD Linges' ongoing European vacation, with this 26 May stop at the Colosseum.

For Mum's and Baba's anniversary this year, 8 June, we ventured to the biggest grocery store in the neighborhood, Waitrose, where we had some coupons, and bought ingredients for a special family dinner. Bob was tearing through the store, filling his shopping basket with whatever the hell he felt like, Baba trailing behind and placing those items back on the shelf.

The next day, we went to Lord's, the self-proclaimed home of cricket, to watch the local team, Middlesex, play an exhibition match against Australia. Cricket is like a super high scoring game of baseball played with a much smaller infield and much larger outfield. We brought a bottle of white wine and some sandwiches from Pret A Manger. The match didn't hold Bobby's interest for long. He ended up taking a nap in the Ergo Baby. Points easily start racking up into the hundreds. We left when Middlesex were still down by a couple hundred and Bob's patience was expired. See, Bobby is a bit of an anarchist, and he doesn't appreciate such games with attenuated rules. He likes the hitting and running parts, but his attention easily wanders.

On 10 June we visited the Marquess Tavern to partake in the famous Sunday roast tradition. We found this hidden river running right into the heart of Islington. Apparently the New River is an aqueduct bringing water from the north into London.

This picture was taken on 15 June, but it could have been taken almost any day this summer. This is a fence nearby our apartment through which Bobby passed many an afternoon spotting the trains heading to and from King's Cross.

Bobby and I spent this Saturday morning running through this little grove of trees in Highbury Fields. June 16.

For Father's Day, 17 June, we searched for sandwiches. Two of the top sandwich restaurants in London, according to Time Out and fortuitously published just before Father's Day, are not far from our apartment. We eventually found Max's Sandwich Shop in Crouch Hill. It featured Korean fusion sandwiches. Above, you can see the boy just loving the kimchi sauerkraut. Who knew?

For Father's Day dinner, Mum made pizza. Bob and I helped load up the ingredients. Her pizza is really good! It's almost a Roman style. In Rome, we ate such pizza al taglio, and just recently we found out that our favorite shop, Bonci, has now opened a branch in Chicago!

Amped up by World Cup fever, Bob practiced his kicks in the front yard, 24 June. Later in the afternoon, England would crush Panama six to one. We watched at Ley Ley's.

Visiting the wealthy village of Highgate, we picked up this pamphlet on socialism at a gastropub. High Gaters interested in socialism is what you would call Champagne socialism, which Islington is actually famous for. Jeremy Corbyn is one of Islington's parliamentarian, and he espouses what might strike you as retrograde notions of socialism. Our stop in Highgate was a weigh point on the way to the huge wooded park, Hampstead Heath, nearby.

Baba went to Rugby for a meeting on 26 June. This photo shows the Rugby School, an elite educational institution for boys (and now girls) aged 10 to 18. In the near ground, you can also see the field where some chaps began running while holding their footballs rather than kicking them in the manner we normally think of football (soccer) now. Soccer, American football, and rugby all evolved from the same original game. Picking up a ball and running with it, during a game with rules requiring hands to never touch the ball, strikes me as a bit anarchic. Maybe rugby will be a sport for Bob.

With his rugby ball purchased by Baba the day before in Rugby, Bobby tried out some of his best rugby moves. We had a lot of fun over the summer tossing and kicking the rugby ball as well as his soccer ball from Barcelona.

On 27 June, we see Bobby crouched down and engaging in one of his summer's hobbies, spotting ants on the ground. He was seeing ants everywhere, even places where there were no ants. Believing that he had found ants, or actually finding them, he would exclaim "ma hee," using the Chinese for ant.