[This entry comes before the one that appears previous to it, entitled With the greatest of ease. It's here because the Blojsom blogging software that came with Mac OS X Server 10.4 makes it very, very easy to delete a posting when all you want to do is to block comments and trackbacks. — F]
Actually, I saw very few police here in London, and most of those were securing high-value places like Parliament. That's also the only place I saw the classic helmet. By comparison to Chicago (even the Loop/lakefront, to make it equivalent to Westminster and the West End), London isn't policed at all.
Smiths was a great success. The meat was grilled but not charred, and was an honest medium-rare. I now await strawberry soufflé. This has been a restful day, and I thank my friend and Dr. Jacob for putting it together.
I think there would be a market for a London city map that more clearly shows the size of a street. Such-and-such Street appears on the map no different from the Strand, and you miss it because it is no wider than a truck, and you're surprised it has a name at all.
This is completely explicable, and it isn't bad. It's just remarkable.
You want strawberry soufflé. Trust me on this.
Monday: Westminster Abbey! I want to take it home! My promoting the Tudor queens to my daughters must be tiresome to them by now, but I was especially glad to see Mary and Elizabeth.
They saved Darwin, Newton, and the physicists (even the thermodynamicists, grumble, but James Clerk Maxwell!) for last. I expected a memorial for Lewis Carroll, but Edward Lear
! Is it okay to grin at a tomb?
T.S. Eliot just wished he was English, but it seems the English wished it, too.
Alfred Russel Wallace has a place right next to Darwin, which is just fine.
At the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, there is a Congressional Medal of Honor. No other country's honor is displayed.
My arrival in the nave coincided with the Eucharist there, and the service was much more familiar to me. They pass the Peace at the Abbey, and it was affecting to do so among locals and distant visitors. The service at the Abbey was just fine, and made my visit perfect.
Afternoon — I am just finishing an adequate burger at the Tower, and I think I'll have plenty of time…
And so I did, almost: Four hours. I didn't get to see much of the White Tower — they kicked me out. Also, none of the Medieval Palace. As elsewhere, the Tower is not as large a place as I'd expected. Too small for all the history, and built for smaller men.
I had a great time at the Tower of London.
The first picture I took there, my camera told me its 1GB card was full. Fortunately, I had an annual pass for re-entry, and the souvenir shop sold memory cards. At least a quarter of my pictures are establishing shots (wide, for the context of the real picture to follow) or billboards (closeups of signs to identify place or subject). If you see my photos, and wonder why there are so many pictures of bridges on the Thames, that's why. London Bridge in fact seems to be in good repair. Taking all these extraneous pictures makes me feel quite the professional.
Still, I expect I'll have scores of pictures that I'll never identify.
My tour was led a different yeoman warder, but when he surveyed visitors' nationalities, he asked for Texas separately. Something must be up with that. I asked another YW how he was to be addressed — yeoman? warder? sergeant? He looked at me as if I were feeble-minded, and said, "Yeoman Warder." I didn't think it was that dumb a question.
That was my worst experience in London so far. Not bad. People have all been gracious and helpful.
My feet are hamburger. They feel warm and slightly squishy when I walk, which is better than hurting, but it disturbs me. I think at long last I'll go to the corner Boots and get an anti-inflammatory. This will be the first time my thinking of it coincides with their opening times.
Fantasy: Telling a local that in Barack Obama's (and my) neighborhood, the drugstore never closes. Not for the dead of night, not for Christmas, not for communist revolution. Never. You can come back from the theater and still get an aspirin. They will marvel.
