1) When I got up I knew I would be needing a nail clipper, one thing I just hadn’t thought of. One fingernail had split, and I looked at it warily as I attempted to make coffee with the hotel coffeemaker.
2) I loafed “in a decorative and highly charming manner” (to quote the late Monte Beragon), wrote my column, cleaned up, and headed out to an essential appointment. Along the way I stopped at a nondescript pub near Earl’s Court station for brunch. Pro tip: they make you order at the bar in this country.
3) The essential appointment was for a massage, which was in Vauxhall, and which proved something I already knew: I am ready for the glue factory.
3a) Vauxhall looks very built up, urban, and intimidating. Its legacy is prettier, as it was the neighborhood of the famous pleasure garden called Vauxhall Gardens. I learned about it from 1943’s The Man in Grey (an important scene takes place there); earlier it was called Spring Gardens, and figures in the plot of the scandalous Forever Amber.
4) Next stop, Leicester Square, with no agenda but to wander about before a 6:30 dinner engagement. The joint was jumpin’! Hundreds and hundreds of people milling about with Good Bank Holiday Energy.
I think it’s kind of unfortunate that clothing store for people has moved into a building with Horse Clothing advertised so prominently on it.
4a) My first big surprise was to happen upon a street called Cecil Court, which a friend had very much encouraged me to try to find. And there it was, without me even having to try! A small street full of interesting little galleries and bookstores, and a shop with beautiful old bits of silver.
4b) And later on, Covent Garden itself! Fabled in song and story as the flower market of London, it’s now the London equivalent of Faneuil Hall Marketplace. I recognized the portico of St. Paul’s, which is where the first scene of Shaw’s Pygmalion (and its musical offspring My Fair Lady) takes place.
A post-prandial portrait of our dinner party: Me, Stu, Andi, and Amber.
5) At the appointed time I approached the restaurant, and there was my friend Andi from Interlochen and her family. And there was much rejoicing! Some evenings there’s just rare conviviality and conversation around a table, and that’s what we had.
6) Fortunately for my friends in Kenilworth, I got back to my hotel room just in time to watch the coronation concert, which I really hadn’t given a thought. But I obediently tuned in, and I must say — well done!
7) And now, the packing is almost done, and it’s off to Coventry tomorrow. I will finally have to buy an umbrella.