Saturday morning

Rain. Rain every hour for the next three days and maybe the fourth. And it has rained since Wednesday afternoon.

The dogs are happy. I cooked two big pork loins for them last night.

That will feed them for the next couple weeks. Only $1.99 per pound at Costco. That’s cheaper than canned dog food. And they eat it heartily, as opposed to ignoring or being very picky with dry or canned food.

Pip was whining, and I assumed he needed to poop. He needs to walk some distance from the house for that, for some reason. I watched him walk to the slope next to their pen and go over it. That’s not unusual. He’s always come back up it when he is done. Not this time. I walked over there in the chilly rain and called. He wandered aimlessly back and forth, hearing me but not being able to head toward my calls. When he started wandering further out into the woods, I had to go and get him.

Poor thing.

The deer have decimated my hostas. Hundreds of bare stalks raise their huge lush leaves chewed off. I think it is a combination of the rampant construction down in the valley pushing more of the population up the mountain and the elderly dogs not being the deterrent they once were.

Monday morning

I lit the final fire last evening. I carried up twigs in the black canvas totes from the front porch. It was too rainy to go to the barn for wood. Anything remaining on the drive was wet. Carrying the wood up the 14 stairs from the lower story is good exercise.

I will clean out the ashes sometime this week. Then the iron and steel box will be closed until next fall. When the evenings get too chilly, the first fire of the season will be started, and the ritual will begin again.

The orange eye glowing through the glass on the double doors comforts me. Especially in the black hours on frigid winter nights.

Giles is pressed against my thigh and flank. He has become even more affectionate since Merry passed. It is a comfort to reach over and stroke his short soft fur when I stir in the wee hours. His body is long and lean but very athletic. He will moan softly and contentedly at my touch.

I got a lot done this weekend. There was only one sorter in each day, so the flow from that was very light. I was able to push into dusty carts of old books that had been accumulating and patiently waiting and taking up space.

It was fun. Perhaps because of the break I had.

There were some fun finds.

This Gwendolyn Brooks was nice.

Another cart had a lot of vintage fantasy in great condition.

I can judge a good weekend by the number of books I find that I wish I could take home with me.

Heaven for me would be a place with infinite bookshelves.

“If there is heaven, it must be what a library looks like.”

Borges

I almost always work with something on my laptop or iPhone in the background. I only discovered this weekend that Peacock has Yellowstone, which I could binge “listen to” as I worked. I subscribed to Peacock a couple years ago in order to watch the NBC broadcast of English soccer games. The subscription started at $4.99. Now it is $12, I think. I pay for satellite at home—though that hasn’t worked for over a month since the roof got replaced. That is emblematic of how much I care about broadcast TV anymore. I have plenty of DVDs. PLENTY!

More people seem to be moving away from streaming. One reason is that there are so many platforms you would have to pay for. That has helped drive young people especially to embracing “physical media.”

Books, LPs, DVDs, CDs and even board games have found new audiences. It is gratifying to have had Wonder Book survive to see this current new wave.

It is sad enough to think of what would happen to all the things we recycle into people’s homes, but just think how sad it would be if those homes had no books or music or movies that people own and can use whenever they want. Things that are immutable and can’t be taken away or altered by some corporate whim.

When you own a physical copy, your content can never be censored, bowdlerized, expurgated—changed for whatever political or social whim is considered “correct du jour.” (Did I just coin that?)

But I miss London. It was a great trip. Gerry helped enhance that by forcing me to restaurants and shows that I might have passed on in favor of my familiar and comfortable experiences.

The food… what wonders there were.

The last two stories covered the beginning and the end of the trip. I should share the middle.

When will I return? The Bayeux Tapestry is coming in September…

Tuesday. Damp. The driveway is littered with tree debris. Mostly it is oak tassels that are the problem, but plenty of other stuff drops or gets knocked off—especially with all the rain we’ve been having. Until it dries, there’s nothing to be done but to try not to track the stuff in on my shoes.

I’ve been back a week now, and it has rained every day. It will rain tonight and tomorrow.

Depressing.

I’m anxious to get things cleaned up.

Monday was Memorial Day. For Wonder Book, it is just another workday. People expect the stores to be open, and the online orders we got over the weekend can’t wait.

I decided I should go to one of the stores. It’s been a while since I was in the Frederick store. Books by the Foot had a long list of books in subjects they needed.

Ernest drove me over. We had 30 big plastic tubs. (Customers bring us books in all manner of containers. They just want them gone so they can move or redecorate. Plastic bags, boxes and tubs we can all reuse. The plastic and cloth bags we can give away at the stores. When we get too many tubs or milk crates, we put them outside our dockyard gates and hoarders come and take them. Boxes we don’t reuse ourselves get recycled as corrugated paper.)

BBTF needed sci-fi and lit paperbacks, gardening, cooking, hardcover lit, philosophy, psych, bios…

I enjoy this work. It takes stress away. It is therapeutic for the stores. We prune old stock and duplicates. It makes room for new growth.

We pulled maybe 2000 books. You wouldn’t even notice—except in gardening. For some reason, there’s been a run on that subject. It has never been very popular “by the foot”, but now the shelves are half empty. I’ll tell the sorters to send more from the warehouse. It will fill in. Like a hole dug on the beach, it will fill in when the tide brings the waves up.

When I got back to the warehouse, it hit me. I was tired and empty. I couldn’t face more cartloads of books. I’d done so many over the weekend.

Was I still jet-lagged? Not likely.

Did I miss London? Yes. And its food.

Did I miss the parties that friends used to have on Memorial Day? (It always rained.)

I looked for something different to work on. Terry does a lot of our “Bag and Hang.” This stuff ranges from ephemera found in books to plates and maps removed from incomplete or otherwise defective books. It is a way to salvage; rescue parts of books that otherwise will be recycled. Much of what I send her is in fixed-price boxes, but some of it is unpriced because I need to review the material. Fox example, old maps from a mid-19th century atlas can be low value—like eastern states whose names and boundaries haven’t changed since colonial times. On the other hand, western states and territories can be much more interesting. These sorts of things she puts in boxes, and I need to sort through them and put them in piles by price. At least that was something different. Desk work. Here are the results.

Hopefully, people will find and want these to collect or frame, and they’ll continue to exist.

Two things with which I didn’t know what to do.

These maps of London. They’re very old.

London…

The last two stories recorded the beginning of my visit and the end. The middle was so full of things I did and Gerry and I did together.

Here goes:

The morning after the visit to the opening of the rare book show Firsts, I awoke feeling a little queasy. Maybe I overdosed on sushi at Kulu Kulu, or maybe I had too much of the self-serve wasabi. My first stop was the National Gallery. I searched out favorites like the two side-by-side Vermeers and wandered aimlessly through other galleries filled with saints and martyrs. Those paintings always seem full of reds and blues. Then vast rooms of gentry, their fashions frozen in time. Moving forward in time to the “moderns”—Van Gogh, Monet…

Gerry and I were texting. He was next door at the Portrait Gallery. He likes guides and lectures. I usually just wanna wander. I decided to have a pot of tea at Muriel’s Kitchen, hoping that would settle things some. I had Good and Proper—the name of the tea, and it was good. Then I meandered to meet Gerry somewhere amongst all the British heads over the centuries. We had timed tickets for entry to the Severs’ House. A friend had mentioned that it looked interesting, and I like touring old houses. It was over in Spitalfields—a part of London I don’t get to often. We were met by an actor outside the door and given an orientation. It is an early-18th century townhouse. The rooms and stairs are tiny and cramped. That was interesting, as one gets the feel of a middle-class merchant’s home. The contents at first confused me. Then I got the joke. Severs had filled the rooms with his whimsy. A lot of it was almost flea-market stuff.

“It was never meant to be an accurate historical creation of a specific moment—it was an evocation of a world. It was essentially a theatre set.”

Gerry and I laughed it off. Live and learn.

It was mid-afternoon. Gerry was a little queasy too, and we sought out a Boots pharmacy. It is an interesting neighborhood, and the sprawling Spitalfields market had many exotic food stands. There was a big vinyl show going on—dozens of vendors with young people flipping through their crates of LPs.

We both needed a break and parted to return to our hotels. I stopped at the familiar Dickens pub across from Paddington Station on my way and had a cask ale.

He had reservations for dinner and tickets to a show. I took the tube to Piccadilly Circus. I moved my wallet to my front pocket because the area is notorious for pickpockets. My phone got me to the restaurant. It was a lovely classic place—Brumus. The meal was made more interesting by the arrival of a client. The young man was a Samuel Richardson fan. Really. And Gerry had a signed note. So, while I was sipping Rioja and nibbling pate, a rare slip of paper was eagerly inspected.

Gerry had gotten us tickets for a show at the Haymarket next door. Ralph (“Rafe”) Fiennes was starring in Grace Pervades. It was excellent. It was two-and-a-half hours. I was glad I’d taken an afternoon break.

I didn’t know Fiennes was Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies.

We parted. I couldn’t resist stopping at the Sherlock Holmes Pub for a cask ale on the way to the Embankment tube station. Back at the hotel, they had left an event room door open on the top floor, and I was able to see central London in all its glory at night.

Saturday, May 16th. I headed out early to the South Kensington station. There’s a long tunnel from there that takes you to a small nearly hidden entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum. My first target was the Boar and Bear Hunt tapestry.

This tapestry draws me each time I visit the V&A. It is huge—13 feet by 33. It is full of symbolism as well as a snapshot from the 15th century. I just sat on a bench before it and absorbed the ambience. I spent a few hours wandering the vast halls. Stepping outside to my right, a crowd was assembling for a Palestinian protest. Hundreds of people were wearing the green, red and white flag. To the left, Brompton Road was shut down by police, but I was able to walk down to the Oratory and then across the street to Harrods.

I love wandering through the vast department store. The perfume areas on the ground level stink, but fortunately that doesn’t pervade into the food halls.

Then, for some reason, Gerry and I decided to meet at the book show. I was tempted by a Christina Rossetti first with a signed note laid in. It wasn’t that much money. Why didn’t I?

We went back to Gerry’s hotel near Westminster Abbey for a break.

Then it was time to head across town for an early dinner. Only we couldn’t get across town. There was a huge conservative protest in between.

The buses weren’t running. We got on the tube. It was packed because of all the upheaval. Eventually, we got off at Piccadilly and made our way to Soho and L’Escargot. This has become one of my favorite restaurants of all time. The place just drips class, much as the snails are drenched in garlic butter.

I was in heaven.

Gerry had us at the ballet that evening. Mayerling. It was astounding. The cast (troupe?) was very large. But by intermission, I’d been dazzled enough for one day.

Sunday, I decided to try the Imperial War Museum. I loved military stuff when I was a kid and found the history fascinating as a young man. Now, I have little interest in guns and tanks and warplanes. The museum is very close to the last stop on the Bakerloo Line—Elephant and Castle. It was a lovely spring-morning walk through unfamiliar neighborhoods, and then I saw it!

One of the huge 15-inch naval guns came off the WW2 HMS Roberts.

Will they ever name a ship after me?

Most museums in London are free.

When I entered, they had a “show of force”—planes and rockets suspended from the 5-story atrium.

(I need to hurry this up.)

I took the elevator to the top floor. There was nothing there. It is a rooftop event space. Down one level was a large art gallery. Who knew? It was mostly WW1. The subjects range from battle scenes to scenes in the undergrounds of people sheltering. On the next level was a Holocaust wing. It was very moving. Personal effects of victims, from children to grandparents, were accompanied by the backstory of the person and their doom. I thought of mass hysteria and mob or herd mentality. Shakespeare does a wonderful job with this eternal human pathology.

There were three more levels. It is actually a great space and puts a lot of history into context.

Context. We all need more “context.”

From there, it was an interesting walk north to the Thames and the Tate Modern. There was a very long line. I was at the end and thought of bolting. Then security came down the line saying, “If you don’t have bags to be checked, you can go right in. “

Why didn’t they say that 30 minutes earlier?

First, I went into the bowels of the old power plant and visited the Giacometti with their ethereal lighting up shadows from the super-skinny metal statues.

Then it was the elevator to the top and some of the “pile of rocks” galleries that I pass in wonder.

Are some of these artists descendants of P.T. Barnum?

There is some great art (my opinion—I “know it when I see it.”) And some of the “art attempts” I find intriguing and not a total waste of time.

(Maybe I’ve just become a crusty grumpy luddite.)

The Tate Modern is such a vast space. I’d love to see more of used for artwork like the Orsay and not just vast steampunk vistas.

Back out into the beautiful spring day. A walk across the Millennium footbridge which dumps you out at the foot of St. Paul’s. Whoever designed this (and whoever APPROVED it!) are/were visionaries. To think—crossing a footbridge across the Thames—from the Tate and Globe to St. Paul’s. The views of the city are extraordinary.

St. Paul’s wasn’t my goal, however. I’d spent time inside last fall. Instead, I turned left on Fleet St. and was soon in the dim cozy arms of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. The pub was rebuilt shortly after the Great Fire in 1666. The literary figures: Dickens, Oliver Goldsmith, Mark Twain, Alfred Tennyson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, P.G. Wodehouse and Samuel Johnson are all said to have been “regulars.” I sat in the snug and had a Samuel Smith cask ale for rejuvenation and then headed to Dr. Johnson’s house a hundred yards down the alley.

I’d visited before, but it had been quite long ago. The place is 5 stories and filled with books (some were even his own copies.) The tour was self-guided. Indeed, I was the only one there for much of the time. The doctor wrote much of his dictionary on the top floor in a kind of spacious well-lit garret. The rooms are filled with period furniture—some of it having belonged to the great man. I spent a good deal of time reading the stories and explanations of what was exhibited. Then I got a text from Gerry wanting to meet at the Cheshire Cheese. I supposed I could force down one more ale. Down the narrow rickety stairs to the exit where the ticket taker sat. I couldn’t resist a Dr. Johnson tea towel and a few pamphlets written by the great man. I’m not a tote bag kind of guy, but I was unable to resist this one.

Back down the winding path past the bronze sculpture of Johnson’s iconic cat Hodge and into the alley entrance of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

We sat on rustic benches in the corner of the snug. When it is cold, there’s an open coal fire in the tiny stove. It was Gerry’s first visit. The food there is as good as the ale.

But Gerry had other plans, so after we were refreshed, we headed toward Fleet St. with a brief homage to Dr. Johnson’s house for Gerry’s edification.

I knew what was just ahead near the dragon in the middle of the street that delineates the border of the City of London proper from Westminster (Temple Bar.) At some point, Fleet St. becomes the Strand—maybe at the dragon? The tiny iconic 300-year-old Twinings Flagship Tea Shop.

Though you can find grocery-store varieties of Twinings teas, there the real appeal are the exotic blends and presentations.

Yep. I bought 4.

There’s a lot of other tea accouterments squeezed into the delightful boutique as well.

Just across the street are the Royal Courts of Justice. These Victorian Gothic Revival buildings are imposing and a bit spooky—as courthouses should be. Stunning.

On down the Strand, Gerry turned us into the Courtauld.

“I’m a member. I can get you in free. There’s a Seurat exhibition I want you to see.”

It is yet another delightful semi-hidden jewel in London’s crown. Van Gogh, Manet’s “Bar Maid”, Modigliani as well as more ancient medieval pieces. But the excitement for me was the Seurats. Many were set on the French coast where I toured just a month ago. In my considerable museum wanderings, I haven’t seen many Seurats. And since he died at 31, his career was not long enough to create as much as he should have. But it was a delight to have this immersion in all his stages.

Back out onto the Strand. I was getting tired. Can you imagine why? We were a little early for our dinner reservations at Simpson’s, so they led us up to the bar. We were surrounded by portraits and caricatures of famous people. The place was opened in 1828 but was closed by COVID. It reopened in March 2026. It is and has been stubbornly British—serving only British products. These don’t offer menus but rather “Bills of Fare.”

The dining room is like stepping into the mid-19th century. The staff and service are impeccable.

Among other things, I had Dover sole. Gerry decided to eat light and, among other things, ordered the Hot Trolley.

THE HOT TROLLEY Roast Rib of Devonshire Beef carved at the table 44.75 served with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and root vegetables, seasonal greens, horseradish sauce and gravy.

…a popular attraction with patrons including Charles Dickens, William Ewart Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, and later Arthur Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, Peter O’Toole and Charles III.

It was wonderful. Top the world.

Leaving, I couldn’t resist taking an image of the main dining room—the Grand Divan.

I couldn’t resist suggesting a nightcap at the American Bar in the Savoy. I had a Vesper.

Then it was a ten-minute tube ride back to my hotel.

It was a great London trip, for all its brevity.

It is Friday, May 29th. Monday will be June. Unbelievable. It seems that just a few weeks ago the world was covered in hard marble-like veined ice that refused to melt. And some months earlier, I was young and in love.

Time…

This weekend is the rare book show in DC. Annika will be running the Wonder Book booth.

There were a number of booksellers in Frederick shopping for deals and treasures.

Books? I found a few.

Last evening, four of us went out to dinner.

That’s about 200 years of bookselling!

To say Gerry enhanced this trip to London would be an understatement. He should start a travel agency. But I suppose he couldn’t take the pay cut. Purveying the Van Gogh letters and Monet epistles and astronauts and… Probably more revenue in that. Still, I enjoyed riding on his coattails for big sections of this trip.

Here’s a poem I found from 2023. It was on a yellow legal pad under my bed.

7/22/23

the night wind whispers a lullaby
the breeze through the tree’s leaves
flutters percussive accompaniment
cold soft moonlight’s luminous
it glistens upon the forest’s reflective surfaces
dawn is just a future dream
a golden east that melts morning mists
can a melody be soundless
star ring like silent chimes
the woodland’s song’s a murmur