It is Friday, 4 in the morning and raining. It began raining on Wednesday afternoon. The forecast calls for a 100% chance of rain today, Saturday, Sunday and a high chance of rain Monday and Tuesday. Happy Memorial Day weekend!

So much for cleaning up the yard. And it’s been cold. When I landed at Dulles Tuesday, it was 93 degrees. A real shock, as London had been chilly damp every day. The storms brought cold and damp with them. It is 51.

4 in the morning. That all-too-familiar hour at this stage of my life.

I’m home in my bed. Pip is gazing at me lovingly, devotedly with blind eyes a few feet away.

I never found a hoodie I liked. The closest choice was at the Imperial War Museum. It had schematics of a Spitfire fighter on it.

It was dark when I got home. I did check, and there were no trees fallen on the house that I could see.

May has flown by. I feel like I just got back from France. That’s kind of the case.

Too fast. Too slow. Too much. Not enough. Too… too… I guess if the porridge was “just right” all the time, life would get boring.

There will be time to doze, prostrate like Pip is now, when there’s no fight left. Until then “…the fighter still remains.”

Still remains!

Since I’ve been back, my focus has been on books. There was a huge backlog waiting for me when I stopped in Tuesday night. (Strange, two days seems so long ago.)

I spent much of Wednesday and Thursday going through carts. It was fun until I ran out of gas in the late afternoon. I’m still a little jetlagged. My body feels like it is five hours later than the clocks indicate. 5:30 = 10:30.

There have been a lot of fun finds.

When I looked inside The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I thought it would be an exercise in futility.

Nope! It is a first. I found two more Narnia firsts.

There were also a half-dozen Edward Eager firsts in attractive dust jackets. I discovered him late in life when I went through a binge of “juvie” reading.

This old three-volume treatise on boxing was a surprise. I’d only seen it in books before, never in person.

London… was so big. My buddy Gerry kept me going in the evenings. He planned dinner and theater every night. Exhausted or not, I had to go. And I was glad I did. (I admit I bailed out at an intermission at a ballet and a play, but I had the experience.)

I arrived Tuesday, May 13th. The last full day was Monday the 18th. I had a step count over 20,000 or close to it those days and every one in between.

There was just so much to do, and I seized every day as if I would never be back.

How to convey the richness of that city…?

I’ll start with the last day.

I would often go out early to get my choices in ahead of Gerry’s plans. Harrods was the first stop. I love the food halls, though they’ve come down a couple notches from past glory. The fish department used to have a very large still life hung on a wall behind the counter. Fresh fish of many varieties were arranged in a large sculpted marble shrine.

It must have become too expensive.

Still, though the variety has shrunk, you can still stare slack-jawed at choices of exotica. Everything is beautifully showcased. It is almost a Disney experience with team members dressed in classic garb befitting their specialty—butcher, baker, fishmonger, chocolatier…

Only there’s no charge to get in.

I didn’t buy much. I have so much at home to use up.

Since I didn’t want to carry it, I took the 10-minute tube ride back to my hotel.

Thence to the British Museum to meet my friend. I’d visited early in the trip, but he hadn’t. There’s plenty to do. I visited Ashurbanipal’s stone library again. I sat before it and mused at these proto books, amazed at what had survived and in wonderment at that which time and misadventure has destroyed.

I wanted to have a last martini for Barbara in the Great Court Restaurant, but it was closed on Mondays. I met up with Gerry, and we went across the street to the Jarndyce rare bookstore. I buzzed to get in and stepped back in time to a 19th-century bookshop much like Dickens would have visited.

Then around the corner for a cask ale at the Plough pub. I started a poem—A Pint at the Plough—but it is hard to chat and be poetic at the same time.

Then it was up to the British Library. My final day was mirroring the first. How could I object to a return visit? It was a beautiful walk through Russell Square and into Bloomsbury. We went into the rare book room, and he was critical of some. “I have better manuscripts than that.”

We had time to kill. He decided to sit on a bench in the soaring lobby and catch up on business correspondence with billionaire clients he has. I decided to revisit the Fairy exhibition because I’d been in such a blur when that was my first stop after landing and dropping my bags. There were no children present—present company excluded—so I could play to my heart’s content. The exhibit made it clear that fantasy and fable are parts of all cultures. A Persian dragon. Japanese fisherman with an uncanny catch. Russian macabre.

Fairy stories…

Back out in the lobby, I found Gerry dozing on the bench. I was to find out later that I should have napped.

We walked down Euston toward Marylebone. Gerry had reservations at an Austrian restaurant named Fischer’s. Stepping inside was like entering the Belle Epoque. There were Jugendstil features as well as mounted game heads. The menu was so difficult. I wanted one of everything. I hope fate lets me return.

After some appetizers, I chose my “entree” from the special seasonal asparagus menu. (I’ve included the menu so you can see the why I chose the “spargel” or white asparagus.)

My companion’s dinner was more substantial.

But he was generous and shared some of everything.

There was still time to kill before the theater, so I ordered sachertorte and tokay for dessert. (You can see Gerry’s fork poised to share.)

Then we walked up and into the heart of Regent’s Park. It is a vast space with many gardens as well as trails, tennis etc…

The show he chose was an outdoor theatre-in-the-round Sherlock Holmes performance. It was getting cold. I was wearing a sweater and a long-sleeved t-shirt beneath it. But wind and damp chill were cutting through it. So was exhaustion. I bought a coffee as much to keep my hands warm as to perk me up. The show was lively and fun. The stage had a large revolving wooden floor in its center. When actors ran through or around it, it gave an impression of extra distance or travel. The cast was good, as was the plot. Riotous at times.

But my phone was dying. I was fading. I bailed at intermission.

“Where am I?” In the middle of the vast Regent’s Park. The zoo is in the northeast quarter. The southern boundary is on Marylebone, I think. Nursing my phone’s battery, I allowed it to guide me down paths and over bridges. There was a big road ahead in the distance.

“Right. Right?”

The hotel would be a forty-minute walk.

Where was a tube station? I walked and walked and then up ahead I saw Sherlock Holmes!

It was the Baker Street station. Two stops from home!

SAVED!

Soon I was up in the sky and soon after in bed.

Tuesday, my flight was at two, so I could leisurely breakfast, pack and dress. The Heathrow Express had me at Terminal 5 in fifteen minutes. British Air admitted me to the lounge. There I wrote, and if someone started talking too much, I could move elsewhere.

The flight was smooth. My legroom was spacious.

I was glad to get back to Maryland—with all its faults.

Tuesday evening.

I wonder what I will face when I get in tomorrow morning? I look forward to handling books again.

The flight back was smooth. I dozed some. I wrote the beginning of a fairy tale that I’m pretty happy with. I hope I can finish that “strong.” The plane was more than half empty. That was so odd.

Strange to have so much room to stretch.

The dawn on the horizon is burnt orange. A wood thrush is serenading me from just outside. When I got back last night, the house was warm and stuffy. I opened some windows and switched on ceiling fans.

I was surprised when I got out of the car by this garish flower.

A very late amaryllis!

I carried Pip out to do his business. That’s easier than cajoling him across the house. Then I carry him in and set him down just inside the door. Eventually, he found his way back to the bedroom and negotiated the portable steps at the foot of the bed and back to his spot. Poor sweet creature.

Well, I’m home.

No more trips for a while.

At least none planned.

She was a sister to me. As a 6-year-old in a family of boys, it was an interesting experience to welcome her. She was Annapolis royalty. Her grandfather was the Naval Academy music director who succeeded John Philip Sousa. Her father captained a ship in the Aleutians and died aboard in battle during World War II.

In 1960, I had never really left Buffalo—Amherst, that is. I was 5. Then Mom, Dad, Jimmie, Tony and I were going to Maryland for Joe’s Naval Academy events and then to meet future in-laws. It was an exotic world of crisp bright-white and gold uniforms, crabs, an all-woman family and saltwater, ships and sailboats.

It all seemed so forever. My brother Joe opted for the Marines at graduation. He wanted to fly jets but was trained for helicopters. In Vietnam, he flew the giant twin-rotor Sea Knights. He was shot down twice. Two Purple Hearts. He ended what was to be a lifelong military career after one 13-month tour.

Vietnam was ugly. His return to the States was as well.

They got married after graduation at the Catholic Church across the street where Bunny’s family lived in a two-building apartment complex they owned. The ceremony ended with Joe and Bunny exiting beneath a row of young officers holding crossed swords aloft.

He and Bunny had 3 kids. Robbie born in 1963. Gerry (my “wacky” picker nephew—1965) and Kristen a few years later on.

Things went from bad to worse and worse for Joe and his Annapolis family. I was too young to understand most of it. But he was “different” after Vietnam.

They split up sometime in the early 70s after years of arguments. That was the precursor to my world collapsing with Mom’s strokes and nursing homes and a wheelchair and live-in caregivers (who were uniformly dreadful.) Dad died suddenly in ’75. Mom early on Christmas morning 1977.

I spiraled for a few years til fate or God or karma led me to open the bookstore in 1980. Books and hard work saved my life.

Bunny and I remained friends. I always thought of her as my sister.

She and the three kids settled in Annapolis to this day.

I thought she would live to be a hundred. Her mom and grandma did. Gone at 87 while I was on my way home.

Now the penultimate link to the “wonder years” as a child in Buffalo and Annapolis is gone. There’s one sister-in-law left. We don’t talk much.

Italian. Catholic. So exotic to my white-bread upbringing. God, it was so much fun. The pageantry and the entirely different culture.

Godspeed, Floranne (Florestano) Newman (Roberts) Palka.

Half in sleep, half out
Half in, half out of dreams
Half in this cool soft world
Half in a place where sense is
There are times when times seems to stop
Though the hands of the clock move on
Visions swirl
I remember you
I remember
So long ago
Distant in time
And faraway
I can never go again
Only look back
Trusting memory
Trusting emotion
Trusting myself
Not to lie
There is no trust
In dreamland
Tonight, tonight
What is tonight?
Tonight means you’re almost dead man
Looking back through a fog
Of time and dimming eyes
The shapes are indistinct
They shift with thinking thinning mist
On legs not strong nor straight with bone
I weave toward the past
Uncertain of the footing
Uncertain of the way
So long ago
So far away
You are gone from the present
But I see you long ago
Indistinct but familiar
I would move to you
And rest my head upon your shoulder
But you retreat as I approach
Just out of reach in the fog
There is nothing to hold in dreams
Ether vapor

Tuesday heading home. The British Air flight is amazingly more than half empty. At least it is back here in the cattle car. They run a good airline. Even the cheap seats are fit only for sardines. My knees are not even touching the seat in front of me!

Luxury!

…on a budget.

The London visit was extraordinary. Never a dull moment. My friend Gerry arranged almost everything. A few times I needed to sneak away to check off a box I felt I needed—out of loyalty or passion or, sometimes, need. A lot of boxes got checked off.

We flew over the warehouse just before landing at Dulles.

The huge quarry with the blue water at the bottom is a landmark.

In that building are many friends. People I’ve known and worked with since the 80s… or since last week.

In that building, I have worked and created a service that many people love. I love my work.

The books may not actually be infinite—circumscribed by those walls—but they certainly feel like they are. And there is a constant flow in and out of its many doors.

What surprises are in store?

And then it rained and rained…

…and rained…

100% chance Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Likely Monday and Tuesday too.