20,265 steps on my first day in London. I’m driven. I’ve found the only way to push through something physically difficult is to just grind it out. I refused to stop. But then, I had no place to stop. The plane landed at Heathrow after 7 a.m., and of course when I got to my hotel, the room wasn’t ready. After customs and luggage and taking the Heathrow Express, it was about 9.

I crossed the crazy busy-busy Edgware Road and entered the ancient Edgware Underground Station. My Oyster Card still had over 10 GBP on it from the last visit. Over to Euston Station. From there, it is a short walk to the British Library, which opens at 9:30. The library has become my first stop in London.

Why?

That’s the only copy of Beowulf in existence. At least it was until its epic beauty was discovered. It was nearly destroyed in a library fire in the 18th century. If that charred copy had not survived, there would be no Beowulf.

Another reason is their exhibitions. They really show off their book chops in these. This time, it was about fairy tales (again.) On the surface, it was kid-oriented. Indeed, there were a good number of moms with very young children I had to navigate.

Interactive “rooms” like “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” and a troll bridge.

But, oh, the books and art. Right up my alley.

(There are more images on Instagram #merryandpippinlotr and #wonderbookandvideo.)

Then it was out into the rain and sun. The whole day was contrasts of rain, then sun, then rain and sun.

“Should I Uber to the British Museum? $25. Or a 22-minute walk?”

My feet guide me in my favorite city.

I’ve learned there’s almost never a line at the rear entrance. Serendipity took me through the Death and Memory exhibition first. Though my body was exhausted and aching, the battering my visual cortex took drew me forward.

I thought of having a martini in the Great Court Restaurant at the top of the museum—in the soaring atrium. I’ll never forget the martini I had after attending the opening of the Barbara Mertz Bioarchaeology Laboratory a.k.a. “mummy lab.” The magic in that museum. We weren’t permitted to take pictures (“disrespectful to the dead”), but I can still see the 18-year-old corpse with the tiny Coptic Christian tattoo on her thigh and the…

She looked much older than 18. Centuries older. Ethiopian, I think.

Death and memory.

I would have become a puddle if I’d taken strong water in the old place today.

I inspected the ancient stone library. (Clay, actually.)

After wandering through the vast galleries, I exited the front door and headed for Tottenham Road Station. Back to Paddington and my hotel. It was midafternoon, and my room was ready. I lucked out. The top floor. 23 stories up and with a panoramic view of north London—which isn’t thrilling in and of itself, but still…

I washed and brushed and changed and combed. Sprawled on the vast white plane of cotton, I caught up on things at work and at home. It felt good to get off my feet.

A couple hours later, I was back on my feet to meet Gerry near the V&A. He’d chosen a dinner place not far from the Royal Albert Hall. It was a Polish restaurant set in an old mansion. The choices were exotic, and I really wanted one of everything.

From there, it was a short walk through cold dying sunshine and splattering rain to the Royal Albert Hall.

I had tickets to two Paul Simon concerts in 2025. I missed one because I just couldn’t face driving to Wolf Trap alone that night for some reason. (As is so often the case, I should have gone.) The second concert—front row seats in Philly—was canceled at the last minute when he injured his back. He’s had some dreadful health issues in recent years.

Gerry offered to get me a ticket, but I dithered and ended up in the nosebleed section. I could barely see the top of Paul Simon’s head if I leaned over the railing. I could see less than half of his 12-member band. He announced the first set would be a 35-minute song cycle. (That meant no applause in between “songs.” It was depressing. All about aging and frailty and death (“2 billion heartbeats and out”) and a spiritual awakening near the end (“the Lord is a forest ranger…”) I guess I wasn’t in the mood after the recent glories. I think about that stuff enough.

Too much…

I considered leaving, but Gerry texted that no one had occupied the seat in front of him, so I made my way down the stairs of the 6-level red-layer-cake theater to sit through the second set with him. Simon said the second set would be hits and deep tracks.

Simon and Garfunkel are the soundtrack of my early life. The later Simon I find too often gimmicky and sometimes bordering on cultural appropriation.

Tears welled when it was clear he was going into songs like “Homeward Bound.” He seemed to get stronger as the set went on. Indeed, he finished with two encores—four songs.

At the end of the penultimate, “The Boxer”, he became defiant. The audience was encouraged to sing along with the “lie la lies.” And I did—when I didn’t choke up. He finished the song like a fighter, emphasizing, “I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains.”

“STILL remains!”

He and the band left the stage. Paul came back out alone.

Sometimes you remember the exact circumstances and setting of life-changing moments. I was in my parents’ car at Fort McNair. Dad had gone on active duty as a colonel in the Army Medical Corps in 1968. He was 59. The military needed doctors because of Vietnam. We’d left tree-lined streets and classic homes for the wasteland that was track developments in Montgomery County, Maryland. (Odd, I’ve never really left Maryland—love/hate.) It was a fancy Sunday brunch at the officers’ club. Dressy. I self-exiled my bratty self to the parking lot. I’d rather be home watching cartoons or old black-and-white comedies. I was listening to the car radio when the DJ announced a new song by Simon and Garfunkel. It raised me, soaring into the sky, performing acrobatics before bringing me back to earth.

I’ll take your part
Oh, when darkness comes

And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Two hours and forty-five minutes.

Perhaps this review will give you a better idea of the experience.

We left the hall and walked down past the V&A with much of the concert crowd to the South Kensington tube station. Soon, I was back in the sky. 23 stories up with millions of lights twinkling below. I wrote a few lines before Lethe’s potions took me away to that distant land where fairies live and death and memory don’t hover.

It is Friday, 4 a.m. Back at home it is still Thursday, 11 p.m.

For some reason, memory has been replaying the first minutes on Omaha Beach in Normandy a few weeks ago. I separated from the group and headed across the very wide beach toward the water. It was as if no one else was there. I looked toward the north and saw a very incongruous sight coming toward me. Two horses trotting down the strand pulling two riders on harness rigs.

Closer and closer. Soon, I could hear hooves pounding the beach and the beast’s big lungs pumping air out and in.

It was magical. A gift from the gods. What was the meaning? I still don’t know. I watched them get smaller and smaller before disappearing to the south. But if I close my eyes, I can re-see those steeds crossing the sands where so many young souls bled and died.

Thursday was another fully packed day. Kind of lazy in an intense way. Nearly 18,000 steps. That makes about 40,000 in the first two days.

Gerry woke up late down in Kensington. I messed around on my laptop til it was time to head to the Tate Gallery. I overshot the nearest tube stop so I could be on the south side of the Thames—Vauxhall. I love walking over rivers. The front exit was closed for renovations. The Manton entrance is down a long ramp. The stone building’s wall there is still heavily pockmarked from a Nazi bomb.

There is something eternal about the collection. Indeed, I felt 19 again when I saw Ophelia and The Lady of Shallot and the other Pre-Raphaelite women. I was backpacking through Europe. A Fodor’s Guide—Europe on $10 a Day in hand and some American Express Travelers’ Checks hidden in the bottom of my knapsack. Did I know any of the paintings before I walked in? I don’t think so. My juvenile art knowledge would have been Picasso and Rembrandt and…

I recall standing transfixed before the canvases. My eyes bulging and perhaps my mouth agape. Perhaps with a look of desperate longing, like the Lady.

Foolishly, I purchased a large poster of The Lady of Shallot. I carried it in a soft paperboard tube all the way back to Luxembourg and thence to Dulles. It got a little bent at customs. It hung on my dorm room wall that fall.

Not foolish after all.

While at the Tate today, I met Gerry. He wanted to attend one of their frequent free lecture/tours. I preferred the art speaking to me directly, and so we parted. I wandered the galleries, and my eyes filled with color and form and meaning. And memory—of that first visit a lifetime ago. And a decade ago, when I thought my life would soar. Like Icarus, I crashed. I’d flown too close to the sun.

And the visits between and since.

I found myself sitting before a fuzzy Turner. (Did he have eye problems later in life? Did Monet? Do I?”)

And wrote this:

When I’m in Heaven

On a cold stormy day
When winds and rain lash
I will venture to the Tate Elysium
Wander through its master halls
Drink in the forms and colors

Turner’s “agony of ochre”
His “soapsuds and whitewash” live
Confined only by golden frames
Lest they escape and
spread over the stone walls
Ophelia’s posies pose
Atop her sodden floating
funeral barge corpse
The Lady of Shallot
Drifting downstream
To a doom she invites
“‘Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.”

Longing, a visage, of longing
I long to be 19
And I will
When my eternal spirit
Can flit through the Tate
Forevermore, forevermore,
forevermore

From there, the day sort of fell apart as we dithered and didn’t really accomplish much. Rain and sun came and went. The visit to the Tate Modern was aborted after we disembarked the Uber Water Taxi. Gerry was hungry, and we diverted to the Borough Market with its dozens and dozens of food choices, from window-vendor handhelds to sit-down fare. I talked him into going into The Swan next to the Globe. I had two half-pints of excellent drafts. My companion had another lunch.

He’d ordered a sausage starter and instead was served a sausage entry. I never “sausage” (saw such) a thing.

There was St Paul’s looming across the river. The day was already aging. I wanted to go back to my room and change, but Gerry thought there wasn’t time. I was wearing my Half Moon Bay hoodie, which I didn’t think would be appropriate for the Preview Night of the London Firsts book show we would attend.

“You can buy a shirt near the Saatchi.”

I don’t need another shirt. Maybe another hoodie. I’m a hoodie hoarder. Each one in my collection evokes a place and a time. I wonder how much my hoodie collection will bring at auction when the time comes?

Gerry led me through a few stores—he’s familiar with them, as his wife likes the neighborhood. I ended up getting a Barbour shirt at John Lewis.

“I need a coffee.”

“Why?”

“To clear the cobwebs. And I need to change into my new shirt.”

I chose a Lebanese place. The coffee was thick and black with a caramel-colored foam atop it.

Checking my emails, I chuckled aloud.

“What is it?”

I held the phone across the table so he could read it.

“…a foreign buyer is looking for 3 million unique books…”

Insanity.

It was only a few hundred steps to join the queue outside the Saatchi Gallery.

It is 60 pounds to get into the preview, but I’d been emailed a free ticket. (The British Pound is currently worth about $1.37.)

It was fun wandering through the treasures. I was tempted, but I tend to buy only from people I know and like.

…and trust.

There was no one there I really knew.

“I’m done.”

“I’ll meet you outside.”

My leader and guide had sushi on his mind. I was thinking snails. We dithered on the sidewalk about the best way to Piccadilly.

Bus?

Tube?

Taxi?

“I’ve had a pretty good year. I’ll pay for an Uber.”

We ended up at a very scruffy-looking hole in the wall. But considering how many awards were plastered on the windows, I didn’t think I’d get poisoned.

It was tiny. Maybe 30 stools around a counter with a conveyor circling it.

“How do they know what to charge you?”

“You stack up your plates—they’re color-coded for price. When we’re done, they count the plates.”

It was fun. Hard to decide what delicacies to grab as they rolled by.

“Octopus? Salmon? Mussels? Aubergines…”

It was great. Maybe I overdosed on the self-serve wasabi and ginger.

The little Asian grandma next to me ended up with a stack of plates twice as tall as mine.

The day was done but for the walk to Piccadilly and down the steps to the tube. The Bakerloo will take me right to my hotel.

Up 23 floors into the sky and onto a broad white cotton plane and sleep.

Ernest and I are driving to Gaithersburg. It is Monday. A getaway day. Tomorrow I leave for a short trip to London. There’s a book show I want to visit. But most of all, it is London calling me. I’m meeting my buddy Gerry there. I think he has made plans for us for every evening.

As long as I get to the British Library, the British Museum, Sherlock Holmes Pub, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, I’ll be happy.

And the Tate.

I really, REALLY pushed hard this weekend. It was a self-imposed challenge. Physical and mental. I wanted to make space and free up carts for the team while I was away.

(Team is the term now.)

But, honestly, I really wanted to see the books awaiting my eyes in the big warehouse. I didn’t want to miss anything.

Bibliomania. It is a mental condition. Is it in the DSM? I could contribute a chapter. And here is week #461 of these book stories. And if I don’t give into it, there are physical ramifications. I don’t feel good if I don’t get my fix.

My friend Michael Dirda wanted to see me before I left. He’d culled 14 boxes from his home and wanted them out of his hands. Perhaps less temptation…

He stayed and spent a couple hours foraging through the vintage rooms. He’s the only person I permit to do this. He found just over a box he wanted. I let him have them for a pittance. Addicts need to support one another. We only chatted briefly. Weekends are my holy days of book worship. And it was midday.

I always feel better and smarter when we converse. He knows so much, and is gentle and generous with it. He said I was a writer. Casually. But it was as if laurels appeared around my brow.

The next day, I got a message that he had stopped at the Frederick store and…

But his ratio was good. 14 boxes out. Only two boxes in.

My home… I have about a dozen boxes on the floor. My bookcases have been curated beautifully. I don’t want to mess with them. I’ve long thought of building an addition, but the house is set into a mountainside. Nothing seems to make sense. I have plenty of books. What’s so important about these twelve boxes? I couldn’t really tell you what’s in them.

“Treasures I had to bring home for… the duration.”

And:

“You just don’t understand.”

It is a cool gray Monday. 55 degrees. Cloudy. No rain though. Too bad. I planted 36 peppers and tomatoes yesterday. I need to find someone to water them while I’m gone.

We are on our way back. We did some major culling. I nuked all the series romance I could find in General Fiction. (We combined General Fiction and Romance not long ago. So many authors end up in both—Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele…) Series romance is dead. I also hit the old cartoon books. We had a dozen copies of some Charlie Brown books. Wizard of Id? B.C.? Nobody cares.

The store is shaping up. It has been just over a year since we started getting bookcases up in the new section. Some things have taken a lot longer than I anticipated.

Sleep was elusive that Monday night.

4/12/26
.
I assume the pose of sleep
Curled fetally
Arms wrapped round a soft feather pillow
I try to exhale the nerves
That flash and jolt
In my gut and behind my eyes
Exhaustion does not help
Blissful unconsciousness will not come
All is silent, all is black
All is calm and still
But the engine inside me
Will not shut off

I was miserable when I awoke from a wakeful night.

Tuesday. Getaway day.

Giles senses something is up. He is leaning half on my flank, as if to keep me in bed. He has started speaking lately. A kind of moaning groan comes out of him. Sometimes, it is a satisfied sound. Sometimes, plaintive. He’s also created a soft chattering sound. Almost birdlike, but deeper and softer.

“Chudachudachudachudachuda…”

Perhaps the last fire was lit last night. When I return, it will be nearing June.

I dragged down the rest of the branches from the tree that fell while I was in France.

They only got as far as the driveway though. I’ll finish the job and get them down in the woods when I return.

I tossed most of the firewood from the woods over the garden wall and onto the river rubble patio.

There are a few pieces In need to cut up. Too big.

The bleeding heart “hedge” continues to expand further along that garden wall.

Gardens are notorious for some things doing too well and others struggling.

I heard birdsong while I was working to get out.

I had to stop and listen.

A photographer sent us images that were taken of a couple’s engagement at Wonder Book.

They’d had their first date there.

I wonder how many others have succumbed to the seduction of biblioimmersion.

There are more images on Instagram.

Congrats and happy days to you.

Sunrise at 39,000 feet.

We are about an hour out of London. The map shows that we are headed straight for Galway. It is just before 1 a.m. I’m a bit dazed. Maybe I had a couple hours sleep. The flight was very cold. I had the hood on my hoodie up and pulled the flimsy blanket they supplied up to my chin. I was still cold. The flight was bumpy too. Almost constantly I was being shaken and jolted in the dark. There was legroom, which helped some. It will be about 7 a.m. when I land in Heathrow. Then the fun starts. I’ll get my bag—sooner or later—and make my way to the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. I chose the Metropole rather than the Paddington Hilton because it was cheaper. It will require me rolling my bag down the sidewalk about ten minutes to get there. I’ll be told, “We’re sorry we don’t have a room ready for you.” Check-in is not til 3. It’ll be too early to go out and explore, so maybe I’ll go into the executive lounge and try to write or something.

Somehow I’ll find inner resources to power through the day. I’ll take the tube to the British Library when it opens. I hope there will be an interesting exhibition on.

As the day wears on, I’ll get acclimated and start to enjoy the great city.

Travel is such torture. The prep, the cost, stress, getting to the airport, parking, walking miles of aisles. Hurry up and wait. Ride an uncomfortable seat for hours. Constrained next to a stranger. Cold. Tossed around. Land with a scary screech. Hope the customs walk is smooth and fast. Walk miles of aisles. Wait and wait and wait for my bag. Then into London before anything opens.

Somehow I’m feeling better, it seems. I felt like crap on Monday night trying to sleep. Stress? Overworked? It was torture planting all the tomato and pepper seedlings.

At some point, London will kick in, and I will be thrilled. There’s a lot of work and expense to get to that point.