Where was I?

What happened on the missing Wednesday, between the Tower and the shopping? No doubt a string of receipts and ticket stubs will tell a tale.

Yesterday (Monday, June 7): a late start due to dire laundry needs and the slow but solid exactness of the British front-loading washer (each load takes 67 minutes). Then on to Abbey Lane so that Don could re-enact the famous march across the cross-walk. Took several tries, because as he explained, "From left to right is canonical"--and there were lots of lorries to dodge. We looked down our noses at those careless tourists satisfied with a right-to-left cantor. Of course, as one thoughtful young American woman said, "If I lived here, I would shoot these people."

Then onto the Beatles store on Baker St., very near the Sherlock Holmes museum, where Don bought some "Sergeant Pepper" cufflinks. In walking the wrong direction down Baker St. for a couple of blocks, we saw a blue plaque for John Lennon, which according to a blue plaque guide I consulted later, marked the site of a short-lived Apple recording label store that John set up for a few months.

Then Don and I traveled to Westminster to visit the Abbey. But upon finding that it closed at 3:45 and cost 15 pounds, I balked and sent Don in. I spent the next 75 minutes trying and failing to find a toilet.

Then we were off to the Cheese to meet Disa, Tom, and Leo, who we called while they were at the top of St. Paul's. A quick dinner there (decent and cheap mac and cheese) with a truly fine extra stout, and then Don and I walked around the remains of the old Jewry, looking for, and finding, St. Lawrence Jewry, next to the Guildhall. A grand function was about to begin there, and important-looking men bearing impressive lacquered crosses on ribboned cords around their necks hurried toward the entrance.

At 7:30 we joined up with a Ripper Tour (through London Walks) delivered by the best educated of the Ripper guides, Donald Rumbelow. It was a lightly rainy, cold night, perfect for Ripper-walking. The East End is still creepy, even 122 years after the murders. The 10 Bells looked beguiling but the thought of walking the same floors as Annie Chapman, Long Liz, and the other victims was too much.

Of the new tube stations I saw that day, St. John's Wood was the most beautiful of the day with polished brass along the escalators and lots of dark wood (hmmmm--"St. John's Wood"-wood: a connection?); Baker Street has tiles with the Holmes profile repeated ad inifnitum; Westminster has stunning great vents and pipes around, so that one feels like an ant entering the world of the machines; and Bank was the most terrifying (with Liverpool a close second), as we walked and walked and walked, seemingly in a nonsensical pattern--upstairs, left, right, down stairs, down more stairs, now up stairs--as we breathed hot, de-oxygenated air seemingly left over from WWII. In Liverpool St. Station, we saw Londoners we hadn't seen before on our visit, the poor, the mean, the desperate. The station has a kind of green light that make all look ill, and the women in particular seemed just one remove in class and desperation from Jack's victims. We rushed to the comfort and security of Hampstead and the creperie (banana, chocolate, rum--chocolate and hazelnuts is better).