Uncle Pat's Window Seat

Last week I discovered the Sherlock Holmes Museum; yes; of course it's on Baker Street. In there I picked up a sweet text "The Sherlock Holmes Walk," which has two short expeditions around London to places mention in The Canon of holy writ. Tonight Kathryn and I watched "The Return of Sherlock Holmes: The Bruce Partington Papers." That title is mentioned in this booklet. Tomorrow I plan to take in both short walks to see specifically (note I did -not- split the infinitive)  the places located on the walk. I actually was at Scotland Yard last week when I was enroute for Buckingham Palace, the Admiralty, and the Globe, but I didn't know which building I was looking for. I do know now. And I snapped a photo of The Great Detective's statue while I was there. I also learned that when the cellphone is in a selfie stick, it cannot record my witty commentary. I'm working on those technical difficulties right now. For my fellow dementees, stretc...

Half a dozen years ago I stumbled across an article about British narrowboats on the canals. I've ordered a couple of brochures; I've followed different companies online. I've finally made it to the holodeck. I found a flotilla in Manchester. I saw individual boats out the train windows on the reposition to London. Walking to find breakfast pastries the other morning, I found the Grand Union Canal in the outskirts of London, and there were half a dozen boats there! As we ll as a gloriously rowdy canalside pub. There are all manner of lengths, but most are only eight feet wide. The canals connected the industrial hubs of the country before the railroads came to the fore with greater cargo capacities more quickly. The canal boats were even a serious part of the war (WW-II) effort, manned by women since the men were mostly in combat. All the boats I have seen, save one, are make-overs, many of them built in the 1930s. These older boats are lovingly maintained, and t...

 got home at 11:30 last night. I fell asleep on the Bakerloo Line tube two stops before mine at Harlesden and woke up two stops after in Wembley Central; I wasn't able to get off there, and had to turn around at Wembley North.  But that was because I went to Shakespeare's "Merry Wives of Windsor." At the Globe Theater. In London. As a groundling. Standing for two and a half hours. It's open-air. Gawd, it was wonderful. And hysterical. And schlocky. And slapstick. And cornball. And fun. And surprising. And . . . And . . . And. . . . Falstaff walks to front of stage carrying a shoe. He relates how the basket he was rolled out of the house in was dumped into the Thames. Then he pours water out of his shoe . . . And it ends with the cast doing a Charleston to the hot music of the band. Shakespeare's groundlings paid a penny to get inside. This groundling paid five pounds. That's probably much of a sameness. The twenty-three-pound seats were sold out; t...

Any group of three or more people will have its own jargon. I love shellfish. These are not edible. I snagged these specifically for Cousin  Linda  to share with her incredible mama, Aunt Gertrude. (That's her in-family name.)  One of Gertrude's stories involves all the aunts and uncles on a family outing of one sort or another, and it included the oldest brother (Bailey, WW-II Air Corps Navigator, with a penchant for "colorful" language). Bailey didn't have any qualms about expressing exactly how he felt about any thing.  At any rate the group decided to follow a park sign advising of a "prehistoric oyster ring," and they figured this might be kind of interesting. Bailey had fallen behind the lead elements while in conversation with someone else in the conversation. Aunt Gert and some of the others got to the pile of oyster shells that remained after a Stone Age feast and -knew- Bailey's temper and mouth would erupt when he caught ...

If you've ever read any of Dame Agatha Christie's detective thrillers, you'll know why I took this photo.   In the meantime, the rest of the people are headed for Miss Jane's house on track at 09:41 on the train on Track 2. Caution: the doors will close up to 45 seconds before departure.

First impressions of Manchester, England, after eight weeks of Spain, Portugal, and France. It feels like everything is red brick or glass and steel. Heavily industrialized. It feels like Coblentz's "The Blue Cat of Castle Town" character Aruna Hyde has run amok. The buses are double-deckers, not because they're quaint, but because the ridership is so dense. Four-coach trolleys are as common a sight as the two-coach articulated trolley. I have seen very few single-coaches. Everybody is in a striding hurry. Madrid moved quickly, but not at this frenzied pace. Even strollers clip right along. However, in marked contrast, since the sun is out and the temperature is in the teens (70s US), people are asprawl in the grass singly and in groups. One bunch of seven men and women we clumped in discussion. Another single skeletal old man was down to his expedition shorts, asprawl and asleep, face to the sun, shoes, socks, and shirt in a pile beside him. Women are ta...

Quarter of nine. Gray rain-shiny paving. Washed-wet-headed women walking with their men. The Street not yet awake. Sleepy-eyed daughter standing in her pajamas and rain jacket and black rubber boots with her papá in the boulangerie; two baguettes for the family and a chocolate croissant for her; bread in one hand, his daughter carried in his right. Redheaded shop girls smiled and bade her "adieu, mam'selle." Bought a flaky apple pastry to eat while the washer churned.  No smile. The laverie antiseptic under its yet-blinding fluorescent bulbs. I chose the largest machine.  Twelve euros, and I have to buy detergent.  We don't have that much to wash, but I can see the water sloshing.  I guess it's worth it for the week's wear. Two cars pass. Then two piétons. Another car. The street blinks and yawns and starts to stir. I sit with my flaky apple pastry and watch my laundry try to beat itself to death in the white water, and I read in the slow-growing...

Interesting day in Paris in the Spring . . . Dragged out of the sack about eight of the clock (we'd been up reading last night till midnight), and, stuffing each of our laundry bags into my on-its-last-legs-overnight bag, slogged off to the "Club'Lav" over a couple of blocks. Yes, I -did- stop to pick up an apple-stuffed flaky pastry for munching during the wash cycle. Slow morning. Strolled to the end of the block to discover the Folies Bergère. Paris is a medieval city still. Yes, Hausman's avenues slice straight lines across her, but when you get off those straight lines, the Lord in His wisdom knows where you'll end up and what you'll find. I've passed the rear of that building several times and never had a clue. As well as palaces and museums and historical sites . . . you have to have a destination in mind. Walking the streets in this immediate neighborhood I have found half a dozen five-star hotels on streets ...

Climbing the steps to Sacre Coeur . . . You start at street level outside the No Problemo bar and go up from the curb one step; then up two flights of seventeen steps followed by three of sixteen more. You walk about twenty yards up a gentle slope to five flights of twenty-five steps, then two more flights of twenty-two. One more gentle slope and a penultimate flight of thirty steps are followed by a final flight of twenty five, and the grounds of the Cathedral slope -upward- to the podium of the basilica itself. For those of you who enjoyed the adventure of Sesame Street's Count, that is three hundred twenty-four lifts of eight inches, which works out to two thousand five hundred ninety-two inches, or, more simply put, is two hundred sixteen feet . . . lifting one leg at a time . . . for what seems ever. I counted them on the way down because I wasn't having to do the same survival breathing I did on the way up. At the top, yes; there is ...

Tell me again about the fruits and vegetables section at Whole Foods Market . . .  I don't know if it's better in the Bahamas or not, but it's amazing here.

After digging like a Labrador through the bolts of fabric in this shopping district and walking up the steps to Sacre Coeur (then sitting for half an hour nursing a Coke to sugar back up, Kathryn and I picked up a couple of sandwiches and sauntered back down the hill to our hotel.  Near the beginning of that saunter, on a tourist-dense street, was a Chocolatier.  I capitalized that word because the shop does more than make chocolate candy.  And maybe I should have said "the" Chocolatier. It's a sculpture gallery. It's almost like walking through a chocolate gravel quarry . . . there are bins and shelves lining the walls with more shapes and variations on the theme of "Death by Chocolate" than I ever imagined in my fevered dreams.  This is, after all, Paris. The showpieces of the shop are carven chocolate sculpture.  Beginning with the gargoyle inside the front door (whose glass case reflects so many different light sources he's impossible to photo...

Oysters aren't the only things you can by the half dozen in the shell. With butter and spinach and a little bread . . . gotta be french bread, or it doesn't count . . . not even to six. Pony up, y'all.

To stand at the foot of the steps and look up to the bronze doors is to understand the awe the Greeks felt when they built the Parthenon in Athens. The absolute scale of the place is humbling. I didn't stop to take out my tape measure (I don't know why) to actually define the dimensions of the giant-order column's bases, but they are at least six feet square. As I think on it, they're probably two meters square." The quality and overwhelming detail visible to the ant-like mortal perceiving it are breathtaking and lovingly, carefully, executed. I really am at a loss for words to describe this building; having seen the place, I would be unable to convey my impressions to a class of undergraduates in other than mechanical, dimensioned terms. This is not a building that permits of dry descriptions. Standing at the door, looking down the Rue Royal tying together the Church and the Place de la Concorde, the knot is the gold-...