A Djinn in London: Prologue

It is about 7 a.m. as I write, an uncharacteristic hour for me to be up and about. But it is after all 3 or so p.m from whence I just only returned, across the Atlantic pond.

There is a deep morning June gloom here in West Hollywood,  The choral background of a 2007 recording of Candlemas at Oriel College provides serenity despite the lack of a sun, which it appears, I left in London and its environs, Oxford, Portsmouth, and Hampton Court where the ghosts of several kings and queens of England still bicker in their bedrooms, an antecedent to someone getting sent off to a royally cmmanded execution.

Despite my just tractable fear of flyiing that threatens to become intractable always--my psychological motto has been and remains, "I hate travelling, but I love having travelled-- I took a nearly two week trip abroad. I was mesmerized and it is my experiences of which I hope to write in the next days.

It will take some doing. I did so much it seems there are times that I cannot exactly remember what it was from day to day. I have, of course, various brochures, and souvenirs, from the British Museum, The National Gallery, Royal Academy, Churchill War Rooms, Oxford's College Worcester, where I stayed, as a student of a certain age, on campus, Littlemore, Christ Church, Portsmouth, Hampton Court, but it was a whirlwind in which I yet found myself supremely comfortable in a place that, as a child of the East Coast of this country, was more familiar than I expected even as the antiquity outstripped it and could only lead to a sense of awe at what human beings can accomplish in their rendition of beauty.

So over the next several or more blogs, I hope to unravel the brochures, consult my travel journal (I kept it quickly and it only orients me to days and places, not to many details which are stuffed joyfully into my head) and take you with me as best I can on my first trip so far off in 22 years (I went to Italy in 1991).  

A Djinn in London.