Spit Foul Villanous Filth Bile.

 Everything must come to an end one supposes and that includes the limitless excursions of ones own imagination, and the peaceful bliss and endless enjoyment one finds in ones own thoughts but there you have it.

You have probably heard, or surmised, I suppose it would be hard not to, what the irredeemable unwatchable libelous hot-mess The Crown has become.  There were stirrings while I was in the UK, but nothing more than the polite Well I don't think I'll watch it, or I'm certainly not going to watch it, or I think I'm going to give it a miss, or I suppose one gets the point that it is nothing more than treasonous scandal-porn fit only for the eyes of after-school-special watching, overfed, American barbarians with an it really gives me the vapors to even discuss it and it wasn't even 24 hours ago.

Vile filth!

Spit stuff.

Curse,

Spit more stuff

Crime.

Villanous bile.

I seem able to do little else than express simple words, and in no discernible or comprehensible way.  I will call my attorney at once and ask if I have a case against those Netflix creeps which I no doubt do!

Fucking simpleton scandal-obsessed feral vermin with a streaming service.

The Frenetic Wheels Of Commerce.

The last couple of days in London were spent shopping, shopping, eating and shopping and shopping and shopping.  Not much time to journal, but I did get the issue of the wrong size sorted first thing or maybe it was second.  I had a long list and for the most part I emerged victorious in my endeavors.

Hit a small bump in the road when I went to Burger King in Leicester Square only to find out that their plant based menu options have been turned on their head and substantially diminished.  Wave after wave of disappointment.  This made me temporarily unable to handle the throng of children that descended the stairs as I was gingerly made my way up balancing my tray of disappointing food in the process.

The Burger King was jam packed because they really love it over there, but I found a table behind a support column that was almost entirely out of site from the rest of the Burger King.  I say almost because as I was indelicately shoving a plant based Whopper with plant based cheese squarely into my face, someone, I say someone when really it was a vision of clumsy English urbanity and the creamy English charm Waugh wrote about, stood over me and sheepishly asked if he could sit at my table.

My lips said 'of course', but my mind said sit your hot little ass down, but I knew that I was in the middle of one of those culture clashes I always watch about on the Star Trek.  If someone in America asked to sit at someone else's table at the local Taco Time I mean holy shit.  It really would be a choose your own adventure story from that moment on.

After doing glorious battle with some savages at Whittard I made my way to Liberty where the livestock was sprawling and confused, but completely incapable of stopping me from scoring a fetch tote.  I also managed to find Palace in the endless maze of Soho where I was happy to see my Wedgwood plate safely behind glass. So, so satisfying. 

I eventually made my way back to where I was staying which on this trip happened to be Shepperd's Bush which although not the seediest part of London I have been to, it is certainly the seediest part of London I ever paid to stay. I adored it. I went to the English equivalent of a Century City shopping mall and it was mind blowing. The queue at TKMaxx was really getting a lot of English people excited and although I also shared their enthusiasm for the season I really couldn't feel what they were feeling.  I simply put my acrylic blend back on the rack and hoped it would be there tomorrow when I would have to return.  

The Best Kind Of Mistake.

My fourth day in London I went to Knole which is an enchanting house set within beguiling gardens situated in a picturesque park.  I thought I had learned a lesson from my trip to Hever the day before and bought my ticket at the station.  However, I still spazzed out and boarded a train that took an hour instead of a half hour to arrive.  You really have to watch that stuff, but my mistake allowed for a more resting journey, but I decided, nonetheless, to make sure something like this never happens again.

The park was positively replete with wildlife which in the case of a deer park tends to be deer.  Lots and lots of deer. One of them happened to feasting on what appeared to be a particularly succulent section of grass right in the middle of the footpath, and its a footpath in a deer park, it isn't like there's a lot of options of where I could go.  I just chilled and stared at my phone and let some demented runner in lycra buzz the ravenous deer and when I was convinced the deer was chill I proceeded on to the house.

Continuing with the theme of layered disappointment the finest of the showrooms in the house were closed and I didn't enquire why.  In true modern tiktok linguistic fashion where one phrases even the most implausible of statements in the most pompous and gate-keeper manner, if you haven't experienced Knole park during each and all of the seasons then you simply haven't experienced the change of seasons the way humans were meant to to experience the change of seasons. End Quote. Crinkle nose.  It may sound fantastic, but someone on tiktok seemed like they were wanting to convince me that I was a type of Untermensch for not having eaten escargot at some Parisian bistro. Taste the facts. Ersatz erudition, presumed pedigree and obnoxious overstatement are the currencies in which they trade.

Sevenoaks is, TikTok hyperbole notwithstanding, a delightful day trip from London which should be a half hour each way when you are not spazzing.  It is a quirky little English village with a central pedestrian shopping area with quaint local shops, bistros, thrift stores and a Ferrari dealership.  It offers an escape from the London tourists without having to go somewhere thoroughly unacceptable. 

I absolutely thieved at one of the thrift stores, waltzing away with a delightful Spode porcelain basket dish, a positively charming Wedgewood pin box, Two deadstock Silver Jubilee glazed glass dishes, a vintage Barclays bank note wallet, and a positively gasp inducing pair of Halcyon Days Silver Jubilee enameled beakers.  I slithered back to London on the train with a look on my face like the cat that had just got the cream.

I wanted to do some London shopping before I called it a day so from Charing Cross I went up to Twinings a bought some tea, then I ended up in Covent Garden where I bought something in the wrong size which I suppose that means I will be going to Covent Garden first thing in the morning.

Holiday Of A Thousand Days.

Third day in London and I had to leave London.

Hever Castle has been on my list for quite a while, but it just seemed like quite a hassle.  I actually considered getting a room in their guest accommodation, but upon consideration decided a brief visit first might be preferable. Preferable it was, but I obviously chose the wrong day to do it.

The tube ride passed through Westminster station and someone failed to send an alert that it was a school day out because just when I avoided getting on a carriage crammed with children, the carriage I am on becomes flooded with kids.  When they left, like atmosphere escaping a breached fuselage I sat in a seat and the lady that took a seat across from me shot me a glance of complete and utter relief and we both smiled.  Such an exchange on the Underground is never done, but there were no witnesses.

The phone said we were to have 2 hours of rain at most, but I read that to mean I would need an umbrella for most of the day so I brought one and good thing I did because when I got off the train at Hever it was near steady rain and I had a mile to walk.  A mile to walk through a muddy fucking field, through low lying hedges that cruelly snagged my umbrella hindering my passage.  I cursed my situation because it seems that lately all my trips to England seem to involve me getting lost in the middle of some field in the middle of nowhere.

By the time I reached the castle I was a sight to behold I am sure, but they took pity on me and let me in.  Fires were blazing, Christmas trees were lit and there were few people that dared the weather besides the hardcore so the castle was near empty.  There were times when I was completely alone in a room in the castle and I could just enjoy it in complete solitude.

On the train ride back to London Bridge station I sat across too incredible looking tradies.  I thought it was a little funny since they were obviously coming home from their construction job, and I was coming home from my fanciful trip through high society Tudor England yet I was the one whose boots and Dickies were splattered with mud and looked like I the one that had put in a proper days work at "the site".  They probably couldn't work because of the rain, and here I was sleeping all the way back to London Bridge while they swiped their way through Hinge profiles.

Heading back to my room on the Central line I can always notice the Americans even if they are halfway down the carriage.  They talk loud enough for the entire fucking place to hear.  This striped haired specimen said something about her 'friend in Seattle' and that gave me a little bit of a shock, but then I remembered I only really know three people in Seattle. 

Today I am making a point of bring my earbuds.  That seems to help a lot of London commuters cope with these interminable periods where phones become little more than useless e-readers.

Suspiciously Declining Standards.

Second full day in London and I decided to get an early start by investigating one of the silliest attractions in all of London.  The Sherlock Holmes museum, which I gather is within earshot of the Wax Museum which I gather always has an hour line even if you have booked a ticket months in advance, but I do not believe they offer to sell you a membership to jump the queue, is not actually a museum and it isn't really anything more than a set construction and waxworks of various aspects of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels.  The price of admittance seems reasonable, Sixteen quid, but when you realize it is about 5 rooms stuffed to the gills with random victorian antiques that you can find in any antique store in London you feel a little let down.

The Charles Dickens house and the Samuel Johnson house are actual houses where actual interesting people lived and the price of admission isn't as steep and the overall feeling is more satisfying.

I soothed my deflated feeling by purchasing a jigsaw puzzle in the Sherlock Holmes gift shop and enjoyed a nice sunny walk through Regents Park to Camden where I had a somewhat disappointing meal at one of my old favorite spots.  Cost cutting and cost of living has resulted in a somewhat lesser, but in no way wholly disappointing product, but another disappointment, however, the walk through the park I should mention was celestial.

I was going to race back to my room before the show, but realized I wouldn't have time so I got off the tube at Tottenham Court Road and walked down towards Soho and popped into two bookshops that I always pop into and maddeningly found 2 expensive and 2 rather inexpensive books I may have to buy which may totally exhaust my luggage allowance. 

I arrived at the theatre early for Backstairs Billy more for a piss than anything and I ended up relieving myself in what was little more than a tasteful glory hole situated behind a dark lounge stuffed with entirely respectable looking old people.

The whole experience at this campy take on HRH The Queen Mother's relationship with her notoriously snotty and homosexual staff deserves a separate treatment, but needless to say I escaped getting too deeply involved with what seemed to be two genuine theatre homosexuals, but were probably just MI5 officers who happened to find me on the balcony of the theatre for a brief chat before discovering their sears were oopses, just right next to mine.

Anyway, I may try to do less today, but it is still early and I haven't decided yet.

License To Infuriate.

First day in London and the good people at the Victoria and Albert Museum straight-up tried to hussle me right there in the middle of the gift shop.  I had the temerity to ask about information on the Coco Chanel exhibit.

On the nine hour flight from Seattle I had the misfortune of sitting in the the seat where the inflight entertainment system was messed up.  No matter what I tried the only movie it would play was Alexander Christmas or something so I had to rely on my phone for entertainment and I read in the most recent issue of Country Life digital edition free from the Los Angeles Public Library, about the Chanel exhibit at the V&A and I immediately thought well there is my fourth day in UK saved.  I penciled it in and made a point of going early this morning so I could beat the rush.

I detoured through the medieval section because that is really the one area of the V&A that interests me most and it was on the same level as the Chanel exhibit, but I could not find it through all the massive slabs of stained glass.. 

A large Chanel display in the central gift shop indicated I may have found a place to inquire.  I queued, some weirdos holding postcards not knowing how things were done wandered in front of me, but when I got to the sales assistant I asked where I could buy tickets for the Chanel exhibit.

Some weird guttural sounds emanated from her mouth, her eyes rolled slightly back in her head and I almost called for assistance because I was sure she was having a stroke, but once I realized she was speaking English, just badly and with the tongue-too-big-for-my-mouth speech impediment that is all too common on this island I could understand her.

"Fur, I'm sowwy fur, da Thanel Thow is thold out and hath bin thold out for munfs, but woo can pewchase a membooship and thee the thow that vay."

I hope I didn't smile too much, but I thanked her for the information, turned on my heels and made my way promptly to the National Portrait Gallery which is also free, but I gave a considerable donation on entry just to spite those grifters over at the V&A.

"Thold owt fowur munfs my afffs!'  It was only featured in Country Life this week!