On our last full day in London, much of our
attention
is on the next leg of our trip: the hyper-organzed tour of Ireland.
(Seeing
everything in a whole country in four days takes a fair degree of
planning,
as you can imagine.) Up until now, we have been pretty much on
our
own, except for flights and cruises from one point to another and
hotels
at our stops. Starting tomorrow, we will be part of a group with
a
fixed agenda--with, probably, both pluses and minuses. On the one
hand,
we won't have to make nearly as many decisions, but on the other hand,
other
people will be telling us what to do every step of the way: a modality
neither
of us can claim an unblemished record on.
The morning has been devoted to mundane
preparations
for the move to Ireland: most notably, taking our laundry to someone
who
can do something about it being so dirty. This is not as simple
as
you would imagine. First, you ask the hotel to recommend a
laundry
and then explain that no, you aren't really interested in giving it to
them
to do at hotel rates. They were nice about it, gave us the name
of
a laundry and a map for getting there. Getting places by map in
this
section of London is not all that clear cut, but we succeeded. As
I
write this, we are operating on a promise that our laundry will be
ready
in time to pack it, in time to go to Ireland.
Another part of our logistics at this point
involved
Sheila updating some of her computer files, only to discover that her
computer
screen has self-destructed. So. . .she has just sent an email
home
to have her regular computer shipped to Vermont. How did the
pioneers
in the Old West handle things like this, I wonder? You read about
prairie
fires, cattle rustlers, and hostile Indians, but you never hear
anything
about internet connections and computer repairs. Maybe they were
just
lucky. (As you may have gathered, this is the kind of rambling
narrative
you get when I have time to work on the journal but no photos to put in
yet
today.)
This evening, we had dinner with Elizabeth and a friend of hers,
Gavin. I took an instant liking to Gavin due to his commitment to
Macintosh.
Tomorrow, we fly to Ireland, where my internet
connectivity is questionable, and we've just learned that the baggage
handlers may go on strike, so we may be carrying more than we
thought. However, we will soldier on and will let you know what
happens.
