Day 8: London (still here)

I’m feeling a little under the weather, blowing my nose and feeling a little less perky than usual. I may also be suffering from uncertainty. There isn't much certainty forecast for the next little bit. So here we are.

I didn’t want to sit around in the room worrying about plane flights or blowing my nose so I rousted myself and walked down to Tate Britain—a little longer a walk than I had imagined but just fine. I was able to see some of my favourite paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (the PRB), an odd assortment of British painters who had affairs with their models, occasionally married them, and fell in love with each other’s wives. Being English in the middle of the 19th century, they felt extremely conflicted, guilt-ridden and sexually repressed. I don’t know that I would go so far as to say I love their work, but it is really interesting and beautifully painted. I am especially fond of the work by Edward Burne-Jones and the designer William Morris. Tate Britain has a great collection of their work which I visit every time I’m here. Then I walked through an exhibit by Chris Ofili, a Brit who is probably best known for his use of elephant dung in this paintings. He’s moved on to other things now—but I must admit I like the elephant dung pieces better than his current work.

I realized early this morning that I wanted to have a simple meal we could eat in our hotel room tonight without having to make plans and reservations. So I stopped by a local deli-type place called Jak’s and bought two plastic boxes of various salads of my choosing and some cooked salmon. Our dinner is waiting for us upstairs in our room’s mini-bar fridge.










If I find out anything about our plans later today when Katherine returns from her office, I’ll add a note to this posting.