London - 26 Feb 06

I didn’t go six days without writing, but I did go six days without writing in this journal. I spent more time on blogs this last week. I also wrote some important, lengthy, and exhausting emails to friends this week. Feeling the need to write and finding myself without this journal today I wrote the following on a McDonald’s napkin:

I don’t know if I have something in store, but I needed to write so I improvised and used these napkins. Sitting in a McDonalds on Fleet Street, right up from St. Paul’s, I have some time to relax. Personally, I like to think that I write a good amount, or more than my peers, but I have no reason to believe this is true. Perhaps I write significantly less. To raise my writing to an above average level I should write a lot more, and in different locations and times. I have been to too many places where I find myself desperately short of pen and paper. My next computer will be a laptop. I have to promise that to myself because I am becoming more convinced that a laptop is going to be essential to me becoming the writer I want to be.

I often forget the value of writing anything down. It doesn’t have to be after my most recent big adventure. You see, even in the previous sentence I marginalized my day to day experiences. It is still all life, and life is good.

This is a first, journaling on a napkin, but I like it. It adds a sense of adventure and character to this entry. I rode the very slow Hammersmith and City line to the former destination in order to buy another layer, this time a red Nike fleece. I bought my first London Krispy Kreme. It was delectable. I walked from Holborn to here and will now sit under the roof of the most beautiful church I have ever seen.

Later…I just can’t wait for Kate’s arrival. It is two weeks away and she will be here. We just got done talking and she sounds great. Now in a few minutes I’ll talk with my parents. Be back later this week.

I still have the napkin from McDonalds. I copied what I wrote on the napkin into my journal, and then folded the napkin up into a stack of brochures and random stuff from daytrips and whatnot.

Yes, they have Krispy Kreme in London. I paid $3 for one donut.

Not including the Docklands Light Railway, the London Underground is composed of twelve lines. Some lines are newer and faster than others. If you ever go to London, or have been, stay off the Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan, District, Circle, and Metropolitan lines. Those damn trains are always breaking down. A bunch of times I got into a Circle line station and saw a train there with its doors open. I naturally assumed that that train was about to leave the station. I got on, so did many others, and we sat there for a few minutes without word on why we weren’t moving. This is often the case on those crappy lines I mentioned. The rest of them aren’t bad, but the Piccadilly Line gets grossly busy during the rush hour. It also gets hectic in between Holborn and South Kensington because it stops at many of the big London attractions that inevitably draw the most annoying tourists. This is not to say I wasn’t a tourist for three months, but I was quiet, respective of the locals, and tried to be as un-American as possible while I was over there, that meant not being so boisterous and arrogant. In other words, I tried not be a flamboyant Yankee.