August 7 More Nostalgia

We checked out of our hotel in Bloomsbury and took the Circle Line to Kensington High Street, with long delays at Bayswater and Notting Hill Gate. John and I looked at each other--what an odd, dislocated feeling, as if we were back in time ten years and would soon be climbing to our flat on the top floor at 27 Palace Court. We rolled our bags past Holland Park--another sharp dislocation, not turning in at the park gates and climbing the steep hill (steep with luggage anyway) to the Youth Hostel there. Instead, we walked on west down the High Street until it became Hammersmith, and half a block outside the congestion zone we picked up our snazzy little black car and headed north and east around London, just as it started to rain.