May 21, 2026

Dateline: London, England.

And tonight is the last night on this sceptered isle. Off to the continent in the morning with three stops prior to returning to Birmingham and the workaday world. It the other stops are as magical as the first two have been, it will have been a grand tour indeed. Fairly amazing for something that kind of fell together around a lot of other people’s schedules.

Today began with clear skies so I met up with David Pohler at Sloane Square (prior home of Princess Di and her Sloane Rangers set of many decades ago) where we took a look at some of the floral installations that are part of the Chelsea Flower Show. Think stationary and smaller Tournament of Roses floats. We really should have done that yesterday, Eliza Doolittle Day, but this is just the way things worked out. I didn’t get the visual decorative gene that so many of my gay brothers have. Tommy and Steve both had it. Hand them some tissue paper, cardboard and a hot glue gun and they would have a parade float ready in a couple of hours. I, on the other hand, would likely create something completely unrecognizable in either form or function.

We then decided to do something cultural so we headed up to Marylebone and spent a couple of hours in Hertford House gazing at the Wallace Collection. Like the Frick, it’s one of those smaller off the beaten path museums with multiple excellent pieces and a size that keeps you from feeling completely overwhelmed. It was my maternal grandmother’s favorite museum in the world. I visited it on my first trip to London more than forty years ago but hadn’t been back since. It has a lot of very good 17th and 18th century paintings and sculptural pieces courtesy of the Marquesses of Hertford and the Wallace family. I particularly liked the room full of Canaletto’s views of Venice.

Then we headed off to the South Bank of the Thames for a pub lunch followed by the matinee of Into The Woods at the Bridge Theatre. I had fallen in love with the Bridge as a venue after seeing their arena production of Guys and Dolls a few years ago. I was hoping for something equally revolutionary. It wasn’t as they had reconfigured the space back to a fairly traditional proscenium house. The woods set, however was spectacular. The performances were uniformly good. And, most importantly, it was a production which more or less solved the biggest flaw in the material. The three moralistic ballads that end the show – No More, No One is Alone, and Children Will Listen. That last twenty minutes usually drags and drags but there was some alchemy here that prevented that from happening. No More was devastating and it’s usually the weakest of the three numbers. That provided the impetus to take us through to the end.

After the show, David went off to join his other half and I made my way across Tower Bridge and into the City of London to meet my cousin Jack for a belated birthday dinner. We’re both May babies. He happened to be in town on business – something about a supply chain of building materials from quarries in Wales to the greater London area. We had dinner together in a Japanese/Brazilian fusion place called Sushi Samba on top of one of the new glass towers that have arisen over central London this century. From the dining room on the 39th floor, looking down over the gherkin, the Thames, and St Pauls, we enjoyed cocktails, short ribs, sushi, edamame and a chocolate mousse dessert. It was nice to catch up on various family matters. We are the bookends of our generation – I the eldest and he the youngest but as we have reached our middle years, we have found ourselves more and more simpatico and enjoy getting together when we can. I headed back to the hotel after, calling it an early night as I have to get up tomorrow and get myself on the Eurostar.

It’s been very nice not being inundated with American political news here in Europe so I am going to continue refraining from commenting on it for a while longer. On the public health front, it seems pretty clear that withdrawing from the WHO, decimating foreign aid, and hamstringing the CDC has helped Ebola emerge again in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ebola and the other filoviruses are the ones we really don’t want getting loose in the US. They kill somewhere between 30-90% of patients, depending on the strain and they are fairly easily transmitted through body fluids. Previous administrations, understanding the danger, have always made the resources available to combat outbreaks where they occur so that they don’t make their way here. This administration has destroyed our ability to do that. There’s no need to worry yet but all it’s going to take is the wrong person getting on the wrong flight and it could easily seed in one of the USA’s international travel hubs. No need to panic, just a need to remember that viruses have no interest in human politics and will go wherever they are given an opportunity to spread. There’s no need to panic over hantavirus yet either. That appears to be properly contained. At least I have not heard of any new cases breaking out related to the cruise ship affected for some weeks. Keep those hands washed.