A full week has passed with very little posting from us, and I need to at least explain why, even if it's too late to make up for it entirely.
Our week in London was exhausting. Naturally we were tired on arrival (last Sunday); that always happens. Monday, Kristiana went to work at the nearby Regent Street Apple Store, and I found that my computer - which was fine on Sunday - wouldn't boot up. Kristiana worked rather late into the evening and so did I. She came home saying "there's a lot of work to be done," and found me saying much the same thing.
Tuesday through Wednesday were largely a blur. Kristiana's big cutover was Tuesday night, so she went to the Regent Street store Tuesday afternoon, visited the hotel for a few minutes in the evening, then went back and stayed there until Wednesday afternoon. I brought her a cappucino early Wednesday morning and had an interesting conversation with a Jamaican-sounding gentleman who was working store security that morning.
"You are American?"
"Yes, California."
"Ah, I thought so. I love the accent."
"Thank you..."
"Yes, you can always tell the American accent, I love the way they chew their words."
"Oh, dear," I said, trying not to sound chewy. "That doesn't sound like a good thing at all."
"No, I like it very much. It sounds like," and he made a sound like someone mumbling, only at an American-talking-too-loudly speech volume. I may have cringed a little. "I cannot do the accent," he apologized. "But I really do like it."
Just then Kristiana walked up, and I handed her the tray of cappucino and croissant.
"What's this? Two cappucinos?"
"Um, yes. Minor misunderstanding. I asked for Tall which isn't a size here so they heard Small, so then I ordered another that was Large."
"So I have a large main cappucino and a small auxiliary backup cappucino."
"You worked all night, it didn't seem unwise."
She turned to my Jamaican friend. "Do you like cappucino?"
"Oh, yes, very much."
"Please enjoy this cappucino," she said, handing it to him.
"Thank you," he beamed.
From the Apple store I went on my next errand, to see where I could find a replacement disk drive for my dead computer. Back home I would drive straight to Fry's and be home in half an hour, but this was London, and disk drives aren't really covered by the guidebooks. I had tried Googling for "London computer parts" but that was hopeless; too many results, and I didn't have the knowledge to sort them readily by proximity. I decided just to walk around instead. Oxford Street was full of shops: booksellers, a CD/DVD megastore, hoisiery vendors, seemingly innumerable mobile phone boutiques. There had to be electronics and computers there somewhere. I figured if I could find one computer-ish store, even one that didn't sell parts, the most knowledgeable person there could at least direct me to the next better place to look. I thought I would have to climb sort of a ladder of expertise going from one store to another all morning, but in fact it took only two stops and I was home and reviving my computer in about an hour.
All my software, etc. had to be reinstalled and then I had actual work to catch up on, so I was still working when Kristiana got home Wednesday afternoon. She of course went straight to bed. I kept working, and went out and got us a collection of sandwiches from Marks & Spencer and Pret-a-Manger in case she didn't wake up in time to go out. I honestly can't remember whether we ate sandwiches that night or dragged ourselves out, because most of the week was like that: working, deciding we were too tired to eat or it was too late (or both), and subsisting on sandwiches. I know we stumbled out to a ramen place one night, and managed a pub lunch on Saturday, and otherwise I'm not sure. Luckily the take-out sandwiches in London are uniformly pretty good: fresh ingredients on grainy whole-wheat bread, not the processed-meat-extrusion-on-white that prevails at home.
Thursday Kristiana went off to Bluewater, a smallish store in a mall just outside of town. "It's a pretty strange mall," she told me later. "You approach it over a bridge, with a little lake that has remote-controlled boats you can drive. Inside, the decorations are..." she showed me a photograph. "Sculpted calla lillies?" I guessed. "No, actually that one is a dragon, when you get closer." Bluewater wasn't a huge job, but she got a late start and got home late. Friday she had a longer trip, out to Milton Keynes, and again got home late. Me, I just stayed in the room and worked, except for a couple walks out to Seven Dials, home of Forbidden Planet science fiction bookstore, Monmouth Coffee, and Candy Cakes cupcakes and muffins which also contributed to our sustenance on a couple of mornings when we hadn't the wherewithal to go out for anything fresh.
Also, I was gradually getting sick, developing some kind of stuffy head cold as the week went by. Despite decongestants I'd have fitful sleep filled with dreams of suffocating, so I wound up at least as tired as Kristiana, possibly more so. Eventually it dawned on me how much worse I felt in bed than out of it. The Hotel Kempinski's luxurious down comforter and feather pillows were perhaps not the entire problem, but a significant part of it. We were able to organize a partial solution in London, but I didn't really start feeling better until we reached Cork yesterday.
Cork is by all accounts a very nice little city, full of history and charm and eminently walkable -- except today, when it has become rainy and, from the way I can see people's trouser legs flapping from my window, quite windy as well. Kristiana's gone off to work at Apple's Cork facility, and I'm likely to remain in our hotel room for the day, nursing the last of my cold and finally rested and clear-headed enough to get some real work done.
