All the Tourists of Fitzrovia

Just over a week ago, I was in London.  Right after that I boarded a train for Paris and stayed there five days.  I'm still getting acclimated to my time zone and catching up on all the laundry I need to do.

You'd think I would have tried visiting the real Fitzrovia, but the closest I got was Covent Garden.  I was rather disappointed to see how many shitty upscale chain boutiques were there, but not too surprised.  I then went to my old neighborhood in Southwark to see the street I lived on and the apartment building, and reflect on all that's changed in the years since I was there.

My room was with the window to the left of the door

My neighborhood was so hardcore, and apparently still is, that a spiked fence with "anti-climb" paint encircles the car park.

When I was newly widowed, I often thought of that weird time in London when everything was strange and I had to find all these resources inside myself to make ends meet.  I guess we all have more inside us than we give ourselves credit for, when we need to draw upon it.

And now that a few days have gone by and there's been another bombing in London I feel unable to do any commentary right now about the good times I've had, or about cleaning and tidying and such.  One of the reasons this blog is lagging these days is that there are more important things in the world going on.  I don't need cleaning therapy as much as I did, either.  I'm not giving up on blogging yet, but it's hard to come up with fun tips or anecdotes these days.