Nights, Mountains

Too damn tired to write anything and too damn geeky not to. Also I wanted to average a post a day this month and though that ain't happening I'd rather die trying.

Never went to Windsor but for a walk up the High St and into a French restaurant in the old train station. We wound our way in the cold air Friday between clumps of cursing teenagers clutching cell phones for whom it was clearly Drama Night. A beautiful place at night, lit up in the way of old towns that must seem like nothing to people accustomed to it, but for those of us raised in places that didn't exist before the electric light and the automobile the effect is fairly magical.

Especially with that ancient castle looming over.

Last night, alone, I took random trains and found myself walking down Whitechapel under the walls of the East London Mosque and through a sidewalk being cleared of its Saturday market, Arabic conversations everywhere, halal fast-food joints, even an Islamic bank for those who want to conduct business in accordance with their faith, its policies acclaimed by a council as being true to sharia'a. Not far from that, a "gentlemen's club", table dances £10. It must be difficult; but everyone who comes to London knows it is not like home.

I forgot to bring a tie, and tomorrow the meetings begin wherein a tie would not be inappropiate. My employer's normal policy is in line with the modern Silly Valley mode of casual, and a tie worn to the office would be a subject of rude speculation. But not so much tomorrow, at least for the first day. White shirt, too! For my only other dress shirt is black. So I bought a cheap souvenir tie in a stall in the Leicester Square tube stop, blue with little crosses of St. George, on argent gules.

I dozed in and out today with clouds below and awoke with a start over the broadest and whitest mountain range I had ever seen. I could not imagine how anyone got elephants over it but beyond that, its beauty was far greater than I had imagined it could be. We moved beyond the snow and dropped into a new world for me, one it took but minutes to develop an intense desire to explore in detail. Not much of that this trip, but with luck there are other years left for it. Right now it's eleven at night and I'm here, wishing a conference room wasn't my venue tomorrow but a simple open road.