When my phone alarm rings I wake up and reach outside the bed frame to turn it off and when I do my arm flies its weight across my body sending me over the top bunk and onto the floor. I might have broken my neck but instead settle for a chest contusion from falling on the desk. I get up from the floor and hit snooze but the phone dies during the six minute break. I sleep into the afternoon and lose a letter grade for missing my final classes. I had done so well up until this point but in the end did not achieve perfect attendance. Oh well, “B’s for degrees.”
It is a short bus ride to Harrods where I want to have a meal before leaving London. I want to stare at goose livers and watch butchers cut meat in the food court. I buy some white chocolate truffles but I’m not allowed to eat them inside unless I go to a restaurant in the store or go outside. I choose Harrods’ modest Terrace Bar as a place for lunch. My waitress is Lithuanian and the food runner, Spanish. Next to me is a couple with an animated toddler boy with curly blonde hair and a two-toothed smile. I order a ribeye sandwich and coffee and chat up the couple who are visiting from British Columbia. I finish my meal before them and say goodbye. I leave an excellent tip and wander down to the musical instrument section of Harrods. There I meet a lady my age who helps plug me into a spruce-top Taylor T-5 acoustic/electric which I play in the soundproof room for nearly an hour until she comes in and says that’s enough, politely though, so I do not fault her. What an axe!
I ride back to the dorms but when I get home I tremble and sink when I realize that I have lost my journal, my companion. I have only lost one journal before this, a gem orange Ordning and Reda plain sheet notebook. It is somewhere in the trash in Norway as I left it on a train coming back from Bergen to Oslo. No doubt it contains my greatest writing.
I take the bus back to Harrods and return to the Terrace Bar where, owing to God and my habit for good tipping, the Lithuanian girl has saved my journal behind the host’s stand. I thank her and leave for a William Hill gambling establishment where I bet on a race of digital ponies and win 20 pounds. My luck is outstanding but it still hurts when I breathe owing to the chest contusion from falling off my top bunk that morning. That night I lose my wallet in a black cab while riding home from a shite club where I danced with members of The Chorus. I have to borrow cash from Remus and Billy Goat. There’s nothing more septic then having to borrow real money from friends. But as the song goes, we all get by with a little help. To save money, I eat McDonalds for the next three days, stretching out my borrowed pounds.
I board the flight back to the states with only a passport and my Freitag laptop bag. When I stuff the bag into the overhead I hear a terrible crunching noise come from inside of it. When I open up the bag to inspect the computer I see a crack splitting my Mac’s screen vertically down the middle. It looks like if a rock had been thrown at a windshield at full speed. My trip is over.
Ordning and Reda Journals – http://www.ordning-reda.com
