The art of finding quiet in the cacophony.

There are times when you need to just....stop.

The trick is to easily identify those times, and take advantage of them.

The busy is going to continue for at least two more days, and then there will be a respite, followed by several more days of busy.  You know I'm busy when I look thinner and the shock of hair that began to grey in my thirties turns white.  It's by "busy" barometer.

So, I'm ten pounds lighter and I look like a skunk.

But I was talking about stopping, not how busy I am presently.

There was a little place on London Street, just up from Sussex Gardens near Paddington Station.  I stumbled upon it by accident, of course, but necessity is the Mother of Exploration as well as Invention.  I was hungry, and I didn't want to rely upon the stand-bys I could get in the States; even though KFC and Burger King and McDonald's were everywhere.

Can't even remember what the place was called, but it was on the corner of London Street and an alleyway that would have made The Ripper feel at home.  There were several tables by the windows, and several more outside, and that's what I chose.  I felt the need to eat, of course, but I didn't want anything as mundane as eating interfere with my seeing.

An English Breakfast, with White Coffee.  And listening to the sounds of a metropolis walking past you; the sounds of strange and melodic dialect, the sounds of the tiny cars driving in jarring configurations, and a charming lady asking me if I wanted more coffee and how brilliant the day was and how smashing my accent was......

I loved that; no matter what pub I was in, no matter what I ordered, it was the same reaction:

"I'm going to have a small puppy, boiled in peanut oil and stuffed with several fluffy bunnies."
"Brilliant!  We'll have that right up!"

The English Breakfast:  eggs, back bacon, potatoes (hashed), half a grilled tomato, baked beans, and toast.  I was soooooo tempted to ask for Spam as well, but I was afraid I would either be serenaded by a chorus of vikings, or brained by a skillet.

But the thing of it was this:  I had no other place to be.  At all.  In the middle of a sunny morning, in the middle of this strange and wonder-inspiring city, in the middle of my first trip, I had no other thing to do at that moment but listen to the city and drink my coffee and think about how fortunate I have been.

So, I did.

So, in honor of that treasured moment, let us take the time to treasure this moment.


And now, THIS moment.


And now, let's treasure the memory of those three moments.