Dreamy Recollections: The Obliteration Room

I find that with travel the best parts are the beginning and the end, but the best parts arise from what happens in between. You can't have a beginning or an end without a middle. So at the beginning your brain swims with dreamy anticipations. And at the end your brain swims with dreamy recollections. The recollections and the anticipations never match, but the mismatch is delicious and, if you're lucky and a bit reflective about it, educational. During the journey itself your brain simply swims. Such is my experience.

Three and some-odd weeks ago, I flew to London, accompanied by family, to help launch the good ship Moby-Duck in UK waters (number one title in the category of books about the city of Bath!). Night flight. Some sleep. Boys zonked out on armrests and shoulders. Then the abruptly wakeful arrival. London. There it was, glimpsed from the freeway, blurring past. A rental on a street with the almost too-perfect name of Barlby Gardens. A day of rest, and for me, editing. Then a bus ride to Trafalgar Square, red bus, double decker, the boys and me on the upper deck, right up front, all eyes. A grand day in London that culminated perhaps on the ground floor of the Tate Modern with a trip inside Yayoi Kusama's Obliteration Room, pictured above.

Some more dreamy recollections to come, if I can steal the time for them.