Burlington Arcade

Yesterday I went into Westminster to pick up a couple of last-minute things for Christmas. I know I said I wasn't doing gifts, but I decided it would be in poor taste to show up in Florida utterly empty-handed. So I got some swanky chocolates from Fortnum & Mason that everyone can share. I bought a box for my family and a box for Dave's, along with a tiny Christmas pudding for wherever we happen to be on that day -- I think at my stepmother's. The bill was something like £112. Insanity!

Oh well. I'm sure Christmas is what keeps Fortnum & Mason afloat the rest of the year.

Across Piccadilly from the shop was this brightly lit shopping arcade, Burlington Arcade, that runs to Burlington Gardens and thus to Bond Street. I took a look inside.

There's a "Twelve Days of Christmas" decorating motif going on -- I believe those are the "twelve drummers drumming" above. I barely looked at the shops because I wasn't really in the market for any of the finery that's on sale there.

At the other end I wound up on Bond Street and saw...

...a very trendily-dressed woman and her cotton-ball of a dog, who was sporting a special Santa hat and collar. This is the kind of thing you see on Bond Street.

From there I headed to the Tate Britain, because I wanted to see the Lee Miller exhibit currently on show. Miller was a model and surrealist photographer associated with Man Ray in the 1920s, who then became a fashion and war photographer in her own right. The Tate show covers her early surrealism, her fashion work for Vogue, and her years as a war correspondent, including some heart-wrenching images of post-Holocaust concentration camps and the destruction in Europe.

And there, among the wartime pictures, was this one:

Yes, that's the Burlington Arcade, taken during or after the Blitz. I was mesmerized by many of Miller's photos, like the one of four rats sitting on a piece of wood in Paris, their tails hanging down in parallel lines, looking composed and almost elegant as one would expect of Parisian rats. Or the one of René Magritte and his dog LouLou, which reminded me of Paul Simon's song, "René and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War." I thought, "That's it! That's the dog!"

Anyway it was an interesting exhibit and I'm glad I fit it into my schedule before we depart for Florida today.

I came home and gave Dave his gift, which I bought on my errand to Covent Garden a few days ago. I got him an Apple watch, largely because I want him to be able to track his heart rate. But it does a lot of other cool things too, like measure the quality of one's sleep and, of course, provide all the communication you could ever want with the world at large. It's right out of Dick Tracy, for sure.

Last night we watched "Being Charlie," the movie Rob Reiner made with his son about addiction. It was modeled on their family experiences and was quite powerful, but as you'd expect, also quite sad. The lead character, Charlie, seemed so angry and nihilistic -- a perception perhaps heightened by recent events. I was struck by a scene when Charlie said to his father, "I don't hate you." Which makes what ultimately happened all the more mystifying.