In Londinium

From the “Sometimes, You Can Only Laugh” Department:  As usual on such occasions, I didn’t sleep on the non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from Salt Lake City to London.  Instead, I read Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in which she first introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot — I can’t recall having read it before — and then, to my shame, watched five episodes from the first season of the current television series Watson, followed by listening to a mixed selection of country and classical music during our final approach to London Heathrow.

We reached our hotel — the DoubleTree By Hilton (London – West End), in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum (so not altogether a roach motel) — just before noon.  The plan was to catch a few hours of sleep and then to take in an evening play.

It was a good plan.  A sound one.  Except for the jackhammering that commenced about ninety minutes after we’d shut out the lights and that then continued without much let-up until roughly 3:30 PM.  (We had set our alarm clock for 4:00 PM, so that we would have time to stroll over to the theater (or theatre), grabbing a bite to eat along our way.)  And — oh yes, I mustn’t forget this! — except for the piercingly high-pitched fire alarm accompanied by a flashing strobe light that erupted in our room about an hour before the jackhammer ceased its ministrations.

I know.  I know.  Some of you will be thinking to yourselves “Oh, the poor dears.  Suffering so, in London!  Cue the violin music!”  (In a sense, it’s analogous to what some would call “a very first-world problem.”)  And at least a few over at the Peterson Obsession Board who monitor this blog with slavish devotion and who gave their lives over to Cthulhu at impressively young ages will be ecstatic at the thought of my receiving at least a tiny portion of my just desserts.  And their faith in the view of me that they have so assiduously cultivated over the past fifteen or twenty years will be confirmed by the fact that, at certain points between about 12:30 PM and 3:30 PM, London time, this song was going through my mind over and over again and I was contemplating homicide.  “When a man is tired of London,” Samuel Johnson is reported to have said, “he’s tired of life.”  I can now confirm his sentiment: I was tired in London and I was certainly tired of somebody’s life.

We did, in fact, attend the play, after grabbing some really good thin-crust pizza at a little street cafe en route to it.  My wife, a theater major, had already booked the tickets.  The play was Stranger Things: The First Shadow, at the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road.  It’s a theater with almost a century of history behind it, having opened on 24 September 1930 with the premiere of Private Lives by Noël Coward, who also appeared in the play, along with, Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier. Noël Coward had a long and repeated association with the theater, and the foyer bar was named for him on his seventieth birthday in 1969.  More recently, Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods ran at the Phoenix, as did Michael Frayn’s wildly funny Noises Off and a revival of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Name Desire.

To my own considerable surprise, I didn’t fall asleep — heck, I didn’t even feel sleepy — during the play, which lasted slightly more than three hours.  Of course, my wakefulness probably wasn’t hurt by the fact that, with all of its special effects (e.g., lightning, gunshots, crashing thunder, screams, growls, shouting, and the like), Stranger Things was even more noisy than our hotel room had been.

Here is a trio of new items that have recently appeared on the never-changing website of the Interpreter Foundation:

• Interpreter Radio: Come, Follow Me in Context: May 19-25: “That Which Is of God Is Light”: Doctrine & Covenants 49 and 50.  In the 27 April 2025 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show,  John Thompson and Martin Tanner discussed the Come, Follow Me Doctrine & Covenants lesson for 19-25 May 2025 covering Doctrine and Covenants 49 and 50.  A recording of their discussion, shorn of distracting commercial interruptions, is now available for your happiness and delight.  The other segments of the 27 April 2025 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-april-27-2025.
• Interpreter Radio Show —May 4, 2025, including Doctrine and Covenants in Context: “A Faithful, a Just, and a Wise Steward” covering D&C 51-57  For the 4 May 2025 installment of the Interpreter Radio Show, Martin Tanner, Hales Swift, and Brent Schmidt discussed the Come, Follow Me Doctrine & Covenants lesson for 26 May-1 June 1 covering Doctrine and Covenants 51-57. An edited version of their conversation is now available to you at no charge.  The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.
• Come, Follow Me — D&C Study and Teaching Helps (2025): Doctrine and Covenants 49–50: May 19 – 25: “That Which Is of God Is Light”

And, finally, lest the mood here become too optimistic and bright, I share a couple of specimens retrieved from the effectively inexhaustible Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:

• “Church donates medical technology and supplies in Philippines: ‘Just as a hospital treats physical conditions, the Church supports the spiritual needs of individuals,’ says local Church leader”
• “The Church and its members donate time, resources to support women worldwide: ‘We are committed to providing support to those who need it most,’ says Tijuana Mexico Stake Relief Society president”

Posted from London, England