everything you touch surely dies

My first full day in London was gorgeous - well, gorgeous if you're a hermit who likes Regency-type activities like walking and writing. I got almost ten hours of sleep last night, which was v. v. necessary, and awoke feeling refreshed and in a much better mood than the one I was in when I left Germany (I would spit here, but you wouldn't see it and I would have to clean it up, and besides, I'm not good at spitting). Then I took a v. nice shower and abandoned my posh hotel to wander around London for awhile.

My first stop was breakfast(ish) at Le Pain Quotidien, which appears to be London's version of SF's La Boulange, but with table service. My eggs and prosciutto were delicious, my coffee slightly less so, but it was a good place to write in my journal for an hour and try to meditate my way out of my own head and back into Thorington's (is that creepy to say?). Then I walked for approximately two and a half hours straight without any real goal in mind other than to wander around and get inspired. I strolled through Hyde Park, walked along the Serpentine and cursed the geese, delighted in seeing random British things like overblown gold-encrusted fountains and unexpected horsemen, and ended up in Mayfair. There I wandered with even less direction, admiring the very lovely doors on the ultraposh townhouses. I also did some window shopping at some of the most ridiculous fashion stores around - the only one I was tempted to go into was Marc by Marc Jacobs, which begins to look like a bargain basement compared to Louboutin, Celine, Jenny Packham, and the like, but I spared my wallet and stayed outside looking in like an urchin.

After that, I returned to my hotel in South Kensington, ready to stop walking and start writing. But first I took a nap. And then I went downstairs and had afternoon tea while starting my reread of Thorington - afternoon tea is a much healthier endeavor when one is avoiding gluten and so can only have the grilled chicken + salad. But the tea was great and the room was gorgeous (with the exception of the toddler who screamed most of the time I was there with relatively little effort made by his parents to tame him). And between that + working in my room most of the evening, I'm almost done with my readthrough. It was slower going than it should have been because I kept letting myself get distracted by technology, but c'est la vie.

And now I'm going to sleep even though I'd wanted to finish the read-through tonight - I'd rather keep resting up so I can survive the next push. All in all I'm really happy with where the story is, though - I need to make some tweaks, but nothing major, and I have high hopes that I'm very close to done (with the exception of a final scene that I still haven't written, ugh). Goodnight!