My Bed Has Curtains

No sleep
Six hour layover
Train to Palmer's Lodge
No "War Horse" today
breakfast next to Bloch store
(poor Stortos, uneaten and wilting)
extra plane food
V & A
sleep-deprived delirium
poor, poor me

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That's a poem I wrote after the 24 hour trip from Honolulu to London. Or I'm calling it a poem now...it has a nice shape to it, and an appropriately poignant ending.

We're staying at Palmer's Lodge this time around, a hostel in north London. It's no Passfield Hall. Palmer's Lodge is like going camping, where every new discovery reminds you what a nuisance it is to go camping (and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible). Bunk beds with wooden beams hammered at random diagonals, requiring you to stoop constantly or bump your head every three seconds; showers with no door or ledge; showerheads that only spray for 20 seconds. And yet, I am clean, warm, comfortable. So far, so good.

We are way, WAY up in the attic.  Room 302 is up three flights of stairs, through the bathroom, up two more flights, then down a short hallway leading to a spacious area under the roof where 12 bunks are stuffed into whichever corner they fit. Small, public, and no storage space.  That being said, it's a beautiful old Victorian house, and I can imagine this to be the servants quarters, which gives it a little charm. And even if have to be a servant, walking up and down four flights of stairs is much less painful when you have a carved bannister and a suit of armor on the landing.

It is now 4:30pm, I have finished my roast beef, and there is no energy left for anything but packing and then sleep forever.