Sunday August 27, 2006

MORE FROM ROY'S ASSOCIATE. The proprietors of our hotel, the Arosfa, are a sweet older couple of indeterminate national origin, though her accent is more inflected with British than his. We asked for a wake-up call yesterday morning so that we could catch breakfast, but apparently the ringing phone wasn't enough to rouse us. This morning I struggled to consciousness at 8 a.m., in time for the breakfast, provided in a little room downstairs. The landlady, wearing a patterned housekeeper's smock, served us orange juice, coffee, toast, sausages, a fried egg, and bacon.

We spent most of the day inside the National Gallery, studying 16th- and 17th-century pictures until they all seemed to fuse into a jumble of luminous flesh and rich drapery. Art-induced exhaustion notwithstanding, we still managed to fit in the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum. I've breathed the air inside the bunker, preserved just as it was on V-E Day, where decisions upon which everything depended were made as German bombs fell all around; and I can die now that I've seen Churchill's own hearing aid.

I have an early plane to catch. If you'll indulge me, I will wrap this all up upon my return to New England.