Today: woke up too early (3?) and couldn't really get back to sleep - not due to a nightmare, just general anxiety/frustration over a mailing that hasn't arrived yet. Not even strawberries can calm me down, though they are nice. Out in the morning, beautiful blue sky with clouds, a waning moon the same pale white. The grass is either mowed or going to seed...roses and lilies and foxgloves and other plants I don't know are growing and the gated garden at St. James's is almost, almost done. I stood in front waiting for the bells to ring and from where I was, the sound was doubled, a quick echo - like it was answering itself...I lit a green and then a honey-glassed candle and left, the sun already pounding down, to look after Standing Man, who was a little bundle of energy all day (he only slept an hour!) but very good. Every day he seems to be picking up a word, and is more vocal now - "whoa-wuh" and other sounds.

After, I walked up to nose around HMV and Sunrise and at the latter saw some Impulse! compilations that looked good, but no, I can't buy anything, not with London plane tickets and London itself on my mind; yes, I have the tickets not literally in hand but I will soon...so Mssrs Mingus, Rollins and Coltrane will have to wait...

Indeed, London is so big that I can barely think about it in general, just in details. The museum (which one, I wonder, the Tate?) where the guide was making all the kids kneel in front of the gold-haloed paintings and told me to kneel down as well, but I didn't because I got the point; the restaurant that had the phonetics for certain Italian words I'd known since my early teens - right there on the menu, which puzzled me, and their never having heard of a Shirley Temple, which puzzled me more; feeling more at home on Parliament Hill Fields than anywhere else, defying all the people that said I shouldn't go there alone...are there still chocolate bar machines on underground platforms?

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"...the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is..."

I can't say I'm like her entirely, but oh yes, oh yes...