One more London trip. I was supposed to leave at 6:17 for the ten minute leg to Manchester Picadilly where I would get the London train. I took the 5:43 so I wouldn't miss my connection if the local trains were canceled or delayed. Which they were! Peversely, the satisfaction of having prevented greater inconvenience with foresight far outweighs the satisfaction of everything just working the way its supposed to.

Quick browse of some hipster bookstores and Brick Lane Flea Market, lunch at Wicked Fish in Spitalfields Market which I'm sorry to say did not show our local chippy in Didsbury in a very favorable light. Main event: the Dennis Severs House. DS was a transplant from California who bought a decrepit house in Spitalfields in the late seventies. Over the course of the rest of his life, he meticulously arranged it to look like the Hugenot family who lived there from the 1700s had just stepped out.

When I bought my ticket I booked a "relaxed" slot as opposed to "silent", when you can't even ask the round shouldered ear-gauged docents questions. I shared my slot with two guys in their sixties who seemed to be a local and his Dutch visitor. When our slot started a greeter came out to get us. He was wearing a dangly earring, fanny pack, and lace print jorts, and he had the grave face, deep voice, and plummy accent of a villainous butler. He gave a brief history of the house and told us the rules: no photos, don't touch anything.

At this point I have been through many houses with historical set-dressing. None of the others had real wine in the glasses, real chopped onions and cabbage in the pans in the kitchen, and certainly none used real candles for light. Many of the items hadn't been restored or recreated and were in their natural state of tatter. I hope the committment to realism did not extend to the pool of liquid in each of the chamber pots. An enormous 1990s desktop was tucked behind a screen, adding another ghostly layer. DS died in 1999, having been one of the first confirmed diagnoses of HIV in Britain. The greeter said that one of his friends still lives in the house. Every saucer and ragged silk coat was chosen by someone who must have had moments of terrible fear and loneliness, and had responded by creating something fragile and beautiful that defies time.

Coffee with former colleague B. I told her about the afternoon's agenda: visiting a former movie theatre-turned bingo parlor with exquisite Art Deco decoration of which the architecture critic Ian Nairn had said something like "Skip Westminister Abbey, but don't skip this." "But you have seen Westminster, right?" B asked. "Well Ian Nairn said I don't have to," I said. She gave me a look like she wasn't sure whether I was joking. "I mean," she said, "I do think it's worth seeing."

Let's see what merited a long stuffy ride on the Tube to, yes, Tooting! At 3pm on a Saturday, Buzz Bingo was quiet. Some aunties and uncles at the slots and chitchatting in the auditorium, I'm sure you would learn a few things about this thing called life if you spent some time eavesdropping. I asked a security guard if I could go up some stairs with ambiguous signage and he said sure. Other than that, no one paid attention to me except a lady who rattled off all the names this place had since it was built as the Granada in the thirties.

Can I say that any visitor to London is cheating themselves if they don't go to Buzz Bingo Tooting? I think if it would amuse you to say "Buzz Bingo Tooting," it's worth a look. Part of me regrets not dragging someone there with me for an evening to actually play bingo. There can't be many of these old movie palaces left in such good condition, there are certainly a lot in a sad state.

On the way over, I thought of B's nonplussed face and concluded that I couldn't properly appreciate Buzz Bingo unless I could actually compare firsthand with Westminister Abbey. To be honest, the hefty admission had given me pause. But I checked the service times, and if I went to Evensong, I wouldn't be able to walk around and see the whole building but I could see some of it and hear a good choir for free. When I went through the bag check, the guard said "It's about an hour, no photo or video" which gave the first sign that attending a service is not meant to substitute for a tourist visit. A few hundred people were herded into rows of chairs arranged in a place where it would have been very difficult to discreetly duck out if I hadn't moved my dinner plans and needed to rush off or, seeming more likely by the minute, if I started to succumb to the heat. I gawked as much as I could on the walk to my seat by Poet's Corner. No direct view of the choristers but there was a livecasting TV screen. Service was a civilized 45 minutes and there was a bit more latitude for dawdling on the way out. Based on my partial glimpse, I would now be more willing to buy a 30ish pound admission. Do you need to hear me say it? Yes it is more impressive than Buzz Bingto Tooting, but I would posit that BBT is the Westminster Abbey of repurposed movie theatres.

Leisurely dinner in J's garden punctuated by cheers from neighbors watching the Norway game. Lots of bats out, keeps away the bugs! Uber driver said it would be a slow night until the game was over.

Sunday, Columbia Road Flower Market which I'd earmarked as something to fill time before the museums openned, going to church again not something I entertained as a possibility. If I'd been up a little earlier and thus had a larger gap to fill maybe I would have enjoyed this more? It was all very pretty and full of people taking pictures of themselves eating delicious-smelling glutenous things. There was a store with a huge crate of white peaches in the window that turned out to sell diaphanous cotton dresses. I paid $4 for a prop peach which was lucious and perfect, although the 90 seconds between finishing it and finding a place to through away the pit felt endless.

To the V&A for the Schiaperelli exhibit, v. good.

It was starting to sink in that I might not be back here for a long time. Briefly considered flying visit to Hampton Court Palace, talked myself out of it. Decided to indulge in the luxury of wandering through the museum semi-aimlessly for a little while. Went to the Portrait Gallery after that, just managed to catch a 45 minute highlights tour which rounded out the afternoon nicely before ducking into St. Martins in the Fields while their choir was rehearsing, then back to Euston.

I got to the station an hour early, mostly so I could turn off the part of my brain scrambling to optimize every moment. Twist! My train was canceled. But! I was early enough to have some alternatives, which I was hoping wouldn't be too crowded since most of the other passengers on my train probably weren't at the station yet. Reversal! Lots of trains were delayed or canceled, and the "early" one I got on left even later than my original time. By now almost everyone from my original train was trying to squeeze onto this one, and there was some sharp words in the jostle for the unreserved seats. Eventually everyone got settled. Long bus ride home from Manchester Picadilly since my connecting train was long gone, but the promise of a sizeable Delay Repay refund sweetened the trip.