Less than a week after I returned home from London in March 2020, the covid travel restrictions hit. It had been strange to see my fellow readers in the National Archives slinking around, warily keeping their distance from one another. Women in the public restroom peered over their masks with glazed eyes, as they washed their hands with a Lady Macbeth-like obsession. We were all silently singing “Happy birthday to you” as we scrubbed, not rinsing off the soap until we had finished the song in our heads. Such a simple ditty could mean the difference between life and death. In the midst of this global pandemic, we caught a lucky break by finding such an easily remembered mechanism to assure we didn’t abandon the antiseptic process before it had accomplished its mission of killing the germs. Or flattening the curve. Or whatever the greater good there was to be gotten by walking around all winter with chapped hands. 

Two years later, with the travel restrictions lifted by the governments of the USA and the UK and the mask requirement sloughed off by the airline industry, I returned to England. The day after I arrived, Boris Johnson announced his resignation as Prime Minister. It was a politically charged time to be there.

But it was also mid-summer and the United Kingdom was experiencing a heatwave. When I turned on the television in the morning or evening to get the latest reports about the Tory food fight, I was more likely to hear some BBC news reader babbling about climate change.

Despite the heat, I spent my last day in England walking through my favorite neighborhoods and parks in Central London. If I hadn’t veered off the route a few times or stopped to take pictures with my phone, it would have taken a half hour to get from my hotel in Fitzrovia to St. James’s Park. 

The swans went about their business, keeping cool in the pond, projecting a sense of serenity, and looking snazzy.

Some of my American friends are surprised when they see photographs of the friendly geese that live in England. The geese I once encountered in Clear Lake, California, were more inclined to pick a fight with humans than to welcome them. But this guy in St. James’s Park seemed intent on extending a friendly greeting.

In Victoria Tower Gardens, I sat for a minute under the shade of a London Plane tree and took in the view of the boats on the River Thames near Lambeth Bridge.

From there, I continued on my way to have lunch at The Albert, a pub on Victoria Street.

After enjoying some fantastic fish and chips, I strolled along Buckingham Gate for a last look at Buckingham Palace.

I walked along the Mall to Marlborough Road, then went a short distance down St. James’s Street. Back in the late 1700’s, there had been a tavern along this stretch that I wrote about in my latest novel, and I was curious to see if the Georgian building was still there. Although that neighborhood retains much of its historical character, the structure now standing on that particular corner is definitely post-WWII.

Since I was getting tired and I had a flight to catch in the morning, I decided to take the Underground back to Fitzrovia. Green Park Station was about a third of a mile away, but I knew of a pleasant shortcut that would get me there in minutes.

London had changed in those two years that I had been away, and more changes were to come. Little of it has been for the better. It’s still an amazing treasure, but its guardians have been derelict. The downfall of Boris Johnson did not augur improvement for the UK. Instead, what has followed is the continued erosion of the great British culture, the nation’s values, and its way of life.

These are volatile times. Winds of change are beginning to batter immutable forces. As I observe these shifts, the words from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 come to mind:

1. Everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the heaven.
2. A time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot that which is planted.
3. A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break and a time to build.
4. A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time of wailing and a time of dancing.
5. A time to cast stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
6. A time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away.
7. A time to rend and a time to sew; a time to be silent and a time to speak.
8. A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.

I offer no solutions or predictions. But perhaps you can take comfort or find inspiration in this immortal line:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. — Ecclesiastes 1:9