I decided to go to the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garrett today and then to Borough Market. Instead of the underground, I took the #63 bus to Blackfriars Station, South Entrance, then walked along Bankside, past the Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe. It was mobbed with people, some sauntering, some walking three and four abreast. Now I wouldn't say I'm a particularly fast walker, but I do like to get where I'm going. As my frustration level rose, I began to wonder how it would be if everyone walked at the same pace and kept to their half of the sidewalk. And could there be a special lane for those who feel compelled to come to a dead stop? Is my impatience with trying to maneuver through the streets of these large cities (like Barcelona, Madrid, London, New York) higher precisely because I don't live in a big city? People around me don't seem to be bothered by it. Are they just used to it? Do they just not sweat the small stuff? Or are they all just more accepting of things they can't change? I guess I'll never know. But I can work on not letting it get to me, and to recognize that I don't always have to rush to be somewhere.

The Old Operating Theatre is in the attic of a former (18th century) church and the entrance is up a narrow spiral staircase, in the church's tower.

St. Thomas's Church became a hospital, and the operating theatre was opened in 1822. Florence Nightingale set up her nursing school at this site in 1959 until the hospital moved to Lambeth in 1862. It was closed up and forgotten for 100 years and rediscovered in 1956.

This was the operating theatre for women, and no they didn't transport them up the stairs. They came from the ward that was in another part of the hospital. The museum provides a social history of medicine and surgical practices before the use of anesthetics. So most of the surgeries performed here were amputations (which they could do in under a minute) and fixing compound fractures. Surgery was only done as a last resort, because this was also before antiseptic surgery was invented. Surgeons would more often wash their hands after a surgery and not necessarily beforehand. Among the many artifacts were amputation kits and other operating tools, herbs, preserved body parts. We've come a long way and I'm grateful. I would have been kicking and screaming like the man in this print.

The museum offered a "Halloween Hospital Horrors Pumpkin Pathology Trail" for children (and adults). They had six pumpkins around the attic room, each "suffering" from a different disease, and you had to study the pumpkin, read the clues, and figure out which disease belonged to which pumpkin, and which herb was used as a remedy.

I walked over to Borough Market and made a few purchases, including an olive wood pasta server and some bread and fruit. It is such a wonderful place. I've been many times on previous visits, but I've yet to try any of the many prepared dishes of which there are a large variety. Maybe Gord and I will come back some weekend and plan to eat there.

After a short stop at home, Gord and I went to the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane for the Epicurean, London's Artisanal Drink and Fine Food Festival. We walked past all kinds of wonderful looking Indian restaurants, but our tickets to this event included tastings so we thought that would be dinner. Inside we discovered that most of the tastings were of the liquid type. The food was few and far between, a chocolate maker here, a Portuguese custard there, and only small samples. In Room 3 we did find three food vendors, but their food was not included in the ticket price. We bought some kottu roti, Sri Lankan street food, from one of them before tasting the wine. We talked to a lot of people and enjoyed sampling their wines. A lot of countries were represented, from the usual suspects, Italy, France, and Spain, to Australia and Argentina, and even the Finger Lakes of New York and two wineries from India. And I can't forget the UK bubbly. We had fairly extended conversations with some of them. I can't speak for Gord, but I enjoyed it. Would I recommend it to anyone? Probably not.

We walked some more of busy Brick Lane, passing this mosque.

We'll come back for dinner some night at one of these eateries.

Read: William Makepeace Thackeray's "Going to See a Man Hanged" (1840), from London Stories