This was a red-letter day and nobody could possibly guess why.

I gave blood! I was probably the most excited person ever to give blood. The American Red Cross doesn't want my blood, and they haven't for over twenty years. You see, we were living in London for five months at the beginning of 1996, and in March of that year there was an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). I remember it well. On Sunday, March 17, the five of us had gone to lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe London to celebrate Gord's birthday (I think the girls picked the restaurant). We all had hamburgers, one of the very few times we had beef in London that winter. Then we walked across the street to Kensington Gardens and I remember we went to see the Peter Pan Sculpture there. The news broke the next day, Monday, March 18, the news being that they had linked a variant form of CJD in humans to BSE in cows. The worst thing was that they had to slaughter 4.5 million cows as a result and I can't imagine the toll it took on the British farmers and the beef industry.

It occurred to me last week that maybe I could donate blood in the UK, so I signed up online and made an appointment at the West End Blood Donor Centre (the British Red Cross no longer accepts blood donations). I was fully prepared to be rejected yet again. When I arrived, I filled out a detailed questionnaire, went over the red flag items (of which there were many) with one nurse, and then the head nurse came in to make the final determination. I think they were amused when I told them about not being able to give blood in the US because of Mad Cow Disease. They were more concerned about Zika and West Nile Virus, and the head nurse told me that the UK was the safest place to be from. She didn't understand why the US would reject me. I had to tell them what state I lived in. Maybe if it had been Florida, they would have denied me. I also had to tell them I had been in Italy and Spain. Spain was not a problem, but Italy would have been if I had just returned, since the West Nile Virus has made its way there.

They were all very nice, it took only about seven minutes to fill the bag, then I rehydrated and rested the requisite fifteen minutes and left. Easy. So too bad, America, someone in the UK will now benefit from my precious blood.

I decided to walk along Oxford Street and shop a bit. It's all dolled up for the holidays. Oxford Street was as busy as ever, in fact I read that it is Europe's busiest shopping street and gets 500,000 visitors a  day. That's a lot of maneuvering, but I'm a pro now. I've recently thought that if someone developed a dodge the pedestrian game, I'd probably excel at it.

I bought gloves for myself and a wallet for Gord at John Lewis and gloves for Gord at Primark. As it was rush hour on the subways, I decided to take a bus back to King's Cross. It took at least twice as long, but I had a seat and was happy. I met Gord at The Fellow, a pub we walk past every day. Our landlord recommended it in her big binder of information, saying it had traditional pub food. Well, it didn't really. We were hoping for fish and chips, but they didn't have any. The food wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either. I don't think we'll bother going back.

Today was very mild, in the 50s. It rained a bit on the walk home. I talked to my dad and he sounded amazingly good for someone who had major surgery only 36 hours before.

We leave London a month from today!

And, by the way, those two paintings I liked from David Bowie's collection sold for £23,750 and £10,250 each (their estimated value was £300-500 each).