Sorry about the lack of posts here lately, but I'm not getting too much internet time for one reason and another, and on vacation I'm more distant from the daily news as well as from what's happening on the blogs. So what can I tell you? Well, I can tell you some of what I've been up to here in the capital city of the US of A. You're not sure you want to know about that? Yeah, course you do.
I could start with my meeting with The Dude yesterday. I roll up at his apartment at the appointed time and he's not quite ready, so I may be one of the few visitors chez Hitchens to have seen him clothed as he was. Anyway, it meant that, while he was completing his preparations for the day ahead, I got to play the piano - which is somewhat better than my piano in being a Steinway, but (temporarily) somewhat worse than mine in that some of the keys stick. Still I got through Bach's C Major prelude and a few bars of Sweet Little Sixteen, until El Hitch appeared and we got down to business. Business in this case being talking: agreeing about much, as you would probably expect, though also disagreeing about one or two things. This continued over lunch at a restaurant nearby, with Christopher's wife Carol Blue now also agreeing and disagreeing. A most enjoyable, if too brief, encounter concluded as I went off to meet my friend Geoff.
We were heading for an exhibition of Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits at the National Gallery, and how I knew about this was that Andrew Sullivan had put me on to it. I'd met Andrew for a coffee the previous day and for the same purpose: to say hello, make his acquaintance and talk. I learned, as I hadn't previously been aware, that Andrew has a background in political theory, having done his PhD on Michael Oakeshott. We also covered many of the usual subjects. On the same day I met Gene Zitver, and we discussed various matters ranging from Israel to the state of the left to the music of Emmylou Harris. And in the evening I met the journalist Alex Massie for a drink and a meal, at which a great time was had by all. Alex has a strong interest in cricket, to the point that we could even discuss the obsession with its minutiae - amongst many other lofty topics, naturally.