It has been hot in London this week. Hot meaning mid 80 °F, which we would not consider really hot in the USA, but it is hot here in the land of no air conditioning. It is especially brutal in our flat, with its glass wall of windows facing west. By late afternoon the place is literally a sauna. We can cool it off (a bit) at night, but that means opening all the windows, which means that we hear every truck, emergency vehicle and drunken groups of yabbos going down Commercial Street (and I have learned there are a lot of them). I know it won’t last long and that cold showers can help, but it really is unpleasant. On the plus side, I’ve been exercising more since our gym is air-conditioned.

The Bank of England: It was so damn hot that, in order to get out of the flat, I went to the Bank of England. I actually had a purpose because Rich and Mair had given me old bank notes that could only be exchanged there (very simply as it turned out). It wasn’t that big of a deal since Threadneedle Street is nearby (guess which of the guilds were in that area). Since I was there, I went to the Museum (which was air-conditioned). It’s a museum about a bank, so even though the Bank is one of the oldest in the world, there is a bit of limit on how much fun it can be. A few highlights:

• It began in 1694, when the King needed money for yet another war with France. A loan to the Crown of £1.2M was raised in two weeks. An act of Parliament gave all subscribers a guarantee of 8% per annum interest in perpetuity. There were hundreds of subscribers, from all walks of life.
• There was lots of information about its architectural history. Sir John Soane, the great architect of the 19th century (and the proprietor of the house that is now the Soane Museum), rebuilt the Bank in neo-classical style. It was his greatest work. Unfortunately, after World War I it was decided that the Bank was not big enough and virtually all of Soane’s masterpiece was demolished.
• Kenneth Grahame worked at the Bank for many years, rising to become the Secretary. He had wanted to go to Oxford, but his parents didn’t have the money and he ended up taking the test to work for the bank and got the highest scores ever. In 1903, he was called out to meet a person asking to see him and was shot at three times (all missed). The assailant was subdued with a fire hose and later found not guilty due to insanity. A few years later, he resigned in a dispute over Bank internal politics and moved to a bucolic spot in the country. In 1908, his book, “Wind in the Willows”, was published.

Jeremy’s Little Engine That Could: The latest bizarre moment from the Labour leadership election (although it doesn’t compare to the Trotskyite stuff) happened this week when Corbyn released a picture of him sitting on the floor of a train on the way to Liverpool or somewhere, saying that he train was too crowded and making the point that the railroads should be nationalized. Kind of pointless, but it backfired because it was a Virgin train and (Sir) Richard Branson got his people on it. They produced a CCTV video showing Corbyn walking past countless open seats in order to sit on the floor. It has become a big deal in a campaign that has no real news and probably did play well with his base. Corbyn responded to this by calling Branson a “foreign tax cheat”, which may be true, but has a sort of Trumpian ring to it.

On the one hand, your reaction has to be “Who cares?” On the other hand, here you have the “Leader” of the Labour Party making a pointless demonstration that would have seemed silly thirty years ago. Should he really be concerned about making these points off of the far-left wing wish list (but which will probably excite the Corbynistas) or should he be concerned about being a credible alternative to Theresa May and the Tories, who seem likely to move increasingly to the right as there is no credible opposition? May has already appointed a woman to be the head of the Ministry in charge of international aid whose position is that Britain should not be providing such aid and has advocated the abolition of the department which she now heads. You can expect the Conservatives to say nice things about National Health while simultaneously trying to destroy it. Who is going to stop this country from veering ver rightward? Parliamentary Democracy is supposed to have two parties. That is not the case now.

“Father Brown”: Having finished watching all of the episodes of the mystery, “Vera” (a great show which may not have made it to the States), we have started to watch the “Father Brown”mysteries, based on the books by G.K. Chesterton. They are nice and gentle shows and Father Brown is played by the same actor who played Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter movies.

The Old Neighborhood: I am constantly learning things about this neighborhood. The history is fun. Bishopsgate Road is the road that you get on when you leave Liverpool Street Station to get to our flat. It originally emerged through the London Wall, built by the Romans to protect Londonium, at Bishop’s Gate. The gate was one of seven in the Wall and was marked with a bishop’s miter (and the usual heads of traitors and noted criminals presumably not notorious enough to make the spikes on London Bridge). The road led to Shoreditch and beyond and was a major thoroughfare. Shakespeare undoubtedly walked along it to get to “The Theatre” on Curtain Road in Shoreditch. It was run by James Burbage and housed the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a troupe that employed Shakespeare as an actor and playwright. When Burbage had a dispute with the landlord, The Theatre was dismantled and it wood shipped to Bankside where it was used to build The Globe.

Right near where Liverpool Street Station is today was the original sight of “Bedlam”, the asylum for the insane which coined the word. It became the first psychiatric clinic in the world, after opening in 1257. Located just outside the Wall (which makes sense), it was originally St. Bethlehem Hospital, a general hospital that became a psychiatric hospital in the 1400s. In typical fashion, Bethlehem was gradually shortened to St. Bedlem Hospital and then finally nicknamed Bedlam. In the late 1600s, Beldam was move to a new location in Moorfields.

If you walk away from the old Bedlam site down toward where the old gate was, you come to St. Ethelburga’s Within Church. (Within means that it was within the city wall, as opposed to St. Botolph’s Without Church, which is a few blocks up the street.) It was constructed in 1250 and rebuilt in the early 1400s. Henry Hudson and his crew took communion there before leaving to seek the Northwest Passage. It survived the Great Fire of 1666 and the German Blitz of World War II, but in 1993, half of it was demolished by an IRA truck bomb that exploded on Bishopsgate and at the church’s doorsteps. (The IRA had given enough warning so that the only person killed was journalist, but there was massive property damage.) It was rebuilt as a Center of Reconciliation and Peace and has a lovely, hidden courtyard.