A WEEK IN LONDON

We arrived at Luton airport (London’s fourth airport) in the early hours of Wednesday morning and made our way to Matt’s place (Amy is away in Australia), where we eventually arrived at around 4am.

The first talk in our UK tour took place that evening, Wednesday 10th, where David presented The Whole of Tanach in One Hour to Southend & Westcliff Synagogue. The audience was a little smaller (around 40), but those who attended were excited to hear that this talk was the subject of David's next book.

With a free day on Thursday, David and I did a little exploring. We made our way to the British Library where David had the exciting new experience of giving his first book to this grand establishment for their catalogue... it is now officially lodged in the archives of history. We then wandered down to the British Museum where I marvelled and David suffered from information access overload. The British Museum is currently hold a special exhibition on Hadrian. . David and I ummed and ahhed about going, but what proved to be more enticing was the advertisement for its forthcoming exhibition on Babylonia. David then realised that he had a question which the Babylonia exhibition curator perhaps help him with...and after some nonsense, was provided with the name of the curator (Irving Finkel - do a Google images search for him and you will be impressed) with whom he is now in dialogue about some chronological questions he has on the First Temple period. Thursday was nicely capped off with dinner in Golders Green (Solly's) with Matt and then drinks back near his place and more chats back at 'home'.

On Saturday night we arranged our own little reunion, meeting for drinks with Claudie Plenn, Sarah Schubert, Caroline Morley and Mark Hammond. We hadn't seen Caroline for around five years, Mark for around three...and even Sarah for a year and a half. We had a great night, hanging out in Claudie's super trendy West End club, The Hospital, which proved a very amenable environment.

Sunday night we were in West London, wHere David gave The Whole of Jewish History in One Hour to Ealing Synagogue. We had a great audience (more than 100) and a very enthusiastic response...fortunately, we also sold quite a few books.

The following afternoon we were in Highgate again to give The Whole of Jewish History in One Hour to WIZO Daphna. A small but warm crowd greeted us...and also bought more books!

Meanwhile, throughout this trip David's threatening dental problems had taken a turn for the worse. The situation became so bad that on Tuesday morning, several hours in advance of our flight to New York, David visited a dentist who pulled out his troublesome tooth. And so, with the throbbing pain of a difficult tooth extraction, he made his way to meet me at Heathrow, ready start the next leg of our tour...one tooth down.