Fraters Libertas

Mind The Gap

Tonight I embark for Iceland and a weekend hockey tournament in Reykjavik, to be followed by five days in London enjoying the lovely November weather. That's right. I've decided to take a vacation from the onset of winter in Minnesota by heading off to places that have even less daylight and potentially worse weather. But it should still be a wonderful trip if for no other reason than I have complete control of the itinerary. My wife has been too busy of late to get involved with the trip planning and so I will dictate our every move in London. Buwah-hah-hah!

Can you say heavy historical emphasis?

"We've spent eight hours at the Imperial War Museum. Can't we go shopping now?"

"Shopping? London's a bad shopping town honey. If we hurry I think we can still make the HMS Belfast..."

Plenty of Churchill, Shakespeare, and Sherlock as well. Holmes is one of my favorite literary figures and like the great deductive reasoner, I have my own Moriarity.

If I have a chance I might get in a couple of quick posts whilst on the road but expect the brunt of the load to be borne by the rest of the crew for the next week or so.

Of course thoughts of my Fraters brethren will never be far from my mind no matter how far a field I may wander. In fact I've already made a list of items to bring back for each of them:

For Atomizer it's simple. Gin. But not just a bottle of the splendid spirit. He wants the closely guarded recipe to Bombay Sapphire, figuring that he could save approximately $17,000 a year if he distilled his own. I will mount a covert op to try to secure the precious formula for him. If I fail, he'll have to content himself with a bottle of Spar Gin.

Meanwhile JB Doubtless will never forgive me if I don't track down that rare UK issue of The Clash's Sandinista for him.

And Saint Paul? While I initially considered a bootleg tape of the best of BBC Parliament, I finally decided to pick up the one thing closest to his heart. Irish porn. The good stuff is very hard to come by over here and Saint Paul's small collection has become a bit "weathered" over the years.

Tally ho!