I planned it as a hit and run.  Arrive early before the tourists and Christmas shoppers and enjoy the winter sunshine before the rain clouds slipped in.  My plans were modest: buy a few books in Blackwell’s on Broad Street, coffee and cake at my favorite café, (Opera in Jericho), and a quick peek at the Bodleian.  Mission accomplished with a few nice surprises along the way.  The great library had a small display dedicated to Wilfrid Owen, presumably to mark the 100th anniversary of the armistice.  I’d never seen any of his manuscripts, so it was a thrill to see Anthem For Doomed Youth and Dulce Et Decorum Est in his neat handwriting.  In Blackwell’s, one of the world’s great bookshops, I chatted with two delightful young booksellers working to pay their way through their graduate publishing course.  I even got a table at Opera without waiting.  So far, so good.

But the sky started to darken as I headed up St. Giles’ and so did my mood.  Perhaps it was the sight of the Martyrs’ Memorial, that reminder of ancient intolerance and cruelty, or Owen’s sad and beautiful verse in his boyish hand:

What candles may be held to speed them all?/Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes/Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes./The pallor of girls brows shall be their pall;/Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,/And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Or, more likely, it was the previous day’s experience, that sudden alertness to the presence of death.  Time to leave before the rain started to fall.