I arrived in London completely exhausted. I deliberately selected a routing to South Africa that gave me a 13-hour layover in London, but I failed to anticipate how the timing was going to mess with my body. My flight landed in London at 7AM GMT, which is 1AM EDT—the time that I would normally be going to sleep. The result was that I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight over, but as soon as we landed I was totally exhausted and ready for bed. Nevertheless, I was determined to take advantage of my limited time in London (I’ve been twice before–both times when I was much younger, on family vacations) and see the sights.

I wandered, in a haze, through the British Museum’s remarkable collection of artifacts.

I browsed contemporary art at the Tate Modern, at which point the combination of my bodily exhaustion and the art made me feel like I was on a psilocybin trip.

And when I couldn’t handle that anymore, I wandered out into the city, determined to stay awake until my flight boarded, which would put me more-or-less on the right time zone for when I landed in Johannesburg the next morning. This helped keep me awake, though the sense of hallucination did not entirely subside.

At Trafalgar Square, I paused to remember a song that I once heard John Roberts sing about Admiral Nelson:

Sing me a shanty,
Canta del cabo San Vicente,
Chantez des marins du Nile,
Sing a hymn of Trafalgar.

By evening I was barely standing, but I managed to make it back to Heathrow, catch my 8PM flight, and fall asleep almost immediately.