30 August—A British posh tour packager (as opposed to a posh British tour packager) has been pestering me for a few months to sign up for an “Exclusive & Private Viewing of the Crown Jewels” in the Tower of London on 8 September. The solicitation doesn’t define “exclusive” or “private.”

It would cost me only £370 + VAT. That’s per person, of course, but it doesn’t include the cost to a foreigner like me and inconvenience of travel and lodging away from home. It must be intended for Londoners and day-trippers from the provinces. I could probably cadge a doss in or around London, but I’d hate to impose on the few remaining (i.e., living) friends I still have in Blighty. Or anywhere, for that matter.

I had visited the Tower of London back in the sixties, through the good offices of our embassy (then Eero Saarinen’s magnificent brutalist edifice in Grosvenor Square that, like the Litchfield courthouse, is now being sacrileged to a hotel) and was treated to a semi-private viewing of the Crown Jewels. For free. So why would I want to pay almost $500 in funny money, at the current exchange rate, plus another $100 or so when VAT is tacked on to it, for what hadn’t even thrilled me in my impressionable youth?

(VAT—value-added tax—is a complicated consumption tax assessed by most of the nations of the world on an ultimately arbitrary increase in value at each production stage of a good or service. A rational and simpler consumption/sales tax that replaces rather than supplements a graduated income tax is certainly the closest thing to a fair tax. And that’s precisely why we’ll never see one.)

So what exactly would I be missing at the Tower of London by not flying over next week?

“The greatest working collection of Crown Jewels in the world, priceless symbols of the British Monarchy. You will have a unique opportunity for a private viewing. You will enter the Tower after it has closed to the public for your exclusive viewing.”

Truth be told, everything has its price. Even (!?) the British Monarchy. QED. And, to me, private and exclusive mean being alone with the goodies.

“You will be met at the West Gate by a Yeoman Warder [Beefeater], who guards the Tower and the Jewels, before being taken on a short tour of the Tower. You will enter the Jewel House where you will hear the full history of these rare and unique pieces.”

Unique pieces are rare by definition. More to the point, will I be given the freedom of the Tower should I choose not to audit the lecture? I have a short span of attention and tend to nod off during lectures.

“The private view will give you ample opportunity to really study the jewels, unlike ordinary daytime tours where tourists are literally conveyor belted through.”

Big whoop and horse pucky! Really study the jewels in the super-ultra-high-security environment? I rather doubt I’d be able to study the jewels by actually handling them. And what’s to study anyway? They could all be glass and anodized alumin(i)um, for all I’d know.

“Following your private show-round you will be taken by car [of unspecified but probably flashy marque] to the Pont de La Tour [a pretentiously yclept pricey French restaurant, whose name simply means Tower Bridge] on the opposite bank [i.e., the now-fashionable South Bank, home of the hideous new U.S. Embassy] of the River for dinner. Within site of Tower Bridge, it is the perfect place to end the evening with a three-course dinner and accompanying wines.”

But will I be able to choose my own courses? What, for instance, if I want a vegetarian cultivated boeuf en croute? And diet cola,diet cream soda, and diet birch beer instead of accompanying wines?

There’s still time to reconsider. I could hop on a Concorde at Bradley and be back the same day . . .