I've seen your flag on the Marble Arch

I do not recommend US Airways for overseas travel. The company's been "restructuring" for four months now, and while domestic flights are fine, the strains show when you cross an ocean with this outfit. You have to wonder whether the cost savings from charging for headsets and drinks aren't offset by repeat business disappearing. Personally, I don't drink on airplanes, but I like watching movies on the trip home. You could use your own headphones, of course, as long as you had an adaptor. Or, like me, you could plug in your iPod headphones and experience I, Robot's glorious left-hand audio channel.

I usually don't eat dinner when I'm traveling eastward—I try to go to sleep the moment I get on the plane so I feel like I had a poor night's rather than no night's rest when I arrive. When I woke up before we landed, I was pretty hungry and looking forward to the little breakfast. Breakfast was...a doughnut.



I never much cared for London, but this time I really enjoyed it. Maybe my standards have slipped since I moved to a broke-dick place like Richmond, or maybe my taste has just improved. It's still inexcusably expensive, and in my experience, people who live there either make absolutely no money whatsoever or a pasha's ransom. There seems to be very little in between. I don't know whether a middle-class life is really possible if you want to live in the city.

The other problem is transportation. The Underground is fantastic when it's running. But at midnight it bears an uncanny resemblance to Snow White's chariot. I had to take a minicab from Brixton back to my hotel room after the band I was writing about finished their show. You're supposed to agree on a price beforehand with those guys, but I forgot to do that (all I can offer in my defense is that I'd had about four hours sleep in the past 48), so as we set off, the guy said, "This will be £25." That's nearly $50 with the weak dollar.

"The guy in the venue told me it should be £15 at most." I said.

At this point the driver slowed down and pulled the cab into a very dark and foreboding street. "How about £20?" I offered, remembering every horror story I'd ever heard about minicabs. For a second I imagined morning breaking, The Wire-style, with birds singing and my feet poking out of one of the trashcans.

I was pretty relieved that he said yes. I got real chatty with the guy, trying to make him like me so he didn't kill me on principle. "So you're from Brixton," I ventured lamely. "I'll bet you've seen a lot of changes around here." We talked a lot about neighborhoods gentrifying. He kept me nervous by asking over and over again about crime in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was a very genial and gentle mugging.



A bouncer I met my last night there told me a funny story about ejecting a famous patron that I won't retell in case he's working on his memoirs. That seems entirely possible, as I noticed that, unlike most of the editors I know, this guy used the word dilemma properly (it's a choice between two more or less equally unpleasant outcomes, not just a problem). It made me recall Bill Bryson's observation that he isn't sure whether it's impressive that Britain is a country where engine drivers know about Tintoretto and Leibniz or that it's apalling that Britain is a country where people who know about Tintoretto and Leibniz end up driving engines.