Trippin' in the UK
Prologue:
I'm no world traveler by any stretch. I prefer staying at home for my vacations. I get lots of stuff done when I'm home for the week. Home projects, art projects, doctors' appointments, car repairs. You know, the stuff you can't do if you work full-time and live alone. Even flying to my hometown in California is a hassle, since that's a week taken from me to do projects, and I have to hire a sitter for my cat.

For many years I've been something of an anglophile. This doesn't come from my family. Our heritage is European Mutt at best, and I honestly don't know when any of my ancestors first came to the U.S. Plus some family members, for some reason, think we're Irish, except that we're not. I was the only one in my immediate family who had any affinity for Monty Python (the only English show, besides Dr. Who, I recall ever seeing in my youth). My mother was good friends with a local woman possessing a divinely Julie Andrews-ish accent. Two of her kids were close to my age, but I didn't enjoy playing with them, because they were brats. In fact, all four of them were such *ahem* handfuls that their mother was in a perpetual state of rage. Years later we took to affectionately referring to her as the British Bitch. That is, after her kids had grown enough to allow her to calm down and accept the nickname for the joke it was. But unpleasant demeanor or not, I loved her accent and wanted nothing more than for her to talk about her country with me. This did not occur until years later, though, since when visiting, Mother was her companion, period, and kids were meant to be playing elsewhere, not conversing with stressed-out adults.

Switch to the present. In spite of having visited Tijuana against my will as a child, I maintained the conviction that I had never left the U.S. A few years ago I joined a company that not only provides 24/7, T1 or Greater Internet access to its employees, but not being online is contradictory to our work. I used to prowl the generic Buffy chatrooms, only to find them crawling with teenagers locked in perpetual catfights and cock-a-walks. Spammers (bored morons who used cut 'n' paste to flood the screen with their posts) were ubiquitous, and the room's topic was rarely ever in sight. Sometimes private message sessions were more enjoyable, although not typically. In my case, another fellow chatter fed up with the nonsense reigning supreme invited me to join an online club devoted to Buffy. In general I'm reluctant to join clubs devoted to anything specific, since I regard myself as a lazy fan of most things, or would like to be one, anyway. But I joined because he asked me to. No harm done.

The club turned out to be useful to my well-being. For many years I'd been deprived of Things English, having only the occasional PBS showing of ancient britcoms like Are You Being Served? and Waiting for God to feed my need for the UK. Someday I'd go there, I told myself. That or Canada. One of those two countries would be the first one I visit. I knew how to spell things UK style. I knew the slang. By gum, I even almost spoke the language. But with no permanent companion, I'd have to go alone, and even I would prefer not visiting a strange country solo. Tour groups were out of the question. I frown heavily on "If it's Tuesday, we must be in Salisbury" itineraries.

Meanwhile I kept visiting the club. As it turned out, the club had been founded by residents of the UK and was mostly joined by their countrypeople. I became the token Yank and was proud of this. At least one other American joined, but as far as I knew, I was the first. Whether they liked it or not, I had no choice but to bring an American perspective to the club, and to Buffy viewings, since US viewers always see the episodes before the UK. Their television, I learned, is broken down into the BBC, or "terrestrial," and Sky, i.e., cable. Sky, I've been told repeatedly, is superior to the Beeb.

Occasionally some anti-American comments cropped up in posts, which I took with a few grains of salt. I'm no jingoist. Eventually the comments of one reached a point where I threatened to quit, leading to much pleading on bended knee from more than just the instigator. Wow. Somebody actually wanted me around. This was a new experience for me. But without getting awash in sentiment, I'll just say that I was convinced to stay.

THE TRIP:
Now for the visiting the UK part. Every year these blokes converge on some central location within the UK and celebrate Buffy. I know, it sounds lame, but England is a small country, so they can take train rides to wherever, and it's once a year. It's not so much a convention as a reason to hang out in person and get drunk. Well, they get drunk. I don't drink. I missed the first year's gathering due to lack of funds and general uncertainty. I wasn't keen on flying out to some event that might turn out to be... well, boring. Apparently it was not, based on the posts of those returning to their respective homes.

The following year I was in a better position, financially, to afford a trip to another country. Another country! What the hell was I doing? Going to another country to see a bunch of people because of a TV show, and there weren't even going to be any celebrity guests. I won't even drive 2 hours to Springfield to the United Fan Con if the guests don't interest me, and I know the people organizing that convention. But eventually deadlines were approaching (for the meeting, for hotel reservations, for plane tickets), so I had to decide. Okay, I'll do it. Oh, crap.

A friend of 17+ years agreed to accompany me. Why not? He'll do almost anything once, he said. What an adventure. Great. Now to find hotels in the area. I can use the Internet! Trouble is, the best sites I could find for finding hotels assumed a great deal of its searchers. Namely, a great deal of familiarity with London, of which I have none. I didn't know how big it was, where anything was, or what areas were bad. Bad as in don't go out at night without weapons. Travel books were equally difficult to use, and why the &%$# did all the hotels cost so damn much? What did they mean, "en-suite facilities available?" Is anything close to anything? Can they take reservations online?

Eventually that stuff was taken care of. Our itinerary became this: London from Sunday to Wednesday. Cambridge from Wednesday to Friday, and Birmingham from Friday to Saturday night, since we had to take the latest train back to London in order to make our flight from Heathrow on Sunday. Oh, what fun. Of course Saturday night was going to be the high point of the Buffy club's gathering, but that's the life of the world traveler.

My traveling companion had to first fly in from California, sleep at my place, then it was shuttle to Logan the next (very early) morning. His flight had been delayed so badly that he'd missed his connecting flight, and the airline folks refused to confirm if he was on the next flight coming in. Aren't "federal regulations" special? Fortunately our flight to Heathrow was uneventful. The planes had individual viewers for every coach passenger, so we had our choice of something like 12 channels to watch. That's probably more than BBC viewers get. For reasons beyond my deductive powers, one of the films available was The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. For those of you unfamiliar with this film, he played a veteran of the French-Indian War just prior to the American Revolution. English types were portrayed as unspeakably amoral and cruel baby-killers and cannibals. Okay, the cannibalism was offscreen, but the English were bad people. Counting Braveheart in Gibson's canon, one could assume that he's not an anglophile. I suppose for this reason, I was NOT worked up into an anti-British froth, ready to coldcock anyone who dared drop their R's within my hearing range. Good form, British Airways.

At Heathrow, it became clear straight off that transportation was not going to be a problem. It's called the Tube, aka the Underground, or as we'd call it here, the "T" or Subway. For about $5, the Tube took us to the nearest station. From there we walked to the hotel, which was described as being very close to the British Museum. For whatever reason, we didn't see any of the ubiquitous black cabs which could have taken us there straight off.

Accommodations, such as they are
Sightings so far of actual British people: 0. Sort of like trying to find an American in New York. But I digress. We stumbled into the hotel, which was not run by British people, and were directed to the third floor. The numbering system of their rooms made no sense at all. We made it to the third floor (no lift, only stairs), my friend carrying my monstrously bulky duffel bag, and discovered that our double room had one bed. Not for two platonic friends, we wouldn't. So Culture Shock #1 was that a double room, to Brits, means a room with one double bed. We cleared up the cultural misconception after a few minutes, and a new room was found. This was on the second floor. We had two beds, a shower but no toilet, a nonworking TV, and the fragrance of old cigarettes. The toilet was down the hall. Is this what they meant by "ensuite facilities available?" Culture Shock #2 - no guarantee of both a shower and a toilet in the same room. Some rooms have nothing at all. Even crack dens in the US all have toilets and showers in every room!

With no toiletries in the shower, and none of our own packed, it was up to me and my friend to track down some shampoo. We wandered the streets of London aimlessly, looking for any open place at 10 p.m., and found a convenience store full of toiletries galore and pot noodles. Helpful Hint: they taste about as good as our Cup O' Noodles. We slept in the cold, smoky room, serenaded by traffic noises, and planned to spend the next day in the British Museum. The next morning he'd gotten up early enough to have the hotel's breakfast of eggs, bangers, and cereal, but I don't eat breakfast cereal. So it was off to a cyber café and a burger to satisfy me. And what's with the paper packets for condiments? One of mine was leaking as a result. Why was our server French? I thought they hated the English. She moved to another country to become a waitress?

The restrooms, and every facility so far that I'd seen, were extremely unfriendly to the handicapped. First it was necessary to go up steps to reach the restrooms - sorry, toilets. Once there the room was almost smaller than a closet, and there was only one toilet. I should point out that, while not actually disabled myself, I suppose I've become unusually cognizant of how accommodating the US is just from general observation. Since this was a cyber café, it behooved us to go online and send emails and check our favorite online comic strips, and so on. Ten minutes for a pound. Well, two minutes of actually trying to get online, plus another minute or two to get used to the different layout of the keyboard. The letters were all there, but in different places. Hm, well, on to the British Museum! It was right across the street and was probably the only place open on Sunday. We hoped.

The British Museum
It's a bit bigger than we expected. I also had no idea what sort of museum it was. Those looking for an art gallery had best go to... well, whichever museum has art. This is for mummies! Ancient rusted armor, pieces of shipwrecks, cursed skulls, plundered stone and statuary from the Parthenon and THE original mausoleum of Mausola, sarcophagi just sitting in the middle of rooms, 40-foot high stone guardians to whole cities, and mummies. A whole room devoted to 'em. Even mummy cats, which look more like table legs than former felines. The biggest surprise came after seeing a crowd gathered around a glass case. In the US, the original copy of the Constitution might have warranted such a crowd, but this was even better. "THE Rosetta Stone??" I said. "Of course," said my friend. "This is the British Museum!" There was a brief time when the burger of that morning... um, affected me. Chase music played as we raced against time to find a toilet. Helpful Hint: definitely plan an entire day around visiting this place. Everywhere you look, there's a new, unexplored room.

London, Town About Town
Monday. A work day! Heh, we'd forgotten about that. Commutin' time. Well, the Tube wasn't TOO bad. Rush hour had ended by the time we climbed aboard, making sure to mind the gap. We were one station away from King's Cross, where presumably Harry Potter waited at platform 9½ to begin his adventures. Unfortunately the escalator was being repaired, so our train wouldn't stop there, meaning we missed our destiny to become great wizards. Instead we wandered around until stumbling upon the Charles Dickens' House, a type of museum with which I've become familiar. New England is full of historic houses converted into museums. This one was apparently Dickens' penultimate house and the one where he wrote David Copperfield, his personal favorite. I'm partial to A Christmas Carol, myself. And wouldn't you know that The History Channel aired an episode of Haunted History devoted to London, and listed that house as haunted. Did we see a thing? Of course not. I dare Dickens' ghost to come to MY house. Hear me, Chuck?? I dare you!

Sightings so far of actual British people: still 0. Talk about an international city. Or maybe the guy running the museum was, but I don't recall. Since our time in London was limited, we had to pick our stops wisely. Since my friend refuses at all times to have an opinion or a plan for anything, I had to make all choices, including where we ate. In fact the only place where he expressed an interest was the sort of greasy spoon that even greasy spoon lovers avoid. He wanted "real" fish 'n' chips, which was fine, but not at that place. So I picked our stops for the half-week. A bus tour of the city. The Tower of London. The Natural History Museum, which is housed along with the Earth Museum, but we skipped the geodes and volcanoes in favor of dinosaurs and other preserved animal parts. I also very much wanted to shop, but was both worried about whatever customs does to returning natives, and my friend had no desire to buy anything at all. Not that he hates shopping, but he's completely indifferent to it. I mean, it's not like we were in another country or anything. What could possibly be there to buy?

The Tower of London
Yet another site spotlighted in Haunted History's special, we saw no ghosts and felt no unearthly presences. The huge crowds prevented us from viewing the Domesday Book, which is not a book about DOOMsday, but was the UK's first official census book. Exciting. I was more intrigued by the excavated hole under some stairs, visible on the way up to the White Tower's entrance, where the bones of two boys had been discovered centuries earlier. Were they the bones of England's murdered boy princes? Did their uncle do it? Well, forensics weren't as advanced as they are now. My friend just wanted to see the ravens. By the way, if all the ravens leave the Tower, England's monarchy will crumble. Just something to keep in mind, no other reason to mention it, hm hm-hmmm. Failing to find a model of the Tower in the packed gift shop, I found a paper kit of a mechanized executioner chopping off the head of a nobelman. Just turn the crank and watch that head drop. A truly whimsical toy that many English children have no doubt found under the Christmas tree.

The Ripper Walk
This turned out to be my favorite stop. Tuesday night was devoted to Jack the Ripper. Fortunately both of us had a fondness for Alan Moore's "From Hell," and of Alan Moore in general. Of the many pamphlets available in our hotel, 3 of them were devoted to different people giving tours about Jack the Ripper. Each one, pardon the pun, ripped into the other tours, whining about how the others were all deficient compared to THIS tour. We picked the one that boasted pictures of the victims. Or rather, I picked that one. We took the Tube to the middle of the East End and, with no tour guide yet in sight, we decided to wander around the East End, by ourselves, at night. Not something I'd do if alone, mind you. Eventually the guide appeared, as did more people. Apparently other hotels had similar flyers. He collected our tenners and began his spiel with a genuine East End accent. At last, a real English person! Okay, by now we'd been seeing some natives, but not as many as I'd expected. Why was this my favorite stop? Well, I've got an affinity for living history, for lack of a better term. If I didn't, I wouldn't go on house tours or walk around Walden Pond to relive Thoreau's old stomping grounds. Anyway, the tours are more than just retellings of the murders, but a history of the East End itself. Life in London's slums is recounted in disturbing detail. You almost get the sense the Ripper was doing those women a favor, their individual lives were so ludicrously abysmal and desperate. Some affable locals shouted at us at one point to join them later at the Jack the Ripper Pub, and by golly, we did. Part of the tour consisted of a stop at the Ten Bells, commonly referred to as the Jack the Ripper Pub, since all of his victims gathered there sometimes. If they really did know each other and conspire to blackmail the Prince of Wales, Victoria's son, is still up in the air. Or they just happened to all drink there like most everyone else in Whitechapel. Ripper souvenirs packed the walls at the pub, and yours truly is a sucker for museum gift shops of every kind. I bought a map showing the East End of 1888, with biographies of the victims and suspects on the other side. The tour ended with us being left to fend for ourselves in the middle of the East End. Okay, a Tube was nearby, but at least one of the competing flyers boasted that it was classier than "some" other tours that take us to pubs and leave us stranded. But hey, adventure is what we were all about. I just wish I could figure out why I was feeling so funky that night.

Strange and Exotic Diseases
This was prior to the reemergence of Mad Cow Disease in Jolly Olde England, but for all I know, the two burgers I ate infected me, and 8-10 years from now, my brain will be paste. A vegetarian described this possibility to me with barely disguised amusement in his voice. He thinks I'll be just fine. I wish I had his positive outlook. No, it was the common flu that reared its ugly head upon me. I spent Tuesday night shivering in my bed. The room was no colder than it had ever been, which meant one thing: a fever. The next morning I woke up weak and nauseous. As the English say, Lovely. This was the morning to check out, and it being early enough, I elected to stay in bed until checkout time, while my friend planned to return to Trafalgar Square to see a very, very, very strange statue. It's a Dali-esque little number depicting a giant hand holding a whale and a book. Or perhaps the hand is a tree. Anyway, he wanted a closer look at it. The clerks confirmed that checkout time was 11 a.m., not noon. Bugger. I insisted on a cab to Victoria Station rather than dragging our luggage to the station, since the flu has an amusingly draining effect on one's strength and stamina. Fortunately black cabs are as common in London as cockroaches are in Hawaii.

Beautiful Downtown Cambridge
At Victoria Station, I tottered uncertainly until the train to Cambridge arrived. No seats available, you see. The train had seats, though. Why were we going to Cambridge, aka a college town? Well, the bloke who first introduced me to the Buffy club a few years before lived there, and figured that we should stop by, being in the neighborhood and all. We arrived at the B&B, which appeared to be run by one guy who lived in the back. Others seemed to live back there, too, but we never saw them helping out. Our room, astoundingly enough, had both a toilet and shower. It was just after 3 p.m., and I was sick and hungry. Time to rest in front of the Beeb, then search for food. It was about 4:30 when we set out for a Chinese restaurant up the street. A McDonald's sat across the street. Those, too, are as common in all England as the Hawaiian cockroaches mentioned earlier. The restaurant was closed, not to reopen until 5:30. Another restaurant nearby wouldn't open until 7. Whatwhatwhat-? Culture Shock #3: Food is not as easily available over there as in the US. And I could eat Chinese every day, every meal, yet hadn't found a single such restaurant until now, and IT WAS CLOSED! No matter how hungry I am, I will NOT go to a McDonald's. My rule while there was: No restaurants that could be found in the US. Unfortunately that severely limited our choices. London was full of Mickey D's, Burger Kings, and even that "American Restaurant TGI Friday's." Nowhere that Rumple of the Bailey would frequent. Returning to the B&B with no food in our bellies, I used the payphone to ring my friend's cellphone. He answered and couldn't hear anything I said. Well, when was I supposed to put in the money?? The clerk explained that first you dial, THEN you put in the money when the person answers. So timing is everything there. The new plan: he'd meet us there and get us a cab to beautiful downtown Cambridge, aka a shopping center. I still wanted Chinese, so we had Italian. And what's with the malls closing at 7? It wasn't Sunday. Even shops in London closed then. More culture shock, I tell you. My friend then led us on a quick jaunt to a local pool hall, which turned out to be less quick of a jaunt than he remembered. For some reason my occasional announcements that I had the flu fell on deaf ears. By the way, I'm convinced that all of England's homeless people are in Cambridge. And not very docile ones, either. The competition must be fierce, since they shouted at us frequently for attention. Now that I think of it, London did have some homeless folks, to whom I always tossed a pound. That's the beauty of international money. Although the pound is stronger than the dollar, it's not really "our" money, so it never seemed quite real to me. Almost like Monopoly money or something. It took me all week as it was, anyway, just to recognize which coin was which denomination.

Back to Cambridge. My attempts to defend American honor by trouncing my friend at pool failed, and I apologize for that. I've been trying for years to be a pool shark, but have never made it past sucking at the game. And he doesn't drink, either, so I never was able to use alcohol to my advantage. Later on his dad picked us all up.

The next day we rode to beautiful downtown Cambridge - no, it really was this time! - and shopped for guitar picks, kazoos and art supplies. Well, you know, local boy, in town to do local errands. I'd probably do the same. By the way, still sick. Yep. We met up with a dour friend of his, a Goth gal who mumbled and never smiled. It turned out that that happened to be her dominant personality at the time. Er... well, enough about that. We took the tours of King's College Chapel, an incredibly exquisite cathedral where no photography is allowed, and yet more dead people buried under our feet. This was a quaint European custom previoulsy unknown to me. You see, with burial space being limited, many folks were buried right in the floors of churches and cathedrals. Most of them were marked, so if, like me, you have any issues with walking on graves, they can be sidestepped. Goth Chick was kind enough to point them out to me as the occasion arose. The tower of St. Mary's was another stop. I'm not sure if this was THE St. Mary's whose bells Bing Crosby made a movie about, but the tower was famous. Seven stories culminating in a panoramic view of Cambridge, which I took advantage of. By the way, did my friend bring a camera, too? No. It was only a trip TO ANOTHER SMEGGIN' COUNTRY, after all. Since I was sick, making it to the top was a double challenge, since I'm also a tad out of shape. From there it was a bus tour of Cambridge, where I took lots of photos that I never labeled and so can't quite remember what they were. Actually, the same thing happened during the bus tour of London. Ah, well. That night we were treated to a Sunday roast on Thursday, compliments of Mum. It was that night that I learned that all mums are the same all over the world. She's a teaching assistant, and as such has come to the conclusion that "Kids today know only two words, and they're not afraid to use 'em!" Read that with a middle class accent for the full effect. She also taught me that the English schools aren't much better than American ones, so there. Well, that and reading some of the posts in the Buffy club, abysmal grammar and spelling and all. By the way, Sunday roast for this family means roast beef or pork, Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes, peas, and a big glass of Coke. At the time Mum was very much into Coca Cola, and seemed to stock nothing other than that beverage. Unfortunately my appetite had suffered serious damage from my flu, and I could not complete the lovely meal.

Beautful Downtown Birmingham
We took a separate train than Cambridge Boy did, who was also attending the Buffy gathering, since for some reason he felt that leaving at 8 a.m. was a good idea. We took a later train, and even later than expected, since our train was cancelled. So we waited for two hours instead of one. Apparently this is common for rail commuters. The train was unusually cramped for non rush-hour traffic, with Liverpool as the ultimate destination. Liverpool? Hm, even Liverpudlians hope for escape, but hey. We cabbed our way to the hotel and passed some blokes in the lobby. Some gave me a look of hopeful recognition, as in "Wonder if that's one of ours," i.e. a Buffy clubmember. I wondered the same, but didn't care. I was still sick, dammit, and wanted to find our room. I am pleased to report that the accommodations were the first we'd seen that compared to US hotels. We had both a toilet and shower AND room to move around. The TV even got Sky, where we were finally able to see for ourselves that even English cable TV had little to offer. My friend was quite satisfied with the animal documentaries, though. He just loves those BBC narrators and read so many public signs in a fake BBC announcer-style accent that I wanted to smack him upside the head most of the time.

After chillin' in the room, which had a lovely view of St. Chad's Church across the street, we headed back down to the lobby, where the same people as before sat. Now my Cambridgian... Cambridgious.. Cambridge Boy was there, too, so apparently this really was the Buffy gang. A gal whose face was vaguely familiar, thanks to the club's photo gallery, wandered in. Apparently she'd been at the train station, waiting for people like us to arrive so she could ferry them to the hotel. Ah, well. She recognized me thanks to a self-caricature I'd posted in the gallery. By now I'd established an anti-hugging rep amongst them and figured I'd not disappoint them. Handshakes all around. Up to the hotel bar to sit around and make a lot of noise. I returned to my room and retrieved the coveted Twinkies that for reasons unknown to me, they craved. They're not available in the UK, so apparently Twinkies have developed some kind of reputation for tasting good. That or maybe they'd been mentioned on Buffy, so they wanted to bond with the characters this way. The other token Yank in the club reached for one, too, and I reacted strongly to this. "UK residents ONLY!" I announced to the crowd. I was just trying to be fair. C'mon, the chick works at a "Mart" store back home. She has access to cases of the things, fergawdssake. Our hostess (aka one of the club's "founders") announced fish 'n' chips, and nothing else, apparently, available in the hotel dining room. I'd spent a smegging week in this place and had yet to have even one lo mein noodle, and dammit, I was going to have Chinese! Besides, my traveling companion had already had his damned fish 'n' chips, and I was still lo mein-less. Yet only 3 others agreed to make the cab trip. My friend, of course, plus Cambridge Boy, and a new gal who enjoyed experimenting with body jewelry and her hair. We found a real Chinese restaurant. I mean real as in family-style dining, and shark fin soup, eels, squid, monkey eyeballs - REAL Chinese food. So I ordered chicken. Our new pal read our auras and proclaimed that mine is purple, meaning my mind and body are out of synch, and I'm probably in pain, too. Since this was an accurate assessment, I've since called myself The Purple One. Cambridge Boy is Mormon, so of course regards all that as stuff and nonsense. I say if someone's right about me, then they're right about me.

The brits celebrated Buffy by getting pissed (i.e., wasted, smashed, blotto, ripped...) in the hostess' room. Goth Chick, who'd come from Cambridge, too, was trying to sleep in the room, in spite of every available space being taken up by sots. The party even spilled into the bathroom, where some flopped around in the tub and ate the cinnamon Tic Tacs I'd brought along. Oh, they begged me for those, too. Cinnamon Tic Tacs. Cambridge Boy begged me for fruit roll-ups. What is it with these people? Eventually I wandered back to the room, where my friend had been watching an animal documentary the whole time.

I got up with barely enough time to get dressed and eat breakfast. People should eat breakfast at a decent hour, like 10, instead of this 6 - 8 a.m. nonsense. Our hostess made it her business to table hop in order to meet everyone. I was thanked for flying out, although this whole Buffy thing was just an excuse to tour England. In fact, I need to go back there to do the stuff I missed last time. No Cambridge this time! Pure London and Hamley's and its seven floors of toys! Toys!!

I forgot where I was. Right! Birmingham. The Buffy gathering began. Mainly it consisted of dailies from the show and other clips. I brought the season premieres of Buffy and Angel, which even the cable folks hadn't seen yet. There was also an auction for a breast cancer charity, and I spent much of the day pining over two absolutely stunning busts of two Buffy villains. Building resin and vinyl kits is a hobby of mine, and these kits were flawless. No bubbles, no seams. Perfection. And still I was worried about customs. Do they tear apart everyone's bags? Are things like this considered no-nos? And what about the joy of adding these heavy items to my bag? And what was I really spending on them after converting pounds to dollars?

I lost my place again. Oh, right. Later on some brave souls performed a Buffy parody I'd written, scripts in hand, with me playing a Buffy who'd really let herself go over the summer. Then there was a trivia quiz, which I had nothing to do with, since I can barely remember the plots of episodes, let alone minutiae. A break, then a costume party and dance, or fancy dress, as they're called there. And we? We had to bail out that night and take the last train to Clarksville, aka London. Our hostess caught us before we could escape, though, and I obliged her with a farewell hug. Once again the ride took longer than expected thanks to recent speed regulations introduced after a nasty wreck. We arrived at the station after closing time, so we walked all the way through the station, got cab vouchers, then walked all the way back to the platforms to catch said cabs. We checked into the same smelly hotel with no lift as before, went to the third floor for real this time, and crashed. I slept through the guy who woke my friend. The sot had forgotten his room key and figured he'd sleep in ours rather than get the spare from the clerk. We were charged slightly less for the room because of the shorter stay, and it was off to jolly olde Heathrow in the morning, where the return flight was so long that I was able to watch "Gladiator." TWICE. Flipping back and forth between that and "Shanghai Noon" the second time. This time I had to act. I'd seen the little model airplane in the catalogue on the way over, so had to get it on the way back. My own little British Airways 747! Yay! Back at Logan, my friend braced himself for the equally long flight to the west coast, reminding me that, by the time he got home, he'll have been awake some 33 hours. Meanwhile, it was snowing outside. Snowing! In October! Well, I always had complained about California's predictable weather. Careful what you wish for.

Would I go back to Jolly Olde Englande? Of course. Hopefully this can happen again this year, provided no more of my appliances die out on me and the house in general doesn't fall apart and stock prices don't keep plummeting. Small country but lots of stuff to see. I mean, there's a Legoland at Windsor. Screw the castle - I want to see the bricks! And the seven stories of toys. SEVEN STORIES OF TOYS