London Encore

And here I am - just like that - back in the UK. 


 Eastwards is a tough flight from New York - not quite long enough to sleep on the overnight+wet or grey on arrival and worst of all: rush-hour traffic. But it feels genuinely good to be here and I chat with the taxi-driver about the state of the world and London. You can imagine. Radio 4 and John Humphries in the background and now part of my fabric. By contrast, New York's entrance is dramatic - the Triborough Bridge (great name for a bridge) serves up an endless skyline to the South and a brilliant contrast to everything else belching smoke or going clackity-clack. 


New York's sheer infrastructure dazzles with its neon, steel, poster giants, concrete and cement as far as the eye can see - tune in Gerschwin's Rhapsody as I pass the Lucky Strike billboard and the picture complete (though Lucky now a Discovery Channel). 


London, meanwhile, has its elevated M4 which passes 15 meters over the roofline and built in '67 as a necessity to connect the airport to Central London. Mostly the scenery dreary with the the occasional new construction taking advantage of the proximity to the airport. Glaxo-Smith-Kline, for instance, is impossibly modern and bendy whose curves emphasized by the dilapidated, post-war neighbors. 


Closer to the center, we see more glass than brick and London starts to feel cosmopolitan somehow. Since the buildings not high by NY or Big City standards, there is a human scale to the madness - it becomes easy to imagine work-places, homes and whatever. Even more cool to consider the various enthnic groups spread across the city's vast real-estate (180 languages and etc.) My best part is knowing Sonnet and the kids await my return.

Madeleine on a new house: "It would be great if we moved to Chinatown."

Photo of parliament from the London Tourist Board.