No More Planes, Please

Made it back home in one piece. England was suffering from massive floods in the midlands, but we mostly got unsettled weather while we were in London. The hotel was way out of town, in the Docklands of east London. The Docklands consist of skyscrapers populated by banks, built on the old port of London, a half-hour train ride away from almost anything you want to see in town. Still, we managed to see a ghost story play, Woman in Black, and the musical Billy Elliott. There were probably fifty fourteen-year-old girls at Woman in Black. When the creepy ghost showed up, they would all scream in unison, making us glad we were in the half-price-ticket rafters. Billy Elliott followed the same story line as the movie (kid in on-strike mining town wants to pursue ballet dancing). It was very good, but I suspect it won't translate well to American tastes -- even if a little Margaret Thatcher bashing should be fun for everyone. And speaking of Thatcher, Tony Blair formally handed things off to Gordon Brown while we were there. In spite of widespread discontent over Iraq, the papers there were amazed that the House of Commons gave him an unprecedented (for any PM) standing ovation.