Back from London. Love London. But it did a number on my technology. Meaning after about two days, nothing worked. Phone, email, even my brand-new, much-beloved Christmas toy (no matter what Apple claims about speed, power and potential as a tool for world-domination, the iPad mini is a toy) were pretty useless. I’m catching up on work and email finally, but still just a tad overwhelmed. So this is two-fer post. Pix and a list.
And my first list of the year is…
Ten Things London Does So Well That the Rest of the World Should Just Give Up
1. Bookshops. Hatchards. Blackwells. Charing Cross Road and Cecil Court. Even Waterstones. Foyles. They always have every Harry Potter, several versions of Pride and Prejudice, and at least one copy of Elephant and Piggie.
I can’t find Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian anywhere in Ireland, and often can’t find it in the US, despite the fact that it won the National Book Award. But here it is:
At Hatchards.
And at Foyles.
2. Dead writers. I would just say “writers”, but considering that would imply that I think Sherman Alexie and Mo Willems should quit, I wouldn’t dare. But, oh, the literary figures that have passed through here. Chaucer, Byron, Austen, Shakespeare, Amis, Waugh, Woolf…
I’ve never understood those fans of “Call me Ishmael.” Really? Huh uh. Nope. The best opening line in literature, hands down:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Followed closely by:
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
3. Museums. I gotta say, I miss the creaky floors and dusty displays at the Natural History Museum, which has become very slick and contemporary, and I had a cranky, old fogey moment remembering when you used to be able to almost climb on the Rosetta Stone. But the British Museum is still unrivaled (and, I think, possessed of an institutional sense of humor).
The Tate. The Victoria and Albert. My very very fave museum in the world, the National Portrait Gallery. The Royal Academy. Apparently there’s even a museum attached to Scotland Yard that spotlights murder weapons. Used ones.
4. Old living next to New.
Okay, so apparently Prince Charles calls the modern addition to the National Gallery “a monstrous carbuncle”, but he’s notoriously curmudgeonly about New moving in next to Old. In general, London seems to work on the principle that, like a shark, a city that doesn’t move forward dies. Sure, Buckingham Palace ticked off a few curmudgeons when it was built. But look who lives there now.
5. The Queen. In general, I’m a lot more of a socialist than a monarchist. Like, had I been French in the 1780s, I would never have advocated dispatching the aristocracy with such violent glee, but I would have been delighted to have seen them all shipped off to the Sahara somewhere. Elizabeth II is another matter. Love her. The corgis help. Seen this? Seems perhaps Her Majesty has a sense of humor, too.
6. Taxis. Not only are they terrifically cool to look at, they are generally terrific. In order to get a London taxi license, drivers have to pass extensive tests. They have to know the city streets so well–and that’s hundreds of small, large, one-way, multi-way, twisty, sometimes similarly-named streets–that a British university neuroscientist actually claims London cabbies’ brains grow with their knowledge. Whatever–they get you there, usually with humor and charm. And the occasional very apt comment about the American political system (“Bit like a donkey with two arses and no head, innit?”)
7. Ferris Wheels.
8. Place names. Piccadilly Circus. Bleeding Heart Yard. Pall Mall. Tottenham Court Road. Chiswick. Marylebone. Maida Vale. Goodge Street. Ickenham. 
9. Public Transportation. (See above: Tooting.) The Underground is easy to use, goes lots of interesting places, has lovely polite disembodied folk telling you to “Mind the Gap”, and for the most part, doesn’t smell of wee. The buses are bright red and have an upper floor.
10. A warm, comfy place for those golden, post-Punk years. People still talk about Joe Strummer as if he were alive. Shane MacGowan is around somewhere, one foot in England, the other in Ireland (shame on anyone who’s even tempted to make a “one foot/grave” pun about him!), you can still buy a Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen” tee in about a hundred different places, and, of course, God Save McQueen.