A Rainy Day in Camden Town

I flew back to London yesterday. For the first time I took a daytime flight: Virgin Atlantic's Flight 26. The plane left JFK at 7:30 in the morning and got to Heathrow at 7 in the evening. Thanks to a strong tail wind the flight only lasted six hours--that's a little longer than it takes to fly between the two American coasts.

It was a strange sensation to take a flight to Europe that didn't fly by night. We didn't hit dusk until we were almost on the ground in England. Somewhere over the Atlantic we must have passed the hoards of planes from Europe bound for the New York airports that arrive in the afternoon.

While I was waiting at the gate at JFK I sat next to an Irish couple. They were married and probably in their 70s. The man had a stunned look in his eyes and seemed feeble. I was fascinated by his facial hair. He was clean shaven, but had hairs growing out of the tip of his nose--white hairs that matched the snow white hair on his head. He also had a big forest of white hair growing out of his ears.

The plane was pretty full with no room to stretch out, but I had an aisle seat. There was a pleasant guy next to me wearing an expensive gangsta jacket and matching oversize baseball cap. He was a good travel companion: only got up once the whole flight. He said he was coming to London to see his girlfriend for a month.

It is truly autumn now in England. The nights are nippy and the days can bring rain and temperatures around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. As I look out the living room windows of the flat I can see that the leaves of the large plane tree are changing from deep green to yellow and brown. Soon our living room will not be cloaked as it has been by the tree all summer. I daresay we'll have more sunlight pouring in... when there is sun.

John and I are both experiencing the strange sensation of having lived here for three months, then having returned to our home in New York for a very brief period, and now being back here in London. We're a bit topsy-turvy. And the sensation may only get more pronounced as there is less than a month and a half left in our London experiment.

By the way, I took the fall color photos in Duluth, Minnesota, following my nephew's wedding. The maple trees were on fire.