Restaurants don’t serve ice water. They will bring you water, but never any ice. They will sometimes bring ice if you ask for it separately. Is this somehow related to warm beer?

They don’t use manila folders here. You can’t seem to even buy them, at least not easily. Instead they seem to use those clear sheet protectors, which are stored in notebooks.

British drunks are different from American drunks. They just seem to be happier. We were stuck on a crowded tube, cheek by jowl with some clearly wasted 20 somethings. One of them reached up and began tickling Judie’s armpit (she was holding on) and started giggling when she gave him the inevitable look. They wanted to know where we were were from and assured us that the best place on earth is Lincolnshire before we left the train. The other thing British drunks do is sing. It is sometimes at 2:00 AM and on the street in front of our building, but I’ll take that over fighting or yelling.

On the spur of the moment, we went to the theater Wednesday night. We could never really do that living in Montclair (too complicated). So this should be one of the great things about living here. Judie had no evening calls (for a change), so I stopped by Leicester Square on my way back from Tate Britain and bought tickets to “The Curious Incident”, which we somehow never got around to seeing on Broadway. The staging was so spectacular that it sometimes overwhelmed the story, which was probably a good thing, since the story was actually pretty predictable after a certain point. Some wonderful performances (I though the actor who payed Christopher, the boy, was terrific–he has to be for the play to work–and the actor who played his Dad was also particularly good). A great piece of theater. It’s weird not getting Playbill (the way British theater works–unless you buy it), so I can’t tell you who I saw. I wonder what the rationale is for that.

Here is what I have to do to make a payment on line with HSBC: I go on the website, hit log on, put in my user name and password and then take out my HSBC Security Device (see photo), push the green button to turn that on, enter a different security code, push the green button again and then enter the resulting six digit number on the sign in page and I then hit continue and you finally get online. Then, to make a payment, I pick the payee (assuming I have gone through the ordeal of entering the payee previously) fill in the amount and date, and then pull out my trusty HSBC Security Device, push the green button, enter my security code, and the this time push the yellow button and enter the last four digits of the account I have entered for the payee when I set it up, then hit the yellow button again, which results in another six digit number, which I then enter on the page, hit continue and then confirm that yes, I really mean it.resulting six digit number on the sign in page and I then hit continue and you finally get online. Then, to make a payment, I pick the payee (assuming I have gone through the ordeal of entering the payee previously) fill in the amount and date, and then pull out my trusty HSBC Security Device, push the green button, enter my security code, and the this time push the yellow button and enter the last four digits of the account I have entered for the payee when I set it up, then hit the yellow button again, which results in another six digit number, which I then enter on the page, hit continue and then confirm that yes, I really mean it. The mind boggles. Yet the same bank lets you just wave your debit card at the card reader if the bill is less than £20, with no PIN number or anything.

I’ve been putting together two small desks we bought for the flat. This is always a miserable task, but it is especially awful with the pathetic little tools that are provided. And then I realized that they sent the wrong parts for my desk and I discovered that I’d misplaced three of the little screws for Judie’s desk. I decided it was time to take a sanity break. Next day–Following the wisdom of Mr. Natural (“Get the Right Tool for the Job”), I went out and bought a real screwdriver with different bits, had a physics lesson on the importance of torque, found the little screws, got the replacement parts, and finished the desks without killing myself. The best £10 I’ve spent here so far.