[Note: This entry should follow the next entry in the blog, Like a pendulum do. They are out of order because the Blojsom that came with Mac OS X 10.4 makes it very easy to delete a message, without warning, when you mean to edit it.] 
 
In the restaurant on the way back from Boots, I made a friend at the next table. This happened when I was attempting to spread firm butter on a springy roll. The roll flew from my hand, landing in the other seat at my table. "Good shot, mate!" 
 
I passed my meal in silence, delighted at the prospect of Eton mess. This is a dessert my daughter had recommended, a meringue filled with whipped cream and strawberries. I had not found it in my online researches, and it was only in my last night that I found it. Eton mess is delightful; I'd be hard put to choose between it and strawberry soufflé.  
 
Once I'd finished, my companion asked how I liked it, and we struck up a conversation. He was from Kent, and found London dirty, crowded, noisy, and multiethnic. I said I was a city dweller and an anglophile, so I found it not to be a bad city at all, and I'd been there a short enough time that the inconveniences still charmed me. We talked a few minutes more, generally on the lines I've already written here. He seemed a little snooty about Spamalot.  
 
A very nice man, and so much for my fear that somebody might want to pick a fight with a Yank. 
 
This morning I packed up and paid my hotel bill, which was very sad, but it was time.  
 
I then spent a derisory amount of time — two hours — at the British Museum. I got the audio for the highlights tour. Audio tours turn out to be a very good idea, but there are only a few more than 50 highlights in the vastness of the BM, and I found the signs that identify the stations very hard to locate.  
 
I wanted to see the Rosetta Stone, the Easter Island statue, and the Lewis chessmen, and I hit those, and photographed many interesting things on the way. Where I could, I also snapped the labels on the things I took. Good thing about electronic cameras: 300+ pictures a "roll." 
 
Well, I love the Lewis chessmen. I bought a Lewis chessmen tie and a Lewis chessmen bookmark. There is a replica set available, but I couldn't spare the space, the £45, or the indignity of its being labeled a Harry Potter Wizard's Chess Set.  
 
The cab driver was charming as before. It works — I'm pretty sure I tippped him well enough. I don't know whether to be ashamed of that cynicism. I truly was entertained. Heathrow Express departed as soon as I boarded.  
 
You may remember a 1990s Mac game called Oni. It featured stylized combat, often in stark, modern, and ominous buildings that happened to be easily rendered on a computer. Heathrow Terminal 5 is such a building.  
 
However, HT5 has shops and gourmet restaurants on the secure side. O'Hare Terminal 5 was built pre-security, and it has a cart with Gatorade and chips on the secure side. So I ate at Wagamama, a soba restaurant that has a branch a block or so from the Morgan, but this was my first chance. Good teriyaki steak soba, but the service was inattentive. 
 
For the first time this trip, I passed a metal detector without tripping the alarm.  
 
I'm on BA 299 now. On the way out, I'd been seated next to another large man, and when I tried to nap, I found our breathing would synchronize. Very disturbing. This time I'm seated next to a slender woman. 
 
In London, I could get all the Coke and Diet Coke I wanted, though not actually cold. I drank a lot of tea, with much pleasure, though I don't expect I'll keep the habit up. I don't have a teapot, which seems to make a difference. I could, I suppose, get one. The weather, as a whole, was beautiful, sunny most of the time, mid-60s in the day, mid-50s at night, and I never dressed wrong for it. Ibuprofen cleared up most of the foot problems, and I'm sheepish I didn't think of it sooner.  
 
I never lacked for a toilet, though I did have to backtrack through the Queen's Gardens, which got me stopped a couple of times before a very kind warder walked me back.  
 
I was at home in England. Maybe it was my anglomane mother (and no less my father, who taught me to believe in the common law), who spent weeks there, it seemed, every other year. Maybe it was 40 years of the BBC World Service, and the subscription to Punch I had in my late teens. Or Dorothy L. Sayers (didn't look for 110a Piccadilly — or 221b Baker, for that matter — something else left undone). I planned this trip for my honeymoon, in 1983. I'm glad I finally took it. It was worth the wait. I left many things to do in England. I hope I go back.