Day 11 - August 18th - London

Back in London for a couple of days before I head off to France! It was another really really wet day, from lunchtime on and again I foolishly go without my big black Kirkcaldies coat. I guess the logic to me is that a summer rainstorm is likely to be short and warmish, perhaps even refreshing. Instead it's cold and hard rain and again I cop a soaking. I hope my weather rants are not becoming boring, but here we are in Day 11 and I am yet to have what I would call a summer day, a day where I can wear my shorts. At this rate I will return to New Zealand without the slightest sign of a sun-tan and looking at my pasty face in the mirror as I write this, I could really do with some sun on me. Next time I will bring wet weather gear.

One of the things I have been looking forward to is in London is reading really good newspapers and on that score I've been disappointed. The Independent for example seems to be a favourite of hotels, I suspect because it veers somewhere in between being a tabloid and a serious paper. I find a good deal of its news coverage terribly tedious. Page three today is devoted to a report of Ken Livingstone's description of the race between himself and Boris Johnson for the London Mayoralty as comparable to the battle between Churchill and Hitler. As you read the remarks, they're, obviously enough, a joke, and I find myself wondering why this amount of space was given to such a lightweight story. The paper also gives plenty of coverage to the launch of Celebrity Big Brother and I guess I find it all a tad strange for a paper which once refused to cover the Royals because they were too trivial.

This time I am in Kensington which is at the west of the central city but close to fashionable suburbs like Notting Hill and White City. It's also near to some of London's great parks. So I'm not in the centre of town as I was before but still very well placed. London's transport system makes it reasonably straightforward to get around once you understand how it works. Today though I try to find myself a shop that will sell me a bus pass and find it difficult. One bus stop is directly outside a dairy, buses go past saying it goes to White City which is where I want, and the shop has a London Transport logo on it so in I go. Inside the man behind the counter says they do sell bus tickets but only to Ulster. "So where can I get bus tickets to White City?" I ask. He shakes his head. I just don't get it. Seeing as the bus stop is right outside and there is nothing at the stop that tells how to get a ticket, I can't have been the only person ever to come in to ask this question. Surely you'd try and find out how the ticket system works???

It's an interesting thing, service. I have to admit to not always finding phone calls at work from the public a good thing if they're trivial "what was the last song that Lloyd just played?" and I'm busy trying to concentrate on subbing a package. But I get the feeling that in the tourist industry, service is regarded as being about smiling and nodding and checking that you're enjoying the meal and so on, rather than actually providing a service. It's nice if people are friendly, but I'd rather they actually helped me when I asked for it. I asked at the hotel shop today if they could provide me with a map of the suburbs heading west and bought a book of maps on the man's recommendation - only to find it didn't have maps going west. Annoying!

I fear I am beginning to sound a bit grumpy when - really and truly - I am having a good time here, relaxing, reading, eating well, catching up with folk, sight-seeing and so on. But there we are, I have a few grumbles and today you get to read some of them.