Diary – 6 March 2004

June. My first day back in Britain after eight years in America and I couldn’t be happier. The sun is shining and I have a large cheque in my pocket with which to conclude the purchase of a nice house in Norfolk. Things could not be better. Setting off from Gloucester Road Underground station, I join a throng waiting for a Circle Line train that never comes. Silently we wait and wait — for ten minutes, then 15 — but nothing happens. ‘I remember when trains used to go by here,’ I remark brightly after a time to the man beside me. By chance he is a fellow American, but new to the country, and possibly to humour, and doesn’t realise I’m joking. ‘Are you saying there are no trains here?’ he asks in alarm.

‘Well, no, because then there wouldn’t be people here, would there? I mean, we wouldn’t all be standing here if there were no trains.’

‘But we are standing here and there are no trains.’

This is not an easy point to answer. A voice comes over the Tannoy apologising for the delay, which it says is due to a shortage of rolling stock. ‘You see, there are trains,’ I explain to my new friend. ‘They’ve just …mislaid them.’

‘This sure is a screwy country,’ he says.

‘Yes, it is,’ I reply happily.

July. The thing I like about Britain — and I mean this — is that you can never guess how you are going to be thwarted. In America, you can count on a thwarting in a dozen or so well-defined situations — generally they involve airline employees, uniformed (but unarmed) government officials and hotel check-in people from whom you seek a room while it is still daylight — but here it is much less predictable, as I am reminded when I try to buy a rail ticket over the telephone and am told that it cannot be issued because the postcode I have provided is invalid.