Perhaps I'm overcompensating for weeks of website neglect, but here I still am. In the UK at the moment doing final packing and cleaning of the flat before the very final goodbye to London. Am truly hating it (packing and cleaning; not London). Yuck. Here's another US-UK anthropological observation. A few months ago, I was telling this American woman that I'd been going out with Natalie for seven years. She was agog: "That just doesn't happen here". "So what does happen?". "Well, after two years you'll sit down and decide if you're going to get married or not. If you are, you do it; if not, you split up". Blimey.