There is no better way to shake up the status quo, get yourself out of any sort of rut and generally reconfigure everything…than to make an excessively brief trip to London. Yes, 10 days there. Many more days anticipating and recovering. Such that your wah, or whatever it is, becomes so totally out of kilter that it stays that way.

How else to explain the sudden and total collapse of the electronic house of cards in which we live? For reasons that are unclear, the people who installed our sound system also created several Wi-Fi zones. And, one by one, they hit the digital road. No we are not alone in this, for everyone is now totally dependent on life within an electromagnetic bubble. And when that bubble bursts, we really don’t know what to do.

For one thing, there is a massive shifting of the buck. Yes, the digital buck stops nowhere. Who is responsible for our networks? Well, the people who installed them. And they are awfully hard-to-reach. They like it that way. They are in the business of installing systems, after all, charging enormous fees for the privilege. After which they skedaddle to the bank. And that, in their estimation, should be that. But if you are persistent, give them your credit card number…yes, they demanded this…a technician will condescend to call you back. Magnolia Stereo used to be the name. Now it’s Magnolia Home Theater. And I really would like to do without them, but they have certain insider knowledge about our routers and modems and condoms. So there’s no escaping.

Sometimes it’s the background one recalls. In London, I’ve gotten used to staying in the Paddington Station Hotel. Very handy for the express train to the airport. Not to mention the Great Western Railway to points west and northwest, such as my cousin’s house in the Cotswolds. But there’s more than that.

There’s the station itself, a vast world under glass Victorian canopies. Aside from the massive toing and froing, there are scaled-down representations of much of the British mercantile. To pick up a copy of the Guardian, there’s a vast W. H. Smith. To pick up anything edible, there a Marks and Spencer Simply Food. And so on. But more than that, there’s all this urban bustle. I like it. Now that I’m back, I recall it fondly. And I’m so glad to be back, that I’d rather have pleasant memories then the actual experience.