“Mind the Gap” had a sinister and, like most location-names in London, literary, connotation before I even arrived. In Neil Gaiman’s book Neverwhere the gap between the train and the platform edge reveals a link to the mythical world of London Below, a place where Knightsbridge indeed features a knight and a bridge, and where there really is an Angel in Islington. To this day, every journey on the underground leaves me ruminating about the possible underworld realities behind every name, and like so many British place names they all have a bizarre and discordantly musical sound. Shepherd’s Bush, Covent Garden, Swiss Cottage, Elephant and Castle, Tooting, Harrow-on-the-Hill. And Burnt Oak, perhaps the best of all. I like to imagine it having been named for an actual burnt oak in an actual field, and now it’s only a suburb on London and the birthplace of Tesco.

Like most people who have had to commute or in any way depend on the London Underground, I no longer find it charming, but I can’t even imagine London without it, and “Mind the Gap” remains in my mind the ultimate expression of Britishness.

Every country’s airports have their special tortures. Canadian airports are very cold. Spanish airports are very disorganized. German airports are plagued by fogs that cause excrutiating delays. But after some intensive (though not comprehensive) research I’m going to state that the worst airport experience is usually reserved for England. Where else do you have men at so insignificant a place as Luton, London’s fourth airport, stationed at a quarter to 6 in the morning snapping at all passing women that your handbag must fit into your carry-on. At Luton they have also brought the great airport rip-off to a whole new level by selling the zip-loc plastic bags you need to transport liquids in vending machines (generally they are handed out, in most civilized places, or it’s informally understood that you don’t really need one).

Then there’s Heathrow, which is rather like a small country unto itself… a small country without a public transportation. Walk walk walk walk. Realize you’re in the wrong terminal. Walk some more. Occasionally you luck out and find a moving staircase.

The newest Heathrow outrage is having to remove your shoes, not only to put them through the scanner with your hand-luggage, but also immediately afterwards, to have them radioactively scanned. On the plus side, in all the commotion, all my non-bagged, non-sealed make-up somehow made it through the scanner without detection.