London & Cambridge
 Last summer, I went to England with my mother, while my wife and daughter were in China, visiting my wife’s parents.
 On June 22, we went to Boston, boarded our plane, and then waited for it to take off. It was supposed to take off at 8 p.m., but 8 p.m. came and went, and we were still on solid ground. After we had waited for almost an hour, the captain came on the intercom, and said, “I’m afraid we can’t take off. One of the passengers absolutely refuses to fly. [He said this in an angry tone.] We’re going to escort him off the plane, empty the plane completely, and search the plane.”
 We found out later that the passenger who refused to fly was an Arab; some people said he was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. He said that he had spoken to his brother by cell phone, that his brother was sick, and that he didn’t want to travel. He asked to be let out of the plane, but had little interest in getting his luggage, fueling suspicion that he was engaged in some criminal activity — perhaps planting a bomb on the plane. At any rate, the airline didn’t want to take any chances, so the Arab was escorted off the plane, and then all of us passengers were disembarked. Rumors circulated about the Arab’s suspicious behavior, about his luggage being blown up by airport security (who didn’t want to search through it themselves), etc.
 We waited in the airport for hours, and finally were told that our flight was postponed until the next day, and that we would be taken to hotels for the night — the night, which by then was almost half over. We only slept for about three hours, then came back to the airport. When our plane was finally airborne, after a delay of 18 hours, the long-suffering herd of passengers broke into applause.
 Ah, the pleasures of plane travel! When I was standing in line recently at an airport, I heard the person behind me say, “every time I do this, I swear I won’t do it again.” My mother’s spirits were good, though; she was striking up conversations, exchanging rumors, making notes in her diary, etc. And some of these conversations were continued after we reached London; as we visited London’s attractions, we bumped into people who had been on our plane — as often happens, since tourists frequent the same places.
 We arrived in England in the wee hours of June 24, in what the poet called “the dead waste and middle of the night,” took a cab into London, and roused the concierge at our hotel. The concierge, far from pitying us for our sufferings, took us to task for interrupting his slumbers.
 Our hotel was located in the King’s Cross section of London, which is in the northern part of the city. It was a simple, no-frills hotel, in contrast to its grand name, “The Alhambra.” Our room was clean, and the ceiling was high, but it was cramped. I suspect that, at some point in the past, the owner of the hotel had decided that he could increase his profits if he divided each of his rooms into two rooms. Then he added a bathroom to each room, further reducing the amount of space per room.
 Perhaps the owner of the hotel is wondering (right now, even as we speak) how he can utilize the space that is “wasted” by the high ceiling; perhaps next year that space will be converted into another room, a room with a ceiling so low that the room can only be entered by someone who lies on his stomach, and wriggles like a snake. At the end of our trip, when we were staying in Bath, we had a room that was built in the old style: high ceilings, vast amounts of space, but no bathroom; you had to climb a flight of stairs to reach the bathroom.
 In the morning, we ate what is called an “English breakfast”: eggs, sausage, stewed tomatoes, and toast. The English are fond of potatoes, and at lunchtime, we often had a baked potato topped with baked beans or some other topping. We found that English pubs serve decent food at a reasonable price, unlike their American counterparts, which generally serve only drinks. The English are fond of “health food,” and the number of health food stores is a good indication of an area’s educational level.
 For an American, one of the most striking things about England is that it rains almost every day. The rain didn’t bother me much, but it does seem to bother the English, who long for blue skies and warm sunshine. The rain produces luxurious gardens, arranged in the untrammeled style for which English gardens are famous. My mother never tired of admiring these gardens. Grass is cut very short, so that lawns resemble putting greens on a golf course.