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Settling into London and getting a quick education on the NHS, the Royals, the proliferation of letting agencies and the lack of local news.  (If I am missing something in the latter, please send links.)

The NHS: It's hard not to have low expectations after reading the American press on the NHS, but when our 70-year-old friend visiting from Berkeley falls scarily ill,  we are forced to face what the NHS has to offer. It's full of surprises. Everyone from the triage nurse to the docs has a sense of humor and appears to know their medicine. By the time we get to the acute care window, Tony can barely stand. 

"He's deteriorating by the minute, " I say in panic after hearing the gentleman in front of me say that he is bleeding to death.  (I decide that emergency rooms are like jails except that here everyone is dying and there everyone is innocent.) At any rate, the doc sees Tony in five minutes and reads the assessment of the clinic doctor who quickly discounted the dizziness and our diagnosis of an ear imbalance/infection (you can take care of that in the states, she says) and focuses in on what appears to her to be acute anemia. 

She's right. A few tests later (it's amazing how few tests later) the docs believe that Tony probably has at least one bleeding ulcer, causing him to lose an alarming amount of blood (hence the deterioration and the increasing dizziness).  A day's worth of transfusions later he's ready for a procedure where they go in, confirm two bleeding ulcers, treat the devils and put Tony out the door the following day.  No one asks him about insurance. No one presents a bill. No one talks money. They talk health. It's impressive. 

The Royals: Recently in a snit about photographs of the topless Duchess, which the American newspapers pick up on day two or three. It seems an especially boring story because Europeans have just spent the summer watching old, young and everyone between baring...Read more