"Mind the step as you exit the train. Be sure to take all your belongings with you."
Dropped in the morass of people in the underground, all fighting to rise above. Pushing ahead, "keep to your right" as they shove you against the side of the moving escalator, pushing everyone to the side, and like ants they fight to get to the top of the endless rise, only to be stopped by the ticketing machines "no credit", and have to line up to top up their oysters again.
No smiles and "good mornings", everyone immersed in their music or phones, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, some more recognizable than others. Ignoring everything and anyone, disregarding any beauty there may be around: a rainbow, the scattered bursts of rain, the laughing children in the platform across the rails, their father nervously telling them "keep away from the edge". You patiently wait, only to be shoved aside by somebody who thinks maybe they should get in first, even though you're much older, and have been standing there 5 minutes already, waiting for the same train.
Oh, we do live in paradise! We get home to a clean house, going out for dinner and a drink is a call away. No wonder the tourists go nuts in the tropics, they're not used to seeing smiling faces, anxious waiters bringing them colorful drinks with Chinese umbrellas on pineapple wedges or mojitos with deep green sprigs of aromatic mint.
The array of foods is amazing: Chinese, Arabic, Indian, the stodgy English pies and fries (stodgy because you can actually make great British food, they 'ave awesome new salads with grains and sweet peas, with feta, and mozzarella), "battered" fish, and great pork pies, nothing like a good roast, but really, if you have an allergy to anything, they can't find a solution? The coleslaw so thick, you've lost all sense of freshness, the pastas with bits of potatoes? Really now.....