Landing

keeps yapping into my ear because there is still traffic on the landing strip below, so the descent is taking twenty minutes too long and my patience with the man next to me was lost twenty minutes ago, five hours after he first showed me pictures of his children out of his wallet, and an hour after he got tipsy off of a Bloody Mary, or maybe it was just V8, but the point is he's rambling about nothing and I'm not interested. I could be less snobby but first of all, this dude's breath smells like copper pennies, and secondly, he tried to put my seat belt on for me, which was a slight invasion of my space. I'm on the aisle and this annoying guy, he's on the window side and whenever I try to look at the view of London below he thinks I am still interested in more small talk so he continues to tell me about the time he met Mick Jagger and even when I look away, he taps my knee so I'll give him my full attention. It sounds like I'm an ass but after eight hours on an airplane with an extremely talkative guy who won't let you leave to go to the lavatory, the first thing you want to do is get off the plane to take a piss. The captain says we now have clearing to land and this finally shuts the guy next to me up, although only for a few seconds, because then he again sticks his neck above my left shoulder and tries to give me unwanted help on the USA Today crossword puzzle I've been working on. Welcome to London, local time 9:35 AM, the captain announces, and into the Heathrow madness I go, where I wrestle some random chap for my suitcase, this chap refuses to believe that this is my bag and not his until I force him to look at the identification tag, and he says "Blimey! You're right!" I've realized that there are more gays, punks, gangstas, Asians, Africans, and weirdos here than I thought, and I find this to be comforting as I seat myself in a bug-looking taxi cab that takes me through countless curving highways named names that sound as if you are either playing Bingo or trying to sink my battleship: A316, A40, A4, etcetera. The cab finally brings me to my hotel and I tip the driver some of the British pounds my mom gave me from her last trip to London. I take in my first actual deep breath of London air and look around at everything, and everything around me looks gray. Sure there are parks on every other block, but other than that the sky is gray, the ground is gray, buildings are gray, and the old doorman, he looks a little gray too. I step into the lobby and I'm greeted with hand shakes by a few people and the hotel manager welcomes me to town and she