London: the kindness of strangers

I jumped onto the departing Heathrow Express as the doors closed. But my friend and traveling companion Joyce, walking behind me, didn't make it onto the train, and the conductor was unable to re-open the doors. I had both our tickets, and she had no phone (yet). The conductor instructed me sternly to find a seat. The train pulled out, fully loaded on a late Friday afternoon, headed for downtown London.

"Don't worry, we'll take care of your friend. She was the one with the walking stick, is that right?", the no longer stern conductor asked me in a pleasant African accent. A passenger on the train helped me find a place to sit.

The conductor made a phone call. A staff member back at the heathrow train station found Joyce, told her there was no problem, that she should just take the next train and "tell them Vernon said you can ride without a ticket."

Meanwhile, I had arrived at Paddington Station, dragging my luggage behind me and wondering how I would find Joyce again. A woman and her daughter, leaving the train when I did, told me not to worry, she was sure things would work out. The African conductor left his train to wait with me, paying to rent me a luggage cart, checking schedules to see where I should wait, telling me how to get to the taxi ranks without having to drag my luggage up a half flight of stairs, and, when he had to reboard his train, connecting me with a colleague who babysat me until Joyce emerged from the next train, having successfully invoked Vernon's name to get a free ride.

The driver of our black cab to the hotel was young, conversational, and very well informed about American politics, though he confessed to having no idea where Oregon is. We rode through dense traffic on London's narrow non-rectilinear streets discussing gun control -- his idea was that we should limit guns to what the founders knew of when they wrote the Second Amendment, breech loading muskets. He said following American politics is almost as good as watching "Dallas" for sheer entertainment value.

We are now happily ensconsed in pleasant single rooms at one of the points of Seven Dials. Now if we can only adjust to the time difference, and if I can only get unpacked!