In 1963 I arrived at Waterloo Station, lugging an umbrella and seven suitcases, one entirely filled with American toilet paper. I was the Kellett Fellow from Columbia to Clare College, Cambridge. Just track-side I asked an attractive young woman where public telephones might be found. She made some ambivalent sign. When later I stepped from the booth her Cockney boyfriend was there. “If you keeps talkin’ to girls whot is engayged, yer gonta come unstuck,” he said. And hit me, palm-flat, on the sternum. It wasn’t what you’d call an auspicious start.
And it got worse. Later the same first day, I became lost in Kensington. No one had told me that London ceases existence at around 12:32 a.m. Hitler wasn’t night-bombing the English, he was just trying to wake them up. After some time I came across a lone bobby. “Hi, there,” I said. “Do you know the way to Cromwell Road?”
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