I just got home from Boston’s Logan airport after my flight from London. This morning my mother and I went in to Oxford to buy a few small items that, curiously, it is almost impossible to find in the USA:
Soluble paracetamol (acetaminophen) and aspirin. Quicker acting than tablets or caplets, and much more convenient for those who have trouble swallowing tablets, or for oral pain. In the UK you can also get over-the-counter soluble paracetamol with codeine (500mg paracetamol with about 8-10mg. codeine), which would probably require a prescription in the US – if you could find it.
Blu-Tack – a simple way of sticking papers, postcards, etc. to vertical surfaces. Comes in a slab; you tear off what you need and squash it into shape.
Small cash-ruled notebooks – Merry uses them for various purposes, we always get them from W. H. Smiths.
Wrights Coal Tar Soap.
Sounds ghastly, doesn’t it? Actually it’s my favourite soap, and a British tradition for 145 years.
We also met my brother for coffee in Blackwell’s. It’s convenient to the Bodleian, where he works, but it has one unavoidable drawback: I cannot enter the shop without buying a book. Today I got away relatively cheaply, picking up philosophy books on Jerry Fodor, the Churchlands, and Indian philosophy.
As for the flight, I’d prefer to forget it. The seat recline mechanism was broken in our row (no, there wasn’t an emergency exit behind us), and when the three people in front of us all reclined their seats fully, we were trapped. I had the window seat, and the tall guy in the middle next to me had nowhere to put his legs. (I prefer the Airbus A330/A340 with 2-4-2 seating.) In spite of this, I actually got some sleep, using my iPod and Bose noise-cancelling headphones. The trick is to listen to music that is fairly repetitive but not too quiet: I used a playlist containing two albums by Ray Lynch followed by five or six CDs worth of No-Man. That worked.
And now I have to face my case full of dirty laundry. Perhaps tomorrow….