Lovely and Warm

News items while I was in London: Retiring of the Routemaster double decker buses. This is the number one question people asked when they heard I was in London. 'Oh, did you ride the double decker buses then?' Answer, 'No'. Even though they are being retired, two or three tourist routes will still run Routemasters, so next time I go and actually figure out which bus goes where I can still ride one of these landmarks. Further, they are being replaced by newer double deckers on the routes they're being taken off of. From what I could tell on the news reports, the only difference is that you can't hop on or off at any point on the new buses (not something I was likely to do in any event) and that they seat more riders. It's possible that the new buses also have a covered, not open top, but there was no mention of this on the reports I heard.

Other big news was the election of the minority leader of Parliment and the passing of a law allowing legal unions between same sex couples. Big discussion was made over Elton John and his partner and what their ceremony, scheduled the first day the law went into effect, would be like. Elton John was covered both as a news story and as a tacky fluff piece.

Also the drawing of teams for the World Cup was a big to do -- I think it the broadcast of the draw was a 1 1/2 hr show, as well as a big story on the morning news the next day.

'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here' may have been a show in the U.S. it did sound familiar when I first heard of it in the U.K. It's finale was on the week I was there and the winner was in all the news as well. I'm not a prodigious Anglophile, but did think I was fairly familiar with Britculture. How very wrong I was. I don't think I'd heard of any of the three finalist. Part of that may well have been that many were D-list celebrities, but part was also that some were British celebrities, not international celebrities. It was amusing to see one of the Osmonds was on the show. No, don't ask which. I can only say it was a boy and it wasn't Donny. The winner was Margaret Thatcher's daughter.

I mused for a while on that -- children of politicans as celebrities. I suppose, but definately D-listers in the U.S. to my mind. And that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Enough people are celebrities for being children of the rich/famous, we really don't need a whole new category of them, and I'll deny long and hard that Chelsea Clinton and Jenna and Barbara Bush are celebs. But it did make me think wistfully -- what if George W. Bush decided to famewhore himself on Celebrity Mole, or The Sureal Life, or whatever other reality show would apply rather than deciding to run for govenor and then president. It's enough to make me wish the reality craze started a few years earlier...