One of my favorite British-isms is "Sorry!" When I first started spending time in London, I noticed it was used all kinds of ways I wasn't used to. For example, being American, it took me a while to get the hang of walking to the left rather than the right, so I was frequently in someone's way on the sidewalk. "Sorry!" they would say, meaning, "You're in my way." It's more polite than the thing New Yorkers say in the same situation: we issue an exasperated, angry "Excuse me?!" which is not much of a euphemism for "Effingmove it!" Other times in England "Sorry!" is used if you make a mistake, to simultaneously acknowledge and gloss over the social awkwardness. "Sorry!" the flawless concierge at our hotel would say if I knocked a pen off the counter. That sort of meant, "Sorry that happened and rather than ignoring it, which would be potentially even more awkward, I'm going to sort of take responsibility for it myself." As we rushed to get on our plane at the end of our trip, I "bumped queue after queue" simply shouting over my shoulder, "Our flight is leaving, sorry!" In this context it meant, "Thanks for understanding my boorishness." Thank goodness someone has written cogently on the the uses of "sorry" in British idiom. I love this hilarious piece, "A Poor Apology for a Word" by Henry Hitchings in the New York Times.

Before I left London I spent an afternoon in Shoreditch with my friend Charlene Mullen. Not only does she have a brilliant shop (okay, I would call it "a genius store," but I've just spend seven days in London so I'm going native), Charlene is also a fun and savvy tour guide. I think Shoreditch is Williamsburg crossed with Bushwick. Let me know if I've got that wrong. You can can check it out online here.

When I came back to New York, it was snowing like crazy. It's so beautiful when it snows in New York that it makes me cry. Then, the next day, without fail, it has turned to slush. The comedian Jake Johannsen once observed that after it rains or snows in New York, every walk to the store or Starbucks is like a Lewis and Clark expedition. There are these enormous, vast puddles. Don't ask me why. Sometimes you will see people just standing there in front of one, pondering their next move. That's how it is now and it always makes me grateful that I don't have a stroller anymore. I can't describe how difficult that was, and I always offer the moms dealing it with it a hand now. We wear big rubber rainboots — Hunter is a popular brand, but we also love the Chanel ones with flowers on them, and the Valentino rockstud ones and the simple black Prada ones, too — much of winter here, because it helps in these situations. The thick microfiber liners they sell to go inside the Hunter boots are sold out already. Brrrrrrr.