A lot has changed in the five years I've been away from the UK. Little things. Every now and then I found myself feeling much as I imagine a stranger would feel, or an old person who suddenly finds they haven't kept up.
In London I tried to board a bus only to find I should have bought my ticket from a machine behind the bus shelter. In a shop I tried to pay with Switch, then panicked when I saw that my card no longer bore the Switch logo. This was alright though, but then the cashier pointed me to a card reading machine on my side of the counter. Only on my third attempt did I get it in the right way round, then was asked to enter my PIN. "Is that the same as the one I use in the ATM?" I had to ask. It struck me as funny, but I've a feeling I just appeared rather stupid and confused.
Luckily I was taken step-by-step through the self-check-in process by a charming young man at Heathrow - see, now I even sound like an old dear. The new security measures in the airports were easier to deal with, as there were plenty of instructions for the uninitiated.
Nobody had told me that mobile phones were 'locked' into one network. And that was after I'd remembered not to call it a handphone. And so on. There I was, old before my time, a stranger in a familiar land.
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