I'd forgotten what it's like to travel internally in the US by air. The time keeping of US airlines makes British Rail look like it's being run by the Swiss. When I arrived in Newark on Tuesday evening I was faced with a 75 minute delay to my 48 minute flight to Rochester. On Wednesday my return flight was delayed by 90 minutes. The delay on the return flight was much more significant, since I had a connection to the Virgin flight back to London. When I arrived at Newark I had 50 minutes before the flight to London left and I really didn't think I was going to make it. There was also another person trying to make the same flight; when we arrived at the ticket desk we were told the flight was closed. There is a lesson to be learned here: if you have a connecting flight and you can check in all the way through, do it. I had and the other person hadn't. Since I'd officially checked in, they had my boarding pass, whisked me through security and got me on the plane, closing the door as I got on. The other person had to wait for the flight the next day.

On returning home I received some good news. U2 are touring at the moment and they're a band I've always wanted to see live. It seems I'm not the only one. All 26 dates of the first US leg of the tour are or were sold out. Of the 30 dates in Europe, only Gelsenkirchen in Germany and Zurich are not sold out. Even for the second leg of the US tour they've sold out 42 of the 50 dates, right up to Christmas. One of the European venues is Twickenham stadium, little more than a stones throw from where we live. Of course, by the time we tried to get tickets, they'd sold out. However, they had a lottery for local residents and there were a thousand tickets available if your name came up. In the post yesterday was confirmation that we could buy two tickets. Hurrah!