About this time last year I was in Los Angeles. Staying with a very good friend who was a Getty scholar at the time. When I asked her which buses or trains perhaps served the area, she quite rightly looked blank and admitted she didn’t have a clue. But Ah! She said, I have a British colleague and he can tell you all about routes and how to use the buses. And he did indeed. Adding that here, public transport was only used by the unemployed and academics. After having used the splendid service the City of Los Angeles does in fact provide, I had to correct him. It wasn’t the unemployed, it was those in domestic service, and visiting academics that used public transport. Now, a year late, having moved to a northern residential suburb in Athens, I have discovered the same thing. We might just as well be in Los Angeles here too. The buses are only used by domestic help… I don’t know of any visiting academics, but maybe I should add to the list, those who grew up in London.