First, there was the passport inspector.

"How long do you plan on visiting?"

"Five weeks, I replied without hesitation.

"You say on your card you'll be in Dublin, Belfast, and London."

"Yes, I plan on walking from Dublin to the others."

"Walk! Why?"

"I'm a writer, and I want to learn about the people in a special manner."

He stamped the passport and handed it back. "Well, the best to you. I expect to be reading about you," he said in such a cheery voice that I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear.

I glanced at the retangular stamp mark. It was good for six months.

"Thanks."

He winked and flashed the thumbs-up sign. I nodded, very impressed by the cheerfulness exhibited on his part. And yet in the back of my mind I felt a sudden unexpected twinge of apprehension: The door to my American past had just clicked shut. I had "officially" entered into the foreign phase of the worldwalk. From here on I was on my own to a degree that I had never experienced in America. Home was not longer just a car or a bus ride away, should I find myself in any trouble.

Home, it hit me, was no longer here, but over there, as far away in time and distance as once the rest of the world had been. And it was only going to get further and further away, at least for a while.

In the afternoon, I returned to Earl's Court, after making the rounds of such tourist-packed sights as the Westminster Abbey, the Parliament Building, Fleet Street, The Tower of London (which is actually the original fortified city of London, not a tower), and the adjoining Tower Bridge (which I had always thought was "London Bridge").

On the whole, what struck me the most about the city was the overbearing grayness of it. The gray sky, gray soot-coated buildings, black taxis, dark blue- and gray-suited businessmen (especially in the Fleet Street district), and the smoggy air all combined to make London hopelessly neutral. Sad to say, the most colorful feature of the city was the Thames River--not its parks and boats, mind you, but the unbroken stream of trash which floats down it to some growing mound beneath the Atlantic.

More and more, as the day wore on, I grew anxious to be in the green countryside of Ireland. Quite frankly, one day of stone gray settings and overcast skies was all I cared for.

From Earl's Court I traveled by train to Uxbridge on the western edge of the Greater London area. Then from Uxbridge I went to Oxford by bus.

Since no more buses were going westward from Oxford after 11 p.m., I slept that night in the center of town, in some bushes beside a large paking lot. Twice during the night the sounds of patrolling Bobbies with noisy walkie-talkies strapped to their belts woke me.

Each time, however, their flashlight beams passed over and around me, and I escaped detection.

Steven