Ghost planes and deserted roadworks

When I was in America I saw three items about Britain on the TV news: the Duke of Edinburgh's stay in hospital, the family who wasn't allowed to stop great crested newts flooding their home, and of course Terminal 5. There was a lot about Terminal 5.

Why is all travel in the UK so horrible? A week ago we came back from Colorado. I learned that the incoming BA flight from Heathrow had been cancelled, so assumed that our return flight would be binned as well. But we were lucky - BA had flown out a plane empty of passengers and cabin crew, and that took us all back. "Knock-on from Terminal 5," said the guy in Denver. "Shortage of cabin crew," said the official spokesman. Either way, hundreds of people were re-routed or stranded as the ghost plane flew the Atlantic. The next day's flight back had already been cancelled. "Gonna have a lot of unhappy folks here tomorrow," said the man on the desk, grimly.

If there is a plane, the BA service isn't bad - better than the big American airlines, with their bossy attendants, bad food, expensive booze and - recently - seemingly endless cancellations for federal inspections. But BA faces greater disasters. There was a brief period after privatisation when they really could call themselves the world's favourite airline, without a million passengers snorting in disbelief.

But here in Britain there's always someone worse off, and it's generally you. We went to Luton airport to pick up our son from his gap year. The crawl up the M1 took hours because they are widening it. But, though it was a nice sunny mid-week afternoon, no one seemed to be working. Empty trucks and vans stood everywhere. For miles we did not see a single human being actually widening the road. Does Ruth Kelly know about this? Luton makes Heathrow look as gorgeous as the Lake Palace at Udaipur. We paid £7 to park for one hour. This means that, pro-rata, a car-sized rectangle of concrete on a field in Bedfordshire costs twice as much to rent as a luxury hotel room in central London, carpeted in deep Axminster.

· Barack Obama's observations about small-town America ("they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them") is a gaffe, if a gaffe is properly defined as a remark that is perfectly true but which you're not allowed to say. Americans have a particular regard for small towns, which are thought to epitomise the best of the United States, being close-knit, self-supportive, friendly communities, loyal to God, the flag and each other. Many are.

But suggesting that some of them aren't is like saying: "I often think we Americans might be too patriotic," or "Apple pie is very overrated. Have you tried îles flottants?"

I have a perverse liking for these derelict and blasted towns, many of them as isolated from the world as desert islands. There's a plangency in their boarded-up buildings, the rows of ancient, little-used parking meters that still charge five cents an hour. There are dusty diners where morose men sit for hours. Now and again someone will try to bring the town some distinction. I once passed a sign saying: "Dog's Breath, South Dakota (or wherever). World's Largest Collection of Agricultural Implement Seats."

Everything Obama said about these places was true, so he will not be lightly forgiven.

· Liberal bumper sticker in the US: "We're making enemies faster than we can kill them!"

· I quite enjoyed what I saw of Delia's cheating series on BBC2, though I don't think I'll be making the recipes. They may involve pre-packaged food, but they were awfully complicated. What did baffle me was the way they kept popping in stuff that wasn't about food at all. I suppose Delia wanted us to see her as a character, like other TV chefs. But suppose Match Of The Day were interrupted by favourite recipes from Rio Ferdinand's mum? Gary Lineker: "Well, this match is on a knife-edge. But before we bring you the second half, what great food does Frank Lampard whip up when he's relaxing at home?" Or if Songs Of Praise interviewed yet another sidesman: "So, when you get back from church, how do you ensure that your pork crackling really crackles?"

It would be absurd. But TV chefs get away with anything.

· The news that John Betjeman remained friends with the now late Joan Hunter Dunn long after he realised that he would never have her love is affecting. The memory of the love you never had can be even stronger, can pull at the heartstrings for much longer, than the love you once had and lost. Their occasional lunches during her widowhood must have been poignant.

I've been reading Cold Cream, the beautifully written memoirs of Ferdinand Mount, who had a similar JHD experience.

In the early 1960s he was working for Selwyn Lloyd, who had just been sacked by Harold Macmillan. Another aide in the camp was Diana Leishman, evidently a gorgeous PG Wodehouse-heroine kind of girl, with a tip-tilted nose and hair that bounced like corn in a breeze. One of Mount's jobs was touring the country with her and Lloyd, investigating the state of the Conservative party. Once the two young persons were billeted in two turret bedrooms at the top of a steep stair. "Somehow I thought we must bump into each other on our way to or from the bathroom we were sharing. She would brush against me without meaning to, I would steady her with my hand - but no such thing happened."

A year later she married a balding stockbroker. But as Mount willingly acknowledges, the marriage, like JHD's, was a great success. But it is hard not to be touched by all that longing, clearly still aching after 45 years.

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