Moira Redmond moved back to England from the United States six months ago. She used to be the Fray editor at Slate. You can e-mail her at .

Very busy road, not many cars todaySaturday filled London up, with anti-war protestors. Today the idea was to empty it: London imposed its first-ever congestion charges on those wanting to drive here. This is a deeply controversial measure, and no one knows whether people will pay the approximate $8 a day charge or give up their cars. Traffic was reported to be down by about 30 percent today: "It's like a Sunday" everyone said. Farringdon Road is a major thoroughfare in the center of London—this picture was taken at lunchtime: not many cars.

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This doesn't affect me directly because to get to work, I walk to Winchester station, make a one-hour train journey, then walk from Waterloo station to the Guardian. I read a book a day on the train—chosen for size (250 pages is ideal, and it must be paperback) not content. Today I attended the editorial meeting, then had appointments most of the day to talk to Guardian journalists, though I broke off long enough to have lunch with my future sister-in-law, who lives nearby, and a discussion about the two forthcoming big events in her life—her wedding and her first concert (she's a classical pianist) at London's prestigious Purcell Room.

What can you tell from a Favorites list? Five years ago I set up my MSN home page with my most-used links, and they were: Slate, the Guardian, Amazon, and the New York Times. Today—an Internet lifetime and 5,000 miles away—I'd pick exactly the same ones, which seems astonishing to me, though not as surprising as the fact that I ended up working for two of those sites. I've been a classic Guardian reader for many, many years—in U.S. terms, it is the voice of liberal Britain. (Liberal means something different over here, but we don't have space to go into that.) So going to work there was like the mothership calling me home.

Office life at the Guardian couldn't be more different from Slate—I can't decide how much of that is down to U.S./U.K. differences and how much to the contrast between a large computer company (a Microsoftie once told me, "It's the most sexless office I've ever known") and a newspaper. For a start, at the Guardian everyone isn't tucked away in offices, but mixed in together in a series of huge untidy rooms. (The downside is that it's hard to find people—no office doors with names on them.) News for those of you who think the English are more reserved and formal than Americans: Life is much looser here. I was interested to get work e-mails, from women I had never met, signed with an initial and a kiss: for e.g., Cx. That never happened at Microsoft. Perhaps the litigious society and the fear of harassment claims make you more cautious? Today I went to talk to a sports journalist, someone I had just met for the first time, and as we sat down together, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a tube of moisturizer and put some on his face. I expressed surprise, and he said: "Need it in this weather. Want to try some?" It smelt delicious so I said yes. (This may be a Sex and the City moment, but FYI it was Yves Saint Laurent Hydra Tech, and it was fabulous.) I have tried with all my heart to imagine this scene with any of my male ex-colleagues at Slate, but it is quite, quite unthinkable.

On-the-way-to-Waterloo sunset, from Blackfriars Bridge Walking back to the station at sunset is spectacularly beautiful and beats the subway any day. I got back to my house at 7:15 p.m. and bravely faced up to the knowledge that I really ought to go to a 7:30 talk about overseas development work. Complaining that I hadn't had my dinner didn't seem appropriate in the circs, so I grabbed a banana and my daughter and went out again. The charity involved has the splendidly self-explanatory title Wells for India, and we came away better-informed about exactly that.

I was very happy to see so many old friends in "The Fray" and to receive much valuable advice on crossing the road, reviving mix tapes, and readjusting to English life. Indeed there've been few problems—I still occasionally go to the wrong side of the car, but fortunately haven't yet driven on the wrong side of the road, and I try to avoid the word "schedule" because I can't remember if the hard "k" sound is Brit or American. I have also realized that while I always claimed that working in the Fray gave me unparalleled knowledge of American life, I came home to the U.K. never having fully understood the following items: Eddie Haskell, Sadie Hawkins, shit-eating grin, behind the eight ball, and slam-dunk. I'm sure the Fray can help me.

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