This is the last of a 7-part daily journal from London with the annual Post-Gazette Critic's Choice theater tour. To read the whole thing in proper chronological order, click here.

Yes, I did stay up for the Pitt game -- or rather, I dozed off and woke up about 3 a.m., in time to fire up the laptop and shepherd Pitt through the end of its win over Georgetown. So I participated (in this middle-of-the-night way) in Pitt's four Big East victories.

Some of the PG group at the top of Portobello Road

But I paid for it, having to get up a couple of hours later to finish packing. It's been one of those days, endless traveling by everything from jet to horse cart, or just about. Our bus left the Radisson Edwardian Kenilworth Hotel (our London base, and it's time I mentioned it) about 9:45 a.m., London time, and now it's 8 p.m. Detroit time. That's more than 15 hours elapsed so far, and it'll be nearly four more hours before I finally throw myself into my Pittsburgh bed.

Not that I'm really complaining. I'm glad the world hasn't completely shrunk.

But I sure wish we had proper international flights to and from Pittsburgh.

We reached Detroit just in time for me to settle into a bar, tuck into a cheeseburger (one of the categories in which America has England beat) and enjoy the NCAA draw on TV. After Pitt won the Big East, I figured them for a 4 or 5 seed, but when Georgetown got a 2 and Louisville a 3, I thought a 3 might be possible. But 4 is fine. Go Pitt!

On the long trans-Atlantic flight, I finally read some of the London papers that had piled up, so I conclude this year's London Journal with a few random tidbits.

• The Independent is running a series of 14 brochures they call The Great Poets. The one I saw is a nice little 18-page survey of Wordsworth (with Coleridge appended). Here's whom they count as the favorite poets in the English language, chronologically: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Pope, Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Whitman, Dickinson, Hopkins and Hardy, with some 23 others appended here and there. So two Americans made the list, but not Yeats; I guess World War I was the cut-off. (Read more at www.independent.co.uk/poets.)

• The Daily Telegraph had a compelling piece by Neil McCormick on the unfairness of attacking Amy Winehouse as "the poster girl for drug abuse," as the U.N. drug czar has done, claiming that she glamorizes destructive behavior. On the contrary, he points out that, "her closely (and somewhat salaciously) documented journey from pop princess to barely functioning addict seems more like a cautionary tale."

What really caught me was this quick survey of the links between popular music and drugs: "alcohol and the blues, marijuana and jazz, LSD and psychedelic rock, cocaine and disco, speed and punk, weed and reggae, crack and rap, ecstasy and house music . . . ." I'm going to ask Scott Mervis if this list holds up.

McCormick continues: "A study published last month by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine claimed that one-third of the most popular songs in America (based on the 2005 Billboard charts) mentioned substance abuse of some kind" -- led by hip hop, followed by country and western.

• The Sunday Telegraph just had an interview with Lord Andrew Webber. Apparently he's been doing a series of those TV reality shows to cast leads for various shows; the current one is to choose an Oliver and a Nancy for "Oliver!" He says that both "Woman in White" (weak second act) and "Whistle Down the Wind" (no specifics given) were "mistakes." And he is working on a sequel to "Phantom."

• I also picked up an issue of The Stage, which is sort of like the English Backstage. There's enough of interest in that for a separate journal entry, as soon as I sleep off this endless journey.

It's good to be back.