Soft as velvet eyes can see bring me close to ecstasy

The weirdness of this country never ceases to amaze me. As I am sure you are all aware today is Valentines day. Fair enough, send your anonymous cards and flowers and chocolates to the object of you desires if you must. But here they treat it like its a holiday like Christmas. Giselle has received emails from her customers with Happy Valentines Day greetings on them. The Management Office of our apartment building have given everyone Valentines presents (a bag of gourmet popcorn). I will no doubt be wished a happy Valentines day in the supermarket later. I find it all a bit disconcerting, its not my bloody birthday so I do not want to wished a 'happy day'. I think they miss what its about myself (or maybe not as people always maintain its a made up excuse for greeting card companies to make money....).

Anyway, happy St Cyril and St Methodius's day.

Skyscrapers bloom in America

I may just give up*. After four months of writing this, trying to sum up the American Experience, this has been pointed out to me by one of my loyal readers. It sums up everything you could ever want to know about the foreigners experience of living in America in a much clearer and conciser way than I can.

* - no, not really.

I have spoke with the tongue of angels

The scene: A large clothes shop with me wandering around aimlessly looking for Giselle. An assistant sees me and says:

"Is there anything I can help you find?"

Me (somewhat flippantly): "Yes, my wife".

Assistant: "Does she have the same accent as you?"

Me (somewhat warily): "Er, yes"

Assistant: "I have just helped her find something, I shall take you to her."

I love being a foreigner.

Walk right in its around the back, just half a mile from the railroad track*

I have just had the misfortune to have to go to the supermarket. Nothing wrong with that you would have thought. Well today is Thanksgiving eve. Think Christmas Eve in Sainsbury's and then multiply it ten. It was carnage. It appears that Thanksgiving dinner is the same as Christmas dinner in that it full of stuff nobody wants to eat and wouldn't touch the other 364 days of a year. Tinned yams anyone? And there were more tins of pumpkin pie filling that you could shake the proverbial stick at. We were here last year for Thanksgiving and I had pumpkin pie, personally I thought it tasted like something you should be putting wallpaper up with. We shall feasting on our normal christmas dinner of ham, egg and chips tomorrow, although I have relented to normality this year and I shan't be doing frites a la Blumenthal (although they are the greatest chips ever and well worth the four hours they take to prepare). And other than that we have a plethora of films to watch. So bring it on.

* - To save you googling this one, its from Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody). Its sort of about something that happened on Thanksgiving and it is something of a tradition for American radio stations to play it three or four times during Thanksgiving day.  It is very funny and I thoroughly recommend it. Its about the only traditionally American thing I shall be doing tomorrow.

There's no pill I can recommend where the side effects aren't guaranteed to send you round the bend

I have just had my first encounter with the American health care system. The basic gist I get from it is - people in the UK, please don't ever moan about the NHS any more and people in America, get yourself an NHS.

I went to the dentist with an abscess. And what a palaver. Unless you are shelling out the cash upfront, the dentist has to talk to your insurance company to see what they will and won't pay for. Thankfully our insurance paid for my treatment but please, what sort of way is that to provide health care for people?

Then it was down to the pharmacy - the cost of three prescriptions? Nearly 90 dollars! It puts £7.20 per prescription item into perspective. I shall never complain about prescription costs ever again.

I'd quit my drinking and work on a building too

I went for a walk downtown to do some stuff this morning (including joining the library - I felt like Lisa Simpson, although unlike Springfield's library Nashua's seemed to be in rude health and full of patrons). As I was coming back I saw something that made me smile.

There was someone replacing the putty, or as I found out last week when I had a conversation about ours (don't ask) its known as caulking here, in one of the windows of another apartment in the building. Being me, I was wondering how this feat would be achieved, given that we are five floors up. Well it appears that it is done by the use of a bit of rope and a length of wood. No need for a full scaffolding of the building here (as you would have to do in the UK), just dangle the guy over in a seat attached to a girder on the roof - superb. Though I really must remember to take my camera out with me.

But the banks are made of marble, with a guard on every door

Monday is Labor Day, a bank holiday that apparently traditionally marks the end of the summer. Something concerned me about this holiday - its name. Its a bit, well, socialist. And surely America couldn't be celebrating something socialist could it? Turns out they could. Labor Day has been around since the end of the 19th century and was instigated as celebration of the achievements of workers.

Its the one dichotomy that I find time and time again here. On the face of it America (or probably more accurately some Americans) cannot countenance the very idea of socialism. Its an anathema to everything they hold dear. You just have to listen to people talking on news shows about the idea of healthcare reform. News channels, such as the one owned by everybody's favourite Australian are full of people who just seem to be, well the only word I can think of is foaming. (Not necessarily on topic but my personal favourite in this category is the mild mannered pastor who, with some of his mates, next weekend plans to burn the Koran in a protest against Islam.  He truly was the voice of reason)

There is an anti Obama bumper sticker I have seen that says "United Socialist States of America, 2010 - 2014" somehow equating the mild reform that Obama is doing to the USSR. Personally I don't think that socialist is a label that I would ever have put on Obama, liberal democrat perhaps but socialist? The very idea of state intervention to some people here is just selling their birth right. (Again, slight away from the topic but still on it, I was wearing this t-shirt when I was accosted by free thinking local who pointed to the hammer and sickle and asked if I knew that that was a symbolism of being a communist. I of course thanked him for putting me right on this information that I was previously unaware of.... Can't wait to see what happens when I wear this.)

And yet, and yet.......

I am constantly reminding myself that this is the land that gave the world Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Its the land with radio stations that are full of moderate voices who say "hold on a minute....". Its the country where they celebrate the worker and actually name a day after them - something that we aren't allowed to do in the UK, ours just becomes May bank holiday. For gods sake, our electricity is supplied by the Public Service Company of New Hampshire, I don't think you could get much more socialist than that.  So I shall stop worrying about the nutters and celebrate the progressives. Remember, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty

Well thats an interesting place I shan't be going back to in a hurry. We have just spent two nights in Atlantic City, NJ as we were the visiting le famille Cairney-Wells who were holidaying in Brigantine. This is a lovely little seaside town about 5 miles from AC (as it seems to be known by everyone in America). And a wonderful couple of days we had with them too - I don't think I have ever had so much fun on a beach. The waves come in at some lick and it is tremendous fun playing "lets see if we can stand up in the oncoming waves" - the answer generally being no, as the wounds on my arms will testify. I have promised a strict no pictures policy of the events (especially of Gary) on the beach as he has photos of me and I don't think the world is ready for either sight. But AC, well where to start.....

I have never been to Vegas but it seems that AC is Vegas's tackier, seedier cousin. It is dominated by big casino/hotel complexes and I mean big. When we were looking for a hotel, we looked at one of the casinos that had 117 floors of rooms, which as far as I can see is 100 floors too many. And they are everywhere, the whole city seems to be one skyscraper after another and everyone a casino. Not being a gambling man, not a lot there for me. One of the "benefits" of the gambling industry is that bars are allowed, no made, to be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  I am all for being able to get a drink but do I really need to get one at 430 on a Tuesday morning? The answer would appear to be yes.

But all is not lost in Sodom & Gomorrah  - AC was once a thriving seaside town where the whole of New Jersey and Pennsylvania went for their summer holidays (done for by the advent of mass car ownership after WW2). There are still bits of old AC left including the hotel we stayed in. If you ever find yourself in AC do stay there, its amazing. Lovely old building, amazing bathroom and a superb (proper European style) continental breakfast, definitely recommended. Not that I have ever seen one (or been to one) but the building had the feeling of a Wild West bordello....  The other thing worth seeing is the Boardwalk, apparenty the same one as sung about by the Drifters in "Under the Boardwalk". Sadly it is now mostly lined by new casinos and shopping malls but there are still one or two old buildings left on it. Including one with an amusement arcade where five bucks was well spent on Guitar Hero - the arcade game - what a genius idea for an arcade game. On the hi-score board for Motorhead by Motorhead in 3rd place and I never even had it on any of the versions I had for the PS2 (not that I am proud of this fact, ahem). 

As far as I can see, AC whole raison d'etre seems to be the inspiration for two pretty good songs and thats it. Happy to have seen it but don't think we will be rushing back.

I'm wearing out the flooring in a cheap motel

Well not that cheap really.

Oh, its like a film noir. Check into a motel  then go out to a diner and have steak and eggs with a cherry coke (thats coke with cherry syrup not the insipid stuff that you get in a can - and real maraschino cherries floating in it) for dinner. Can you get any more B-movie than that? Hopefully no as I'm hoping that there is no midnight visitation by the cops.

So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies

So having been here for nearly a month and a half, I think I am now in a position to make sweeping generalizations about America.

The first is that I am shocked by the people who I have met and spoken to at length. I had always had the impression of Americans being positive and believing whole heartedly and unquestioningly in their country. Almost to a man (and woman) the people who we have spoken to have have all said "I love my country but...." and there then follows a litany of things that they think are wrong with America. And its not the things that you would expect (taxes, weather etc etc) but things like "why can't we have a health service like yours?" or "why does all our food have to be so full of shit/be supplied by huge corporations/be so processed?" This isn't what I expected at all. It may be because we are living in the liberal north west of the country and that the residents Boise, Idaho are different but it has rather wrong footed me.

The most interesting example of this was a guy who was talking to whilst watching a game of junior baseball in a park near our hotel. We were discussing the relative merits of US/UK sports. He completely from nowhere stated with complete irony "Ah thats the problem with us in America - we look at the rest of the world as a third world country" . I was taken aback (not only by his command of irony) as I never expected to hear an American be so candid as to "failings" of their own country. And he wasn't some screaming radical or conspiracy theorist, just what they would describe here as an ordinary Joe. Have the events of the last decade make Americans re-asses their self image?

The other odd thing is that America projects itself (certainly from what I have seen and read - remember this is generalization) as the world's cutting edge country, bringing the world innovation. So why can't we pay our rent online and have to do it with a cheque? And before someone says, no thats just where you live, other people have said the same thing about where they live. The concept of direct debit seems to be something unknown here.

But enough of the negativity. What is fantastic is the attitude of people when you deal with them in business. Two examples - when we came to get our apartment we had to pay the deposit by cheque, no other way was possible and we didn't have any as we had no bank account. Not a problem, the person we were dealing with took cash from us and wrote a cheque from her own bank account at her instigation.

Yesterday I had to phone our cable company to get a router. Its free but when I tried to order it via their website it wanted to charge me $150 to install it. As I can do it myself, I didn't want to pay this but there was no way to get rid of it from the order. The person I spoke to just took the payment off and let me know when it would be here. There was no "computer says no" or stroking of chin and intaking of breath at all. Just an attitude of getting things done with a minimum of fuss.

Coming soon - impressions of food, media, sport, transport and politics (not necessarily in that order).