Now Playing: Fatz Cafe's theme song
Topic: Stephen Says
Things I learned on my trip to America:
1) When you’re flying from Cleveland to Charlotte, don’t make fun of goofy Southern accents because the well-dressed businessman next to you will have an even goofier accent than anything that you can muster. (Though, ironically, no one seems to mind that you’re talking in a fake southern accent. Let’s hear it for assimilation!)
2) Don’t mess with the Department of Homeland Security or U.S. customs in general. Not only will they do a really thorough and uncompromising job in order to make you feel safe, keep their country secure and keep that niggling fear of terrorism alive in the back of your mind, they also don’t mind if you give their camera a big goofy grin after they’ve finished fingerprinting you and are taking your mug shot. Though they’ll cut the locks off your bag, search it they will leave a ‘compliments of…’ chitty inside your suitcase.
3) You can say hello to and make small chat with anyone. In fact, it’s expected. Unlike in England where you’ll be regarded as a crazy. In fact, after dining at the Cracker Barrel, I had a word-for-word identical conversation with a lady that the U.S. guide book that Elisabeth got for me said I would.
4) As a whole, the United States is a very hot country. I mean really, really hot. Hotter than I can handle.
5) On top of being hot, it’s so humid that it’s too humid. Did I mention how hot it was?
6) Going to a great-big (By my standards) southern evangelical church makes me feel like an alien. Or at least newly immigrated Muslim from Pakistan who is made to attend a church service. Except that I speak the language fluently and am technically the same faith.
7) In fact, the sheer bombardment of religion in the South is so overwhelming that it’s easy to assume that you’re opinion of how much religion is out there is correct. Only it only actually accounts for about 5% of the total religion that is very politely and sincerely fed to everyone in the South every day of their life. The local Charlotte ‘news’paper had a section devoted to extreme Christian views as a matter of course.
8) Newspapers in America contain no actual news. And if they do, contain what appears to be a news story then it’ll be cleverly written so as to only contain one side of the story so that people mistake ‘opinion’ as news.
9) It really sucks to be a vegetarian if you don’t live in a city. It must really suck to be any kind of gourmet in the south as well. There must be more to life than fried food and salads are not a suitable vegetarian alternative.
10) Never ever, under any circumstances, eat at Fatz Cafe.
Actually, that should be point number 1. And I can’t really think of any more snark so I’ll stop there. The trip was, in fact, very nice, fun and chilled out and it was a real pity that we had to leave when we did. Even though I’d reached the limits of spending family time with people, it was still very sad to leave.
Back in Woking, we’re taking advantage of the Italian market that’s rolled into town and our bodies are thanking us generously for starting them back on that healthy organic diet. I have gained something akin to a million-billion pounds thanks to the bottomless pit of beer and was carted around with us all trip. So there’s going to be a massive anti-alcohol detox going on for us as well.
(I.e., we only got one bottle of wine for tonight to accompany our delicious Italian market meal. But you need red wine to go with Italian food so it’s not like it’s a failure on our part to control our alcohol intake, we’re just doing what needs to be done. It would be rude not to.)
It’s really nice to be back in England, actually. It’s nice to be in a multi-cultural society again . It’s nice to be able to get a paper and go to the Italian cafe for a coffee to relax. It’s nice to see that there has been progress with the construction near the town centre where the workmen have replaced the safety fence with a different safety fence.
It’s nice to read the paper and learn how the U.S. is helping to commit acts of voter fraud in not just its own country but others as well and that fundamentalism, regardless of what religion is involved is a deviation from the true nature of religion.
It’s nice to be positive once in a while and not snark about how
11) Americans don’t know how to travel. Gatwick has its own wing devoted to clueless travelers how must have come to England in the first place, but have obviously forgotten how that happened because they’ll wander round getting angrier and angrier because they won’t stop and ask for help or, if they do, blame the person who is helping them’s accent for their confusion except that they’ve obviously spoken to English people while they’ve been here so one would think that they’ve learned to understand the language. You’ll also encounter petty air rage on the flight back to the U.K. that’s so petty it’s not worth even going into detail about.