Thud!


From the moment I landed at Heathrow Airport my spirits came back down to earth with a resounding thud. Twenty four hours earlier I had been sauntering around Piedmont Park with Christian in 80 degree heat, dressed as had become the norm during my trip in the ubiquitous shorts, tee-shirt and flipflops. English temperature upon my return was in the high forties, the sky was grey and everything about the place looked drab, drab, drab.

Goosebumps in May? I had not bargained on that. The other real contrast I had not expected - but I don't know why. I had just spent fifteen days in the company of Christian and, at different times, family and friends of Beth, now I was back to my usual existence, alone for many hours at a time.

With no-one to talk to, no-one to share my experiences with - no-one to bore with my holiday stories is the truth - all I could do was sit and reflect on the best holiday of my life. I actually needed the time to process all that had happened, so much was packed in to such a brief period that some events were almost subsumed by the next.

On the penultimate day Christian and I drove to near Birmingham, Alabama to visit a motorcycle museum. On the way we stopped for breakfast, something of a ritual on our road trips, and, in the absence of a Dunkin Donuts we settled on yet another Waffle House. We'd been to enough of these to know that we could find our way round the menu easily enough - the humiliation of my Subway visit still too fresh in my mind to want to risk a strange menu and language difficulties in Alabama!

To the delightful young, pink-haired waitress called Amethyst - birthstone for February as she pointed out - we gave our orders, pretty much just small variations from our previous breakfasts. As always we had both asked for our eggs "over easy", an Americanism I'd heard enough in the films but still enjoyed the novelty of actually saying it.

Amethyst called out our order to the cook - are these the ones Americans call short order chefs - and was met with a strong and withering response. I struggled to understand it all - the cook didn't have subtitles under her face so that we Brits could follow her tirade. Eventually I understood that she was complaining that there was no such thing as "over easy", the waitress should have asked for "over light" I think.

So now I'm confused. Over easy worked just fine for thirteen days and now we'd gotten our waitress a public dressing down for it. As though she cared. She was still smarting from being told to wash out her purple hair as it was too bright, too brash for their customers. Hence she'd changed it to pink! As far as I can now tell the options for eggs in the US roadside diners is from the selection, over light, over easy and over cooked but which one you ask for is anybody's guess.

I had been told many times before by friends who had visited America that the bacon there is very different to ours, "they can't do bacon properly the way we do." Well, what do you know, I absolutely adore American bacon, far prefer it to ours and since my visit have experimented with cooking it for the flavour and texture they achieve. Have managed to get the right degree of crispiness but so far ours has proved a touch too salty. The search continues.

On my third day in America we were off, to Alabama this time too but in this case to Talladega for the race. As we crossed the state line from Georgia into Alabama Christian studied his mobile intently and, sure enough, after a minute or two the time set itself back one hour from Eastern Time to Central Time. Beth was checking her phone - I guess because she's American I had better call hers a cell phone! - but her time didn't alter. Bizarrely, at this time I received a text, something I never expected as all my friends knew I was out of the country and therefore it wasn't worth texting me until my return.

The text was from my mobile (cell) phone provider welcoming me to the Isle of Man! For the benefit of the American readers I should point out that the Isle of Man is, surprise, a small island, population 80,000, in the Irish Sea between England and the Irish Republic. How a signal from Alabama placed me in the Irish Sea I'll never understand. Modern technology at its best, I guess. T-mobile redeemed themselves five minutes later, however, with a follow-up text which said, "Welcome to the United States of America". I'd only been there three days!

My return to England held something of a surprise for me. During my lifetime there have been fifteen general elections, all resolved quite satisfactorily, if not always to the pleasure of various participants. This sixteenth was the first one I was going to be out of the country for - an unfortunate fact caused by the Prime Minister's lack of knowledge of the date for the Talladega race or my travel plans, although he only had to ask.

I applied for a postal vote and British efficiency excelled again - they sent me my voting form some time after I left the country. Thus I was in no position to make my mark and what happens? A hung parliament, that's what. My first reaction was that hanging was too good for some of them but quickly realised I misunderstood the meaning of the phrase. I blame myself for the outcome, of course. I should never have left the voters to cope by themselves with such an enormous task. Simply, I should have tried to get the main event moved to some time after the Talladega race.

Three good things have come out of the results, though. Firstly we have ended up with a coalition government which should prevent the worst excesses we have seen before from the two main parties. Secondly, we have a promise of electoral reform, something long overdue and I have advocated for a very long time, and finally the coalition has agreed to introduce fixed term parliaments of five years in future - instead of elections being called at the whim of the incumbent Prime Minister - a move I suspect agreed upon to make it much easier for me to arrange my holidays and thus avoid a repetition of this whole sorry business!