Category: Blog

Unexpected sporting connections

 

I’ve found a sport that the Brits and the Americans both love. Skiing. And we even have the same name for it. Naturally there are some differences in nomenclature. Here, as I understand it, my pants are held up by suspenders.

We’re two days into a 3-day ski trip to West Virginia, and tired muscles are recovering in our overheated condo. This is my first experience of skiing in N America and not Europe, and the Showshoe resort seems great. Speaking to a stranger does not require a preliminary assessment of what their first language might be, and resort staff (and slope users in general!) are considerably more courteous than those in France. It sits at a lower altitude than any resort I’ve been to in the Alps, but there have been shedloads of snow, and all the runs are covered right down to the bottom. Also, despite the lower altitude, it has somehow has been much colder than anything I’ve experienced in the Alps. Two days before we arrived the temperature here was minus 4. Fahrenheit. Today was a comparatively Amazonian 10F. It would appear that this is cold enough to cause beer bottles, left out to chill on the balcony, to explode. This has never happened before to me on previous ski trips. Although that was usually Kronenberg 1664 and this was Corona. Perhaps French beer is more suited to low temperatures than Mexican beer. Hmmm, makes sense.

Anyhow, the result of 5 exploded bottles of Corona (Corona Light, in fact – never shop for beer in a hurry) was a considerable amount of yellow snow. Possibly the only time yellow snow has been worth eating.

I’ve been back in the US for exactly 3 weeks now. My journey and re-entry to the States was pleasantly hassle-free. On the NYC-Nashville leg of my journey I found myself sitting across from a dude with a guitar. This is not an unusual occurrence on a flight to Nashville. He struck up a conversation with me, thus:

“Excuse me sir, are those in-ear-monitors?”

“Yes they are, absolutely.”

“Did you get them in Nashville? I need to get a pair.”

“Oh no, sorry, I actually got them in Edinburgh, Scotland!”

“Oh, wow, ok, that’s a long way.”

“Yes.”

(Then after a moment)

“I played rugby in Edinburgh once. When I was 12.”

But of course you did.

“I was at school in England, and we were on tour. It was very cold.”

Yes, that’s the one.

On another trip to the States, a few years back, I was taking a cab with my colleague from the airport into downtown Washington, DC. The cab driver was an enormous black dude. The conversation turned to where we had flown in from.

“Edinburgh, Scotland.”

“Oh.” (Then, after a moment)

“I played cricket in Edinburgh once. In a tournament.”

But of course you did.

“It was pretty cold.”

Yes, yes, that’s the one.. 

The Train

Currently on the train, en route to London. I managed to score a seat in First Class on this trip, which is a great bonus. For those who haven’t sampled the Great British Train Experience, First Class means more legroom, complimentary food and patchy wi-fi, and, perhaps most importantly, a significant drop in the probability of you having to share a carriage with a table-load of Geordie lads who drink steadily, and with gradually increasing volume, from Newcastle to London. I was trying to craft that sentence in such a way that it didn’t make me sound like an effete snob. I think I failed.

Sadly the sandwich choices on this trip are not quite to my taste (when are they ever?), but I have been tucking in to the complimentary crisps and Coke. And shortly after each stop at a station, a nice man comes round offering complimentary bad coffee. But that’s a mistake I only made once.

It’s been a fun few weeks back in the UK. Two weeks in London gave me plenty of time to catch up with the family and, with unflaggingly enthusiastic assistance from my 3 year old nephew, burn off some of the energy I’ve acquired from 3 months of ‘resting’. Then over the last week in Edinburgh I’ve had the opportunity to catch up with many old friends. Inevitably I didn’t have time to see everyone I wanted to, which makes this departure feel slightly premature. I did, however, see Wiseman on three separate occasions, so that particular itch has been well and truly scratched.

There are many differences between the UK and the US, and I realise that I highlight them in my blog ad nauseam. But let me just mention the weather. It’s better in Tennessee. Some might say “it’s just different” but I would say it’s better. Even though the temperatures in Nashville and, say, London are probably not dissimilar right now, there’s a dampness in the air here which makes the cold cling to your bones in a disappointingly consistent fashion. Of course, in Edinburgh, you need to factor in the wind chill as well, which cuts a few more degrees off the ‘feels like’ temperature.  It was in this context, a returning son grown accustomed to sunnier climes, that I feel I had a justifiable right to feel aggrieved about my mother’s decision to switch the heating off. My protests were dismissed with an airy wave of the hand and some comment resembling “if you got up and moved around you’d stay warm.”

It’s hard to text on an iPhone when your extremities have gone numb, but, from beneath a number of blankets, I managed to fire off an SOS text to my sister. Her response I do not recall exactly, but am confident included the words “big jessie”. She seemed to relent later and suggested I phone Childline. She even provided the number, so quickly, in fact, that I suspect she might have it memorised.

At least here in First Class, no heating expenses are being spared. An orange rolled off the table of the nice lady across from me and was heading in the direction of the restaurant car, until I retrieved it for her. She was grateful. That has been the most hair-raising event of the journey so far. Let’s hope it stays that way 🙂

Edinburgh, je t’aimerai toujours

Wiseman attempts to focus on his glass of wine. Varifocals, y’see

Thursday, 27 December, 3.45pm. I emerged (I would like to say blinking into the sunlight, but, seriously) into the cold, damp twilight of Edinburgh’s Waverley Bridge. It was 2012, but it could have been 1992. I was a student, returning from spending Christmas with my family, and gazing across the train tracks to the National Gallery and Edinburgh Castle, I was struck afresh how much I love this town.

The next morning I got up early, and after a visit to work to say hello to the post-Christmas skeleton staff (although no-one looks like a skeleton post-Christmas), I checked off a few favourite haunts – haircut at Kenny’s, coffee at Artisan Roast, brunch at Indigo Yard. Last night saw the continuation of another personal Christmas tradition – the festive Subbuteo match. Note to American readers: Subbuteo is a table-top football game (football, yes football) whose heyday was probably in the 80s, but is kept alive by a few anoraks/”enthusiasts” who may well enjoy a spot of Fifa 13 action on their Xbox or whatever now and then but still retain a fond affection for flicking small plastic figures around a large green mat chasing an oversized ball.

Approximately 30 minutes before leaving for the “stadium”, I realised I had failed to include “Subbuteo stuff” on the Spreadsheet of Destiny I created when leaving the country, and thus had (and still have) no idea where/in whose basement/attic I packed it away. Accordingly, I was unable to bring my usual team (Northern Ireland) to the game, and my contribution to the atmosphere of this festive fixture (three sections of terracing, complete with approx 23 plastic fans in various stages of apparent undress, depending on how much of them I had painted) was also missing.

Surprisingly, the atmosphere seemed largely similar to previous years, and I got round the lack of a team by borrowing Argentina from my opponent. He went with Brazil, and they got hockeyed 11-7. We used to play games 20 minutes each way, until we realised we had to play a few games to justify the hassle of getting it all out and set up, and so since 2010 or so we’ve just played the full 90 minutes + Fergie-time. Brings on a sore-ish back, mind, bending over a table for that long.

Tonight was a long-awaited reconciliation with Wiseman, at PizzaExpress. We went to the Holyrood venue, possibly the coldest restaurant in the British Isles. I wore one more layer than I typically wear when skiing, and all was well. He warmed himself with several large glasses of red wine. We shared our respective news. He has acquired varifocals since we last met, which provided more ammunition for age-related jokes, not that the ammunition cupboard was exactly bare. I found it amusing to bob up and down in my seat, although whether the resulting blurring effect for Mark was varifocal or grape-related remains unclear.

Tomorrow I get to worship at St Mungo’s again for the first time in several months, and I’m greatly looking forward to it.

Thanks to all of you who have posted ‘welcome back’ type messages on Facebook and the like. And seriously, if anyone is reading this and they think they might have a battered box of Subbuteo stuff in their attic or basement, please do get in touch. There may be a reward.

The last day of Movember

 

Eleven weeks here, and the US is still treating me well. Am developing an addiction to southern-style sweet tea, and have found a balanced diet of fried chicken and Mexican food.

And yet, despite my refusal to eat anything other than the healthiest fast food takeaway fried chicken and fries, I have somehow accrued a few pounds from somewhere. Life is a mystery sometimes. It may well just be my rather weighty moustache making its presence felt on the scales, but in the event that it isn’t, I signed up to a gym membership for the first time in my life. I have never before done this because (1) they’ve always been outrageously expensive, and (2) I hate gyms. But this is America, where it costs you not much more to work off the pounds than it does to put them on in the first place. And so they get you both ways. And then add tax. No matter, they had a Black Friday deal on membership, so I and my partner in crime, Ryan, signed up, with lofty ideals to work out regularly and keep each other accountable. It may yet happen, it’s early days.

I certainly need the opportunity to exercise, with it seemingly preferable in this country to abandon your car (or large truck) on a grassy area near the front door of the building you’re visiting, rather than park it in an actual parking space if said parking space is more than 50 yards away from the front door.

Being a keen cricketer, I thought about finding an equivalently high-intensity sport and taking it up, like bowling (that’s ten-pin, not lawn bowls, UK people, come on, be serious), or pool, or speed-walking to Chick-Fil-A. I have even been bowling a couple of times, including once against my roommate. My roommate is the kind of guy who has his own kayak, surfboard and skis. And bowling ball. I discovered this after we agreed to go bowling one morning and he re-emerged from the basement carrying it, along with his bowling shoes. I like to think of myself as being a man of some discernment, and it was at this point I discerned that I was in trouble. And I was. I have never before bowled against someone who could rack up over 200. After I had overcome the intimidation factor (4 games in) I found myself raising my game a touch and scoring 192. He scored 193 that time.

Today is 30 November, and is almost certainly the last day of my moustache. For a while there, I was tempted to keep it, but have grown fed up with having an overgrown hairy caterpillar on my lip. It interferes with some of life’s primary functions, like blowing one’s nose. It just makes the clean-up operation so much more … involved. No doubt I could invest in a beard trimmer, which would keep it in check (that’s the moustache rather than the snot), but it seems simpler to just shave it off.

Farewell, dear ‘tache…

The Invisible Election

So, Obama got re-elected last night. Cue spontaneous street celebrations (including fireworks) in my street, and much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth in other places. I arrived in America knowing that I would be here for the election (and the run-up to it) and was both anticipating and dreading what that would entail. The images of American elections and political rallies I absorbed while in the UK involved mass public displays of hysteria and hyperbole. And no doubt all that has been going on of late, but I have been utterly unaware of it. Had I been living in the UK for the past few months, I’m confident I would have been more aware of the circus than I have been right here in the heart of the USA.

There are a number of reasons for that, chief among which is that I haven’t really exposed myself to ‘news’ over here. I haven’t bought a newspaper, I have barely watched TV, neither of which I really did in the UK, but when I lived there I was regularly checking in to the BBC News website, and here I just haven’t. I guess I was expecting more in the way of billboards and things, but as I have been led to understand, Tennessee is “not really” a swing state. Makes sense.

What has been pretty refreshing is that the debates I have heard people getting into have been, for the most part, rational and balanced. I have heard my peers in the school express the full range of opinions on the election and the main political parties. And by peers I mean mostly twentysomethings, for as a single thirtysomething on a “year out” I have more in common with twentysomething singles than I do with married friends of my own age. Some have railed against the pressure they feel to vote, and to vote in a particular way. And I have heard and read many guilt trips that have been thrown onto people who have been considering not voting, or have been unsure of how to vote.

Now, is it important to exercise your democratic right to vote, which is a privilege many fought and died for? I believe it is. But is it also understandable to be unsure who to vote for, when neither main party or candidate fully represents your views on issues that matter? Or, put another way, when both of them support things that you really don’t want to support? I believe it is. And while many seem to think that voting for a particular party (and which party apparently depends on which part of the US you live in) is the God-honouring way to vote, I have never found it that simple. In the UK it appears to be less clear-cut how a Christian “should” vote, as both the main political parties support issues that Christians would traditionally vote against, such as abortion and gay marriage. While that adds confusion, it also to a certain degree releases the pressure that voting in a particular way is somehow betraying God.

The Republicans take views that a large percentage of Christians can get behind. But do they completely espouse Christian beliefs? Is Mitt Romney not a Mormon?

And here’s a question. Should the traditional strongholds of the Republican Party such as the Bible Belt become, over time, gradually less and less Christian, will the Republican Party continue to take a “Christian” view on the big issues? They might, in which case I can only envisage they would gradually slip into political obscurity, and another, more secular party would rise to prominence to challenge the Democrats. Or would they reflect the change in views of their electorate in order to survive? I reckon they would.

Last night my roommate tried to extract from me how I would have voted had I been able to vote here. I successfully bodyswerved the question. For the truth is, I really don’t know how I would have voted.

I write this as an outsider, fully aware of the limits of my understanding of American politics, and conscious of how I receive the opinions of outsiders on Northern Irish politics. I write it not as an observation on the American political landscape but as an opinion on how Christians seem to be press-ganged to vote in a certain way.

When God has moved in power in the past, has it been through godly government? I have not studied revivals enough to know the answer to that, and so it is a genuine question. But I know that whenever the church is persecuted, it thrives. Would God pour out blessing on America if it had a genuinely godly president? He might. Were any of the candidates for the presidency genuinely godly men? I don’t think so.

When I moved to the States, my Scottish friend Boyd, who has lived here for a few years, gave me two pieces of advice.

(1) Be very specific when asking for a haircut.

(2) Don’t discuss politics with anyone.

I’ve managed the first…

Worship

 

So, I am now the proud owner of a car. I managed to get hold of a car with a manual gearbox, and have been re-acquainting myself with the art of the clutch. Has proved extraordinarily difficult to translate many *cough* years of left-handed gear changes to the other side. Couple of times I have tried to change gear with the door handle. Several times, usually at intersections, I have stalled, which is not a failing I can blame on the location of the stick. The gearbox seems a little clunky at times, especially when going from first to second, even after a few hours behind the wheel. But it’s been fun.

Point of note: it’s intriguing that with nothing more than a driving licence acquired through making a couple of turns and stops in an automatic transmission-equipped car, I can, perfectly legally, drive off into heavy traffic in a car with a six-speed manual gearbox.

Worship times at church have been fun too. Not least because our worship leaders insist on singing songs several keys higher than I’m used to. And that’s just the male worship leaders. The song “In Christ Alone” which has made a few appearances recently, I have always played and sung in Eb. Here we have twice sung it in A. One of our worship leaders in particular seems to be possessed of a voice pitched high enough to minister to dogs and bats. Accordingly mass harmonies break out in the room during worship. At some points I am unsure if there is anyone left in the room either capable of, or willing to sing the melody. It should be said that this is Nashville, there is a significant number of talented musicians and singers in the room at any one time, and mass harmony would probably be breaking out anyway.

Apart from the appearance of songs like “In Christ Alone”, which has been around a while, most of the songs we sing are fairly new, if not brand new. Most days we will sing at least one song that has been written in-house. I have learned a few new songs here, although I’m not sure I’ve learned the melody.

There is a tendency in the most recent worship songs to include a chorus or bridge which consists entirely of “oh oh oh oh” or “whoaaa whoaaa”. I’m not going to lie. I love this. There was a time when I would have wondered about the theological profundity of such a sentence, if oh x 4 can be considered a sentence. I would have given it a short amount of thought, and decided that it scored quite low on the theological profundity scale. Probably zero, on a scale of one to ten. And dismissed it as yet another inane modern worship song.

But here’s the thing. In worship we sing songs to our heavenly Father. And God isn’t, as far as I know, impressed with our lyrical eloquence. Were I a father, and my child came to me and told me, in a childlike and grammatically incorrect way, that they loved me, would I correct their grammar, or would the sentiment of their expression move my heart?

I think the latter. And I think God’s heart is moved when we come to him worshipping with our heart rather than our head. Further, I now think “whoaaa” is a deeply profound expression of worship. And much more versatile than most words. It can express wonder, awe, love, adoration, mystery and more. When the Spirit moves you (sometimes physically) in worship, or when God takes you by surprise with a revelation during worship, “whoaaa” is probably the only apt response.

Jesus said that unless you become like a little child you cannot enter the Kingdom of heaven. God has been reinforcing the importance of this to me, and I have discovered new levels of childlikeness recently. I am learning new things about the Kingdom every day. I’m still only moving from first gear to second, and it’s still a bit clunky, but I’m getting there.

The bed, the car, and the bad-ass boyfriend

So, I am now the proud owner of a bed. A Queen bed (please, please restrain yourselves), if you will, which it would appear is the American equivalent of a kingsize bed in the UK. The British double bed is apparently called a ‘full-size’ even though it’s only one size up from the smallest, which is itself called a twin. Of course it is. Nothing could be more obvious.

I test-drove a car at the weekend, which was a lovely experience. After driving for a bit in the gathering dusk, I realized I hadn’t yet switched on the headlights, which instilled a whole new level of confidence in my passenger. This was the saleslady, called Tammy, and she had this lovely southern accent. She also had a great way of phrasing things, such as “you can turn right here” which meant “take the next left.” And right there, if you’ll forgive the play on words, is another British-US difference, not that this blog is meant to be a list of our cultural and linguistic differences, although it might continue in that vein for bit until I run out of steam, or differences, or get bored, or forget what Britain is like. A Brit would say “take a left at the lights”. An American, particularly, I feel, in the South, might say “you can go ahead and take a left at the next intersection”. A few weeks ago, or, perhaps more accurately, before I visited Nashville for the first time in May this year, I would have thought this a terribly extravagant waste of syllables and energy. Now it just seems like a more deliberate way of engaging in conversation, and reflects the joy which is taken in even the smaller details in life here. Of course, I should really point out for the benefit of my American readers that not all Brits are as culturally and linguistically repressed as me, that would be unfair. But some of them are. Oh yes.

But back to that left turn. I did feel Tammy should really have put a comma after ‘turn’, thus:

“You can turn, right here” which would have clarified her meaning somewhat, given that only a left turn was available. If I had a copy of “Eats shoots and leaves” I would have presented it to her there and then, or possibly after I had safely made the turn. I can’t remember if this incident was before or after I had come off the interstate onto the off-ramp, and was remarking how good the car was in the corners.

“Yes. It gets a little twisty here.” she replied.

That I took to be an invitation to go right on ahead and find out how good the car really was in the corners, and so I think I might have accelerated into the “twisty” bit. Oops.

“Can you tell I was in a wreck?” she enquired, her voice possibly rising in pitch just a fraction.

“Uh, I’m sorry?” I asked.

“This bit is quite TWISTY!” she continued, in a crescendo towards fever pitch, banging on my arm with a rolled up.. sales schedule, or something. I got the point and went ahead and slowed right on down.

Turns out she had been in quite a bad car accident a few years back, which instilled in me a new level of respect that she would ride shotgun with potential car buyers trying to find just how grippy their prospective purchase was in the corners. She mentioned her ex-husband in the conversation, and I wanted to ask her had she not thought about standing by her man, but being a model of self-discipline and restraint, I didn’t.

But back to the bed, so to speak. I found it (or rather AJ did) on Craigslist, which is the US version of Gumtree. Or vice versa. Anyhow, it was in search of this bed that I found myself driving into a dark deserted industrial estate in East Nashville tonight. I pulled up to the entrance of what might have been some sort of furniture storage facility, had I been able to see it properly in the dark, alongside the seller’s pickup truck, and was shown the mattress and box spring by this girl and her bad-ass-looking black boyfriend. There was no hip-hop pumping out of the pickup’s speakers, but there might have been. I had visions of me being found lying face down on said mattress with a single bullet hole in the back of my head, but perhaps I’ve watched too many of the wrong type of movies. Real life was, as ever, considerably less dramatic (I’m grateful), and twenty minutes later the pickup pulled up outside my new house in Nashville, where I am about to start renting a room. And so my brief sojourn in Franklin is almost at an end. Alyn and AJ, who probably didn’t find it quite so brief a sojourn, are looking to take on another lodger who would be willing to pay rent in root beer, cream soda and M&Ms.

Am quite excited about my move into Music City itself, and the resulting proximity to the live music scene there, not to mention some great indy coffee shops.  Cannae wait, like.

Driving tests and diapers

 

Following my successful foray into driving theory last Thursday, I booked my road test for the following day in a small town called Jasper (approx 3000 inhabitants), about 2.5 hours drive south of Nashville, close to Chattanooga and the county borders with Alabama and Georgia. You might think that it would be more convenient to take the test in, say, Franklin, or Nashville, or Canada, or really anywhere closer than Jasper, but I couldn’t find a test centre nearby which could fit me in any sooner than late October.

The ladies in the DMV place at Jasper were very sweet. I think perhaps they were pleased to see someone they weren’t related to.

I can’t begin to tell you how different this test experience was compared to my UK driving test in 1991. I was a little worried that the nice examiner lady would be put off by the stash of spare nappies/diapers and discarded root beer bottles in the back, but she seemed unfazed. She also declared that I would have no problem with the test. I can only presume that she took one glance at my “distinguished” appearance and realised I had clocked up a few miles behind the wheel, and was disregarding the fact that I would be driving an unfamiliar vehicle, on unknown streets, on entirely the wrong side of the road.

She was proved right though. The test consisted of a few turns at junctions. No reversing at all, never mind into a parking space, no hill start (bit redundant with an automatic box), no emergency stop. Perhaps just as well, or we might both have been wearing the diapers, so to speak.

Looks like I did just begin to tell you how different the driving test experiences were after all.

So, with Tennessee driving license in hand, the thoughts turn to what kind of car to buy. At the school we’ve been learning how to hear God’s voice, so I asked him what he thought of my idea of getting a massive twin cab pickup truck. He said he thought it was a little OTT for my needs.

So I found a reasonably priced sensible-looking car online, before discovering it didn’t have electric windows. I mean, seriously, this is supposed to be America. Can you imagine the tangle I’d get in at a drive-thru if I had to actually wind down the window first?

So, finding a car and a house are the remaining jigsaw pieces to put into place in order to settle into life here with a degree of independence, and thus reduce my sponging from my hosts and Charlene. Although living with Alyn & AJ has been, I feel, of mutual benefit. I get a roof over my head, food, a minivan (with multitudinous cup holders and spare diapers for emergencies) to drive when Charlene’s car is at the garage; they drink my root beer and get to reach their broadband supplier’s data download limit 3 days before the end of the month. Alyn is particularly pleased about this last benefit. I blame ESPN for streaming live cricket from Sri Lanka. And then there was the Ryder Cup…

Breakdowns come and breakdowns go

(so what are you going to do about it, that’s what I’d like to know…)

“I only crave this stuff when I’m pregnant,” declared AJ, as she swigs on another bottle of (my) root beer. On my first visit to Wholefoods, shortly after my arrival here, I decided to buy a 4-pack of Virgil’s to see what all the fuss was about. Wiseman was always going on about the stuff (he does go on about things sometimes), to the point where I reckon he might have considered moving to the US just to have it on tap. However, he wouldn’t want to be moving in with Alyn and AJ, for several reasons I suspect, but principally because every time he came home he would find the refrigerator ransacked and his supply of rather fine root beer decimated.

Well, purely speculatively, that’s what I suggest might happen. Fortunately this week at the School has been entitled “Healing Life’s Hurts” and I’m here to tell you it couldn’t have come at a better time. Alyn & AJ have not only been teaching this at the School, but helping me work it out in practice, bless them.

This morning was spent back at the DMV, taking my driving theory test. Being of a certain age, I never had to take a theory test in the UK, and so this was a new, and largely unwelcome experience. Although some of the questions did at least provide some humour, like 

Continuous hard braking on snow and ice often:

(a) helps you stop sooner
(b) heats up your brake pads and stops them freezing

I forget what (c) was now but I went for it. Anyway, the theory successfully negotiated, I booked myself a road test for tomorrow. My wheels for this auspicious occasion have been loaned to me by the very kind Charlene, who is able to lend me her car since she is currently driving a car belonging to a rock’n’roll friend who is currently away on tour. Ah, Nashville. Now, Charlene, I mean no disrespect, and I am enormously grateful for the generous loan, but it does rattle a bit, this car. I’m not entirely sure that the shock absorbers are currently absorbing anything. Had I been driving it in and out of pot-holes in Edinburgh, as one is wont to do there, I would have booked myself into the dentist by now. But apart from that it’s a fine car, if you don’t mind the deer-shaped void where the front grille used to be, and the cable tie keeping an undefined part of the engine attached to the chassis. 

And lo, did her car not break down this very afternoon, even while I was in Starbucks (I knew that judgement was coming). Shifting the stick into Reverse or Drive was simply not enough to persuade the transmission to engage. 

The nice Tow Truck Guy that appeared after a short wait drawled that there was nothing with the transmission (buddy), and with a reckless disregard for the consequences, detached the cable tie from the engine part and attached it to another engine part. Having checked that the transmission now engaged successfully, he drove off and left me shortly before the car broke down again. Distance travelled: 12 feet. A quick phone call to Charlene saved the day and helped me open the hood/bonnet (not as straightforward as you might think), whereupon I reattached the thing back to the thing, minus the cable tie, which had fallen off, and hoped I would not be repeating the process every 12 feet for the 3 mile trip to the garage.

Tomorrow’s test will now be taken in Alyn & AJ’s minivan. Maximum credibility awaits.

Starbucks drive-thru fail

Decided to try out the Starbucks drive-thru this morning. Was on my way to the DMV (American DVLA) to ascertain how I might perchance obtain a Tennessee driver’s licence. Having been warned by Alyn that this could take some time, I realised that skipping my coffee this morning at breakfast might not have been such a good plan, and resolved to visit Starbucks.

Now, a word here about Starbucks, since earlier in these pages I have been, um, forthright in my condemnation thereof. I am still not a fan as such, but have now had three Starbucks coffees in the States, and they have all been OK. Not outstanding, but definitely ok.

But Starbucks is on the way to the DMV, and they have a drive-thru, and getting out of one’s vehicle for anything other an emergency is frowned upon here.

And so it was that I arrived at the window, where the nice lady asked me for $4.32. I did wonder if she might be prophetic, as I hadn’t ordered anything yet. And it transpired that somehow I had managed to avoid ordering anything at the intercom-thing earlier in the drive-thru queue and she was charging me for somebody else’s venti iced triple shot pumpkin latte extra soy decaf. I am conscious that I was listening to WSM country music radio, but not *that* loud. This basic inability to use a drive-thru was kind of mortifying. It’s not as if we don’t have drive-thrus in the UK. Anyhow, the rest of the exchange went like this.

“Not a problem, so what can I get you?”

“Black Americano, small please”

“Where are you from?”

“Uh, Ireland”

At this point she screwed up her face and banged her hands on the counter, exclaiming “DARN YOU!”

I looked appropriately puzzled. She apologised for darning me.

“It’s only my favourite place!” she explained.

“Oh,” I said, “Have you been?”

“No.”

I love this.

“But it’s top of the list!”

I warned her to lower her expectations.

She gave me the Americano on the house, because “it’s not every day we get someone from Ireland in here.” I might have pointed out that I will be in there every day for the next 9 months if they keep giving me free coffee, Starbucks or no…