"Toto, I have a feeling we ain't in Burton no more..."

I'm not sure what I was expecting from my first visit to the USA. If the films and TV shows were to be believed, it was a place filled with colourful characters from sitcoms, where everyone lived in towns with names like Springcreek and Greenville, greeted visitors with a cheery "how y'all doin' today?" and went home each evening to eat meatloaf and apple pie. But I told myself not to be so stupid. That was only the stereotype, right?

Actually it seems to be mostly accurate... For a start, the town in which we were staying is called Waynesville. It's apparently famous for its antique shops and consists of a rows of white, clapboard covered houses and shops, with an American flag proudly dangling from each lamppost: in short, your archetypal American small town. It's hardly a big town, yet it manages to boast about five or six antique shops (the American translation of antiques seems to be 'rather tatty junk which is probably no more than about ten years old') and of course the ubiquitous selection of fast food outlets.The people lived up to their image too. When we got to the house, not only did the next door neighbours specifically come round to introduce themselves, the day after we'd arrived, they also offered to lend us one of their cars (fortunately we were already borrowing one). I tried to imagine someone in Britain lending a complete stranger their ludicrously expensive Dodge pickup, having met them just a few hours earlier. My imagination is fairly active, but I just couldn't manage it... 

Another major difference I noticed about America is  how BIG everything is: the cars, the roads, the food, the people. For example, everyone drives either an SUV or a sedan and in the middle of an interstate, where, in Britain, there would be a narrow central reservation, in the USA there is a veritable field separating the two sides, often containing trees or bushes. I haven't yet seen a whole house in the middle of the road, but it wouldn't surprise me. The thing is, they just have so much more space. On our drive from the airport, George (the father of the person with whom we were swapping our home, and a typical retired Ohioan) asked  us about planning laws in the UK. We explained about the green belt, greenfield sites and so on. "We're needin' summat similar here," he replied, "If we keep on buildin' the way we are, we're gonna run of space real quick." I looked around me, out of the window of the car. The highway read surrounded by miles of fields and grassland, the emptiness only occasionally punctuated by a few roadside diners or malls. Space is one thing America is certainly not short of...

Actually, the landscape in Ohio was not quite what I'd imagined. In my mind's eye, it had been composed of seas of gently swaying maize as far as the eye could see, with no hills or undulations anywhere to be found. The kind of place where you could stand on a chair and get a good view. As it turned out, Ohio's landscape seems to be not unlike our own: gently rolling hills and fields (slightly crisped by a summer drought) with a network of roads, both large and small. However, unlike Britain, the landscape is dotted with those fantastic red barns with white roofs. It was a sunny day when we arrived and they stood out, contrasted against the bright blue sky and the verdant green fields of soya. It was a beautiful sight. However, every few miles, this bucolic idyll was shattered by the ugliness of a roadside fast-food joint or a gargantuan outlet mall. Convenience clearly comes before beauty in America... I began to notice more and more little things which caught my eye: a row of shops which included a "Daddy's Gun Store"; a massive super-church with parking for thousands; a billboard by the side of the highway with the words "HELL IS REAL" (I was half expecting to see a sign further on reading "...HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO COALVILLE?"). I began  to realise how different a culture it really was. It's a great place, but it certainly ain't nothin' like Burton...

Flight of Fantasy

I'm writing this whilst high. Not on drugs, I hasten to add, but high up in the  air.  36,007 feet up in the air, to be more precise.  You see, I'm currently on an American Airways flight to Chicago. We're doing a home exchange with a family from Waynesville, Ohio and this is the first leg of our journey. An 8 hour leg... Actually, it's my first ever long haul flight and, indeed, the first time I'll have ever left Europe. Up to this point, I've only flown short distances with El Cheapo airlines with names like Pig-Air and Grot-Fly.  I'm writing this blog entry on one of those tiny fold-down tables whilst, around me, my fellow passengers have gone into that flight-induced state of suspended animation where sleep and books replace social interaction. We're about 4 hours into the journey and I've already finished the in-flight magazine (before we even took off), fiddled with the entertainment system (if you've ever been tempted to watch John Carter, don't bother: it's rubbish) and unwrapped and eaten all the little packets of food which made up the airline lunch. In short, boredom is beginning to creep in.

 Nevertheless, I adore flying. Not just the idea of being thousands of feet in the air (although that, in itself, is pretty amazing) but the whole process, with all its rituals and systems. I think it must appeal to my oft-elusive OCD side. I love it all: the way the luggage disappears though flaps at one end and magically reappears again at your destination (or to a selection of cities around the world if you fly cheaply, preferably a place as far away as possible from its intended destination); the airline food, too, consisting of a tray laden with intriguing little packets, each containing something which tastes rather different from but not entirely dissimilar to how it's supposed to taste. In fact, if you take your time, you can spin out the whole process of eating for ages, opening and trying each tiny parcel separately.

 The only part of the experience that I dislike is airport security. The system seems to be designed to make even the most innocent of travellers feel like a bloodthirsty terrorist planning to commit unspeakable wrongs with the nail scissors and half empty bottle of Volvic they accidentally left in their hand luggage. Also,if you're anything like me, at some point, you will inevitably find yourself, having passed security, trying to juggle a coat, a bag, a pair of shoes and a belt, whilst your trousers, revelling in their newfound, belt-less freedom, attempt to descend. If an alien were to ask me the meaning of the word 'stress', I'd give them a pair of baggy trousers, a belt and a carefully packed bag containing a pair of eyebrow tweezers, then direct them to Heathrow.

 I could add a lot more on this subject, but I'll leave it there for now and go and stretch my legs. I've written too much already. and I'm quite worryingly beginning to lose all feeling in my posterior. Hopefully I'll blog more about the US when I've arrived, if anyone's interested (perhaps let me know in the comments if you are).

Anyway, I was planning to end this post with a pun related to flying. But now I realise that that would have been plane stupid...

 I'm sorry, really, I am...

Sing when you're tidying

If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign? 

Albert Einstein.

You know it’s really the summer holidays when you start tidying your room. It’s one of those chores that always goes down on the top of the to-do list, but which I always leave until last, procrastinating wildly to avoid it. However, this year, circumstances have forced me bite the bullet and get stuck in. We’re doing a house-swap with an American family in about a week, and my study was rapidly disappearing underneath a growing tide of paper, sheet music and books of assorted varieties. I think the sticking point is usually getting started. It’s one of those jobs that, once started, has to been seen though to completion in one fell swoop. It’s not that I don’t like the end result; it’s always pleasant to be reminded of what colour the carpet actually is after a year of it being buried under mountains of paper. The actual process itself isn’t that bad either. In fact, I find the whole thing rather cathartic and therapeutic, flinging things into bin bags with cold, dispassionate, adrenaline-fuelled ruthlessness (okay, maybe I got a bit carried away with that description, but you get the idea...) My OCD side has a field-day, gleefully arranging books in alphabetical order and filing papers in the correct folders.

However, for me, the main attraction is listening to music while I do it. I don’t know about you, but, in an ordinary week, I don’t set aside much time to listen to music, so, when I tidy, I usually put Spotify on shuffle and listen away. My music tastes are somewhat eclectic; my ‘favourites’ playlist veers wildly from dubstep to Bruce Springsteen to Shostakovich symphonies. But one thing I’ve noticed is that the music that’s playing dramatically affects how I tidy. For example, slow, thoughtful music is no good to tidy to. I find myself getting more and more lethargic, drifting dolorously around the room, whereas if something fast and punk-y, like Green Day, comes on, I speed up and end up hurling paper into boxes at breakneck speeds. I sometimes even catch myself tidying in time with the music, stacking things in time with the drumbeat. It’s an interesting phenomenon, certainly, and I wonder if psychologists have ever done any experiments to investigate the effects with different artists. The results would definitely make interesting reading: I imagine Pink Floyd would make people take hours to arrange objects in artful, pretentious little piles, whereas the Ramones would make them throw a few things around before leaving after a couple of minutes. As for several hours tidying to Rebecca Black, I shudder to think what effects that would have on the human psyche... The stuff of nightmares...

Actually, it is rocket science...

There's a certain pattern to sci-fi action films and TV series. You know the type I mean: not the intelligent, thought-provoking ones like Blade Runner or 2001, but their louder and pulpier cousins. I mean things like Independence Day or indeed any modern superhero film. There will, of course, come a point in the plot where all seems to be lost: evil is triumphing and the hero has almost been defeated. But lo, suddenly the obligatory friendly scientist character comes up with a gem of a line such as "There's still hope! If you overloaded their main reactor for just a few seconds, then I could disable their shield nexus and recalibrate my translocator to cross the ion streams and disrupt their energy field!" The hero promptly does all this (which, curiously, usually involves little more than pressing a few buttons or shooting a few things). Cue much celebration and cheesy victory montages.

I began to notice this unique phenomenon and started, privately, to christen it Science! (with a mandatory '!' to distinguish it from its rather more mundane sibling). Indeed, Science! is nothing at all like science. Real science involves unhealthy quantities of maths, strings of obscure facts and hours of carefully mixing two colourless and rather unexciting liquids; Science!, on the other hand, means explosions, lasers and labs filled with horrendously impractical, but really rather awesome stuff. Whereas, in the real world, it takes years to understand the ins and outs of particle physics, in the world of Science!, one can be an expert simply by wearing a white lab-coat, having hair like Emmett Brown and living in a maze of bubbling chemicals and sinister machinery. It's that simple.

 A lot of films and TV shows do Science! in a tongue in cheek way. Dr Who and Back to the Future, for example, are deliberately wacky and convoluted in their idea of science. But it's the supposedly 'serious' action films which get me. How the actors can keep a straight face, I just don't know.

So, In case you ever need to write the script to a Hollywood sci-fi movie, I've prepared a make-your-own Science! script. Simply choose a word to fill each gap. Happy Sciencing!

                          
Scientist A:  The photon emitter/main shield/toaster is malfunctioning! She's gonna blow!
Scientist B: Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Scientist A: Oh piss off...
Scientist B: Well it always works for me... [thinks] Wait, I've got it! We can recalibrate/externalise/exfoliate the reactor/flux capacitor/arctic roll by diverting/caressing the current!                               
Scientist A: By Jove, why didn't I think of that? It's so simple! Genius!
Scientist B: It's all thanks to the [looks directly at camera] power of Science! [grins, gives thumbs up and a hearty wink. Rapturous applause. Slow fade to the sound of The Star Spangled Banner]