Road Trip

Ten inches of snow forecast to fall tomorrow. Regardless of what the Eskimos might say, there are only two kinds of snowfall - the regular sort, and then the kind that causes UVA to cancel classes. When it snows here - even just a teaspoonful - all the local TV stations run a ticker tape along the bottom of the screen with a great big list of all the schools, colleges and hospitals that are going to be closed the following day. My first winter here, I was glued to the screen, waiting eagerly for "UVA: Closed" to tick up on the screen. But it never did, not even when the snow was so heavy that the normally unstoppable US postal service didn't deliver. Then last year we had a hurricane pass directly overhead. Every educational institution in the state closed for the occasion, except for UVA. UVA has apparently only appeared on the ticker once in the last twenty years. I can't imagine what could have happened that day. (I was just about to write "A plague of locusts?" but then I remembered we had one of them last year too. And yes, UVA stayed open).

* * *

Vince's funeral was yesterday morning. It was in New Jersey, about seven hours straight drive from Middleofnowheresville. I wasn't much looking forward to it, I must confess. But somewhere on the DC Beltway, round about the time we realized the jerk in the car in front veering around and flashing its headlights was actually BobTheDawg in his Jeep also headed to NJ, I started to have a good time.

Even when we were hopelessly late, totally lost, and after seven hours driving, arrived at the funeral home for the viewing just as it was all over and everyone was coming out, I was having a good time. And later, sitting in a local roadhouse with thirty other travel-rumpled Dardenites - after I had ordered fish and chips, been surprised by the plate of fish and potato crisps that had arrived, and then fatally mistook a bottle of malt vinegar for my bottle of beer, I was still having a good time.

The following morning, I was feeling increasingly guilty about the fun I was having mourning the tragic death of one of my classmates. The service itself was conducted almost entirely in Korean, which meant we friends and colleagues were relatively dry-eyed until Vince's sister Sue and his college roommate spoke (in English) about him, and there was a barrage of sniffing and a frantic flurry of paper tissues across the back of the room. Vince's college roommate talked about how, when friends came to visit Vince, he didn't care what they actually did together because he was just so thrilled to have gathered a group of his friends. I couldn't help thinking that he would have been really pleased to see so many of us there, having a good time, and suddenly felt a whole lot less guilty about enjoying myself.

They say weddings are a great place to meet men (or women). I've never heard anyone say that funerals are a great place to meet men (or women). However, there was one very cute guy at the funeral, with a Paul McCartney 1967 haircut and a dodgy navy blue overcoat. I knew immediately I would want to discuss him here, but that of course means finding him a suitable nickname. This morning I was toying with the obvious choice, calling him FuneralGuy. But it seemed.. well, a bit gloomy. So this afternoon ScaryCzechLady came up with a brilliant solution: FunGuy, or, said with a Czech accent, Fungi. It's a bit difficult to predict, on the basis of a ten minute long graveside conversation, whether FunGuy will turn out to be a hysterical riot, but let's say the name gives him a bit more of a chance. Stay tuned....

I Love 7s

Before I start my tale du jour, I just want to update you on my newest find at El Gigante. It calls itself 'Chutter!' and its label says it is a "cold packed pressed cheese food". After a fruitless fifteen minutes rummaging through the El Gigante cheese bin looking for something recognizable as having definitely come from a cow, I am afraid Chutter didn't quite sell itself to me as a viable dairy purchase option, but I may change my mind if enough readers persuade me that sampling is necessary in the name of scientific discovery. It is the bicentennary of Lewis and Clark, after all.

* * *

Actually, today I want to be fair to Middleofnowheresville. Oh yes, I know I may seem a little hard on the old place sometimes, although many of my gripes could be just as well targeted at anywhere else supermarkets operate in the United States.

But a couple of weeks ago I discovered that the town I have been living in for the last three years harbors one of the most fervent underground communities of activists on the continent.

Activists campaigning about what, you may ask? Animal rights? Global warming? Iraq? The right to own assault rifles?

None of the above. In fact, the community I have stumbled upon, and of which I am alternately ashamed and proud to have recently become a member, consists of a bunch of people who are angry about the fact they bought fake 7 jeans on Ebay.

Yes, I know. Don't we have anything better to do? Aren't there more productive ways to channel one's time and energy? World poverty for example, or keeping the UK out of the EU?
Probably. But there are so many enjoyable things about this community (known as the I Love 7s) that one really can't find anywhere else...

Let me mention just a few of them:

1) There is no commitment to do anything. Just moaning is perfectly fine. Some people actually do do something, but they are seen as possibly a little bit crazy.

2) Membership is free, save for whatever you paid for your fake jeans on Ebay. The more you paid, the more you have the moral right to rant and rave (counter-intuitively, it turns out there is actually a negative correlation between stupidity and amount paid for fake jeans)

3) Every activist community must have an enemy. Refreshingly, unlike most activist groups, our enemies are not our fellow community members. While a little rage and venting is saved for the people who actually peddle this stuff as "Trust Me: 100% Authentic!!", most is mostly self-directed ("hey, look how stupid I am! I thought I was getting a genuine pair of pink A pocket 7s for $9!" ). Interestingly, most members are not anti-counterfeiting per se: no-one, apart from maybe me, seems to want to bring the entire fake jean industry to its knees.

4) Activist communities really need an organizing master genius. The master genius behind ours calls himself "Honest Dave" and claims to live right here in MiddleofNowheresville. Unusually for online-based activist community leaders (although I suppose perfectly normal at the SPECTRE/Dr Evil end of the master genius chart), Honest Dave is a shadowy figure, and it not even clear whether he is a 7 jeans lover or just likes reading the rantings of crazy and/or stupid people. He does have a frontman, however, another alleged 'Nowheresville resident named Hil. According to Hil's online photo, she is a young blonde cheerleader. Believe it or not, as your taste dictates...

5) Every activist community must have a doctrine, and I Love 7s is no exception. Not to be outdone by Karl Marx, our hallowed manifesto is written entirely in German - apart from the title, No Fake Jeans. It was written by a woman called Birgitta who lives somewhere in Germany; I'm not sure exactly where because I can't understand any German. Anyway, Birgitta is generally acknowledged to be the greatest, most influential living authority on the subject of not buying fake jeans. The one good thing about Birgitta's manifesto being in German is that the counterfeiters probably can't understand it: the bad thing is that neither can anyone else.

6) Any decent self respecting activist community should be infiltrated by double agents. The jury's out on this one: I'm not so sure that any counterfeiter could be bothered trawling through all our petty moans to glean the odd tidbits of intelligence such as BLM has taken principessacosa to SquareTrade mediation over her fake black bootcut Flynts, or that that someone's spotted that the font on the label cut number should be sans serif, or that the inside waistband 7 stamp should be a sort of orangey yellow not a greeny yellow, but hey, you never know.

I could go on but I want to stop to deal with the question that some intelligent readers - obviously not I Love 7s - may be asking themselves at this point. Where is the company that makes genuine 7s in all this drama? The answer is that they feature not at all. The I Love 7s are too ashamed, it seems, to want to own up to the 7 For All Mankind company that they tried to buy their jeans on Ebay. And the 7 company seems to be completely ignorant of the efforts of Birgitta, Honest Dave, Hil, BLM and all the rest.

Of course, I couldn't let that state of affairs continue, oh no... In the best traditions of the Human Guinea Pig (see postings below) I felt I needed to strike a blow for the timid, the oppressed and the plain stupid of the world. And so I rang up 7 For All Mankind in California. In case anyone's interested, here is the verbatim transcript of my conversation.

Phonewoman "Yes, who do you want?"
Me "Is this 7?"
RudePhonewoman "Who do you want?"
Me "7 please"
RudePhonewoman "Who do you want?"

Me " I don't know, I could only find your main switchboard number. I'm calling because I was sold a pair of counterfeit 7s and I would like to bring down the perpetrator please"
RudePhone woman: "What did you say?"
Me "Anti-counterfeiting department, do you have one?"
Rudestupidphonewoman: "Uh??"
Me: "OK, fakes then. Who deals with fake jeans?"
Rudestupidphone woman: "I'd better put you upstairs"

(Lengthy pause)

Man: "Hello"
Me: "Who am I speaking to please?"
Man: "Rick"
Me: "Ah. I'm trying to speak to someone about counterfeit jeans."
Rick: "Big problem."
Me: "Quite. Well, I was sold a pair of 7s that I think are fake, and I would like to bring down the perpetrator please."
Rick: (livening up considerably) "Great! Tell me where they are, and we'll arrest them!"
Me: "Wow, brilliant! Well, she's operating out of an address in Texas, I think it might be her home, and -"
Rick: "You didn't buy them in a store?"
Me: "Erm, no. " (bracing self) "I bought them on Ebay actually."
Rick: "Oh well. In that case you only have yourself to blame. Nothing we can do. "
Me: "But I have their address.... "
Rick: "Nope."
Me: "But - you're losing millions and millions in revenue and brand reputation as a result of their evil machinations!"
Rick: "Sorry."
Me: "Well, don't you even want me to send you the jeans so you can pick them apart and analyse them in your ultra hi-tech-counterfeit laboratories?"
Rick: "No.
Me: "No?"
Rick: "But we appreciate your interest in 7. Have you tried our new Swarovski crystal patterns yet...?"

* * *

Metaphors du jour (new, apparently, to Yanks)

kicking my tyres (as in "they want to interview me in person")
downshifting (as in "I'm bored of the commute, I'm moving to become a subsistence farmer in Brittany)

Back to school

There is something about Middle-of-Nowheresville that is very conducive to childhood simplicity. Here, such ancient arts of apple picking, turkey calling, hayrides, cheerleading, pumpkin carving, and toboganning are still honoured and celebrated.

There's even a society called 4H - (Head Heart Hands and Health) - which is very popular among the rural youth in our surrounding counties. It's like the Young Farmers, but without the scrumpy. (I actually once went online to see if I might be eligible for entry. Unfortunately, along with the answers to burning questions like "where can we find barnyard sounds for our website?", the 4-H organization website conveyed the sad information that I am only 15 years too old to be allowed in.)

In search of rediscovering my own childhood, therefore, I am forced to seek other avenues. I'm definitely too old for cheerleading - and I never could do the splits anyway. It's not the season for hayrides, apple picking or pumpkin carving and the snow we had in January has long since gone.

Now turkey calling (the art of hiding behind a bush and making turkey noises to lure them in your direction) might actually a be possibility, in so far as this is apparently the time of year for hunting wild turkeys. I know this because the local Walmart has a helpful whiteboard with the hunting seasons for just about every animal, mineral and vegetable in the area. I've even found a local guy who MIGHT - no promises - take me out at dawn to try turkey calling. But this negotiation is at a very early stage: no turkeys in hand yet, let alone any turkeys behind the bush. And I have not yet considered the consequences if I turn out to be good at turkey calling. You may laugh, but wild turkeys are mean creatures. Only this weekend, a state trooper in Lima, Ohio was held hostage for three hours by a turkey when he tried to make a traffic stop.

So, with indigenous pasttimes ruled our for various reasons, what else could there be? Well, it seemed like fate when I spotted the small notice in the New Dominion Bookshop one snowy Saturday. The Shenandoah Recorder Society... meets on the third Sunday of every month... What better than rediscovering that sadly overlooked and underappreciated instrument, the recorder? The recorder, which gives most children their first experience of music , and is then cast cruelly aside in favour of loud, in-yer-face instruments like the trumpet or the sax, or moody, neurotic, intellectual instruments like the cello. Cellos and trumpets, after all, do have that certain UCAS form glamour while the humble recorder is inextricably linked with paint splattered primary school classrooms with those really low wooden chairs.

As soon as I made the call, however, and the clock started ticking to the next third Sunday, I felt an advancing state of doom. I have not performed on the recorder since 1986 - the occasion of my humiliating bout of the shakes on stage while attempting to play Pachelbel's Canon at the Nonsuch High School parent's evening. Plus, the man at the Antique Music Workshop in Plymouth, MA told me when I rang him for advice that amateur recorder consorts are notorious for back stabbing and internal politics - even worse than lute ensembles apparently.

So the first step, obviously, was to borrow a recorder to do some emergency practice on, my own being buried in a cardboard box in a garage 3000 miles away. The exchange was made in a dimly lit hallway at dusk. The woman gave me a very funny look indeed.

The second step was actually doing some practicing, most of which happened in the basement in the dead of night. SapphiretheCat is deaf, fortunately, so he didn't mind too much.

The third step was showing up at the appointed hour on Sunday in the appointed place - a church hall. American churches are HUGE. They have enormous ancillary buildings as well, all of which are well lit and central-heated and with flushing toilets. It's been a long time since I was last in a church hall, but if they had had church halls this luxurious when I was in the Guides, I might have stuck it out in the Snowdrops for a bit longer.

The membership of the Shenandoah Recorder Society was not exactly what I had been expecting, although having said that I am not entirely sure what that was. As far as regressing to childhood, well I suppose in one respect I was successful - I was the youngest person there by about 25 years. There was almost an equal mixture of men and women - I think it would have been an exactly even number, but I overheard someone say one of the Davis twins had run his truck into a ditch. Everyone except me had on some combination of orthopaedic sandals or clogs on, and baggy black or brown trousers. And everyone was immensely kind, kind to the extent of sharing music stands and life histories, and pretending not to notice when I missed a note or seven. Really, it was very sweet.

Two guys in particular caught my ear. One was called Bill, and the other one Lee. Very good hearty southern names. Anyway, Bill was probably pushing 60, maybe around 18 stone/250lbs, and wore massive white handlebar moustache, a red and white checked shirt and a builders tan. And he played his recorders so sweetly, it almost brought tears to my eyes. Lee was cut from the same jib: maybe a few stone heavier, and he played the smallest tiniest little recorder, the one that squeaks like a mouse. He also played with a LOT of vibrato, so it sounded like a mouse swaying on a tightrope.

So what, you and I are wondering, was the Antique music man talking about? Well, it's early days yet, but it became clear very early on that the woman who runs the group does have this Thing about toe tapping and body movement. She kept making very pointed remarks about it and glaring in my direction. Like Monica Seles and her grunting, I just can't help toe tapping - it's not so much that I am lost in the music like some kind of Anne Sophie Mutter, more that I have no natural sense of rhythm so I need something to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Body movement is more interesting though. In all my years of classical music training as a kid I was never once told not to move. I have no choice but to conclude it is a sign of American puritanical repression. This isn't the first time I have heard this comment in MiddleofNowheresVille, you see: I was criticized for excess body movement when I first rowed over here too - apparently it seems that the American style of rowing has much less than the British style. But wait - do I detect a theme here? Didn't I get my ass whipped by a bunch of OAPs on the water as well?

Not a betting woman

As someone who likes to describe herself as not a betting woman, it is with some reluctance that I must confess that I have allowed myself to be caught up in another large and stupid bet about famous relations.

The last one was back in October, when EnglishJustin bet me $50 that Ravi Shankar was not Norah Jones's father. I won that one, although EnglishJustin had the last laugh later that evening when he slickly manoevred me into paying for both of our dinners at Mas.

Then, this week, I succumbed to temptation yet again. Dave Rouse (he who claims to know Carson Daly personally, though on close crossexamination it's not difficult to establish that what he really means by this is that he went to college with Carson Daly's business manager) bet me $100 that Tina Fey (head scriptwriter of SNL and author of the Mean Girls screenplay) is not the aunt of Lindsay Lohan (star of Mean Girls and repeat guest on SNL).

Can I just say at this point, it's never me that picks the stakes? If I were the person making the bet, my preferred stakes, frankly speaking, would be a chocolate martini. But male testosterone is such, I suppose, that the guy always thinks a big cash ante will force the poor pathetic woman to fold without having to reveal his hand. Unfortunately for both of us, I have long suspected that I have more than a normal dose of testosterone in my own system, as my leg waxing lady can testify. And there is nothing - nothing - I love more than winning a bet from a man who doesn't read the celebrity magazines.

Anyway, having headed to the nearest internet connection, it took only five minutes to come up with two different websites which agreed that my intensive study of "People" and "In Touch" at the checkout counter of El Gigante has not been in vain. Lindsay Lohan is indeed Tina Fey's niece. TVtoMe and AskMen both say so. But - unlike EnglishJustin who at least had the honor and decency to recognize defeat at the hands of a woman when he saw it - Rouse is not getting his checkbook out. He says he doesn't believe the sources. If anyone out there has any more convincing proof (as if there could be?) please let me know...

Sonic hedgehog

Darden has still said nothing at all about Vince. When they eventually do, it had better be good.
Circuit City is coming up with excuse after excuse why the names should not be released - but then they would, wouldn't they?

* * *

Meanwhile, the daily grind here goes on, and the saga of the mystery tank shows no sign of resolution. I was prepared to get vicious this morning when there was no sign of the bulldozer for the fourth successive day, but - luckily for him - the stick guy had instead brought a thrilling new toy with him: a sonic hedgehog. By this I mean a little thingie that you flush down the loo and then run outside and see if you can detect its sonar waves from above ground. At least, that's the theory. After several flushings, the hedgehog seemed to be sprinting in exactly the opposite direction to the place the tank (on the basis of Tuesday's divinations) was hypothesized to be. I had these dreadful Finding Nemo images - what if the thingie was panicking about heading towards the jaws of all those horrid bacteria? I was somewhat glad to be dispatched upstairs to run the washing machine cycle.

Anyway, after a good thirty minutes of poking around in sub zero temperatures had taken place, after the stick man had just announced that the tank was buried four feet under the drive, right outside the garage door, and had sucked his teeth and started mentioning astronomical sums of money, Landlady Lynn - who in my opinion should have been sitting down with her head between her knees upon learning the information that just a single manhole cover costs a thousand bucks - suddenly said "Isn't there a woman waiting in that car?"

And so it proved. The stick man had left his mother in the car all this time. To be fair to him, he had thoughtfully left the engine running, presumably in an attempt to avoid the inconvenience of a hypothermic parent. On releasing her, however, it was discovered that he had not been entirely successful because the gas had run out.

And so there was only one thing to be done, given LandladyLynn lives in a forest on top of a mountain. Let's just say, it's lucky the grass won't need cutting for another few months....


* * *

Everyone needs an guru to look up to. My guru du jour is a woman called Emily Yoffe, aka "The Human Guinea Pig". This woman has made it her life's work to do really weird stuff: she's kind of like a DC-dwelling soccer mom version of Johnny Knoxville. Anyway, among the stuff she's tried lately: working as a telephone psychic, doing an internet get rich quick scheme and - most recently - trying to get her invention of "hairmuffs" picked up for sale on QVC.

If you too wish to worship at the shrine of the Human Guinea Pig, you can visit her at http://slate.msn.com/?id=3944&cp=2077894

Vince the optimist

Our classmate and friend Vince Choe was killed yesterday in a plane crash in Colorado. I 'm still in shock, but I felt I needed to post something about him.
Vince has a great sense of humor, and in fact I first got to know him while badgering him to draw cartoons for the school newspaper. I love his cartoons so much, I kept begging him to do me my own personal one as a souvenir before we graduated. It wasn't until we spent many hours job searching together in the library last summer that he finally got around to doing it. Here's what he came up with - pure vintage Vince: always optimistic that something really good is around the corner for all of us.

Divination Part II

Should have known better: of course there was no bulldozer today, just a different man with a really hi tech stick, one that bleeps like a metal detector.

The tank is buried five feet under ground, at least, according to the stick man. So bulldozer, apparently, coming tomorrow (yeah, right).

* * *

There are two ways of trying to forestall the temptation to follow a mad and almost certainly regrettable course of action. One is just not to think about it, not to devote any brain cells at all to the possibility and hope it just goes away. The other is to announce it to your friends and family (or, in this case, the entire global internet community) in the hope that having outed yourself you will never be tempted.

I am hereby choosing the latter path. So here goes. WhartonStalkerGuy has invited me to accompany him to Las Vegas to be married, and all he asks in dowry is a case of White Hall Soliterre 2002. There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea, it's untrue - quite apart from the fact that my mother would kill me - and I am hereby hoping that this public posting will serve as an amulet to protect against temporarily losing my marbles.

Water divining, Virginia style

The thing about Middle of Nowheresville is, drama takes a long time to unfold. Entire European dynasties have risen and fallen in the time it takes the man behind the counter at the gas station to count out 15 cents change.

But this week may finally see the conclusion of one ancient mystery: the location of LandladyLynn's septic tank.

My entire oeuvre of knowledge on the subject of septic tanks until last Tuesday was gleaned from a TV commercial in which a cheerful man in overalls implores you to use his patented drain potion, or else (cut to picture of very large bulldozer) your lawn might end up like this (cut to what looks like the battlefields of Somme).

For the similarly uninitiated, let me explain that in these ere parts, there are no civic sewage arrangements. Instead you have a nice tank buried in your garden, into which all your waste goes. The water rises to the top and flows out through trenches of sand (also buried in your garden). Then you hire a bunch of cooperative bacteria to live in the bottom of these tanks and munch up the rest. All you have to do is empty a few packets of yeast (and, if you're feeling nervous, some patented drain potion) down the loo every so often, get your septic tank pumped out at least once every five years, and et voila.

The only problem is, it turns out that LandladyLynn's septic tank has not been pumped out for as long as fifteen years, because noone - not even with the help of plans and blueprints and god knows what else - has ever been able to work out where it is buried. Over the years, a steady procession of gentlemen with and without overalls have wandered around poking the ground with sticks, but the location of the sewage grail has remained a mystery.

Today saw the latest septic tank desperado arrive, armed with a stick with a natty yellow plastic handle. I was, as always, torn between a desperate desire to learn more about the art of septic tank divination, and the sure knowledge that if I uttered a single word, all work would cease for at least forty minutes while the septic tank man remarked upon the fact that I don't sound like I'm from round here. So I settled for mutely observing proceedings from a balcony.

It was too much to hope for that the man would come up with anything today - this fifteen year old drama would never be solved so easily. But he poked around, and in the absence of any better ideas and in the best tradition of the US Army Engineer Corps, announced he would be back tomorrow with a bulldozer to dig up the drive.


* * *

Yesterday afternoon saw the arrival of LandladyLynn back from upstate New York, where she was emptying the contents of her late mother's house. Her Landrover was full of vintage treasures, including gloves, pocketbooks and heaps of fur accessories from the forties and fifties. Most of them were old mink Jackie O pillbox hats, capes and cuffs, but there was one item in particular that shocked even me (and I'm a known fur fan) . It was not one but two entire fox pelts tied together as a scarf - complete with heads, tails and worst of all, paws with claws still attached. There was one horrible moment when, coming back into the hallway, I caught sight of four paws sticking limply out at peculiar angles from under a blanket and I almost screamed - I thought it was the cat. And so, it seems, did the cat himself, who vanished into the upstairs linen cupboard and remained there for the rest of the day. A little bit too close to home, maybe.

Valentine Schmalentine

It seemed appropriate to commemorate Valentine's Day with a posting. I know it's an overrated con and allows men a handy excuse to duck out of behaving properly the rest of the year, but I am currently feeling smug because my card just arrived this morning. I am 99.9% confident that it is from my friend Emmawiththestalkers, even though she made gargantuan efforts to disguise it - I detect the coopting of her boyfriend NiceMartin to write out the address and do the writing inside. Definitely a male scrawl.

What is especially nice is that the card was full of tiny silver sparkly hearts which made a very festive display on the floor. Normally I would have just left them where they were so I could admire them for the rest of the day. And, if I left them there, SapphireTheCat might eat them. From one perspective, this might be a rather cunning plan. For SapphireTheCat has thrown up at least four times this weekend, ever since he rather aggressively - I'm talking jumping onto the table and knocking my cereal spoon out of my hand - badgered me into giving him a small saucer of milk on Saturday. Thing is, I strongly suspect there are more throwings-up elsewhere in the house I haven't spotted. If his vomit was shiny and silver colored, I might stand a better chance.

On the other hand, Landlady Lynn is due back from her trip to upstate NY this evening, so on the whole I decided I preferred to avoid the risk of having to greet her with the news that her beloved cat is spreadeagled on the OR table, having silver sparkly hearts picked out of his bowels. The hearts had to go.

On the subject of Valentine's Day, I couldn't help laughing in the automated checkout line at El Gigante (aka Giant supermarket, home of the FishWoman). There were at least eight men, standing sheepishly in their lines, clutching really bedraggled bunches of roses .

El Gigante, you see, has a Valentine Guarantee. You are guaranteed to be able to buy a really nasty half dead bunch of roses there until 8pm on Valentine's Day. They promise they will not run out. What an offer.

The FishWoman

Relax, this post isn't about sad singletons with scales under their clothing (viz BJ I). Though perhaps that's a subject for future exposition.

This post is about the fishwoman at Giant Foods supermarket.

I have "expressed my irritation" in the past at the American expat Junior League women in London who get all teary eyed and hysterical when they visit the vendor at the JLL Xmas Fair that sells tins of pumpkin filling and packets of Jello. You would think they had been living in a mud hut in Chad for at least three years, not a multi million dollar rented townhouse in the poshest part of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.

I had to eat humble pie, however, within about six hours of my first day in Middle of Nowhere in April 2002. The first meal I ever ate in this town was cheese and garlic grits, which at 8 o'clock the morning after a transatlantic flight was perhaps not what the doctor ordered, but it was the only thing on offer and I was desperate. The second was a Big Jim's BBQ. The third was a Big Jim's BBQ.

For my international friends who haven't experienced the pleasure of a Southern BBQ yet, Big Jim's probably sounds quite promising to you. You're thinking king size steroid-pumped American steaks hanging off the edge of the plate, right? Yeah, that's what I thought too. In fact, Southern BBQ consists of shredded pork shoulder (usually cold or lukewarm) pre-mixed with a sticky sweet red brown sauce, baked beans in a brown sauce, and coleslaw. You spoon a bit of each into a bun, and try to eat it. It's kind of fun watching international students at their first Big Jim's BBQ catered event because they run round looking for the sizzling grill with the hamburgers and chicken and steaks on it, and suddenly realize that the sticky pork stuff in the big pot is all the chow they're going to get.

So, after that third meal, you can imagine how deliriously happy I was when KiltGuy (who'd been prowling around exploring while I was sitting in some meeting or other) dragged me off to the grocery store he'd discovered which sold Cadbury's chocolate, French cheese and live lobsters in tanks. Not that I've ever bought a live lobster from a tank, but I was immensely reassured that a store existed where one could if one wanted. Anyway, it's called Food of All Nations and while it's admittedly not always the cheapest supermarket in town, it's pretty comprehensive. It has a very good range of McVities biscuits, including their ginger snaps and hobnobs. If it stocked Walkers' roast chicken and thyme flavour potato crisps it would be just perfect. (See how I sound like a one of those expat Junior Leaguers?)

That was nearly three years ago, however, and in the intervening period I have ventured beyond the direness of Big Jim's to eat a lot of the local cuisine, and mostly enjoyably. Fried chicken and mashed sweet potatoes are very good and I'm also very keen on southern "biscuits" (aka scones).

But I still, totally, absolutely, hate the supermarkets. Food Lion, Kroger, Giant, Harris Teeter - they're all basically the same. The food is processed, coloured and pumped full of water beyond an inch of its life. (Harris Teeter yesterday, for example, had only one kind of British cheese in stock and that was Dairy Crest Five-In-One.) The fruit is covered with wax, the cakes are all butter icing sponge with lurid decoration (dark blue and orange icing is v popular in this town), and genetically modifed material and antibiotics are so common the labels don't even bother to remark on it. They even do Lunchables for adults now! What is so sad is that even some normal, sensible Americans have had their expectations lowered so far by this bunch of crap that they don't even know what real food should taste like. I can feel American hackles rising so here's an example. At the English tea table at the Food Festival in October, we were asked countless times: "Is this real cream?" "Is this really real cream?" and best of all "Did you whip it yourself?" You see, American supermarkets sell this stuff called Cool Whip which is made of water, corn syrup and vegetable oil, and has absolutely no cream in it at all. Anything white and fluffy in the rough proximity of a pie or bowl of strawberries is most often assumed to be Cool Whip.

Anyway, I digress. I'm finally going to get to the point of this post, which is the fishwoman.

The Fishwoman lives at Giant, the nearest supermarket to Landlady Lynn's house. I would normally avoid the fishcounter at Giant, for all the reasons above and then some, but in this case, Landlady Lynn was already making herself salmon parcelled up in tin foil. I like fish parcelled up particularly if I am not the person doing the fiddly parcelling, so I was quite keen on buying into that plan, but I was going to have to go and get myself a bit of fish pronto.

Here is, verbatim, my conversation with the Fishwoman:

Fishwoman: [raises finely plucked eyebrow]

Me : "Hello I'd like a bit of salmon fillet please"

Fishwoman: [heaves massive, very dead salmon fillet onto scale and starts ringing it up].

Me: "A bit of salmon fillet please" [I consider adding a question to ask when it was caught, but on reflection decide that I probably don't want to know, as it would be a fifteen mile round trip to get anything better]

Fishwoman: "How much?"

Me: "Hmm, how about eight ounces?"

Fishwoman: [drops fillet back on scales, puts hands on hips, raises both eyebrows]
"We don't do ounces. How much is that in pounds?"


In the matter of Ranson V US Supermarket Industry, the case for the prosecution rests, your honour....

New Year, New Blog

Any excuse. Having failed to start my blog in the normal New Year, the Chinese New Year will do just as well. Actually I forgot it was Chinese New Year and this morning actually emailed T'reeza in Seattle to ask what the chicken and the chinese writing was all about on the Google homepage.

Seattle T'reeza, you see, was the obvious person to consult about this because she works for Amazon. From my POV in the Middle of Nowhere, that's as good as working for Google: it's all glamourous west coast dotcommery. If you look up T'reeza's wish list on Amazon, incidentally, you will find one of the most scary reading lists of all time. I don't know if you can hack into and subvert other people's Amazon wish lists, but I would love to sneak in just a couple of Mills&Boons, just to lighten hers up a bit.

But I digress. Before I go back to the blog proper, though, one decision I am making about this blog is that it's going to be in British English. I'm concerned I am forgetting how to spell. Today I couldn't remember whether "realise" with an "s" is a real word and I am still not sure. Anyway, Landlady Lynn announced this evening that it's perfectly OK to use British spelling in America. She's just fought a bitter battle involving a case about central European orchestras which resulted in a triumph for British spelling. If an American and The National Orchestra of Slovenia are prepared to stand up for British spelling, then so should I.


WhartonStalkerGuy has made a move. He asked me for my phone number this evening, on the grounds he wanted to discuss police security at Aston Villa games. I have to give him full marks for originality, though frankly I don't know how much gas that conversation could possibly have in the tank... Very undecided about WhartonStalker. Could be an absolute nutter. On the other hand, one of the few sensible observations ever made by KiltGuy was that most of Emma's infamous string of alleged stalkers were really just guys who liked her.

And if you look at movies, if a guy keeps relentlessly pursuing a girl through hell and high water because he realizes/realises They Are Meant To Be about 75 minutes of celluloid before she does, it's dead romantic. In real life, of course, you would have called the Special Victims Unit before the opening credits had finished rolling. Just like, in films or books, when one platonic friend suddenly pounces on another, the pouncee looks a bit surprised and then after a little token resistance snogs the face of the pouncer and They All Live Happily Ever After. In real life, on the other hand, one would probably shove the poor pouncer away and yell "Gerroff, YUCK, what's the matter with you?"

Anyway, WhartonStalker. I guess my reservations (as with PsychoBaghdadStalkerGuy) stem largely from the fact that any normal person would not devote such energy to pursuing correspondence with someone with whom they had had a ten minute business conversation about Wharton's summer language program on the phone. But I suppose Philadelphia's a good 5 and 1/2 hours drive away, so there's not much havoc he can wreak from there.

I have more to say, but it will have to wait for now. ..