Letter from America.......

So what did I think of the good ol' US of A? Well if you're a yank hater then you might be disappointed because I really liked it. They couldn't do enough for us and I don't just mean the smiley people in the stores or at the parks. No, I mean the ordinary people I spoke to...and believe me I spoke to loads especially in the airports. It may be that we have a lot of Kudos there at the moment but whatever, they really seem to like us........and our money....of course.

Things I loved....

1.) WHTQ (96.5 FM) and 102.5 "The Bone"- 2 classic rock stations playing all the best hippy dinosaur rock in the world. Tell me when you last heard Teenage Wasteland by The Who, or Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, or Welcome to the Machine by Pink Floyd played IN FULL with no voiceover or self loving DJ ruining it? In fact when did you ever hear tracks like that? Even Virgin has shied away from this stuff. So,in the UK it's OK to have pompous stations dedicated to long dead Austrian, German, French and Italian composers from 18 fucking whatever, but nothing that plays (on FM anyway) classic stuff like this. Well done to the US, they have more respect for British rock than we do...in fact they can't get enough of it.

2.) Customer Service - yep it might seem false and overly sincere...but I LIKED IT! Return to the UK to be ignored or patronised by some dog shit snot nosed 17 year old on 4 quid an hour and the difference, no matter how faux is clear.

3.) Prices - we are undoubtedly and very clearly still Rip-Off Britain. Everything is cheaper there without question. Even British goods. Explain that to me please?

4.) Diners - everything that a Little Chef and Happy Poxy Eater cannot ever be. Cheap, clean, friendly, good portions, good simple food cooked well and plenty to choose from. Free refills for the kids on drinks and free coffee or tea refills for the adults (I had the kids drinks...well I was on holiday!)

5.) Air conditioning - yep, when the yanks do something they do it properly. The air conditioning is necessary in Florida, but did they half heartedly hang some noisy thing from a window to drip water on passers by? No, they made it integral. In the parks the difference between being outside and in was a big contrast. And when you buy a cold drink from a fridge....its absolutley bloody ice cold because they actually use the fridges cooling capabilities unlike most cold drinks vendors over here who merely use the fridge as a cupboard with minimal cooling.

6.) The cars - yes, they're gas guzzling environmental disasters. But Christ they're fun. Ours had an obscene 5 litre engine, with an 18 gallon tank that cost $32 to fill up up. It roared on kick-down. It was smooth and refined. It had full aircon. It was lovely but unless I win the lottery it won't ever be sitting on my drive.

7.) Kennedy Space Center - awe inspiring, awesome, marvellous and truly moving. Fantastic.

8.) Theme Parks - awe inspiring, clean...very clean, organised, fantastic queue management, its hard NOT to smile. When Baby fainted...a nurse was with us within 3 minutes. Superb.

Things I hated.....

1.) TV - it is truly bollocks. Ad breaks from nowhere, loads of God TV (strangely fascinating), and shopping channels galore. Total bollocks which i'm sure some people would love. the hughlight was an ad for Ronco (remember them) selling a knife set which started as one knife for $39.99 (spread over 3 months at $13.33) and rising after interminably numerous cries of "But wait....theres more" into a 25 piece knife set, with 8 steak knives, a vegeatble cutter a meat thermometer and a rather dildo-ish looking device used for injecting things into meat, such as Olives, or Garlic cloves,or even mashed potato. Unbe-fucking-lievable. The ad was at least 30 minutes long. Crap but compelling

2.) The roads - badly signed, badly lit, poorly laid out, potholed and very, very straight. The M25 is almost forgiven. Oh and it might be an idea if they told you the right hand lane was an exit rather than just letting you drift onto the wrong road. Just a thought.

3.) Dasani water - everywhere in Disney and Universal....No.....No...this is very bad.

4.) US airlines - worse than anything we could devise. Patently struggling with demand during summer and obviously struggling with the new security regime. We left Orlando 2 hours late (weather). Our flight to Gatwick was canned after 3 hours of being on the stand due to the plane being hit by a luggage truck blown into it by the exhaust of another jet. Put into a hotel for the night with NO food or drink. Told the flight was cancelled for 2 days (what no spare aircraft?). Flwon to Atlanta after having to check in again and go through all the security again. Delayed out of Atlanta for an hour and a half due to a computer failure on the way to the runway. Arrived at Gatwick 32 hours later than planned. Next time I want to see the words British and Airways written on the side of my plane.

And thats it. Overall a very impressive place. It's easy to see why only 20% of yanks have a passport when they have so much within their own borders. But it is very insular. Watching or listening to the news you would never know anything existed outside of its borders and I guess its a lot clearer to me why September 11th was such a shock. I'm sure I heard one newsreader refer to "Athens, Europe" when briefly mentioning the Olympics. No mention of Greece then?

Later, Grocerjack