New adventures

When I walked off the plane I felt like was walking into a damp overcoat a size too small, and wondered whether I’d made a mistake in rejecting Sister Katherine Waters’ offer of a permanent job in New York. But then history would have been different.

Customs checked my hand-made octave mandola, and my 1,500 dollar Gibson mandolin, and asked when and where I’d bought them. England I said. He studied my face for honesty and let me through.

It was wonderful to see old friends again, tramp along country lanes with Bernie and Greg; good to have a decent pint…fish and chips. But already I missed the huge blue skies, the sparkling air, the sense of vast spaces that encouraged big thoughts. The dream of a child in a hospital bed had come and gone, and now I felt like a ghost in my own country. The familiar had become strange.

Even stranger was the fact that someone else was sitting in my chair, at my work desk in school. Someone with eyes that twinkled and a smile that could thaw winter. I lost a chair but gained a wife, but no more shall be said of her here. My wife and children have their own voices, their own story to tell or not tell.

And so it ends.

I’ve often wondered what I would choose for my last meal if I knew I was dying later that day, either by order of the state, (Socrates was un-ambitious sticking to a drink) or by more natural means. It felt like that as we hit Washington, the last day of our tour. In this case it was a bit of a set menu, but I dutifully revisited every monument, garden and statue, and remembered that this had been my first experience of America only a year before.

I hate anti-climaxes, the neither-here-nor-there interludes between major events. If I could have done a ‘cut and paste’ job I’d have zipped back to the inevitable in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately there was another night to endure in New York.

What a strange thing to say. But it wasn’t much fun, packing, looking round Ron’s apartment for one final time, saying goodbye to Bob and Tom and everyone else who’d made me so welcome. I met up with Roland at a similar loose-end, and together we crawled the bars of Greenwich village with Carol Bezvidenhoot. I said goodbye to her with a chaste kiss and walked from the Village to Jackson Heights. New York at night is always an interesting experience.

America was a great adventure, but there was a bigger one to come.



One Adventure ends, another begins. I hope this has proved interesting to my beautiful daughter

Nearing the end

I’m finding it harder to write as this particular phase in my life comes to an end. It’s like a man approaching death, and before you say, ‘Michael, you are far too young to be thinking of such things,’ (I hope you all do) I’ve had a morbid mind since the nuns were unleashed upon me in Primary school.

But America was coming to an end, for me at least; you guys still have some way to go. Our next stop was Williamsburg and very beautiful it was too. I remember the long walk from the Information Centre to the ‘Village’, a walk that allowed you to muse on the information imparted by a very professional orientation film shown at our arrival.

Three and a half hours, the time allotted to us, wasn’t nearly long enough, The William and Mary College alone was worth an hour or two. Now it’s a visual snippet lodged in the brain: America’s oldest educational foundation, Christopher Wren inspired architecture, and the alumni of both Washington and Jefferson.

Speaking of Washington















Next we were whisked off to Mount Vernon - Washington of the wooden false teeth fame – his old place. And there I emotionally and physically collapsed. Emotional, not in a blubbering sense, but the realization that I’d become emotionally drained. I couldn’t take any more.

I have no objection to any sober or orderly person's gratifying their curiosity in viewing the buildings, Gardens, &ca. about Mount Vernon.’ Washington wrote in a letter* which was very nice of him.

I was sober and orderly but curiosity was gone. If I saw one more costume, one further piece of bone china, even Washington’s reputed false teeth I’d have hugged my sides and screamed. I’d seen too much…and the curry was having its effects too.
I went to where I always go in periods of great angst, a bar. And afterwards slept on the grass.

Tomorrow, Washington, New York and then the plane home.

*letter to William Pearce (November 23, 1794

Jack Daniel's or Jim Beam? A sober reflection

Friday 13th proved uneventful, though Kim was still not speaking to me. Having just passed through Tennessee and Kentucky, Roland and myself debated the merits of their respective bourbons and decided there was only one real way to find out. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bottle of Jim Beam, were duly purchased, and we spent much of the afternoon beneath a shady tree.

First we examined the colour. Jim Beam in sunlight looks like piss, the kind that would earn an approving nod from an urologist but not perhaps from a drinker. Jack Daniels is darker, only slightly so, but sufficient to give that same urologist a degree of concern.

The smell we found difficult to differentiate and we spent several precious minutes sniffing and swirling before finally agreeing that although both shared a similar sweet and sour aroma, Jim Beam’s had the sharper edge. Was that a good or a bad thing? Did sharp mean thin? Further discussion ensued but with no definite conclusion.

Preliminaries satisfied it was time to exercise palate and tongue, teeth relegated to filtering as we sucked and swilled and nodded our heads.

Roland suggested a spit bucket as though we were testing fine wines. He was getting above himself and I reminded him gravely that instead of tasting eight or nine separate and distinct wines, ours was the less onerous chore of sampling just two bourbons. A spit bucket would not be called for though if Roland wanted to spit his out on the grass – away from me – well that was his democratic right.

The afternoon passed quietly other than the occasional clink of bottle on glass, the considered slurp, and every so often an appreciative ‘ummmm’. We drank slowly, sound judgement being the ultimate arbiter.

Hours passed, as we irrigated mouth and throat, savoured that slow, final trickle from oesophagus to stomach until a decision was at at last reached. It was unanimous. Jack Daniel’s was sweeter. And there the discussion continued. Did sweeter mean fuller? Which was the superior drink?

If either distillery would like to sponsor a rematch, this could be arranged, though we draw the line at a Pepsi Vs Coke challenge.

That evening I made curry for the group, with unfortunate consequences.

The beer was strong and Kim was upset when I poured a jug of it over her head

Thursday 12th

We spent the day driving to Chesapeake Bay where we took the ferry across. I tried to interest those around me in the exploits of British troops who having sailed up the Chesapeake in the war of 1812, went on to burn the Capitol and large parts of Washington. They were polite but were clearly more interested in oysters and the promise of strong beer, and I don’t say I blame them.

We spent the evening in a ‘Colonial Tavern’ and here my diary goes awry. I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the tavern, and though I retain a very vivid picture of it in my mind, I can’t for love or money find it on Google. The mind is a wonderful and complex thing but it cannot, as yet, transfer an image through cyberspace. So you’ll have to imagine us sitting at trestles on the Tavern’s green, drinking strong ale and being entertained by jugglers, wigs and fine dresses, and jaunty Colonial airs.

I’m told there are asteroids that pursue long and peculiar trajectories through space, appearing once every ten thousand years or more and then disappearing again. Neurons are pretty much the same. That evening a random neuron ripped through my brain and caused me to do something I still puzzle over all these years later. I poured a jug of beer over Kim Haslinger’s head.

It wasn’t in malice or anger. I think I must have thought it funny at the time. Kim was more puzzled than angry and I sat there, not drunk, but bemused. My only defence was that such behaviour was par for the course on that long, long journey across America, where shaving foam-fights were a nightly routine. And perhaps I was sad…at the burning of Washington…at the fact that my journey across America was coming to an end. It was like the worst ‘frat-pack’ movie gone wrong, and I didn’t have Owen Wilson’s charming smile to make everything right. Worse, it was a waste of good beer. I think Kim and I remained friends…but I haven’t seen her since.

The neuron has yet to make a comeback but I’m afraid it’s probably long over due.

A hat at last in Cherokee

Wed 11 August

















Cherokee is nestled deep within a thickly wooded valley and sadly seemed little more than a tourist centre replete with tack. We walked through a Snake Zoo. . . and wondered why. But Cherokee had one trick up its sleeve. Lurking in the shadows, and waiting for the one who was about to release it was a hat.















Throughout my entire time in America, I’d tried Baseball Caps, Panamas, Stetsons, even a Fedora, but none fitted my strangely shaped head; somehow or other beneath a hat my face resembled an ambiguous after-thought.





















And then, in a Cherokee store, I found it: - a 70’s Black Pimp’s brown suede cap; all baggy and malleable. A sheep, even an orangutan would have looked good in this hat. I tried it on and posed; an extra from Shaft. I fell in love - with the hat.

I took it to the counter, hat and wallet in hand. The owner of the shop, a Cherokee Indian, stared at me and then at the hat. He shook his head. Who did he think he was – my style counsellor? I opened my wallet:

‘How much?’

His face remained stoic, impassive, not even a blink. He shook his head again and then pointed at the hat.

‘Mine,’ he said.

‘But it was at the very bottom of a big pile of hats.’

‘Lost,’ he said, ‘until now.’

I stared at him with all the resolution of a nineteenth century land-grabber. He stared back with the resolution of one who played poker. We haggled, me oscillating in uncertainty: was I being obsessively greedy in wresting ‘his hat’ from him – or was he taking me for a fool? We haggled some more, his face barely twitching a muscle, until my want and his price eventually approximated.

It’s a fine hat, but my wife refuses to let me wear it.

South African Roland (as opposed to Austrian cocktail champion, Roland) joined me in a seven mile walk back to the camp. Kim, less nature-loving but more astute, hitched a lift. Perhaps in ecstasy at having at last found the perfect hat I seriously over-partied that night, and in consequence was unable to enjoy a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains the following day.

Meat pies and Bluegrass, the Knoxville World Fair

Tuesday 10th





















In the Simpsons, ‘Bart on the Road’ Bart drives to Knoxville Tennessee to see the 1982. World Fair. Unfortunately the guide book in their rental car is fourteen years out of date and the only operating attraction remaining is a wig store based in the iconic Sun Tower. When we were there it was busier, but that’s about all. Sunshine, and walking, coke, hot-dogs, and weird cultural artefacts designed to sum up complex civilizations for those with short attention spans. The Australian pavilion was the worst offender, leaning too heavily on out-dated images – cork-dangling hats and didgeridoos. The meat pies were good, the Foster’s lager less so. But hey, you don’t set up a pavilion in ‘World Fair’ to sell meat pies.

















The theme of the exhibition was ‘Energy Turns The World’ and it drew in eleven million visitors. I saw touch-screen displays, and Cherry flavoured coke, boxed milk, and, in the Hungarian Pavilion a giant, automated Rubik’s cube with rotating squares. To me it seemed a great waste of energy – apart from the Bluegrass, which was brilliant. Meat pies and bluegrass. It was almost worthwhile.














Mind, worse was to come. We spent the night in a 'Drive in Movie.' For me this was iconic USA, conjuring up Fifties America, Doris Day and rocking cars. Perhaps an unfortunate juxtaposition. The reality was different from imagined nostalgia: a Cheech and Chong movie on a small screen too far-away, and heard through scratchy headphones. And it was cold. Maybe the 1950’s weren’t that good after all.

That night we drove to Cherokee.