Tag Archives: gun control

American Culture & the Mounties

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I think Spring is in the air, and I just found Jake cooking pasta for his girlfriend. Second time today……yep, it must be.

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This is an interesting season in Denver, the brown trees turned green in two weeks, and the bunnies in our back garden multiply, er like rabbits. Heather sits on the grass and they amble around her, as do the squirrels, it’s like a scene from Snow White. Or is it Wizard of Oz? I’m getting old, my memory is deserting me.

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The reason we have rabbits is that the typical American middle class household is obsessed with baby substitutes, sorry, dogs. I can only count one of our neighbours who doesn’t have a canine or three, so the rabbits seek refuge under our decking. The unfortunate by-product of this is that the foxes that tour the area also like our garden, Heather found bits of rabbit strewn about last weekend after we had seen the fox sneaking in late at night, just as we were crawling in from the pub.

Yes, the good news is there are pubs of a sort in Middle America, and the amount of breweries is un-believable. There are supposed to be 175 in the Denver area, and so there is no need to drink Budweiser or similar filth. The only problem is that presumably to differentiate themselves, they make the beer out of some strange things, caramel or wheat I guess are ordinary, but what about “whiskey-soaked pumpkin seeds and orange blossom honey”. Yes, the majority of them taste like………

It might come as a surprise to you my reader (singular), but I am not a patient man. I hate queuing, but the amount of airports I am going through means I have to get used to it. 4 weeks ago visiting New York, I got back to Newark airport an hour and a half before the departure time, plenty of time you would say. But the queues at security were out the front door, apparently someone had shot himself at Houston airport and everyone was freaked, and progress through security just slowed to a crawl.

Americans do get freaked by some things, but ignore others that I would regard as being far more important. An average of 30 people are shot every day across America, which goes completely un-remarked upon, but then what is logically a small incident gets blown out of proportion.

The Aurora “Batman” killer is back making the headlines because he is about to be sentenced for that terrible act, which happened about 8 miles from where I sit right now. The prosecutors are making a big thing of the fact that the gunman walked past two cinemas to perform his deed in the third. Why? Because the first two allow guns in the auditorium and the prosecution are arguing that was a deliberate move to prevent him from being shot back, thereby justifying a death sentence.
Yes, dear Europeans, there are cinemas in America where you can take in a gun.

Anyway, to get back to Newark airport, I wanted to exploit my capitalist right not to queue, so I purchased a priority pass. $60 later, I got through security just in time, only to realise that I had managed to book myself on the only airline in America that doesn’t give you a reserved seat, unless you pay extra. Although a familiar concept for Europeans, thankfully those airlines are but a distant memory to me now.

So I had forgotten to pay for a seat, and they have a bizarre queuing system. You find your position behind a post – C19 is the 19th person in the C queue. Capitalism? I wanted to slit my wrists.

The kids have broken up from school and we are off on that true American tradition, the Road Trip. Jake has a friend joining us on #wardsontour, it’s the California Coastal Highway and then over to Arizona, I suspect some laughs will befall us. I need some laughs the way work has been.

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So far it has been remarkable that I haven’t got an American speeding ticket, unlike my colleague Vrinder who got done in Yellowstone for doing 65 in a 40. And despite a passport photo that makes him look like a terrorist dear boy, they didn’t lock him up. My major incident was being stopped in Calgary by a Mountie. He seemed to think that steering with my knees while taking a picture of the skyline was a mistake. I groveled, he was a real Mountie, what was that TV program?

In the grand tradition of the American Dream, even a 12 year old gets a year book at the end of the year. But unfortunately for poor Ben, they had forgotten to put him in it. I was incensed for him, demanded the phone off the wife, intent on ringing the principal and telling him what I thought of the way they had treated my youngest. Did I say I wasn’t very patient…..now where has Heather hidden the phone?

Accents and other Things that are Different

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I have a bad habit I need to confess to.

Well all right, I only have time for one today, but I need to get it off my chest.  I think my problem became very clear to Heather, my lovely wife, some 20 years ago when we went to meet with one of our clients, up in the North of England.  In Rochdale to be exact.

After lunch, the boss man took Heather to one side and said (I won’t do the accent), “if Mike continues to take the micky out of me, I am going to knock his block off”.  But I wasn’t taking the micky, it was just the first example Heather had experienced of my terrible problem.

When speaking to anyone with an accent, within minutes I will be attempting (but badly) to speak in the same lingo.  I wonder if there is some kind of 7 steps process that can help me.

To be serious for a moment, the key difference between the UK and the good old US of A is the attitude to guns.  Like most Europeans, I find the amount of gun deaths in America to be very disturbing.  The quoted figures of less than 50 in the UK, to over 11,000 in the US has to indicate that this is a key problem.  But, no matter how many times I try and discuss the issue with sane and grown up Americans, I simply don’t understand the huge commitment the majority have to owning a gun.  I am still working hard, but it is something deeply cultural.

If you haven’t seen it, go to YouTube and view some of the Piers Morgan interviews of the last few weeks.  Piers is a man that few us in Britain liked, and most were happy to see leave for the US to take up a nightly TV interview slot on CNN.  But he is has really come to life in my view, although not in the minds of most Americans, who have started a petition to have him deported.

On a show last week Piers interviewed a Larry Pratt, who looked perfectly normal, argued quite sanely, but when Morgan put the gun death numbers in front of him, he suddenly announced that the UK figures were rigged, and really there were 790 gun deaths a year in the UK.  The problem is that people believe these things.

Earlier in the week Piers interviewed an Alex Jones from the NRA (National Rifle Association), who foamed at the mouth, and with bulging eyes told Piers that he needed the guns to ensure that the UK didn’t invade again, invoking the American War of Independence.  Bizarre in the extreme to an outsider, but lots of people see him as a hero, people keep telling me they need more guns, not less.

Some of the differences about living in Colorado are a bit weird.  When Heather came to give me a kiss earlier, she gave me a shock.  I mean an electric shock.

Denver is a mile above sea level, and despite freezing cold temperatures on occasions, it is very dry.  The sun shines for over 300 days a year, and it has only rained once in 3 months, both of which make the freezing temperatures more palatable.  But the climate, and the wall to wall nylon carpets, creates static electricity like I have never seen before.

The lack of air also means my tennis is hopeless, the balls fly out, and even a short rally leaves me lying on the floor gasping for breath.  At the Broncos game this afternoon, some of the opposition footballers were given oxygen on the side lines to enable them to cope.

I needed a bit more than oxygen to cope, football is a great game, but after it went to extra time it took 4 ¼ hours for 1 ¼ hours of action.  Unreal, particularly at – 12 degrees C, 75,000 fans created a fantastic atmosphere, but they don’t have a roof.  It snowed.  And they lost in extra time.

And there were opposition fans in front of us who everyone chatted with, and they even survived the home team managing to lose a game they were 100 – 1 to win at one point.

Earlier in the day we took the boys to have some jabs, they have to have a huge number in order to be allowed to be in school.  The fire station where they were giving the inoculations was in a suburb called Aurora, much more of a mixed community than the enclave that is Greenwood Village.

Walking in to the temporary clinic, a couple of the locals greet me, calling out in support of my Broncos shirt, Go Broncos.

As I say, I have this terrible habit of copying the way people speak, honestly, I don’t mean to do it.

And now I can add Jive Talking to my failings, and my family thinks I am a rude and dangerous person.

Anyone know of a cure?

Two Countries (maybe three)

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There are many things that are much better now we are living in America, and to be personal for a moment, my favourite is that my wife no longer snores.

I can’t put my finger on why my night’s sleep is no longer interrupted by Vesuvius.  Certainly, Denver is a mile about sea level, and the atmosphere up here is very different.  It is so dry, and I do feel ashamed to admit this, but I have had to resort to the use of moisturising face cream.  Yes, things are really changing in the Ward household.   Sorry, men.

There are so many things that are different, we assume that because we speak the same language and use the same words, that we are very similar.

This week’s big laugh has centred on that lovely piece of food that one has after the main course, made from pastry, with things such as fruit on top.  Yes, a flan.

But our lovely Izzy calls it a FLON, in fact every American calls it a FLON.  Laugh, we all corpsed.

When we moved, I had to have a good talk to myself, there are certain subjects that I can never discuss with any American, certainly no-one I meet through work or in this middle class enclave.  As they say at sales school, never discuss religion, politics, or sex.

And this week it has all gone completely pear shaped, but the good news is the worst error was Heather’s.  Buying a turkey baster this afternoon, she actually told the shop assistant, in the poshest, most lovely kitchen shop you have ever seen…….that the device was phallic.

If you haven’t spent much time in middle America, you will be amazed at the relationship they have with sex.  It really just doesn’t exist, and this poor posh shop assistant didn’t even know what the word meant.  But she laughed when she worked it out, which I think was a 50:50, the 50% of the population that I can’t discuss religion with would have thrown us out.  The problem is you can’t tell which camp they are in.

Before I describe my big error, a moment of serious diversion.  I will blog on it at some point fairly soon, but I think I am waiting for some kind of moment of revelation on the attitude of America to guns.  I hate guns, and let’s face it, none of us are happy with 5 year old kids getting killed.  But I now have a Twitter exchange going on with a grown up man, who describes himself as a lawyer, who tweeted direct to me “return to the UK and live in fear of the armed criminals….why do you think more UK police being armed”.

There is such a bizarre lack of reality and logic in the American approach to guns.  There are 41 gun deaths a year in the UK, 10,000 in the US.  But they just don’t get it.  It is very upsetting still to think about this subject, and it comes back to all 4 of us almost every day, but I must move on.

So we went to a local party last weekend, my first, something I really needed and I really enjoyed it.  Really enjoyed it.

In my defence I was on drugs, a quick ridiculous trip to the UK had wiped me out, and left me with a bad cold.  Not that it is a cold over here, they don’t have colds, they have flu, but hey, give me drugs.

A few days in Calgary, in the very oil (and money) rich part of Canada, at 10 degress below didn’t help.  I could give you another diatribe on the difference between US and Canada, but….I digress.

So several 007 cocktails later, beers, wine….yes, I was flying, I was indestructible.

And I broke rule 1.

Yes, I lectured my lovely new American neighbour on the inevitability of taxation, the deferred price to be paid for the US induced recession.  I would like to say that my argument was very logical and I was not trying to be party political, I just know there is a price to pay, and in Europe  every tax payer is paying this price.  But in the US they have deferred the economic medicine, and the “fiscal cliff” approaches.  They deferred the tax rises 4 years ago, and government spend has increased, yes, there is a price to be paid.

The US political system is now very polarised, and the problems in achieving compromise is very difficult, and the middle classes are very unhappy.

Yes, he told Heather I was “left wing”.  I just hope he will talk to me again, I certainly can’t go in that kitchen shop again, and I continue to think of the phantom flan flinger.  I don’t think Chris Tarrant would have got a laugh out of a FLON flinger.  But maybe after so many good nights sleep I have lost it, and for once in my life, I could be wrong.