Friday 2nd April 2010 - All Ship-shape and Bristol Cream

          It's the day to get my Easter rituals organised.  In particular, I have to find a religious supplies shop to get some stocks of altar beer.  This is no trivial task in the United States.  The liquor store has more choices in beer than it does in french wine.  Actually, the beer aisle is not unlike the breakfast cereal aisle in a supermarket.  I feel like a small child in a candy store: there is exquisite agony in making the choice.  In fact, it takes me all of an hour.

          When I finally choose, and get to the check-out, it finally occcurs to me that other people might like something as well.  So, as they say in the Ozzie beer adverts, I throw in a bottle of sherry "for the sheilas".

 

          With alles now in ordnung, I can turn my attention, finally, da-dada-da-dada-da - to the packing.  After a week of background thinking, it falls into place smooth, as they say here, as a Clinton apology.  I have my road bag, my "just in case" bag, and the big case divided into "wanted on voyage" and "not wanted on voyage".

          And I've made a hatbox for my precious Stetsons.

Thursday 1st April 2010 - Ideas Above my Station

          Having trumped the Immigration Service yesterday, I felt my loins sufficiently girded to have another tilt at the Social Security Administration.  Having one of their numbers in my possession will greatly facilitate closing out my bank accounts.

          My last foray in that direction was way back in Montana, where a nice young lady had taken the trouble to find out how to give me a number, and was about to do the deed when we discovered I'd sent the essential document to Immigration.  (I had noted the number, but, surprisingly for the SSA, they didn't want the number, they wanted the object.)

          But now my documentation is complete, so I dropped into the local office.  It was a small office, so, although they had the mandatory man-with-a-gun, he declined to look up my bottom (to be absolutely honest, he seemed a little surprised at the offer)  He told me to take a number; from a little dispensing machine.  This, I thought, is easier than I expected.  But it turned out only to be a queueing number.

          When I got to see the clerk, she was all brusque and business-like.  I'm very sympathetic to social security staff.  They sometimes have to deal with people who are sometimes very stressed.  She looked at my documents.  No, she couldn't help, I was the wrong status.  So how was the young lady in Montana going to do it, eh?  Quick as a flash, the clerk pointed out that she (Montana) hadn't seen the document.  If she had, she'd have known I was (chorus) the wrong status.

          She suggested I go and see the Internal  Revenue, but that is a circle aound which I decline to go again.  They never do anything to help, anyway, but they collect information as they do (or rather, don't do) it.  My father told me to keep away from the IRS. He was always threatening to shoot them (well, not always, just on Saturday nights).

          Still, I suppose it's better to have a government that doesn't know what it's doing: I don't think we'd like the alternative.  I shall just have to stick to cash.

Wednesday 31st March 2010 - A Free Lunch

          I had to go up to town for a meeting with my legal team.  I wanted to check everything was in order, and that I could have a slippery-smooth exit, with no falling foul of government bureaucrats.  It is just as well I took the trouble, because there was, indeed, a severe flaw in my plans.  But, with the proper professional advice, it was soon put to rights: my I979A now nestles in my passport in place of the I94, waiting to confound the aparachik.  Another one in the eye for mere government.

 

          By the way, I discovered, and it is not surprising with lawyers involved, that there is such a thing as a free lunch.  Their ethics do not permit them to accept gifts from clients, so they had to buy lunch.  It was in one of St Paul's finest old Italian restaurants, full of Godfather figures, cheeks stuffed with cotton wool, making that curious back-handed waving gesture.  I suppose any (or, indeed, all) of them might nowadays have been Justice Department stooges, waiiting to pounce on an unethical lawyer.

          I bet you didn't know there's a special rule that allows Lenten fasters to eat masses of Italian food in Holy Week in towns with a saint's name.

Tuesday 30th March 2010 - The Black Sox Scandal

          With some reluctance, I started stage one of the packing.  After a year on the road, stage one is unpacking, the creation of chaos: hence the reluctance.

          Some surprising things turned up: or rather, didn't.  As I piled all the socks together, I noticed there were no black ones.  Now why would I notice that?  I wasn't looking for it.  But black socks are an essential part of the QM2 dress code.  I had them when I came in; where are they now?  Obviously I put them in a sensible place: inside posh shoes; pockets of dress suits: unfortunately, none of the above.

          It is well-known that washing machines are secret consumers of socks, but how could they have consumed the only pair of socks I never wore?  Naturally, everything else was forgotten in an obsessive hunt for black socks: which steadfastly remained unfound.  Perhaps, like the infamous Chicago White Sox of 1919, they have been banned from ever appearing again.

          Having covered the floor in clothes, and invoked the intervention of many of the less-salubrious deities, I eventually pulled myself back from the brink before the men in white coats were summoned.  Instead, I went round to the local supermarket, where the ever-reliable Chinese had stocked a whole shelf with dress black socks, made, apparently, from bamboo.

          I also used the outing to take my dress shirt to the laundry.  The laundry is in the same mall as the barber's, and the young lady here also demanded my phone number.  I gave her a false one.  She asked me if I wanted light-, medium-, or heavy-starch.  I hadn't considered starch at all; I went for medium.

 

          I also found a twenty-five-year-old Canadian two-dollar bill.  I obviously brought my stock of old Canadian money in case I had to take a half-term break in Canada.  Which reminded me that I had acquired a couple of US two-dollar bills on my travels: but they were nowhere to be found.  They are probably among the things I mailed home from Montana and Missouri.  I wonder if that's where the black socks went to?

Monday 29th March 2010 - Recidivism and Shopping

          It is a beautiful day, and fairly warm.  Spring is most decidely sprung.  Minneapolis is at the same latitude as Bordeaux, but, of course, a thousand miles from the ocean, so it can spring a few weather surprises.

          There is a park opposite, and, in the American way, it is 18-20 square miles.  Here you have to drive somewhere to go for a walk.  But a short walk allows me to indulge a favourite childhood passion, throwing stones into ponds.  I'm very civilised about it now, and only throw small pebbles, being careful not to disturb the wildlife: not when anyone is looking, anyway.  When I was very small, I would drag the largest rocks I could, and nearly go in with them in the final heave.  A bit of harmless recidivism is good for a chap.

 

          Suitably fortified, I start to size up the packing problem.  As well as the old camera and computer I lost in Philadelphia, I also lost, more importantly, it turns out now, the bag they were in.  I'm fairly sure that, no matter how brutal I am at disposal, I will have to replace it.

          So I took myself off to the local shopping mecca, a giant mall much like Bluewater.  But where you might have expected them to call it "Blooomington Mall" or "Minneapolis Mall", or ,even in a frenzy of hubris "Minnesota Mall", they chose to call it "Mall of America": no hidding behind bushels there.  The road signs tend, rather diffidently, to the more prosaic "MOA".  They could open a cheap one for the lower classes and call it "MOAB" (that's a rather obscure biblical joke).

          They claim people fly in to the nearby airport just to shop: from as far as Europe and Asia.  Bluewater was pleased when it got a rail station.  Typical parochialism: it should have been aiming for an airport.

          To my way of thinking, it's just expensive shops and mooching children.  I look at the immense, expensively-finished fabric of it, and wonder how all that could have been paid for.  I managed to find a bag.  But I couldn't find a pond to throw a rock in.

Sunday 28th March 2010 - Floods and Teenagers

          It is the time of year when the snow is melting, so the rivers get a sudden surge.  The mighty Mississippi is well boxed in here, but the boxes, so to speak, are nearly full.  The Minnesota, which flows into the Mississippi, has overflowed and now occupies its entire flood plain, looking like a large lake rather than a (relatively) small river.  The trees on its banks can still be seen tracing its normal path.

 

          This we see on our way to a teenage birthday party.  I am one of the socially nervous, who can be readily persuaded that teenagers are capable of casual canibalism.  I have been told that modern teenagers actually watch TV programmes where the characters regularly indulge these tastes.  But, being a close cousin, however many times removed, may spare me such a fate, especially as I have had had the foresight to come bearing gifts.

          As it turns out, I get treated like royalty, which means I get introduced to everybody all at once, with someone whispering names in my ear, than get sat in a corner among the favoured few, and only have to wave benignly from time-to-time.

          The favoured few are mostly parents and grandparents.  They have an inexhaustible supply of teenager war stories which are simultaneously hilarious and hair-raising.  Like old soldiers, they vie with each other over the horrors they have survived.  I discreetly keep a thick wedge of them between me and their teenagers: I could get the hang of this royalty stuff.

 

          Later that night, I contemplate the passing of Palm Sunday.  We're now into Holy Week, or the "home straight" as I think of it.  I can now start edging discretely towards the nearest bar.

Saturday 27th March 2010 - Doing the Foul Deed

          There is good news: nettles have been seized, diems carpe'd, nails hit accurately, iron struck at suitable temperature, stitches saved, worms duly caught; trunks emptied: well, whole cars, actually

          There are, of course, drawbacks.  It's a good job it's Lent.  Getting up in the night now would likely involve the stubbing and stabbing of toes.  Everything has been laid out for disposal or folding into transatlantic cases.

          Which is exhausting enough for one day.  So it's off to the malt shop for traditional American fare.  Americans of my age hanker after juke-box-fuls of sixties music and Horlicks with their dinner.  They probably also think wistfully of the recreational drug use and casual sex they missed out on at the time.

          "Malt shops" sell 'malts', a milkshake made with ice cream and malted milk, a baby food invented by a London Pharmacist come to Wisconsin, one James Horlick.  As an accompaniment to hamburger, it lacks the biting piquance of a rough claret, but Americans have chosen to try to prevent their children drinking by setting this sort of example.  Europeans do the opposite.  Of course, neither works, as the children, in their turn, miss out on their generation's recreational drugs and casual sex.