On Jungles...

I live in Usa; I recently visited the USA.  I love the fact that these places, spelt pretty much the same way, are so utterly different.

On my first day in the States, I wandered, dazed, around a Mall. I tried a couple of times to buy stuff that I knew I needed – 60% OFF! 3 FOR 2! - Seemingly irresistible consumer pressure but I ended up returning them to their shelves, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all.  Talk about culture shock.  Hick alert…

Kind friends took me to all sorts of cool places and showed me great wildlife.  The beautiful coast of Maine, where I tried (unsuccessfully) to catch striped bass, and saw sharp-tailed sparrows and a piping plover on her nest; Massachusetts, where I watched a colourful civil war-era military parade, complete with 15-gun salute and stayed on the oldest continuously-worked farm in the US; Idaho – the glorious Sawtooth Mountains, moose (super-model legs, scruffy in its partial moult but still awe-inspiring), beaver, elk and mule deer; Washington, with its vistas of beautiful snowy peaks, impossibly hovering humming birds and a delightful riot of kids;  LA – brushed shoulders (literally) with the elusive Mr. Spielberg, had a succession of fabulous meals and my first spin in a vintage Porsche; and finally New York, where I became an instant culture vulture, taking in the American Ballet Theatre performing Sleeping Beauty, and a fabulous Picasso exhibition on the same day.

I had a strange love/hate relationship with the SatNav GPS units, all christened Mabel, in my hire cars.  Mabel has a wonderfully soothing way of talking, which is enormously reassuring as you try to negotiate    the complexities of driving an unfamiliar car (automatic!) on the wrong side of the road, in far too much traffic driving far too fast, in a place where you are actually expected to obey traffic signs & speed limits - of which there are a great deal too many, in this hick’s humble opinion.

I just wish Mabel wouldn’t sigh that weary mother-in-law sigh as she intones ‘recalculating…’ as you take the wrong turn….yet again. And anyway, what exactly does ‘bear left’ mean, when you are faced with no less than 3 left-ish turns?  And couldn’t she have given me a wee bit more warning that I would have to turn hard right immediately after leaving the highway travelling at 80 mph?  And WHAT was she thinking of, directing me through downtown LA, eerily empty and dark, with nothing but a torn plastic bag tumbling across the street under the yellow glare of the flickering street lights – on the very night that rioting exploded in celebration of the Lakers’ win over the Celtics?

It is great to be home - but I did enjoy your jungle.