America is rough and lacks the interesting

A refined, upper class English woman told me that years ago in London. If you drive up the middle of Nevada, as I did last week, you might agree. There's nothing to see except the odd McDonalds and a few Shady Lady brothels. Of course when you swing over to California you are entering a verdant paradise of orchards, lakes, mountains and oceanfront an Englishman can only dream about. And the people are very interesting and well educated. We spent an evening dining al fresco on one of those soft summer nights discussing art, music and literature. Not too rough. We even devoted an evening to watching a video of “Swan Lake” by the Maryinsky Ballet and since we had all been to St. Petersburg and some of us spoke Russian, we could enjoy it about as well as the average bloke in Basingstoke. Dickens also complained in “American Notes” (1840) that the Americans he met were boring businessmen and traders. Well, they weren't as exciting and devious as Bill Sykes, Fagin and Abel Magwitch. DeToqueville understood us best, but then he was a Frogie Frenchman, wasn't he? I happen to love England but I do prefer a cold beer on a hot day to a warm one on a cold day. The one who understood England best was Orwell. He wrote in his diary in June 1940 about an item in the Tory Telegraph lamenting that the rich would have to give up their cooks during the war. He wrote, “apparently nothing will teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist”. Make that 100%.