I am constantly amazed at the obsession Americans have for their antecedents. They never say, "I'm an American". They say:"I'm half Irish, a quarter Scottish, a tenth Welsh and......" The other day, I was lunching a contact, a Brit, in a restaurant and our waiter was a short stumpy fellow with a ginger sort-of beard and floppy ginger hair. When I put in my order, he asked the usual predictable question: "Where you fraam, are you Bridish?" I said I was. He then said he was Italian. I thought, yeah right, you look as about Italian as my lunch companion looks Venezuelan. The waiter wanted to tell me more. "My middle name's Luigi," he said, to underline his claim to be of good Mafia stock. I cheekily asked what his first name was. He hesitated a second or two and then replied: "Chuck". Well quite. Debate over. You, Chuck, are an American. In a wine bar near The Times office, I had an hour or two to kill and some food to eat prior to meeting Nicky at the airport. A waitress came up to take my drink order, and when I asked for a glass of white wine, she was astute enough to realise I didn't come from Nebraska. "Are you fraam England?" Sighing deeply, I said she was right. No kidding, this is the conversation that followed. "D'you know what ma name is?" "Eh, no, I don't." "Have a guess." "O'Connell, Macpherson, Jones???" I tried, thinking Irish, Scottish, Welsh. She looked triumphantly at me. "No, it's CHURCHILL. Aam so proud!" Well good for you, now can I please have a menu!
I've discovered one way to confuse American drivers in Washington. They can't cope with jaywalkers. In London, Paris, Rome etc,you step off the pavement and weave your way between the moving cars, with an instinctive understanding between driver and pedestrian, the former wanting to continue his way without killing anyone and the latter intent on crossing the road and catching the eye of each driver to let them know that everything is under control. In Washington DC you can't do that. The lights are green for the oncoming traffic, I step off the pavement, having spotted a gap large enough between the oncoming cars to engineer a quickish manoeuvre to the middle of the road, but it creates panic. The first car in line does an emergency stop and the driver honks his horn with indignation. No instinctive understanding, just total bewilderment. I now adopt the matador approach. I bow slightly and sweep my right or left arm in the air in the manner of a matador playing with a bull and mouth "Ole". Still causes confusion but the word is now getting round Washington. There's this crazy Brit pretending to be a matador, just drive around him. Hurray!!
You'd have thought following the terrible shooting in Tucson where six were killed, including a child, and a Congresswoman was severely injured, that America might at last wake up to its appalling gun laws and do something. But no, just the opposite. After the shootings in Dunblane and Hungerford, the government of the day brought in bans on pistols and automatic guns and everyone felt a bit safer. But in the US of A, the majority of people believe the following: more guns mean less crime. Even Obama has failed totally to do anything meaningful about guns. He wrote an oped in some minor newspaper in Atlanta this weekend in which he proudly affirmed the right of all Americans to carry guns in accordance with the Fifth Amendment and added that he had even expanded this right by allowing guns to be carried in national parks and wild life reserves. Then he urged his fellow Americans to consider tightening the laws so that nutters and mental screwballs couldn't walk into a gunshop and come away with an automatic assault rifle. Well boo to you Mr Obooma. I'm indebted to a columnist in The New York Times for this piece of Wild Westery. Since the Tucson shootings, a state representative in Florida has introduced a bill that would impose fines of up to $5 million on any doctor who asks a patient whether he or she owns a gun. WHAT!! Well actually the bill apparently has more to do with Obooma's health care reforms than gun laws but I won't complicate things more than they need to be. And more and more states are now considering laws that would prohibit colleges and universities from barring guns on campus. "It's about people having the right to personal protection," said Daniel Crocker, southwest regional director for.....wait for it......Students for Concealed Carry on Campus!!! This is an organisation of students dedicated to opening up schools to more weaponry. By the way, for those of you confused by the word "concealed", let me enlighten you. In God Bless America you can get a licence to carry a concealed weapon. I met an American female journalist the other day who runs an online newspaper. We got talking about things and she told me about an incident outside her flat where a drunken male was misbehaving by her front door. She then revealed she had a licence to carry a concealed weapon. She also had a licence for other guns, presumably not concealed. I asked what guns she had. "I have three pistols, an automatic assault rifle, a sawn-off shotgun, my grandfather's 12-bore........" This innocent-looking female had an armoury of weapons in her Washington DC flat. I didn't dare ask what she did to the drunk outside her door but I presume she gave him both barrels and some!!
Stay safe, get yourself a gun. Remember, more guns, less crime. God bless America.
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