The Season in the US

It’s always a pleasure to spend a little time in the States. It’s a nation of such diversity that more or less by definition it has to be entertaining to visit. But often it’s the details that I find most amusing.

My present trip took me to Boston first, and then to Chicago on an internal flight with American Airlines. At one point, a flight attendant told us, “as a reminder, please fasten your seat belts”. Unfortunately, she never explained what fastening our seat belts was supposed to remind us of.

She also asked us to sign up with the airline, at aa.com. AA?  Isn’t that Alcoholics Anonymous? Devoted to helping people recover from a debilitating and self-destructive addition? In my experience, there’s nothing addictive about American Airlines. On the other hand, they could do a lot worse than launch their own kind of twelve-step programme. As a public service, here are a few modest suggestions for six they could use to get started:

• Admit that they are powerless over their lateness and their schedules have become unmanageable.
• Come to believe that a power greater than themselves, such as proper management, could restore them to sanity.
• Mastern the notion that sub-freezing temperatures are likely to make de-icing necessary and start the process before the passengers have all boarded.
• Humbly ask that their inadequacies be removed so that it takes them less than half an hour to get suitcases delivered to a terminal.
• Admit that it’s completely cheesy to sing ‘happy birthday’ for someone waiting to board a plane and it’s worse still to sing it twice because they’d left someone out the first time.
• Train passengers to stow their hand luggage fast and get out of the aisle so it doesn’t take twenty minutes to get a plane boarded. And start the de-icing.

The internal flight was to Chicago. People had warned me that the weather in Boston was bitter and balmy it certainly wasn't. Barmy, indeed, would have been an appropriate term for anyone inclined to hang around much outside. But it took Chicago to show me what winter really felt like.

Frozen in Chicago. Though  at least the lake was still liquid

The lakeside was glorious. On the other hand, it was frozen, to the point that staying upright was an interesting challenge. I think I invented a new kind of dance, as I twisted and turned to stay upright as I began to fall backwards, and then did some more exciting pivots and twirls to right myself when I found myself tipping forwards instead. The cold, though, was nowhere as bad as in the city itself: tall buildings cut off the sun and without even that weak heat to warm us, conditions became positively polar. Unwelcoming would certainly go some way to describe it.

Nowhere, though, was quite as unwelcoming as the Trump Tower, with its owner’s name in letters two floors high across the front.

Sign of a stable genius

You might almost believe that the present incumbent of the White House was an utter narcissist entirely obsessed with self.

Then it was back onto American Airlines and a flight back to Boston. Where the temperatures were a lot more comfortable. Making the hour-long delay, apparently pretty much par for the course in the winter schedule, a price worth paying for the improved weather conditions. 

For this second week, I'm staying outside Boston in a New England Bed and Breakfast, where I was greeted by a curious sign in the bathroom. It asked me, politely, to use a particular cloth to remove makeup. Such a courteously worded request is one I'd like to comply with but, since I haven’t worn makeup since I last took part in amateur dramatics in the late seventies, I find it hard. A real quandary.

A polite injunction. But difficult to obey

New England has delivered milder conditions than Illinois did but, for this inhabitant of old England, where snow happens occasionally and generally lasts only a day or two, it has provided further reminders of what winter means. That made for spectacular views from the windows of the training room where I spent most of the day.

Ah, yes. As I said. Always fun to cross the Atlantic.