They order these things better in the US. Or possibly not

It is said that at its foundation, it was hoped that Canada would combine French culture, with the British political system and American knowhow. Unfortunately, the country has managed to bring together American culture, the French political system and British knowhow.

Ah, American knowhow. The country’s celebrated for it. As well as its culture of service. And generally it fully deserves both reputations. But, as I discovered on this trip across the pond, not always. 

Imagine, for instance, an increasingly cashless society. Even the smallest purchases can be made by card. An ice cream, a taxi, a meal. So much more convenient than having to carry cash, which you can do nothing about if it’s stolen, and which supports a whole parallel economy evading tax. Clearly the way to go in the future.

But that’s not the States. That’s Sweden. I made the mistake of drawing out a little Swedish cash on an early trip to the country and two years on it’s still just burning a hole in my wallet.

In the US, on the other hand, I went to one restaurant which refused to take anything but cash. A fine restaurant but just what are they up to? Back in England, that kind of behaviour would excite suspicions of money laundering.

Then there was the Café that claimed it took cards, until it came to paying.

“I’m so sorry, our card machine is down,” they sorrowfully announced. Though I’m not sure the sorrow was authentic. Fortunately, there was an ATM nearby; less fortunately, it was one of those that indulges in the scandalous practice of charging you for access to your own money.

But it wasn’t either of those experiences that provided me the most powerful insight into the occasional technological and service blips in US life.

I had to get from New York to Austin, in Texas. And things weren’t looking good. A major snowstorm had been threatened for the North Eastern states. There were snowploughs travelling up and down the streets. The buses even had snow chains on their back tyres.

Would my plane take off at all? These were anxious moments.

It was with some relief that I discovered that the weather forecast had been less than accurate, at least for New York. A friend suggested that this might be an effect of the partial government shutdown – staff were perhaps not turning up at the meteorological service. I can just imagine juniors who’ve missed a pay cheque getting together in the office and saying, “hey, let’s give the New Yorkers a shock, shall we?”

New York. At the time the worst snow was forecast

I travelled out to the airport feeling superior to my colleagues stuck in Boston. This is a bad frame of mind. I try not to be superstitious but I can’t help a slight queasiness when I get a little too cocksure. That strikes me as a bit of a lightning conductor for bad Karma.

And so it proved.

As we were boarding, the pilot announced that he wanted us in our seats fast as we needed to be moving away from the stand by eight o’clock. And we rose to the occasion. We were all seated in minutes, well before his deadline. 

At which point, he sat on the stand for a further 25 minutes.

Eventually, he began to taxi towards the runway. In, I’d have to say, rather a lackadaisical way. There were frequent stops, as though the plane was running out of breath. The engines frequently whined, as though trying to reach high speed, while in fact moving at what felt more like a walking pace.

In time, however, we reached the runway. Or rather, not in time. The pilot came back on the PA system.

“We tried our best,” he told us, never a statement that encourages listeners to expect a happy continuation, “but we’re one minute too late. We can’t now get to Austin within the maximum flying time permitted. We have to go back and wait for a new crew.”

Which we duly did. Waiting with different degrees of patience in the terminal building for a further four hours. We took off at 2:00 in the morning, six hours late – a delay significantly longer than the flight itself.

For someone who travels by air a lot in Europe, this came as a disagreeable reminder of times gone by. It’s been many years since I experienced such a delay on a flight, except for circumstances well beyond the control of the airlines – terrible weather or someone flying a drone near the airport, for instance.

We tried to get rest on the flight. Which put me in mind of a line from Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day:

Sleeping on planes – you know. Ruins the complexion. From the inside.

Somehow, that sentiment seems to encapsulate things perfectly. Sleeping on a flight just gnaws away at you, and it is indeed from deep inside you. Not a comfortable way to spend time.

And not the most glowing tribute to the levels of service provided by a US airline.

Still, it was only a discomfort. And a useful object lesson in the fact that it isn’t just severe weather that disrupts air travel but human ineptitude – in this case, running services on far too tight a margin for safety – can be just as lamentable. 

And it even happens in the US.

But I’m not complaining. I don’t live in Yemen, or Syria, or Venezuela. I know nothing of real suffering. What I went through was an inconvenience not a tragedy. Besides, it was a pleasantly ironic insight into things transatlantic.

So, if anything, I’m grateful…

I have always depended on the cordiality of strangers

Often it works out well. On Sunday, we took both dogs to Ashridge Forest, one of the more magical places in the three counties Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. Making up for quite a lot of places of the other kind.

For Toffee, not yet seven months old, it was a matter of sheer delight. I think she had never previously encountered such a medley of smells. She ran through mile after mile of forest with her nose trailing along the ground for most of the way, as she revelled in the experience.

Sharing the joys of Ashridge in the spring

After giving the dogs their treat, we headed to the National Trust café which does an excellent line in homemade meals and cakes (not of course that we indulge in the cakes). The place was full – it took me twenty minutes even to get to the front of the queue, making me more grateful than ever the existence of a Kindle app on my phone – so we ended up sharing a table with other people.

By good fortune, we found ourselves opposite to women of Indian extraction, with whom we got into a pleasant conversation. We agreed about how awful racist objections to Muslim dress are, how desperate a state the Labour Party is in under its present non-leadership and how appalling it is that Britain is planning to leave the European Union.

It really is depressing watching someone self-inflicting a major injury. Especially when it’s your country.

I was amused that one of the women complained that she was constantly losing credit cards.

“How irresponsible is that?” she asked, I assume rhetorically, “what’s more irresponsible than losing credit cards?”

“Using them?” I asked.

“That’s what husbands are for,” she patiently explained, “to make sure you always have credit on the card.”

Her husband was clearly a different kind from my wife’s. With us, I was always the one running up the credit card bills. It was my wife who spent twenty-five years trying to train me to understand that my life would be a lot less stressful and a great deal more comfortable if I stopped treating “credit” as though it were “funds”.

These days I’m convinced that losing my credit cards would be a lot less irresponsible than using them. But it was fun meeting someone who took the opposite view. Especially in as glorious a setting as Ashridge.