No Thanksgiving Please, We're British.

Thanksgiving is one of those Holidays that, as foreigners, we just can’t get the hang of. Plan A has always been to avoid it by taking a cruise. However since The Son went to UMD, their measly 4 day break has put paid to that, so we have to resort to Plan B, staying home and trying to avoid getting invited to someone else’s gathering.

In the words of the man at the liquor store last week, “when it comes to Holidays, Thanksgiving has it all. You can’t beat the 3 F’s, Family, Football and Food”. Really”?

So we can do the first one, “Family”. The son will be coming home, battling the metro and bus crowds, hoping some kind soul will pick him up in Damascus because The Parents are too mean (or sane) to drive to College Park. So there will be 4 for dinner instead of 3.

“Football”. I don’t think so. I prefer the football that has shorts and rippling thigh muscles flying up the wing to kick the ball, to the “football” with men in pads and tights holding the ball and mincing around.

“Food”? Not looking good. The Daughter is vegetarian, and The Husband dislikes turkey. The Wife doesn’t think vegetables belong in dessert, nor marshmallows in potatoes. Nor does she think that a can of green beans mixed in with a can of condensed soup and topped with a can of fried onions constitutes either a casserole or a vegetable side dish, and thinking about the preservatives just makes her head spin. The Son however isn’t picky and is secretly hoping for pumpkin pie, despite the fact that The Mother only ever uses pumpkins to make jack-o-lanterns.

If ever there was a Holiday in need of a facelift, this is it.

So....

We will be eating The Governor of Wisconsin’s Roast Duck with Michael Caine’s Roast Potatoes, (not sure what they’re having!). We will take our family Christmas photo, which will once again be blighted by “No Shave November” and then disappear in opposite directions with our laptops.

Thanksgiving Bliss!

Pretentious? Toi?

I really don’t get much chance to listen to the radio nowadays, and mainly just dip into Steve Wright on the 2 or 3 mornings (I’m 5 hours behind) when I’m not at work.

Unbelievably after years and years of not hearing a peep out of Clifford T Ward, I’ve heard him played twice on that show in the past couple of weeks. Last week there was “Wherewithal” and today, just as I was getting into the shower, I heard an intro, immediately recognised it and thought “Bloody hell, that’s Clifford T Ward, AGAIN! Has he died?”.

I admit to never having liked the badly coiffed Clifford T. I initially laid the blame firmly at the feet of Mr Hague, our old english teacher, who used to think he was wonderful, perhaps because he was a fellow english teacher made good. Making us analyse his lyrics in class didn’t help endear him to us either.

With the maturity that comes with adulthood, I wondered if I would now better appreciate his flowery poetic lyrics? Today we had the leaking cistern in Home Thoughts from Abroad, last week it was nonpareil, elation and nonchalant, all in the same sentence. I’m sure next week the tray of nice things will be upset. Has he grown on me? Nope. I just cringed and thought “Pretentious, Toi?”

Oh and while we’re on the subject of pretentious, if you were called Clifford Ward, why would you add your middle initial instead of shortening your name to the snappier Cliff Ward, I mean it’s hardly a common name, is it???

So, here's "Home Thoughts from Abroad". Let's hope they've called the plumber.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s_rRHCOTXA

Musical Youth

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you realize that you will never ever quite fit in.

It’s never more apparent than when the subject of “the music of our youth” crops up. I guess I had a different sort of youth. I didn’t go through the stoned “Yeah Man” phase, I don’t really remember the Beatles, Woodstock or Vietnam, and didn’t go through a country rock/protest song/singer-songwriter/blues/jazz phase. You see I grew up on the other side of the Atlantic, where the music of my youth was “pop” music, and where my teenage life revolved around the holy music trinity of Top of the Pops, Radio One and the Tuesday Top 40 Chart Countdown.

Imagine if you will, a country where there are only a handful of radio stations, all geared towards a mature audience, a country where there are only 3 TV channels, a country where records cost an arm and a leg. Imagine an era of major unemployment, strikes and power cuts. This is the country and the era I grew up in, 1970's Britain.

Imagine then, the dawn of a radio station for young people, one that played “pop”, (ie popular), music of all genres that young people, rather than their parents wanted to listen to. They called it Radio One and the kids loved it, I loved it and my teenage life revolved around it.

On Tuesday lunchtimes Radio One would reveal the new chart. I would dash home from school for lunch, dying to find out if Slade were higher than Sweet, if Mud had gone up or down, or if, horror upon horror, as all was revealed at 1pm, if Donny Osmond had come straight in at number 1. Then I would race back to school and tell everyone the good or bad news.

Thursday nights, (and for a while Fridays), was Top of the Pops night on TV. Everyone watched TOTP, kids to see their favourite bands, dads to see a scantily dressed Pans People strutting their stuff, and grandparents to tut tut about long-haired shirtless men wearing make-up.

The theme music was a rock guitar riff and only many years later did I naively discover it was a Led Zeppelin song. Radio 1 DJ’s would introduce the new entries and climbers of the week and of course the number 1. Sometimes they would play promos, later to be called music videos in the MTV era, or sometimes the bands would perform “live”, except they didn’t, they lip-synched very badly and played unplugged electric guitars.

It was 45 minutes of pure escapism where glam acts were followed by soul acts, and disco was followed by punk, where Chinichap ruled, where Mud performed their tightly choreographed Mud- dance, where the Quo played their 3 chords in scruffy denims, where Freddie postured in his leotard, Johnny snarled and John walked in his white suit through the white house and played the white baby grand. This was the music of my youth.

My music week would be rounded out by the Sunday evening chart countdown from 6 till 7, an hour which I blissfully spent listening to my favourite songs, on my tranny, in the meagre 3 inches of water that constituted the British weekly bath.

Real Plastic Vinyl

Exactly which neighbour actually came up with the idea and which one just pretended they did, is still open to debate, but

"Let's get people over one evening for a few drinks and listen to our old vinyl together, like we did in the old days", they said.

Hmmmm, I thought, my "old days" must be a bit more recent than theirs. I was more Radio One, mangled tapes and the sony walkman, than pot, Cat Stevens and "Ina Gadda Da Vida".

Still, trying to get with the programme, Friday night found The Husband and I ferreting around in the dank closet in the basement where we had stashed and forgotten our boxes of records when we moved in 11 years ago. I have to say my LPs were pretty uninspiring, and the ones The Husband was unearthing, I was quite frankly thrilled to have neither seen nor heard in 11 years.

At the gathering, my vinyl went down like a lead balloon. People pretended they had never heard of the Human League, I mean "Don't You Want Me", who has never heard of that? They thought Tears for Fears were Depeche Mode and that Depeche Mode were Canadian...

The real heroine of the night though was Ms C, whose 45s were like a fantastic "Best of the 60's" compilation, and included the fabulous "Leader of the Pack" single by the Shangri-La's, which was greeted by "Oh is this from "Grease"?"

If the evening taught me anything, it's that I don't look back fondly on the era of skips, scratches and pops, that I love being able to zap easily through songs I don't like, and that it is a hell of a lot easier to transport 4000 songs on an ipod than 20 LPs in a crate on a dolly.

My one regret is that I couldn't find my Saturday Night Fever album, which I suspect now has pride of place in The Brother's living room. Still a quick click on Spotify and I can listen to it anytime for free, and with service like that, who really needs vinyl?

Chinese Food, Mandarin and "Honey"

A visit to my favourite Chinese restaurant is always entertaining, not least because the proprietor is always so glad to see us, and gushes about how wonderful The Children are, but also because of the music they play.

"What sort of music would you expect to hear in a Chinese restaurant", I hear you ask? A nice bit of classical? Perhaps. Some Chinese opera? Probably not. How about some unsung digital channel that plays a constant loop of Rod Stewart, Boyz II Men, "Unchained Melody" and 50's Doo Wop? Now you're talking!

Except that last night it wasn't the usual station, and we found ourselves listening to backing tracks of easy listening songs that were familiar enough, but with a bit of a twist.... the vocals were sung in what appeared to be a high pitched squeaky chinese. "Mandarin". I was authoritatively informed by The Husband.

By the end of the meal, my nerves frazzled by the musical equivalent of nails on a blackboard, I was wondering if they could have played anything worse?

They could.

The next song started with a lush string intro, soaring soprano and the dreaded opening line, this time in english, "See the tree how big it's grown..."

In the time it took them to plant the tree, crash the car and get the puppy, we got the bill, and exited right on cue, just as the angels came.

Adventures with Bluetooth

I am the new owner of a brand new car with bluetooth capability. It means my cellphone can connect wirelessly to the bluetooth system and I can make hands-free phone calls in the car.

At least it does in theory.

Hot on the heels of successfully programming 12 radio stations into the car, the daughter and I embark on setting up the bluetooth. The salesman was kind enough to get my cellphone recognised by the bluetooth system yesterday, so all we had to do was programme in a few numbers and learn how to make and receive calls.

Either the voice recognition system was deaf or it was being awkward. I would dictate a 10 digit number, it would repeat a 14 digit one. I said "Go back". It heard zero as 4. We thought it might be xenophobic so I tried a southern accent, only to be rejected again. The daughter tried, in her best american teenspeak, but it heard "pound key" several times. We erupted into fits of raucous laughter. I hoped the neighbours weren't watching.

After 30 minutes we had our first successful number entry and had to name it.

"Home" I said.

"I'm sorry, that sounds too much like Help", it said.

"Our House", I said.

"That sounds too much like Go Back", it said.

"Go back you cretin", I said.

"Pardon", it said.

After 45 minutes we had 3 numbers in and just needed to enter the son's number, but no matter how we tried we couldn't get it to work. It would not accept "Nick", "Nicky J", "Nicky J" with the sound effect of keys crashing onto the console, or "Nicholas".

Tearing our hair out we called the son to the car. He lay down on the back seat and in his best Nate robot voice dictated first his number and then his name. We rolled our eyes. We waited for it to say something stupid, but it didn't. It just repeated the name and number perfectly and asked him to confirm.

So he will now enter all the numbers for me, and when I need to call someone I will have to lower my voice by a couple of octaves and speak like a dalek. Brill.

White Knuckle Ride

I hate driving. The only thing worse is driving with the husband in the car, or driving among the nitwits of Montgomery County.

This week "He who shall not be named" wrapped the trailblazer around a tree on the Clarksburg Road. He was fine, the car was not, and even if our insurance repairs it, we do not plan to keep it - 3 accidents in one year and 3 lucky escapes with nary a scratch, we don't want to push our luck any further.

The decision is made that I should get a new car and the kids will get to use my Tribeca. I say that I would like to stick with Subaru as they make good solid cars that perform well in the snow. I have considered getting a smaller car since transporting 2 full size cellos is no longer an issue and suggest a Forester. The husband says the Outback has been revamped and we should check that out as well. He test drives some cars in his lunch break and comes up with 2 he feels I "should like".

He says the Forester drives like a car, but is underpowered so we should drive the turbo version. The Outback drives like an SUV but has a V6 engine. Hmmmm. This terminology means nothing to me. My requirements are AWD, heated leather seats and some way of plugging the ipod into the sound system.

So I find myself in Montgomery County test driving the cars with not only the husband in the passenger seat, but the salesman in the back, on the 355 during Friday night rush hour, with the pair of them saying "pull out now, the cars a turbo" and me thinking "I'll wait 10 minutes until *I* see a gap *I* am happy with", and "why the hell didn't they choose a route where you join with a traffic light?".

White knuckle rides over, here's the female perspective on the cars.

1. No way on earth was I going to buy the turbo Forester as it had a raised lump on the bonnet that looked ridiculous and the foot pedals were metal with holes in and resembled swiss cheese. If "driving like a car" meant it felt flimsy, then it drove like a car, or more to the point, a boy racer car.

2. I felt embarassed being seen in the Outback as the test model was a shit brown. If it drove like an SUV then that I guess that is what I am used to, something big and solid. On the downside it had the ridiculous "parking brake" where you pulled a switch and pressed on the regular brake pedal to put it on, rather than having a separate foot operated or hand operated brake. I mean what is the point? I had to put my glasses on to read the switch to see if I had to push or pull to get it on or off.

3. I don't know if it is a man thing but certain "features" that the salesman touted as selling points are of no interest to me. Why would I want an automatic that I can also drive as a manual? I just want to stick the car in "drive" and go. Why would I want "cruise control"? The thought of the car moving without me having my feet on the pedals, is a scary one. Finally, if I am choosing an AWD car because of the safety benefits, why on earth would I want to be able to turn off the traction control?

Long story short, we went back yesterday and got the Outback, and I drove home in the Tribeca.

Fake Plastic Food

Yesterday I ended up in my local "neighbourhood" Applebees, someone else's choice not mine.

To make the best of things I picked through the menu to try and find something relatively healthy, which in Applebees terms would be anything that is not deep fried and dredged in salt, which in my terms would exclude 95% of the menu.

Being relatively fresh off the plane from Italy, and having devoured many a bruschetta, the

BRUSCHETTA TOPPED CHICKEN SALAD

caught my eye, and having read the description

Grilled chicken breast served on a bed of crisp romaine tossed with champagne vinaigrette and topped with bruschetta, juicy tomatoes, red onions, kalamata olives, roasted red peppers, basil and garlic. Sprinkled with Asiago cheese, golden-fried mozzarella scoops and finished with a balsamic glaze.

I foolishly ordered it.

What arrived on my plate was dried reconstituted chicken that had been grilled, (but not anytime recently), limp romaine with brown edges dripping with run-of-the-mill italian dressing, topped with 6 pieces of diced tomato, a few slices of red onion, several spoons of sliced olives from a jar, (that they had somehow rendered tasteless), and one microscopic sliver of roasted red pepper. Somehow they had managed to forget the basil and garlic that would have made chopped tomatoes into "bruschetta". But wait there's more....

Liberally coated with fake plastic grated american "cheese", golden fried globs of breading with a speck of mozzarella in them, with a bit of brown squirty stuff on the chicken.

In the interest of health if you don't want a full sized portion for $9.49, you can get a half size for $8.49!!!! Not worth the price and certainly not worth the calories, and not even vaguely reminiscent of bruschetta.

I won't be back.