Bueno Taco

Oh, I almost forgot. Never order the 'Breakfast Taco' from Bueno Taco. It is even more disgusting than the buffalo chicken sub.

Snow

Here in Canada, it is very snowy and very cold, as you can see. But ironically enough, in the last week Oklahoma City has been even more snowy and cold, as you can see here.

Looks like we got out just in time!

The Reverend Frankton Muncie and friends

On Monday we arrived in Canada, where we're spending Christmas and New Year. The drive up from Oklahoma took two and half days, much of it through very boring scenery, and I found myself passing the time by inventing characters based on the roadside direction signs. These signs typically have two place names on them, which are the towns you would get to if you got off at the next exit, turning either left or right. The following are all real examples, from the I69 north between Fort Wayne, Indiana and Lansing, Michigan:

Frankton Muncie - the vicar in Pride and Prejudice ('While you were out, Miss Bennet, we received a visit from the good and distinguished Reverend Frankton Muncie.')
Marion Montpelier - used to sing cabaret songs with Richard Rodney Bennett (no relation)
Quincy Coldwater - produced Michael Jackson's first album
Three Rivers Jackson - early delta blues singer
Okemos Mason - world heavyweight champion, 1956

Well, it amused me at the time.

Cheese

I like to think I'm pretty easy-going when it comes to food - I enjoy most things, but one thing I've never liked is cheese. I don't mind a bit of cheese flavour in things and I can manage pizza (though not the 'four cheese' variety), but anything stronger than that I just don't like. Cheese, to me, tastes and smells like milk which has gone off. Although I know this is a relatively unusual quirk, I've always managed fine in the past - at restaurants, for example, I will avoid any dishes which contain cheese and likewise for products at the supermarket.

But that doesn't work here, because Americans put cheese in everything, and they don't tell you. Your innocuous can of pasta in tomato sauce, which looks just like Heinz spaghetti, will taste of cheese, and when you check the ingredients, yes, there it is about half way down. The meal I have ordered in a restaurant precisely because it does not, according to the menu, have cheese in it will appear at the table covered with a liberal sprinkling of grated cheddar. The stuff is everywhere.

Today I was at the supermarket looking for a sandwich to take with me in the car for later. The choices were beef and cheese, ham and cheese, cheese, or tuna. Checking the ingredients on the tuna sandwich revealed it had - yes, cheese in it. They had slipped it in surruptitiously and tried to hide it from me, but I foiled their game. In the end I bought a ham and cheese sandwich and took the cheese out.

What is it with Americans and cheese?

The beginning of the end

Well, my Oklahoman oddysey is coming to an end. I've got a new job to start in January in the UK. The house is on the market, and we're making plans to move on.

I feel somehow that the blog should end on a high note - perhaps a poem or even a musical number. But it'll probably just fizzle out in some kind of unsatisfactory way.

Soup of the day

Why is the 'soup of the day' in every single American restaurant always chicken noodle?

Phone frustration

Why, when you phone Bank of America's number for checking suspicious transactions, is the last item on the second automated menu (after you have keyed in your account number, date of birth, social security number etc.) 'Press 8 if you want to wire money to Mexico'?

Free tree surgery

This morning, when we woke up, we noticed two large orange trucks parked across the road, bearing the legend 'ASPLUNDH tree expert co.' As I've been working this morning, I've heard various sounds of power saws, bits of tree being thrown to the ground, and occasional shouts in Spanish. It's now mid-morning, and I've just looked out of the window into our back garden, and noticed a man sitting in our large pecan tree with a power saw, along with various ropes and pieces of equipment, and lots of branches and leaves all over the ground. There are other men doing similar things in neighbouring gardens. Presumably they've been sent from the electricity company, in order to cut back the trees from the overhead wires. Which is fine, but in the UK, they would at least have knocked on the door and asked if we minded them coming onto our property first, not to mention hacking bits off our tree. I've noticed that Americans are quite cavalier about the concept of personal property: for example, it's not considered rude here to drive your car into someone's front drive in order to execute a three-point turn.

Added to which, we could have saved the trouble and expense of getting our trees cut back approximately six months ago.

Measurement

America is still completely wedded to the imperial system of measurement, and even if the whole world ends up going completely metric, I'm quite sure they will never change. (Who cares what the rest of the world does, anyway?) No American has any idea what a centimetre or a kilometre is. Distances are measured in miles, lengths are measured in feet and inches (even down to small, precise measurements like an eighth of an inch), the weight of everything is expressed in pounds, and liquids are measured in gallons.

I have mixed feelings about this. Like most British people of my generation, I grew up in a strangely conflicted environment, where I learnt about (and did calculations in) centimetres, litres and kilograms at school, but talked about inches, pints and pounds at home, because my parents and grandparents only really thought in these terms. Indeed, they were still only just recovering from the shock of adapting to decimal currency, and my grandmother never really accepted the fact that 10p was 10p and not two shillings. But there was no real choice about this for me: the old system was entirely obsolete by the time I was going into shops and buying things, so I only ever learnt about it second-hand (and imperfectly). But in other areas of life this was not the case, and even now I can only conceptualise height expressed in feet and inches, distances in miles, speeds in miles per hour, and drinks in pints. As for weight, I don't really understand that at all, and to this day remain hazy about whether a pound or a kilogram is heavier.

Which, you would have thought, should have set me up well for life as an American: but it's not that simple. The imperial system is endlessly complex, and incorporates several units which are pretty much obsolete, or only reserved for specialist uses, in either or both of the UK and America: furlong, pole, perch, gill. A gallon, for example, is something I previously associated only with buying petrol - here, it's used for mineral water, milk and orange juice too, so I can now, for the first time in my life, visualize a gallon in terms of size. On the other hand, the stone (as a unit of weight) is not used here, so I am forever trying to divide by 14 in my head whenever somebody is referred to as weighing so many pounds.

The ubiquitous use of the imperial system in America has its benefits: there is none of the confusion between generations or even within one individual which exists in the UK; everyone knows and understands one system. It has even resulted in certain accepted terminologies to describe things beyond the units themselves: a 'two by four', for example, is a standard size of wooden plank measuring two inches in height and four in depth (and varying in length according to need); everyone in America knows what this is, but I had to learn. But, as Europe worked out some time ago, the system is horrendously complicated and fiddly, and its retention here is one of the principal things which makes America feel a little old-fashioned and complacent to me.

Panhandle

Dave Gorman points out, in his book 'America Unchained', that there are three US states which claim to have a panhandle, but Oklahoma is the only one whose panhandle really does look like the handle of a pan. I quite agree.

Actually, the story of why that strange slice of land is stuck on to the northwest corner of Oklahoma is quite interesting - I learnt it not long ago from a colleague who teaches music at the Oklahoma Panhandle State University (yes, really - despite my initial misgivings about that particular institution). Apparently, in the 19th century as America expanded west, the states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas were created by drawing latitude lines at equal intervals running south from the Canadian border. At that time, Oklahoma was still known as the 'Indian territory' or the 'unassigned lands', and was the area which had been specifically created - 'in perpetuity' - for Native American tribes after their enforced migration from other parts of North America.

The obvious thing was for Texas (which had briefly been an independent country earlier in the 19th century) to claim the land to the west of Oklahoma running up to the Kansas border, but according to the rules of the time, in order to maintain its status as a confederate (slave-owning) state, it was not allowed to claim any land north of the Mason-Dixon line. So all the land to the south of that line became part of Texas (the 'Texas panhandle', in fact, though it looks nothing like a panhandle to me - or to Dave Gorman), leaving a thin slice of land by itself. When Oklahoma was granted statehood in 1907, one of the conditions was that it incorporated this slice of land which up till then, no-one had known what to do with (evidently Texas, by that stage, didn't want it).

According to my colleague, this history has resulted in a certain sense of autonomy and rebellion amongst the Oklahoma panhandlers, many of whom don't really feel part of Oklahoma to this day, and there is even some kind of secessionist movement. It is, as far as I understand it, pretty empty of anything apart from cows, and the Oklahoma Panhandle State University. I met this colleague again yesterday at a conference, which is what reminded me about this issue. I mentioned to him that when the Oklahoma weather comes on TV, the far western part of the panhandle is actually obscured by the TV station's logo. 'Oh, that's all right', he replied, 'no-one lives there anyway'.

By the way, in case you're wondering, the third 'panhandle' state is Florida.

Badminton

I played badminton yesterday for the first time in about 10 years. Americans don't play badminton - to find a club I had to drive around 40 miles to the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, and the other players were almost all foreign students at OU - Asians and Europeans. I was the oldest person there by about 15 years and certainly the least skilled, but it was fun.

Teddy bears in the pews

Yesterday I played the organ at a church which had teddy bears seated on all the pews, and where the pianist played all the hymns in a style which sounded like Barry Manilow on speed. The fact that in Oklahoma none of this is particularly unusual is a very good example of why this will never really feel like home.

Greetings

Today, as I was walking across the university campus where I'm now doing some part-time teaching, an attractive young woman, who I didn't recognise, smiled at me as she passed and said 'Hi, how ya doin'?' In the UK, this would certainly be a come-on, but here it's simply a standard greeting between strangers. I think.

Malaysia

I'm currently in Malaysia. I've always really enjoyed my trips to this part of the world, revelling like all Western travellers do in the exotic difference of the culture. But this time it feels different, and I think it's because I'm not travelling from home to somewhere different; instead I'm travelling from somewhere different to somewhere else different, and actually I find myself yearning even more strongly for home.

A dream extinguished

I was so excited to have discovered this place. The thought of real Cornish pasties, Heinz baked beans and pickled onions in Oklahoma was virtually enough to bring tears to my eyes. I even checked on Google maps to make sure it was still there, and it seemed like it was.

Today I drove there, in the pouring rain. It closed down two years ago; it's now a Chinese tailor's.

Hot

People in the UK really should stop complaining about a 'heatwave' when the temperature in London hits 32°C for a week.

(32°C = 90°F. 106°F = 41°C)

'Say something in English!'

This morning, in between playing the organ for two services, I went to a café for breakfast. It was pretty busy (Sunday morning 'brunch' is a popular pastime here) and it was some time before I managed to attract the attention of a waitress to ask for a menu. Just after she went off to get it, another waitress asked me if I needed a menu. I said something like 'yes I do, but I think your colleague's just gone to get me one'. Her expression clearly indicated that she hadn't understood a word of what I'd said - partly the general hubbub of the place, partly my English accent. She looked at me with a mixture of confusion and pity, and said: 'What are you talkin'?' I really wish I'd had the presence of mind to give the obvious answer: 'English - same as you', but I just grinned apologetically and said 'Sorry - I'm from England'. I usually say 'England' rather than 'Britain', which just leads to more confusion.

I had a similar experience a month or so ago when I was in California. After about an hour's drive from San Diego airport, I arrived in the town I was staying in quite late in the evening, and, pretty hungry, stopped to eat at the first place I saw, which was a kind of fast food/diner place selling burgers, pizza and ice cream. I opted for a pizza. The lady serving behind the counter - who I think, like about 50% of the population in that part of the world, was of Mexican descent - asked me what kind of pizza base I wanted, and pointed to a chart on the wall showing the options. I decided on butter, and informed her accordingly. She didn't understand, so I repeated the word. And again. And again. Eventually I was reduced to pointing to the picture on the wall. 'Oh, budderrr!' she said. I suppose my 'proper' English pronunciation of 'butta' must have sounded as far removed from her conception of the word as could be imagined.

All this leads to a dilemma. Once you've been here a while, you know that the way you pronounce certain words sounds odd to the locals. I'm perfectly well aware that if I ask for tomatoes, or refer to my garage, or ask what route to take, I am likely to get a quizzical stare in response. At the very least, I feel self-conscious. But on the other hand, if I force myself to ask for tomaydoes, or refer to my garage, or ask what rout to take, I feel like a patronising fraud. Suggestions would be welcome.

Let me round off with a story which I fervently wish had happened to me, but was in fact told to me by another British person I know in Oklahoma. A friend of hers, visiting from the UK, went into a shop to buy something, and received the inevitable 'Oh, I lurrve your accent? Where are you from?!' 'England', she said. 'England? Oh wow! Hey, say something in English!'

Nobama

OK, time to lay my cards on the table. Politically, I'm left-leaning, or 'liberal', as the common parlance here would put it. So I'm very happy that Barack Obama is the president, and I think that George W Bush was (and still is) an embarrassment who caused untold harm to the world.

In most contexts with which I'm familiar, saying that would hardly be controversial; in fact it would pretty much be assumed. But here in Oklahoma, it's a minority position. Actually, Oklahoma City itself is probably reasonably well-balanced, and certainly during the election last year (see 'Anti-family', 6 October) I saw at least as many yard signs and bumper stickers for Obama-Biden as I did for McCain-Palin; and I've since spoken to a number of people who seem supportive of the new President. But the fact remains that Oklahoma was the only state in the US in which every single county voted for McCain ('Oklahoma facts', 17 December), and there is definitely a very well-entrenched conservative streak here, particularly among the churches.

I wrote a few posts ago ('Organs and Churches', 15 June) about Bill, who told me that 'it's a bit like the Federal Government at the moment - you may not like what they're doing, but you just have to accept it'. Last Sunday there were two other small events which served as jolting realisations of the political culture here. As I drove out of the church parking lot after playing the organ, there was an enormous SUV in front of me with a sticker in the rear window which simply read 'NOBAMA'. And earlier, I had fallen into conversation with a lady who told me she was from Hawaii. 'Oh, like President Obama', I said. Her face looked pained. 'Well, you know there's no record of him having been born there', she said. Evidently there is some kind of right-wing conspiracy which seeks to persuade people that Obama's not really American, but is some kind of dangerous foreigner, and probably a Muslim and a terrorist to boot. 'And he lived in Indonesia, you know. It's like he can't make up his mind'. But she had just told me that she lived in the UK for a few years as a child.

Then you listen to Real Time with Bill Maher, as I do every week, and you become aware of a creeping frustration among liberals - which I share - that Obama's too soft and timid, that he's not going far enough, that the promise of change he brought with him is in danger of compromise. It reminds me of a similar problem I've often encountered as a composer - a piece of music can be thought rather uninteresting, unoriginal and timid when played in a concert of contemporary music, yet dangerously radical and mystifying when played to an audience of people who don't usually listen to modern music. (My friend Derek Bermel made this point very eloquently and forcefully on a recent post on his blog, which you can read here.) You can end up with a profoundly uncertain feeling about where to position yourself.

Wedding

I've just got back from playing the organ at my first Oklahoma wedding, in a Baptist church. I was expecting it to be a little on the, er, saccharine side, and to that extent it did not disappoint. I was, however, genuinely shocked by the Bible reading, which was from Ephesians Chapter 5, and included the following:

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing."

I think someone forgot to tell my wife about that bit.

Senator Jim Inhofe (2)

He's also rude and belligerent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQotshOSDo&NR=1