America

Today, my friends, I am complaining about condiments.

The condiment of Beelzebub

In America, the way in which you receive your condiments will depend a bit on the sort of restaurant you’re in. If it’s an extremely expensive restaurant, you obviously shouldn’t be asking for condiments at all. If it’s a fairly expensive restaurant, you’ll get a rather nice silver dish cointaining your condiment of choice, with a dainty spoon in it. If it’s a reasonably-priced restaurant, it’ll be the bottle the sauce came in. If it’s a really cheap place or an on-street vendor, it’ll be one of those industrial-sized vats of condiment with a shampoo-style dispenser on the top, and you’re left holding your dinner under it and squirting at it. Consider yourselves lucky, Americans.

In Britain, in a really expensive restaurant, you’ll get the nice silver dish with a spoon. Treasure this because, pretty much anywhere else, you will get a miniature individual sachet of sauce. These sachets are around 8cm long and 2cm wide, and are made of a strange metal/plastic composite originally invented for protecting components of the Hubble Space Telescope. A note on the side says “tear here”. This is sarcastic. You can tell it’s sarcastic, because there is a tiny picture of a pair of scissors. No tearing for you, bucko. The only way these things are intended to be destroyed is by an intergalactic singularity.

To open the sachet, you must grip the corner next to the “tear here” nick as tightly as you can between your front two teeth, and then pull the packet away from your mouth. The packet is covered in your sweat, from the period a few moments earlier when you really thought you were going to tear it with your hands. It is more than a little slippery. You’re going to have to hold it pretty tight. Those space telescope scientists may not know how to make a mirror, but this sucker was designed to withstand re-entry. Get ready for a rough ride.

At this point, your dinner companions may start to pull away from the table or run to the loo. This is normal.

Those telescope scientists no doubt have friends in the rocket business. They all hang around together, joking about how rocket science isn’t all that hard anyway and making puns about quarks. Anyway, their rocket friends will tell you that any container, when squeezed as hard as possible and then split, will propel its contents vigorously in the direction of the breach. These sachets should come with some sort of written warning, and perhaps a set of protective eyewear. At the very least, they should say “not for use in densely populated areas” in clear lettering on the side.

And why do the Brits insist on serving condiments like this? I can only assume it’s because there is empirical evidence that one in five males has, at some time, stirred a pub tomato ketchup container with his John Thomas. Or perhaps some people have a penchant for opening the shared mustard, sneezing in it, then replacing the cap. It’s just the way they roll. Are we honestly that untrusting a society that we fear constantly that other pub-goers have been putting ricin in the tartare sauce? Are we really that germophobe that we can’t stand to eat something that’s been touched by another human being?

And, well, I hate to jump on the popular bandwagon, but isn’t this rotten for the environment? Whenever you ask for ketchup in the UK, you can be sure that they’re not going to give you only one space sachet. They’re going to give you six. And you just try giving back the ones you didn’t use. They’ll eye you with a suspicious look. They certainly won’t touch them. Who knows what you’ll have done with them. Heavens, they’ve probably been up your arse twice.

Land of not a lot

One pet peeve I have concerns the fact that most governments insist upon paying people to reproduce. When I am president of a country, the first law I enact will be to remove child benefits. I may even imitate my favourite government, that of the People’s Republic of China, and instate some sort of penalty for having children. Life will be great. House prices will go through the floor. There’ll never be any traffic. You’ll never be put on hold when you call tech support. Hmm, wait, maybe they’ll reduce the number of support staff. Scratch that last one. Anyway, the world will be a way better place, and all the people who decide to have children will pay appropriately for the privilege. Don’t get me wrong – I like children. In fact, I’ve been trying to persuade the wife to help me produce some. They’re just the least environmentally friendly thing we could be doing right now, and for some reason they attract government grants. It’s like subsidising Buicks.

This rant was intended to lead into an almost wholly unrelated topic. That unrelated topic was the fact that America is quite sparsely populated, although the rest of the world doesn’t really know it. Take a look at Wikipedia’s list of countries by population density. America is number 177 of the 238 countries in there. It’s less densely populated than Zimbabwe and Bhutan. There are ten times as many people in a square kilometre of Israel as there are in a square kilometre of America. There’s nobody here. For its size, it’s a ghost country.

This is good because I like hiking, and I like hiking without bumping into other people all the time. I used to go hiking a lot when I lived in London – you could get to the Peak District in four hours, but to get to any mountains higher than Trump Tower you’d be looking at the Lake District, which meant six or seven hours in the car. And even once you’re in the Lake District, it still has the trappings of a fairly densely populated place. You’re never too far from an Olde Worlde Tea Shoppe, or a McDonalds, or some roadworks. This, of course, is mostly due to the very high population density in the UK. As far as rating London against other cities goes, I don’t think population density captures quite what I’m talking about. I’ve developed a new unit of measure to quantify this. Which I will now explain. In the next paragraph.

Were I to start the car in downtown Seattle on a Saturday afternoon and drive purposefully out of town, I’d be in the countryside reasonably quickly. Of course, my idea of the countryside might not match yours, so in order to reliably measure this we need to agree on some sort of standard fixture that is present in the countryside but not in town. This is the cow. Seattle, therefore, has a rating of somewhere around thirty minutes to cow. In London I think I’d be looking at well over 90MTC. Edinburgh, where my family lives, is about 25-30MTC. Manhattan is probably 120MTC. Of course, Bumfluff Arizona is probably a mere 1MTC, but you wouldn’t want to live there. This is why you should be careful to bear in mind population size when considering MTC ratings. I tried to come up with a simple way to work it in, but I couldn’t come up with any measure that didn’t make Los Angeles seem like a dairy farm. Suggestions appreciated.

A typical British street

It’s well known in Britain that the entire country is a great big rubbish dump into which you may cast your cigarette ends, crisp wrappers, used condoms and half-burnt mattresses. If you see someone on the street opening a new packet of cigarettes, I would say there’s about a one third chance that they’ll thrown the packaging in the street. As a result of this, British cities are – perhaps unsurprisingly – strewn with junk. Before I moved to the US, I rather thought this was the way cities were.

In the US, at least here in Seattle, it’s quite the opposite. There’s a real sense of civic pride about keeping the city clean, and as a result it’s much nicer walking around. I suspect this is something of a chicken-and-egg situation – if everyone else is throwing their crap in the street, why shouldn’t I throw mine? Assuming I am a pikey bastard with a dog on a bit of string and whose children have tattoos.

A typical UK storefront

Let me illustrate this with the transcript of a telephone call I had in London whilst trying to arrange the servicing of my car.

Garage: Yes, Mr Rae, we can certainly do all that. If you drop the car off we’ll be happy to get started.
Me: Splendid. When would you like me to drop the car off?
Garage: Any time between nine and five.
Me: Okay – I’ll bring it in on Saturday.
Garage: Oh no [laughs], we’re not open on Saturdays. Goodness me.
Me: I imagine Sunday is out.
Garage: [hearty laugh] My wife’d kill me. Sunday, haha.
Me: The thing is that, well, those times are pretty similar to the times when I am required to be at work.
Garage: At work?
Me: Yes.
Garage: Every day?
Me: Every day except Saturday and Sunday. I get those off.
Garage: Oh! Well, maybe your wife -
Me: My wife also works.
Garage: Every day?
Me: Yes. Perhaps I could leave it outside and put the keys in your letter box or something?
Garage: One second.
Garage: [muffled] Bob, this guy can’t bring his car in.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] He’s working all that time.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] Yeah, every day. Well, except, apparently he gets Saturday and Sunday off.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] Well, get this… apparently she also works.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] Yeah, every day. He’s wondering if he can leave it outside.
[inaudible response]
Garage: Alright, look mate. We think you can probably leave it outside.
Me: Okay, great.
Garage: So just any time, I suppose.
Me: Wonderful. Where shall I put the keys?
Garage: Probably best if you drop them off while we’re open. They’ll get nicked otherwise.

The same conversation is being had daily across the UK, and pretty much across the entire spectrum of service provision. Parcel delivery, fridge repair, license renewal, escort services. Contrast that with the US – I just dropped our car off at the dealer for its service – I could drop it off, they tell me, any time between 6am and 9pm. Seven days a week. It’s true that things are starting to change in the UK – some supermarkets are open late, and more and more busineses are open at the weekend. However, your chances of getting anything done after 5pm on a weekday or at all on a Sunday are somewhat minimal. If you want to make a killing in the UK, I suggest you start a business which is open at times convenient for your customers. Your competitors won’t know what hit ‘em.