In America, as in Britain, when something electrical breaks down one has to spend inerminable hours on the phone, listening to pre-recorded messages, pressing various random buttons and finally, maybe, managing to get through to someone who inevtably will not be able to help you.
Out here, it is common to buy packages for your TV, phone and internet from one provider. Only one number to call, yes, but when one thing breaks down, chances are the other two will as well.
The cable box that sits under our brand new, shiny TV, has been on the blink for days. Today, I finally got round to calling the company. Cue interminable button pressing. Only in America, it turns out there are different issues at stake.
1) When you finally get through to them, they can't understand your accent. Which means you have to speak V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y. Which makes the whole phone call take twice as long.
2) Whereas in England you're likely to be speaking to someone either based in India, or in the darker reaches of outer Birmingham, here you do at least get to speak to an American. Although this means the whole conversation has that added spice of American positivity. So even though you are patently not having a good day, because your TV has stopped working and so you can't watch the re-run of Dallas on channel 305 that you had been so excited about, you have to put up with all the false cheer and bonhomie.
3) Americans are not very good with silence, which means that despite the fact that there are lengthy pauses in the conversation, where you wait for the result of the unplugging and re-plugging scenario to kick in, they feel they have to fill them. "Why do you keep say 'Okay'?" I asked the woman on the end of the phone, after she had made the utterance for about the fifth time. She muttered something about wanting to know what was happening. What's wrong with waiting for me to tell you?
On the positive side, I now have a specific appointment where someone will turn up to fix my TV, on Friday, between 11am and 2pm. What's more, they will call to tell me when they're on their way. Beats sitting at home from 7am to 7pm, as some British companies expect you to do. Just means I'll have to put off my channel 305 watching for a few more days. Sigh.

I'm now blogging on a regular basis for The Lady magazine - England's first and finest weekly. Check out their website here.

If ever I was inclined to follow in the footsteps of Desperate Housewives' Gabrielle and have myself an affair with a sexy young gardener, today was probably my opportunity (albeit with an electrician, rather than a man of the soil - cue electric/sparks flying etc etc jokes). What's more, my electricians came as a pair, which meant I could have chosen between Luke (younger, clean shaven) or Lance (bearded, intense in a curiously sexy sort of way). Naturally I am desperately in love with the Major, which means I am not going to translate the antics of Wisteria Lane into my own life, but it is strange how a TV show which I never even really watched seems to so spookily parallel my new life (or at least it surroundings). Let's point out the similarities:
- Cast: 5 women, plus a narrator. Well I'd be the narrator, natch, and am sure I could pull together a motley crew of women complete with attendent neuroses, no problem. It's only a matter of time.
- Setting: suburban bliss in small town America, complete with white picket fences and chocolate-box houses. If you came to my new home, you'd be doing a double take. OK, so there are marginally fewer picket fences (they don't really go into enclosing their land round here), but my neighbourhood is like a Barratt Homes executive director's wet dream.
- Themes: suicide, floundering marriages, sexual infidelity. Well I can't say I'm experiencing any of the above myself as yet, but it's only a matter of time before I discover other people who are.
Erm - that's about it really. Perhaps not as identical as I'd first thought, bar the suburban setting. I'll keep you posted on the rest.

Sitting at the kitchen table, in slob clothes, drinking tea, checking emails...and listening to the Today programme via the web. I MISS John Humphreys. It's just not the same faking it in America.

The day we nearly bought a cop car

One of the great things about living over here is BBC America, ergo unlimited access to Top Gear - and not just the ones you don't want to watch, but the ones where Jeremy Clarkson et al have a laugh at the expense of the Yanks.

Anyway, to cut a long (and drawn out story concerning one particular episode of Top Gear involving the team buying cars for less than $1000 each), we discovered that it is possible in America to buy former government cars at a fraction of the cost of one from a regular dealership.

There are only a handful of licensed ex-government dealerships in the country, but luckily there's one in KC. So we got ourselves down there, pronto.

The first car we tried out was a sweet, long, low, lean black and white machine, with the words 'Wichita Police' still faintly visible on the side. Inside was a birds nest of tangled wires where the cop radio had been detached - but it still had 'the cage' in place for criminals - a thick perspex screen securely bolted between front and back seats - and if you were sitting in the back, you weren't getting out of there.

Next to it, however, was a complete beauty - a white Police Interceptor, which came complete with flashing lights on the roof and fullly equipped radio with two mikes. Of course if you really tried to stop someone using the loudhailer, or test out the siren you'd probably get arrested, but it would be pretty fun.

Of course we could have bought the crappy car and kitted it out. Inside the dealership were piles of radios, lights - the works. One man was in there with his two sons. He owned a former detective car, which he'd bought directly from a cop. He was going craxy - buying lights, an antennae - the works - for his car, which presumably he was planning on cruising around in posing as a policeman and frightening all his friends into obeying the speed limit.

To be honest, he was pretty scary - and, tempting as the cars were, we didn't want to turn out like him. So we left - sadly just before I spotted the full-on plice van standing in one corner...

Baby it's cold outside

It is bone crunchingly, ball achingly, head freezingly cold. As I write, it says on the BBC website that the UK is bracing itself for what could be the coldest night of the year, with temperatures set to plummet to -20 degrees. Well, in Kansas City it’s -40. The snow has been here for a while already – we’ve already suffered one of the worst blizzards to hit the Midwest for over a decade, where at least 17 people died (on Christmas Eve, nice). Since then, the temperatures have been plummeting almost daily, and now the wind chill factor has kicked in, hence the super-minus temperatures.

I don’t walk anywhere any more, I scurry, in a hunched-neck, rigid posture designed to get me from the car to the nearest indoors as quickly as possible. My face has become reptilian, such is the damage the wind and cold has done to my delicate epidermis. My nose has a constant drip hanging from the end of it (again, nice), and the handkerchief I tossed into my handbag just before leaving England has seen more action in the past two weeks than in the last five years since my mother placed it lovingly in my stocking, since when it has mostly lain crumpled at the bottom of my sock drawer.

Earlier today, we decided to go and look for another second hand car - of course - what else would you do when it's cold outside? The garage owner said he had already worked his way though several spare car batteries as they were dying in the cold weather. This was amply demonstrated when we decided to test-drive one car - which promptly died on us when we tried to turn it around. We had to be rescued.

Prior to that, I went to the gym - as much as to try and warm up than anything else. A hardcore bicycle did nothing to de-thaw my toes, so I decided to hit the sauna. Twenty minutes later... I still had cold toes.

Right now I'm sitting in my warm room, about to hit the hay. My feet are still freezing. Tomorrow, I'm staying in bed.

To Waldos Antiques, where the proprietor, David - or Dave as I now like to call him - has become my number one fan thanks to my English accent and knowledge of all things ancient. Never mind that the knowledge is confined to a hazy notion of what is Georgian and a knowledge of when said thing is, in fact, reproduction Georgian (determined largely by the price tag) - Dave is convinced by me. I've already bought a desk from him - reduced for me from $110 to $85.



We're furnishing our new house, you see - and although we have some basic furniture at our disposal it is lacking in a few elements. Today I spotted a couple of nice lamps and a beautiful (although, once more, repro) Georgian sideboard which would look just perfect in our new dining room.


Tomorrow we're going back to look at some side tables we spotted just as we were leaving. I foresee myself spending quite a lot of time with my new mate Dave.