Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Just back from nearly three weeks in the USA (Boston-Vermont-NYC-Florida) and going to get back to my blog baby!
I'd like to start by posing this seminal question. In a world of science where people can fly to the moon and be operated on through a pinhole, how can it be that no-one has yet invented soundless powertools for builders?
I currently effectively live on a big building site. Across the street from our flat is a huge 3-year project to deck over a railway bridge with a public garden and build some flats. Out the back is a council estate (which I lovingly survey as I type) where there is often scaffolding and workmen with chainsaws. The level of noise is beyond belief. From 7.30am-5.30pm (and sometimes all night too on the railway project) there is manic drilling and grinding, combined with screeching, whirring, hammering, searing, smashing, and crashing. It sounds like the earth is being blasted into shreds.
If I could eliminate just one of modern life's irritants, it would be noise. The building work is necessary, I know, but I get so wound up at times I just want to scream out of our windows 'SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!' Not that the builders would hear me anyway underneath the roar of their mechanical noise machines.
I ask again: why on earth is it not possible to invent silent drills and chainsaws? If ever there was a gap in the market, this is it.
Anyway, now about America. I'm sure many America-despising Brits would call me naive, but I love it over there, love the American way of life and belief system with its go-getting optimism and relative lack of snobbery and fat-free icecream everywhere you go.
There are, however, a few important things America doesn't have as we do in Britain.
1. Marmite. What's the point of breakfast toast without it?
2. Ginger and spring onion with meat as a Chinese restaurant staple.
3. A great number and variety of newspapers and magazines. They seem to have only about five women's magazines, and a distinct lack of national newspapers.
4. Good television. My god, I wonder how Americans put up with all the adverts on their screens, which seem to come in a ratio of 5 mins of ads to every 2 mins of programme. I didn't see any documentaries either - no equivalent of Dispatches or Panorama. And as for their version of Newsnight - pah - where oh where were the biting sarcastic interrogations Paxman puts our politicians through this side of the pond?
5. Enough Indian restaurants.
6. People who say 'Sorry' when they accidently bump into you on the street.
7. Enough roads with pavements.
I have to say though, that in almost every other respect I think Americans have a better way of life than we Brits. They have more exciting and consistent weather, prettier and bigger houses, better music on their radio and jovial folks who stop to help lost-looking tourists without you even needing to ask. I want to go live there!
I'd like to start by posing this seminal question. In a world of science where people can fly to the moon and be operated on through a pinhole, how can it be that no-one has yet invented soundless powertools for builders?
I currently effectively live on a big building site. Across the street from our flat is a huge 3-year project to deck over a railway bridge with a public garden and build some flats. Out the back is a council estate (which I lovingly survey as I type) where there is often scaffolding and workmen with chainsaws. The level of noise is beyond belief. From 7.30am-5.30pm (and sometimes all night too on the railway project) there is manic drilling and grinding, combined with screeching, whirring, hammering, searing, smashing, and crashing. It sounds like the earth is being blasted into shreds.
If I could eliminate just one of modern life's irritants, it would be noise. The building work is necessary, I know, but I get so wound up at times I just want to scream out of our windows 'SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!' Not that the builders would hear me anyway underneath the roar of their mechanical noise machines.
I ask again: why on earth is it not possible to invent silent drills and chainsaws? If ever there was a gap in the market, this is it.
Anyway, now about America. I'm sure many America-despising Brits would call me naive, but I love it over there, love the American way of life and belief system with its go-getting optimism and relative lack of snobbery and fat-free icecream everywhere you go.
There are, however, a few important things America doesn't have as we do in Britain.
1. Marmite. What's the point of breakfast toast without it?
2. Ginger and spring onion with meat as a Chinese restaurant staple.
3. A great number and variety of newspapers and magazines. They seem to have only about five women's magazines, and a distinct lack of national newspapers.
4. Good television. My god, I wonder how Americans put up with all the adverts on their screens, which seem to come in a ratio of 5 mins of ads to every 2 mins of programme. I didn't see any documentaries either - no equivalent of Dispatches or Panorama. And as for their version of Newsnight - pah - where oh where were the biting sarcastic interrogations Paxman puts our politicians through this side of the pond?
5. Enough Indian restaurants.
6. People who say 'Sorry' when they accidently bump into you on the street.
7. Enough roads with pavements.
I have to say though, that in almost every other respect I think Americans have a better way of life than we Brits. They have more exciting and consistent weather, prettier and bigger houses, better music on their radio and jovial folks who stop to help lost-looking tourists without you even needing to ask. I want to go live there!
# posted by Olivia @ 5:02 pm 
