I heard an ad on the radio this week for Hyundai USA. The nice chap from Hyundai was saying that his cars are a cure for erectile dysfunction (a major problem in the US if ad volume is anything to go by). The best line in this advertising masterpiece was “if your arousal lasts for more than four hours, don’t call your doctor. In fact we think you’ll be excited all year.”

Disturbing. Particularly having seen the cars themselves – I think they’d do better being promoted as a cure for insomnia. Zzzzzzz

One day when I was in Churchill I was sat in a bakery/ coffeehouse undertaking the onerous task of deciding which pastry to have with my coffee. I felt that I couldn’t possibly have a fruit based pie or tart as the berries much have come from a thousand miles away. I’m sure this occurred to me as I’d seen all the hundreds of miles of nothing but snow that berries, or almost anything for that matter, had to travel to get there.

That thought stayed with me once I got home. I hadn’t previously specifically looked at the origin of foods I buy at here. I guess with neighbouring New Jersey being” The Garden State” and  all the farmland in the area  I had managed to kid myself that much of the food is grown nearby. Of course it isn’t. I had a quick look at what was in my most recent shopping basket and found things from places including Mexico, Costa Rica, France (ok so I still won’t buy local cheese). Wow my shopping has an astonishing amount of air miles and even the USA grown bits are from thousands of miles away.

I’d actually like to buy locally. I believe it is worth supporting the local community (although some of the shops on the local high street are clearly a tax dodge  – there’s no way they are actually trying to make money). I’d love for there to be shops selling local meat and local fruit and veg – not stuff shipped in from somewhere. I’ll keep looking.

This is one recent event I’m sorry to have missed: The annual Punkin Chunkin contest. In a nutshell this seems to involve flinging pumpkins as far as possible down a muddy November field. However even a cursory glance at The Rules shows that this is far from that simple. For a start there are a bewildering number of categories, such as Adult Centrifugal , Adult Human Power,   Theatrical,  Youth Trebuchet. Hilariously the goal of the “theatrical class” is not distance, rather ” to ham it up as much as possible” as long as you clean up after yourself.

Still, you think, it is probably just a bunch of geeks in a field with some catapults. Well yes, that’s almost certainly true, but the striking thing is the sheer scale of the contraptions. Judging by the photos, there are trebuchets the size of oil derricks out there, not to mention what appear to be surface air missiles!

The rules are astonishingly comprehensive. I’ll admit I only managed to read the first couple of pages (of how many? I shudder to think…). These went into rather a lot of detail about illegal pumpkin tampering (I don’t know either? Maybe you soak them in vinegar and bake in the over as you might to create an illegal but champion conker), also it excludes the use of gasses such as nitrogen, helium and hydrogen. Eeek  – presumably to prevent people from making actual pumpkin bombs. On second thoughts – maybe I’ll just wait to see if it is televised next year.

I think Angie’s List has crossed the pond. It is a simple and effective concept – it gives you access to reviews and real experiences of services, from plumbing to leaf cleaning – to help you choose the best possible supplier. The big difference, I am sure, lies in the services covered. I just received a magazine which featured a really intriguing company. So what services did it highlight? Maybe a great mechanic, or perhaps a really effective lawyer. No. It covered “biohazard remediation” . What’s that you ask? It’s the decontamination of homes soiled by human waste, toxins,  tissue and body fluid associated with a decomposing body”.  Handy I’m sure.

The best part was the quote from a landlord who had used the services of this particular company: “You never would know there was a murder in that apartment.”

I just got back from a couple of weeks in Europe. BIG thanks to everyone who put me up and fed me. It was great to catch up with so many friends and to spend a tiny slice of life with so many of them. It just highlighted how fast time flies – the babies I saw last time are now toddling and talking and generally turning into human beings and someone rearranged the whole of Cambridge town centre in my absence. What was once so familiar has been playing musical chairs in my absence.

It ended up being a bit of a gastronomic tour (Oh how I miss good food) but of all the wonderful meals, the ones that most stuck in my mind were both very simple and somehow caricatures of nationality:

Afternoon tea at the Westminster Inn, London

Bavarian Breakfast overlooking the Rathaus in Munich

It really is a joy looking at the latest edition of Sky Mall each time I fly. The latest one had a pet special – oh the joy. Here’s one of my favourites. I bet my father wished he had something like this when washing my nices’s hair – suffice to say it involved a lot of water outside the shower and a soundtrack of screaming blue murder (my nice not my father. Mostly not anyway).

Anyway  – feast your eyes on this little beauty.

 I hired a car a while ago that, according to the Arizona department of public safety, was seen travelling at a speed “greater than reasonable and prudent”. They even sent me a picture of the “offending vehicle” and driver and a diagram of the various cameras, road sensors etc. Now the interesting thing is that driver wasn’t me. I was behind the blacked out splodge on the passenger seat.

Anyway you can pay the (hefty) fine, request a trial or confirm that you weren’t the driver.  Of course I went for the latter option -I sent them an unnecessarily large enlargement of my driving licence (why oh why didn’t I just give the hire car people the UK one in the first place?)  which should easily confirm that it really wasn’t me. Now in the UK you have to grass someone else up to get off the hook (I remember a British couple hilariously blamed a fictitious Bulgarian lodger for a traffic offence, then went as far as sending postcards from Bulgaria to back up the story… shame she didn’t change her handwriting…). Here you don’t. Here you “may” give them another name. But you don’t have to. In the UK failure to name the driver is a whole offence in itself.

So I haven’t heard back yet. I hope I don’t.

When someone in Blighty talks about getting their garden landscaped, it generally invoves a restyle – the addition of undulating curves in the form of paths or sculpted areas with rock gardens, new trees, ornamental herb gardens, constructions  and a diversity of plants designed to excite every sense. Oh and landscaping ALWAYS seems to involve a water feature. I think it might be the law.

In the good old US of A – landscaping seems to involve a couple of spotty youths in a van who show up, plant a few of those odd looking conical shrubs and cover everything else in mulch.

Pennsylvania laws are rather peculiar.  In particular the licensing laws. The state runs all the booze shops so you can’t just pick up a couple of bottles of plonk on your way around the supermarket. So you go to a state run “wine and liquor store”. I’ve just about managed to get to grips with that -at least I did once I’d found a local shop that’s OK. I’ve also learned to check restaurants for BYO – lots of places aren’t able to servce you alchol so you bring your own.

That’s all very well, but today I wanted to buy beer – so I went to the same shop. When I asked after beer I think it might have been my accent, so what they must have heard is “I’d like a case of your finest heroin please.” Or at least that’s what the expression on the chap’s face suggested. Ok I guess the clue is in the name, it doesn’t say wine, liquor and beer…. Anyway, if you want to buy beer in PA, you go to a state licensed beer shop. These are strange places, tucked away out of sight. So if like, me you need beer on a Saturday morning (to cook beef in beer as you’re asking) you won’tcorrupt all those innocent shoppers on the high street with your alcoholic ways.

I have no idea why you can’t buy beer and othertypes of booze togehter. Crazy.

It is generally a lot easier to buy a new car in the US. In the UK you drive one, you spend ages choosing the exact spec you want, then you wait a couple of months or more for the car to arrive. In the US the forecourts are enormous, filled with many, many permutations of car. So you can drive home in your new car if the fancy takes you.

So who owns the cars? It turns out that the dealerships own the cars  – they have them tied up in some sort of complex financing arrangement. What happens when the industry is in the toilet and you have a forecourt full of inventory? You panic. Then you try to shift the stock.

This is a great thing if you happen to like going into car dealerships pretending you want to buy a car. As I do. Quite a lot.

It’s good sport – the sales team are absolutely gagging to get rid of the cars and it is interesting to see how far they will go. I bet some of them would trade in a toaster to shift a car. Recently the sales team at the Porsche garage I was *ahem* visiting was quite prepared to drop their pants on price without any prompting. If their starting gambit is dropping 10-12 percent off the price it would be interesting to see where negotiations might end up. I’d better be careful. I might accidentally buy a 911.