Stevens in the States

I've blogged about this before, but I'm going to tell you again. It's roughly 1:30am here, which is a horrible time. Because... at this point, the UK is waking up and I'm falling asleep. In fact, right now, I've just had a morning newsbrief through on email, and I'm listening to Terry Wogan online.

It makes me want to stay up, cos the longer I'm awake, the more of my friends will be around and I can communicate with them. However, many previous evenings has taught me that I can rarely stay awake beyong three am (9am UK) by which point I'm making little sense, and can no longer be arsed to contact people.

This, in turn, then makes me knackered for work the following morning, and I achieve very little. Until the next night arrives and the whole cycle starts again.

I think I'd prefer it to be the other way round; I'd rather be 6 hours ahead. That'd be far more ideal. But it's not the way it is.

In other news, it's 8 years since Princess Diana died. Which means in a week it'll be 8 years since my friends Jane and Iggy got married.

Oh, and New Orleans is flooding. It's all getting rather serious. It's in the next state to Texas (I know this cos I looked it up on my wallmap of the USA) and while it won't affect Dallas, it's kinda concerning to see how the news reports continually report more potential fatalities and mass damage. Not good. Not good at all.

And finally... I happened to see one of those "America's most outrageous TV clips" ypes of show earlier. They'd sourced from all over the world, meaning I got to enjoy clips from Noel's House Party, Blue Peter... and the piece de resistance... Northwest Tonight.

Great days.

I'm signing off before it's 8am back home!

What a superb place!

I went to Austin for the weekend with my friends Rach and Alex... and it's awesome. I was always intrigued by it since the South By South West festival that was covered in depth by my previous radio station, and also because of the Austin City Limits festival that happens there in a month from now. Of the 200 or so acts, Keane, Coldplay and Oasis are performing. Not a bad line-up really.

Anyway, Austin. My first real trip outside of Dallas, and it was great. Here's some photos...

From left to right it's Alex, me and Rach. I drove, Rachel did make-up (not on me) and Alex had our schedule perfectly worked out. At least, it would have been if we'd not been lured by the power of alcohol now and then.

This is a breakfast, Austin style. Kinda beats a dodgy continental brekky somewhere. This sandwich is from "Katz"... a Jewish restaurant where we had cocktails at midday. It's open 24 hours a day, as much of Austin seems to be.

A musician's dream... a lane where only musicians can park! This was on 6th Street, one of the main centres of attraction, particularly for music and drink. We spent some time in a pub where a tradiional folk/country group were playing. And talking of signs...

...here's another great one. No kids allowed out at night. Superb. There were enough people out at night anyway, the place was packed on all streets. Great bars though, great pubs, and the club was pretty good as well.

We also saw the bats flying out from under congress bridge at about 8 o'clock on Saturday evening, which was pretty amazing. There's tens of thousands of them that fly out each evening (where? no idea) and as they do so, they look like puffs of smoke on the horizon. Flying smoke.

Lots more to tell you, let's do it down the pub.

Sure, I appreciate that it's just a difference of cultures, but the one dollar note does seem to be the most pointless part of the currency here. I know we're not used to anything smaller than a five pound note (except the Scots) but the $1 note is like having bits of paper each worth about 55 pence.

So you end up with a pocket-full of pieces of paper, and they get mixed up with receipts, notes, business cards, whatever else is in your pocket. And you end up paying for stuff with a whole batch of these notes... it feels very odd.

Also odd... 25 cent coins. And I don't think you can get one dollar coins. So all quite different to UK money... I guess it's one of those things you can argue both ways.

In other news...

Jetlag is still in place. Sleeping happens in evenings and I'm getting up at 5am. Though not tonight as I'm off to a gig (The Killers) after meeting the sister of the tour manager in a taxi queue. Talk about tenuous links and combinations.

Work is good, and my hire car? Well, I'll save that for a future post.

Well, it was certainly eventful.

Was referred in customs, had to wait there for over an hour while I was checked.

Thus I missed my domestic flight from Charlotte to DFW, and had to be moved onto the 7pm one.

Which would have been fine, but when this flight got towards DFW, there were thunderstorms, so they circled for a while and decided to go to Houston instead.

Then we sat on the tarmac for a while before flying back to Dallas Fortworth, where I got a taxi to the hotel.

Return time - 1am. Or 7am in UK time (which my bodyclock was still working on).

So how come at 6am I woke up and couldn't get to sleep? (Apart from because whoever was in this room before me left the clock radio set to go off at 6am at top volume. Bastards.)

So it's now half seven, which is either a very quick recovery to jetlag, or I'm going to be sleeping/waking/etc at odd times for the rest of the week!

Morning all.

So, with baggage on a trolley and my passport in my hand, I got a taxi to the South Terminal of Gatwick, and headed over to the American Airlines check-in.

Unfortunately, it turned out that I was actually flying by US Airlines, from the North Terminal. Oops.

One monorail later, and I was in the right place. I'm now checked in, and about to head to the departure gate. It's peaking at 40 celsius this week in Dallas (105 farenheit) so it's gonna be a scorcher! What's more, my flight changes at Charlotte and I finally get to Dallas at 6pm (equiv of midnight here) so I'm gonna be knackered, and boiling. I think a sleep on the plane will be called for.

Oh, and I've had a McDonalds breakfast - a good start to my latest dosage of American culture.

Time: 1.35am UK time (which is a bit like UK time, and nothing like Dallas time)
Place: Snaresbrook, a small part of London unaffected by bombings.
Influences: A bottle of white wine smuggled out of The Eagle (white, obviously) and my housemate's vegetarian spring rolls. Don't tell her.
Reasons: I'm fed up with people bollocking me for not updating this.

Home is always home.

I did 7 weeks in the states, and the states is a big place. Bloody big. As a result, all of the UK seems like home, which is lucky because within 48 hours of returning to London, I was off to Scotland for a week of conferences and meetings in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

This coincided with the riots, the G8 conference, and more concerningly, the first of the two London bombings. Thursday the 7th of July. 8.55sm they went off, but the news didn't get to me until about 10am when my mate Ian texted me. Apart from a scary hour when I was trying to check that my housemate was ok (a midwife, working in the affected area), my main reaction was "How dare the fuckers bomb my city". I wanted to get back there. To prove I wasn't affected. To prove I couldn't be controlled.

When I did get back it was only for a few days before I ended up working in Leeds for a fortnight during which time the failed 21/7 bombers tried to blow up London. Much as they failed (and this time I was tipped off by BBC Oxford), I wanted to get back there. When I did, I purposely travelled into Oxford Circus with a sense of jubilation and defiance.

Sure, they may not agree with our government's outlook on the world, and they may have some genuine arguments... but for fuck's sake... to set bombs off is not the way to do it. Especially in London. This is in no way a challenge, but Londoners will still move around the city.

It's interesting. I'm a Northerner. Brought up in Chester, with the North as my back garden. My career took me to Sunderland, Cardiff and Leeds. Excluding the Welsh influence, it's all Northern. I've lived in London for a year and am in no way as affiliated with our capital as others who have been here longer. In fact, I never felt as close to the place as when it was threatened by the bombers. And as much as it isn't as simple as "they're bad, we're good"... I still won't let anyone rule my life by terror.

Blimey, that went on a bit. Moving on.

So I got back. Then a week in Scotland. Then a fortnight in Leeds and a week in Barcelona (holiday, hurrah!)... and now in London for a couple of weeks. I promised some form of look back on my time in the US, and that's the reason for this post. Please ignore everything before this section.

Well, how odd it was coming back. Firstly, getting home was shite.

Moving from Gatwick (South West London via Victoria) to my house (North East London via a pavement) was awful. Horrible. Really painful. How glad I was that I abandoned one suitcase in the states. And not helped by losing 6 hours while on the plane. Anyway, I got back to the flat and apart from a welcome home notice on my bedrom wall, it was like 'd never been away.

Don't you find that when you return to a place after a while you expect it all to be different? Even when it isn't? And you almost go looking for the differences? Anyway, the only difference was my confused body clock... which meant that at 4am on Saturday morning I was parked outside Whipps Cross Hospital, enjoying a sausage sandwich from the 24 hours cafe.

And then... you're back... but you've been away for 2 months and no-one knows you're back so no-one phones you. And everyone you call for a beer says "Oh, I didn't know you were back"... which is kinda nice but also awkward.

As for the whole US/UK differences... well I've been back so long, I've frgotten them, so here's the deal. I'm back in just under a fortnight, so when I get back to the US, I'll write them from there. How's that?

And all of you shouting "Timewaster" can shut up now. Al? ;-)

But it's been great fun, and I think there's more fun to come..........

Cx