Stevens in the States

A friend of mine has been ice-skating for a few months, and yesterday was taking part in a low-key display for friends and family of the new skatees.

As it happens, the skating rink is near where I work, and her slot was 6:20pm, so it was quite easy to pop in on the way home.

I'd not been to that skating rink before. In fact, it's years since I'd been to any rink. So I parked up, wandered in, asked if I could watch, and got pointed through to where the rink was.

I stood in a corner, near the door, surveying the scene. On the ice was my friend (mid 20s), and an older woman... and dozens of little kids (aged 5-11 I'd imagine)

This wasn't so bad, but my friend was the second person on. She did her display, then scuttled off to talk to some people she knew there. That left me, looking a little out of place, watching lots of little kids do rather odd displays. And the longer I stood there, the more suspicious I looked. I mean, a grown man (too young to be a parent, too old to be skating) watching lots of kids who are wearing tutus and other such dresses.

The parents clearly thought I was some dodgy geezer, I could tell from the looks. Especially as I kept laughing... purely because for American health-and-safety reasons, all these girls were wearing enormously think leg warmers. I assume in case they fall over. As a result, they all had really fat legs underneath these little skirt things.

So I'm watching young girls, laughing to myself, completely on my own.

I did the wise thing. I left.



This is what they all reminded me of........................

...the odd one here and there. My Wal-Mart value-pack fly swatters are carefully positioned in muster points for such occasions.

It'd seem that one of the down sides to the stunningly warm weather (rarely below 25C during the day, in fact usually above 30C) is that there are lots of insects of various sizes and anger levels.

This is made worse at Chez Stevens due to it being an old building by American standards (1940s) with many holes for aforementioned creatures to pop in for a while.

It all came to a head on Sunday. I came back from a really fun weekend in Austin, only to discover that there were quite a few flies in the kitchen, sitting on the ceiling, eyeing me up suspiciously.

So, I eyed them up for a while, and we came to a mutual understanding that involved me swatting them with the copy of the Guardian that my parents brought over at Easter. This did the trick.

Well, for 24 hours at least. Then the buggers were back. Now, as you can appreciate, this is neither hygenic or attractive. "Welcome to my house, please step over the dead flies everyone, and do ignore the ones circling your head."

So, having discovered late last night that DIY stores here aren't 24 hours, I headed to Walmart and found the insecticides section. They sell things that'll kill whatever you want - it was fascinating! I bought sprays for flies and ants, fly paper, fly swats, and also some chicken and a 6-pack of beer.

Came back, and liberally gassed the lot. It was very dramatic. A spray in each hand, much like a Terminator would do. Which, of course, is what I was doing. Every the instructions said, I doubled. The good news is that the buggers all burnt/perished/sufficated/did whatever they did. The bad news is that I've now got to sweep them all up and throw them out.

I shall let you know if they return.

So I was taking my rubbish (or "trash" to the locals) out to the communal dumpster that we have here, only to hear a noise coming from inside it.

A cat? Rats? No, A man. A guy was going through our rubbish, and putting stuff of interest into a supermarket trolley that I'm guessing wasn't in it's natural habitat.

So what did I do? Tell him to get out of our bin? Call the authorities?

No in a true British way, I carefully put my rubbish in there, and apologised to him that there was nothing of interest amongst it.

Sometimes it sucks being British!