A half-million in the hole

You can dunk your doughnuts, you can mispronounce your entire vocabulary, you can sing the star-spangled banner; but you’re not even half-way to acclimatising yourself to the American way of life until you are up to your eyeballs in debt. The economy is pivoted on this principle; you can’t buy anything on credit until you have a credit-rating; you cannot get a credit-rating without purchasing something on credit. Still, we haven’t let a little thing like that stand in our way.

Yesterday we bought a brand-new car – something I thought I’d never do. For readers who like cars, it’s a Mazda 3s hatchback with a 2.3 litre engine and all the extras; check it out at mazdausa.com if you’re really that interested. Yadda, yadda yadda. Point is, it’s ginger. Orange. “Of the purset ginge”. That is all you need to know.


The ginger car

Here they pronounce Mazda, MARZda, Jaguar, JAGwah, Celica, SELLika, Hyundai, HUNday. Madness I tell you. The long ‘a’ in the American pronunciation of Mazda sounds quite affected to my ear.

Oh yes, so that was the first twenty g.

Then we had our offer accepted on a house we were interested in downtown. It's really gorgeous. It’s also enormous – probably about the size of the Kitch manor down on Southover. I made it very clear to Rach that if we were going to get that house we would have to take in a couple of student lodgers; not so much out of financial necessity, but because otherwise we’d be bouncing off the walls. And because extravagance on that scale is obscene. Rachel’s folks are agin it of course: interestingly, most Americans are very tied to the one house one family mind-set. Bed and breakfasts are rare here. But I’ve grown up with strangers padding about my house and frankly I think its fun. So, that’s the deal. Don’t worry however, with 5 bedrooms, there’s one for us, two for lodgers, a study and still a spare room for you whenever you want it. The house is late Victorian and has much of its original character; the kitchen is simply amazing – it almost sold it to me on its own. There are also two staircases up to the first floor. One for us and one for the staff. And at $455 000 a mere snip! (I mollify myself with the though that it’s about 260 grand UK, which really wouldn’t go so far in Brighton)… So anyhow, to underline the point, please do come and stay whenever you want: there’s plenty of room! Am I sounding needy and desperate yet?

Of course all this hinges on our buyers solictors back in Blighty getting off their porcine asses and closing the deal.

Today we went to the art gallery downtown. It’s really pretty good and not so big as to be daunting.

Rachel’s been wading her way through her postal ballot for the upcoming election. It’s proper democracy here (at least when they bother to count the votes) - not only does she have to select the next ruler of the world, she has to select a position on no less than twenty constitutional amendments then vote for sheriff, DA, mayor etc. Election fever grips the country at large, or at least the media, which can focus on no more than two issues at a time. This week it’s Bush vs Kerry and Yankees vs Redsocks. Thus, in common with everyone else here I have next to zero knowledge of anything that may be happening beyond America. But hey. Bumper sticker of the week: “Keep Portland weird”

Amen to that.