Starbucks

You've probably seen the scene about Starbucks and decision-making in the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan film You've Got Mail.

In fact, Starbucks doesn't just force you to make a thousand choices to get a cup of coffee. I went in there after some common-or-garden ground coffee, and having passed what I thought was the hardest hurdle - choosing the type of coffee - they wanted to know what blend I wanted and whether it was for a Turkish coffee maker, Bodum-type percolator or a coffee machine. And when I confessed that I needed it for the latter, I was then interrogated as to whether the filter had a flat or conical base. I ask you: DOES IT REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE? (I bet it doesn't).

Honestly, I'd rather be stuck in one of those darned call routing systems than go through that rigmarole again. Come back Kenco instant coffee (which I can't get here either): all is forgiven!

Note to Kindergarten Teacher

Dear Mrs Clark,

Just to let you know: the scrawl that you circled in red and corrected at the bottom of the homework sheet headed "Sign and return" was not an attempt by my son to write the word "van", but rather my signature.

Yours, etc.

Book Sections

Barnes & Noble has really come down in my estimation.

They may stock virtually every book since the Gutenberg Bible, but isn't it a bit sick having a separate Memoirs of Affliction section (including, I might add, such titles as "My Lobotomy" and "ADHD & Me")?

Urinals

This really surprised me - and it's not the first time I've encountered an almost floor-height urinal. You see, I'm no giant, but my midriff (to use an acceptable euphemism) is often at the upper extremity of urinals in the US.

Since I know that the average American is about 300 foot tall, I must assume that men have their micturition apparatus reattached at the knee when they have the inevitable postnatal circumcision.

This would also explain why all swimwear is knee-length.

Miss Teen USA 2007

We've all heard the much-propagated urban legend about blondes being dumb. It's also relatively common knowledge that most beauty queens aren't Mensa material. Add these two elements together and combine them with the fact that world affairs isn't really an American forte, and the results can be extremely hilarious:

You Say "Potato" ...

With so many minute linguistic differences between American and British English, I think the time has come to give you a primer - hopefully the first of many - in Neworldspeak:

Behind (AE) = Bum (BE)
Bum (AE) = Tramp (BE)
Tramp (AE) = Loose woman (BE)
Crazy (AE) = Mad (BE)
Mad (AE) = Angry (BE)
Pissed (AE) = Angry (BE)
Drunk (AE) = Pissed (BE)
Peed (AE) = Pissed (BE)
Pants (AE) = Trousers (BE)
Underwear (AE) = Pants (BE)

Consequently, whereas a British bobby would frown on a pissed tramp for being mad enough to pull down his pants and show his bum, a female cop in the States would be pissed if a mad bum peed on her pants and called her a tramp.

NIMBY or IMBY?

It can be rather disconcerting not having a fence around your property.

Just now, a strange, bearded man in a hoody brazenly walked through our back garden (sorry: "yard") and into the next. It had me rather worried until I saw the logo on his back: he was from the electricity company and had come to read the meter.

There isn't really any cause for concern. Crime is extremely rare in this neck of suburbia - so much so that our local newspaper was shocked to report a spate of recent burglaries (two, to be precise: one merely attempted, the other because of an open window - and all the opportunist thief took was cash and an iPod).

In any case, if there were a fence around my house and garden, I wouldn't have so many squirrels, groundhogs, chipmunks and rabbits to put me off my work.