If you go into a hardware store (shop) over here and ask for rawlplugs, or multiway mains sockets, or polyfilla, or a spanner they won’t know what you are on about. Fortunately, the hardware store situation here is exactly the same as it is in the UK; you have a choice between local, family-owned places and one of the various megastores.
Just like the UK, the megastores are badly designed, full of uninterested, mouth-breathing, dullards, and concentrate on quantity rather than quality of crap. Just like the UK, the local places are full of helpful, friendly, geniuses and stock the obscurest of widgets. Just like the UK, the local places are permanently on the point of bankruptcy.
Anyway, thanks to the incredibly nice staff of Stanley’s Hardware and thanks to my late grandfather-in-law, I now have a bunch of tools and enough knowledge of the way things work over here to enable me to give derisory comments and tut at previous cowboys work whilst making a complete bollocks of screwing some shelves to the wall.
The electricity situation here is bizarre. Here is a list of things that will amaze Brits, and that will appear normal to the average American:

• They have mains sockets by kitchen sinks and in bathrooms over here.
• The traditional plugs fit in either way round.
• Not only are the light bulbs screw-in, some fuses are too. They’re also frequently made of glass.
• Frequently the mains sockets aren’t earthed.
• You can buy 3 pin to 2 pin adapters where the earth pin has a little metal tag that can be screwed into a nearby earth.
• Their old wiring is called “knob and tube” because they used little porcelain knobs and tubes to feed the bare wire around the house. Our house still has some “knob and tube” in the roof. Being a Viz reader of course I refer to it as knob and bollocks wiring.
• Sometime a house can have both 110 and 220 volt mains.
• The plugs aren’t fused.

Nonetheless, after walking around the house with my tool box, doing some drilling, checking the shelves with a spirit level and ignoring the plaster-dust generated, I’m feeling like a real man.

P.S. I’ll be back in the UK on the 21st! I’m so excited!

Our first weekend in the new place is well underway and, to be perfectly honest, I can’t remember a time when I felt happier (excluding nights out in New Cross of course). We both love our new house, our bed, our new town, our lovely birds and even our neighbours seem friendly. The only thing missing is you! If you come and visit we’ll guarantee that you have at least one night that will justify your plane fare.

There are other reasons why I’m happy:

• I resigned from my job on Friday!
• We filled in a tax return which means that not only are we eligible for a $1200 “economic stimulation” payment, but I also got a rebate for $500 owing to my stupidity when filling in the tax form.
• I start a new job with a very cool company on the day after my birthday.
• That will leave me with enough time to come back to the UK for a week!
• The tax rebate will pay for it!
• Wooohoo!
• There’s a pub down the road called “Union Jack’s.”

After a stressful day at work, we moved our mini aviary into our groovy new pad which I think means that we have actually moved in! The birds are now sleeping, I’m posting this over our cable Internets, we’re drinking some of Carlo Rossi’s finest, and the house looks like a right tip – I couldn’t be happier. Pity I have to be in work at 5:30 tomorrow morning to jump through a loads of hoops, whilst rounding up some undomesticated geese.

We still haven’t actually managed to move into our new house yet. The latest reason is that the gas works decided to cut us off yesterday and so the place is colder than a witches tit. Despite that, we have a sofa, a lovely bed, some shelves, a jug of red wine, and a cable. I waited in all today for the cable guy to arrive for his appointment, which was between 1pm and 3pm. He arrived at 4, and together with the backup he called upon, left at 7:30pm; the Internet access still wasn’t working. Now, I’m no craftsman but I know a bloody cowboy when I see one, but it really wasn’t his fault. The fact that he was a borderline cretin also wasn’t to blame. Comcast and Verizon make BT and NTL look like skilled professionals.

However, one thing that keeps us both happy is that we both really love our house. It’s exactly what we’ve both dreamed of, and the only worry is a deep-seated fear that someone is going to take it away from us. Everything there feels right, and we can’t wait to move in there with our mini aviary.

Following an enormous amount of stress, last minute panicking, and worry, we now

have our own house!

OK, in reality some bunch of money lenders actually own it but at least we’re not going to be paying someone else’s debts off with our rent for a while.
We have now achieved our goals of:

1. Moving to America.
2. Getting a job.
3. Getting a house.

In less than six months! Not bad eh ? So can I come home now please ? Only joking…I think.

Let me tell you, it’s pretty bloody scary buying a house, especially when it’s more than 3000 miles from your friends and family. But we both have a really good feeling about this place, and it is a lovely, lovely, lovely house. So come and stay people! Please ? You’ll like it! And we miss you!

Recent events had shaken our confidence in whole deal coming off and so we had done very little (or “bollocks all” as they say in my country) to prepare ourselves. After “closing”, and after Fred, our most excellent mortgage/real-estate dude, had bought us a slap-up lunch at LeBus, he dropped us back to the in-laws billet. I had a sudden panic that he was leaving us alone in a new world where we had our own house, without a big book of instructions on what to do. “Don’t leave us!” I said, pathetically. But he did, and after we made a few phone-calls we decided to go to Ikea and buy the bare minimum of furniture to make our house into a feasible home.

As shocking as it may seem to some of you, and despite Michele and I being married for over 10 years, I have never been inside an Ikea. Based on the superlatives used by past and regular patrons I have known, I was expecting something between Xanadu and Shangri-La. But it turned out to be a furniture shop! In fairness, we encountered an unnaturally helpful and friendly guy in the bedroom section (called Ira) and the gear in the place did look really well made, and it was really cheap…

but…

We needed a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. And we obviously wanted it delivered. Did I mention that there was a lot of it ? So we took the list of stuff we wanted downstairs so that we could pay, and tell them where to send it. But that’s not good enough for Ikea. At Ikea you have to show your dedication to the Ikea way by finding the shit yourselves, pulling it off of shelves, and conveying it to the checkout. After paying you then have to convey it to a delivery desk nearby, where staff take care of storing, delivering and installing your shit.

As we were trying to find one of the two sofas we had ordered I realised that me and Michele humping furniture from one place to another in the same warehouse was utterly ridiculous and so instead I found a nearby member of staff. We’d already been told, admittedly in apologetic tones, that we were indeed required to be involved in this superfluous leg of the furniture’s journey, but by now it had dawned on me that if Ikea wouldn’t get our substantial purchase from one place in the warehouse to another without us being involved then they should really stuff our substantial purchase up their Swedish arses.
Pointing this out to a member of staff resulted in the assignment of Monkey-Boy to our aid. Reluctantly he got us to the checkout and then fucked off sharpish. So, once the cashier had run up our substantial purchase I asked if I could speak to the manager before we settled the bill. He was irritatingly nice and agreed that if we knew what we wanted and also wanted it all delivered we shouldn’t really need to drag it across a warehouse, presumably as penance, first and summoned someone else to help him drag it to the delivery section… where three other members of staff moved it to a different rack in preparation for delivery tomorrow.

Tonight Michele’s mum bought us a bottle of Cava to help us celebrate. We did, and I still am. Come and visit us!

A bloody great question mark dropped onto our mortgage plans this week. Obviously, as it landed ten days before we are due to move in to our new place, it was about as welcome as a dose of syphilis. This caused a great deal of stress and anger, as you can surely imagine, but things seem to be a lot happier now – and not just because we’ve had a lovely night out at one of our favorite over-priced eateries on Main St. In fact, it’s all currently looking quite positive on all counts.
As much as I miss London, our excellent friends and our excellent family there, nether of us think that moving back there would solve anything; we’re going to give this thing a proper go.

For the first time in my new cuboid career I worked at home today. There are a bunch of reasons why, but by parrot-bed-time I was feeling utterly rejuvenated. Not only because I got a day working with parrots, but also because I wasn’t in that fucking depressing office. I actually managed to get more done than I would have done in my cube.

The parrots are all superb company during the day, even though the two ekkies are a couple of little buggers. More about that another day.

Work has been particularly annoying this week, culminating in a busy and stressful Friday. In my book that’s just not on, and the end of the tether is within groping distance. Sadly, and as much as I’d like it to be the case, MegaCorp are not entirely to blame. Significantly, but not totally.

So tonight when I got home at 7pm, leaving many of my colleagues enthusiastically grafting in the office, complete with communal pizza, whiskey, and the Dunkirk spirit, imagine my joy to find a letter from the HMRC [for the uninitiated, this is the UK organisation of Tax Bastards] waiting for me on my favourite chair. So, I drank some more, ate a crab-cake, sat down, pumped up the tunes, and ripped open the envelope. Even if it was a bill, I’m 3000 miles away.

It’s safe to say that I have never had good news in a letter from the revenue…until this evening! It was only a letter telling me that they’ve credited my account with a substantial amount of cash! In fact, once converted to the pathetic currency of the US, it’s enough to make me consider dangerous options such as leaving a chod on my work desk and fucking off. It even caused me to do a little dance!

Of course, I’ll spend this weekend doing work as before, and I’ll work on Monday, but it’s nice to know that it’s optional.

No longer can I deal with tedious office stress. It’s quite simple: all I want to do with my life is spend most of it with Michele and parrots, in a place with a roof and internet access, and be able to go outside regularly. Red wine and nice cheese would be a welcome bonus, as would eating out. But that’s it. No cars, posh furniture, jewelry, or gold, just peace and quiet with Michele, parrots, and some intellectual stimulation. That’s not much to ask is it ?

MegaCorp, and most other employers for that matter, expect their employees to be not only satisfied with dedicating their lives to “The Firm”, but they also expect you to be grateful!

The most significantly significant moment for me this week was during our first “team building” meeting [yeah really]. The CEO was explaining a bunch of things about our relationship with MegaCorp since the take-over. Personally I found it genuinely fascinating, and not the least bit surprising. He ended his talk with a sentence that illustrated exactly why I feel like I’m in the wrong place:

“I mean, we all want ******[MegaCorp’s] stock price to increase!”

Well, no! I don’t! In fact I get a considerable amount of pleasure from watching their share price crumble. I want them to fail. Even if it resulted in all of their employees losing their jobs (which it wouldn’t) I genuinely believe it would benefit more people on this planet in the long run. No, I won’t try to justify that statement 🙂

Back to parrots. It turns out we have three of the loveliest parrots that ever lived. Each has a personality as beautiful as their feathers; and let me tell you the feathers are pretty bloody beautiful!

More about our fluffy companions another time.

Meet Leia, Pepper and Winston: our new parrots. Or at least the plan is that they will be our new parrots tomorrow. All three are currently residing in an excellent local parrot rescue, and all three are due to be re-homed with us tomorrow. There are some people that may think taking on three new parrots just before we move into a new house is a stupid idea, and I’m one, but sometimes it’s best not to ask questions and just accept what is going on. Michele is, as anyone who knows her will suspect, very, very excited indeed. Anyone that knows me will also suspect that, despite my reservations, I am too.

Work has been draining every last drop of power from my poor aged brain and so yet again I should apologise to the people I haven’t managed to email recently. Sorry, really. It’s not that I’m not thinking of you, its just that I want to sit down and write properly, which is impossible. Ideally we could meet up for a drink in a comfortable boozer, but that’s quite tricky with a 3000 mile bus ride in between.

On the good side, this evening has been about as perfect as either of us could have wished. We were both craving a curry because our local place recently closed down and we haven’t one for over a month; British readers will understand the gravity of this terrible situation. So, tonight we decided to go to visit a place in Germantown called Dahlak , partly because we were excited by the idea of Eritrean, Ethiopian and Indian food, and partly because it sounds a bit like Dalek. The only problem is that this part of Germantown is widely regarded, by people who don’t live there, as being pretty hairy.

When we got there, the whole area looked exactly like Deptford (South East London) and consequently made us feel quite at home. The restaurant was a beautiful, cosy, oasis of middle-class, red-wine drinking ,nice food eating, friendliness and I can’t tell you how good the whole experience was. Brits, bring your beautiful British pounds over here now – you’ll love how much they’ll buy you. We got the bus home and the entire experience was as close to living back in London as we could have hoped for.

Stay tuned for parrot updates. Good night.

Making friends in a new country is hard. Or rather, making friends here is hard; I’ve no idea about other countries. In all honesty, London is probably a harder place to meet people on account of the average Londoner’s uptight-quotient. Still, we’ve been doing surprisingly satisfactorily. Last week we were invited to our first dinner party. This week we were invited to see a Philly band play a well-known local music venue in Manayunk. We were both quite excited about it; not only had we been invited out, but it also sounded pretty good! Woohoo! Maybe we could tick the “social-life” box. At the last minute the venue was switched…somewhere nearer to our current abode. As it was very, very, cold and as the local weather forecasters were threatening snow, this sounded like good news. All the local places we have noticed appear to be quite hospitable and normal, apart from one place, so we were quite excited to be trying a new venue. By the way, the dodgy bar is just along from the local Sally Army AA place and a couple of other dodgy spots so we have regularly joked about going there for a nice quiet drink – it looks like the sort of place you’d go to on getting our of prison so that you could meet up with your old friends.
Can you guess where the band ended up playing ?
The first thing that struck us about the place, apart from the Hammer-studio decor, was the smoke. Philadelphia has a blanket ban on smoking in bars, but this place was inexplicably exempt. We went over to the bar, which was populated by either coke-heads, aged winos, or generic weirdos, and tried to order a drink. Obviously I went for a Yeungling, but Michele had a few problems. The lack of Irish Whisky (despite having cardboard shamrocks and hideous, bloated, leprechauns all over the shop), and no red wine led her to follow my example and get a beer. “Good choice” remarked a gentleman punter standing next to us. We made a swift exit to “the back” where the band were setting up. Apart from the band there was a pile of old shite, a little bar with no obvious signs of beer on sale, and a bunch of semi-circular, waist-height booths that had apparently been rescued from 1980; one of which was occupied by a pissed-up homeless-looking guy who had fallen asleep and was gently secreting a line of drool onto his trousers. By now Michele and I were enjoying the atmosphere because it reminded us of being in our early 20’s – either in New York or London.
Earlier that day I had been at work and, as we had some cunt from Megacorp coming in, jeans were banned. This is because jeans are made from denim, which “business professionals” are so allergic to that even being in the same room as them can cause perspiration. Or something. Going to this bar in pin-striped trousers caused a few conflicting feelings. Which path should I be on ? Sensible trousers, tofu, and stuffed vegetables, or buffalo wings, pissed-up, beery, comedy punk bands in rough dives throughout the world. We had a bloody great evening there to be honest so now I’m even more confused 🙂 What would Mark Steel do ?

Maybe the confusion is related to our proximity to a huge parallel universe split that is about to occur. Either:

• We get final approval for the mortgage – which means we have a new house, new parrots and a US life ahead of us for a while…or
• We get turned down for the mortgage and have to seriously reconsider our options.

In all honesty I think that both universes offer a lot of decent possibilities. That’s probably why I’m not currently crapping my pants.
Good night.

Since Humphrey’s death I haven’t had a self-indulgent blog about her, mainly because I understand how little she meant to anyone who wasn’t me or Michele. Even the people that liked her and appreciated her company couldn’t understand how important she was to us. We learned a lot from her during her short time with us and I know that she’ll be one of the lives I think about on my deathbed. Michele and I both regularly feel dread rushes of pain when, during our daily lives, we are reminded of her.
Tonight Michele took me to a parrot rescue just south of Philly. We went there because Michele and the owner of the rescue had covertly planned that I should fall in love with a Princess of Wales parakeet that they were looking after. Her name is Princess Leia…obviously. And obviously I loved her. If our house comes together, which is looking more and more like a “when”, then she together with a beautiful couple of eclectuses will be joining us there.
In my sad little dream world we will have a housewarming party that would involve my parents, my sister, Marshall, everyone in the UK fatherland that we know (you’re all invited), together with everyone over here that we know. That would make me very happy indeed…even if you couldn’t make it for reasons of common sense.