Good Night.

For a little while – well quite some time to be honest – when I first went to America I had never actually been in to anybody's house. Never crossed the portal which separated their public and private lives. I had seen inside their houses many times through the magical world of the movies but that was fiction.

Sometimes I would sit and look at a family sitting at an airport or restaurant and try to listen in to their conversations to see if they would somehow drop the American accents and call each other mate. When the great Australian writer (and broadcaster) Clive James first came to Britain he would think the same about the English accents but he was listening to received pronunciation (RP) like Stephen Fry or John Cleese and I was expecting the more common type like Liverpool, London or even oo ah rural. But that wasn't the only thing I listened for; I couldn't believe that they actually said 'have a nice day' or 'have a good one' or even called each other honey or hun!

I would look at their clothes at the airports and wonder if the men were dressed for golf or travel as their clothing seemed strange; all the naff things from Britain seemed to be acceptable in America: baseball hats and white socks, for example.

I used to love the 1950s movies where white socks were worn – Martin and Lewis films; Superman, White Christmas etc. I longed for those fashions when I went to America and in Los Angeles I found them. I loved the 1950s look of LA, the Superman buildings downtown, the 1950s architecture and the fantastic winged motor cars on their never ending freeways but do you know what I never heard? The phrase 'good night.'

Straight away I'm going to be called a romancer or someone having problems with the truth as I did hear it from time to time, but when I stayed at various people's houses I didn't hear it at all.

I was listening to David Sedaris on the radio last night, who was talking about his family and it reminded me of this phenomenon; he said 'my family never said good night; they just disappeared.'

That's what I mean; David Sedaris lives this side of the Atlantic now and has probably noticed that over here people have the manners to excuse themselves when leaving a room and if they're not coming back it would be 'good night' or 'goodbye.'

When I stayed with people over there, or even lived with them when I first got there, I would notice that when it was bed time, they would just disappear; never a good night, kiss my arse or nothing.

One time I was watching TV with the landlady, when I first arrived and I went to the loo. I was out of the room less than three minutes and not only did she not say good night, she turned the TV off and left the room in darkness; not thinking that I might want to finish watching the programme or even moving my stuff from the chair I had been sitting on.

Sometimes she would disappear for weeks – never saying where she was going or even when she would be back; not that it was my business but you know what I mean.

That was when I first went to America; for the first eighteen months I was by myself; living in a shared house at first and then in an apartment by myself. I had gone from evenings of my children kissing me good night to me having to kiss my own arse for company and in this season of good cheer let me be one of the many people to wish you good night and if I'm the only one, you'll have to do what I did – kiss your own arse goodnight.

Which reminds me of a few lyrical lines from the days when everybody expected to be blown up by a nuclear bomb:

So when the nukes come raining down
It's great to be alive, well
World War Three can be such fun
If you protect and survive
Protect and survive

For they give us a four-minute warning
When the rockets are on their way
To give us time to panic and Christians time to pray
So when you hear the siren's going
Place your head between your thighs
Whilst maintaining this posture
You can make a final gesture
And with a little muscular pressure
You can kiss your arse goodbye

Happy Christmas.