America - first impressions.

Here's a little tale for you, I hope, which suddenly came to me today. I was thinking I've been through a few scrapes in my life - I think I told you I dived in to the back of a taxi close to the Sahara Desert; yes they have taxis there.

When I think back on that, I have no idea what I'd have done if the car had gone without me – I might have ended up as a shriveled raisin in the sun as I would have fallen asleep eventually.

But I remember when I first went to live in Los Angeles and my first impressions; I had been to a few hot countries such as India, Israel, Tunisia etc and they seemed to be what they were – a third world country. Hot weather, big advertising signs, beggars, hot weather, driving on the wrong side of the road, hot weather – things like that. So when I got to Los Angeles I saw that lawyers, attorneys and the like had big advertising boards.

In Britain the biggest thing a lawyer could use for publicity was a name plate on the door. It just 'wasn't done' to advertise – bit like the Queen doing a commercial.

In fact comparing the Queen to the Head of State in America – the one thing you know about the Queen is that she would never drink coca cola; and there was Clinton, who was the President when I arrived there, drinking from a paper cup.

Just 'not done' in Britain.

Yes some of the population drink sodas here but you know something – at the moment I don't know anybody who does; either diet or regular.

So arriving in Los Angeles was a bit like going to a third world country.

I hear someone at the back asking what a third world country is?

Well the world as we know it or knew it as it was, was Europe. That was about as far as it got. Then America was discovered and that was the 'new' world – likewise Australia.

And the developing countries – what are they? Well we had two types so the next one would be the third one – the third world. (But you know this).

The third world seems to be hot, with no laws about advertising and stopping at zebra crossings, so that is why I had that impression when I stepped off the plane.

It also had funny electricity plugs and sockets and, as I later got to know, they were better than the ones in Britain as you could put your fork into the electric toasters in America because they had a lower voltage system – safer and more efficient.

I remember some months later meeting an Englishman who said he'd been 'back' (to the UK) and it was like a third world country!!

Now this third world that I arrived in was very cheap – I could get a good breakfast at Denny's for 99 cents and that's not to be sniffed at – 2 eggs, 2 slices of bacon, 2 sausages, and 2 pancakes; of course you had to buy coffee on top of that.

I was also offered a nose full of cocaine on the first night and that wasn't to be sniffed at either – which I refused of course.

Oh I would have been in the soft and smelly, wouldn't I, if I'd taken that sniff and gone on to a career of taking Charlie then on to some harder stuff and eventually being a raisin on the Santa Monica beach – thousands of miles from Sahara but the same sandy raisin feeling.

So I told that postman what to do with his stuff and earned $10 that first week – how? I got a job at The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra's telemarketing office and that was all the cheque (or check as we're in USA) came to. I was booked in to an hotel for a week and I had paid for my rental car for a few weeks.

So it was Denny's every day for my main meal @ 99 cents plus tax and coffee and when the next pay day came I celebrated and went to Maccy D's for a Big Mac.

A few years later a friend of mine was doing market research for a company and one of the research campaigns was at . . . you guessed it Denny's!!

Apparently Denny's had a reputation in the Southern States for racism; I don't know the details but what we had to do was to go to various Denny's restaurants in Los Angeles and test them out. We did this by going into each establishment with a black couple plus one – me and my wife and my market researcher pal and the black couple plus one older male.

The plan was they went in first, we would follow after five minutes and we had to see who would get served first and things like that, but the problem was my pal wanted to do about three restaurants a night.

I tried the grand slam (2 eggs, 2 bacon – you know), then the southern chicken with white sauce and going into the third restaurant each night I swore I would never go into a Denny's again. My pal would say ask for a box but . . ..

By the way they ask at restaurants every time – they never call it a doggy bag as they do in Britain; they're more honest.

They hardly use cheques here at all now but the last time I went to LA they were still using them in the supermarkets.

I came back to the UK most years for Christmas and various family happenings – births and my daughter's wedding – but one time I didn't come back for two or three years, maybe more. During that time there had been a campaign in Los Angeles to ban smoking in restaurants.

This progressed to bars and eventually public places and when I went back to London that time the first thing I noticed was that everybody smoked; the place stank of stale tobacco – it was just like a third world country.

So there we are!

Next week – July 10^th – I am having a public screening of my short movie in London.

So I will take advantage of this (kind of) bully pulpit and put all the details on here. I hope my mailing list – which goes in to the hundreds – won't mind, unless, of course you'll be in London on the 10^th.

If so I'll see you there.