Let's have a heated debate!

Welcome, appalled reader, as I'm sure you either watched or heard about Tuesday night's debate between the two candidates for the Presidency, Messrs Biden and Trump.

Now I worked pretty hard to structure that first sentence without using the word 'presidential', because there was nothing presidential about this at all. The first ever televised presidential debate was held for the 1960 election, with the participants being two blokes called Kennedy and Nixon. It was a slightly different type of contest; watch it here if you're interested.

It was very interesting to watch the debate as an outsider. Obviously we've recently started having leaders' debates in the run-up to UK elections too, but those have always struck me as pretty low-key, stunted affairs. What's more, the striving for fairness in UK broadcasting means they're massively pluralist, giving a very different flavour. Of course they've had their famous moments (remember 'I agree with Nick'? As an aside, Clegg lives in Palo Alto somewhere now; maybe it's that house with all the Trump banners outside...), but overall they've been something of a non-event.

This debate was also surprisingly low-key in my opinion, despite the whirlwind of global condemnation that blew up afterwards. There was roughly an hour and a half of two old blokes shouting at each other, followed by half an hour of journalists telling us how terrible it was. There wasn't a great deal of informed reaction from either side, and one was left thinking this was a completely standalone event which would soon be forgotten.

The debate itself is well documented elsewhere. From where I was sitting, Trump's tactic was clearly to upset Biden and goad him into either verbal gaffes or stuttering. When given his 2 minutes of uninterrupted solo time, Trump was his unscripted self, chuntering on in half-sentences and attempted aphorisms, although the dictionary tells me that aphorisms are generally supposed to be true on some level. It gave the impression of two participants, one of whom had turned up to take part in a ballet, and the other that was there for the annual shin-kicking contest. Biden seemed to be unable to make up his mind as to whether to carry on regardless with his attempts at a pas de deux, or just show he was equally adept at kicking his opponent's shins. One has to wonder how a more polished speaker than Biden would have handled this - what would Kennedy or even Bill Clinton have done? We can only wonder.

The next debate is the vice presidential candidates - Mike Pence and Kamala Harris - which I suspect will be a bit like Anne Widdecombe trying to debate with Dianne Abbott. Bring it on.

More importantly, this week Helen took part in a virtual Harvest Festival, baking this tremendous sheaf of wheat out of bread:

Eating this was a bit of a challenge, and we pondered long and hard over what to do with the little mouse!

And finally, the smoke is back. There are fires raging up in the Napa Valley, north of the Bay Area, and the smoke has blown around and settled in the Bay for the last few days. It's also been warm - low 30s Centigrade - and that early Autumn heatwave has coincided with our upstairs air conditioning packing up. Hopefully we'll get that fixed soon and be able to report on the VP debate from our usual chilled environs!