Scorn on the 4th of July

Gentle reader! Last week we had the next in our ongoing series of American holiday experiences. It was nothing less than the 4th of July - the 244th anniversary of the Americans gaining independence from those pesky British. As ever with these things, we found that experiencing the holiday in the flesh was quite different to our expectations.

Of course, the big event of the day is Nathan's hot dog eating competition. Now, I come from a country where it's considered reasonably normal to throw yourself down a 1-in-3 hill in pursuit of a cheese, but Nathan's hot dog eating competition is something else. Reader, where else in the world would you get the chance to see the edifying sight of someone necking 47 hot dogs in 10 minutes? Because that's what 7-time women's champion Miki Sudo managed this time around. I felt sick just looking at it.

In all seriousness, the hot dog eating competition is just genuinely unpleasant. At least the cheese rolling thing has some historical basis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, competitive eating seems to be a mostly American thing. I'm sure it's what those folks who fought so hard for independence would have wanted.

The holiday itself was otherwise perhaps a little stilted because of the pandemic. I was led to expect lots of fireworks and, of course, celebratory gunfire. Fireworks are illegal here in California, so we'd been repeatedly reminded by the city of Palo Alto that we should report those with illegal fireworks; frankly we'd have needed an open line to the police all night to report everything. There were a lot of fireworks. A lot.

Formal celebrations mostly didn't happen; the usual massive public displays in places like New York City happened to some extent, but often in surprise locations to avoid crowds gathering. This was all backed, of course, by the fevered strains of patriotic music. The style here is very different to the UK, where patriotism when it's displayed tends to be fairly low key; excessive patriotism is considered somewhat vulgar. Vulgar is, as we know, not a word which made it across the pond, because here an artist of the calibre of Renee Fleming belting out "God Bless America" is just normal. What's more, in this age of multiple massive schisms in this country it's hard to identify just what "America" actually means in terms of nationhood. It's possible that on November the 3rd we'll find out.

I'm pretty excited to be here for the presidential election because, as many of you will know, I'm a bit of an elections nerd. I also feel the tone has changed here, and a Trump victory seems less and less likely; there's a "last days of Pompeii" feeling to what's going on at the moment. But the story of who gets elected here is nothing if not full of surprises, so let's wait and see.

Of course, July the 4th meant barbecuing again for us. This time, to light things quickly, I used the Weber chimney thingy which the previous occupants here left us. Despite Helen thinking I was going to set myself on fire, I have to say the experiment was a wild success:

Success! I didn't set myself on fire!

We then used our shiny new meat thermometer for the purpose for which it was intended: to get some steaks just right. God bless America!