Sweet Home, Iowa

Far away from the dirt and smoke there's a little town in one of the vast, empty states in the middle. There's a white house with a porch and a swing where I listen to BBC World Service and drink my coffee in the morning. Sometimes I have pancakes. Every morning the owner of the clothing store downtown passes on her bike. She stops and asks what the weather's like in England today. I always reply 'it's probably raining'. She laughs like a hyena every time. She loves Monty Python and thinks everybody in England is just as funny as Cleese or Palin. It doesn't matter to her that I'm not, she laughs anyway. Maybe it's the accent. After the school bus has picked up the kids and 'im indoors has gone to work, I head downtown and shop for things like Ranch dressing and Jerky. Then I stop off in the coffee shop. I have to have tea. Whenever I try to order coffee the barista looks blankly at me. English people drink tea. Everybody knows that. I go into the post office afterward and talk to the postmaster about his sixteen year old son who's fast becoming a star in the high school football team. I always go to the games. I understand the rules now but my fellow townsfolk like to explain them to me so I let them. I walk home from downtown, which baffles my friends who drive everywhere. Occasionally the English Lit professor from the local university pauses in his run and walks with me. We have a good natured argument about dialects and whether it's a-LOO-minum or alu-MIN-ium. Later on I go to the kids' little league game and spend the time with one half of my brain proudly watching the kids and the other half discussing the local gossip with the other parents. After the children have gone to bed we watch Letterman together and he tells me about the US news (he listens to KPXZ at work) and I tell him about the news back home, courtesy of the World Service. Right now I live in London, where the sky doesn't make me want to fly and I'm just another stranger in the crowd rather than the local foreign colour. But, that town is there. And it makes taking the tube in rush hour a little easier.