Mannerisms

The taxi driver tells me that Americans really admire Prince Harry for going to Iraq when American rich kids would do anything to avoid it.

He says 50 per cent of Americans don't believe in evolution and there are moves to stop it being taught in US schools.

He says 80 per cent of Americans think W is the worst president ever, and that the reason for his ultra-aggressive foreign policy is to prove to his dad he's a big man.

Kurt Vonnegut, whose latest book I read on the flight over, wonders how W can say he's a Christian, while behaving in ways so at odds with the principles advocated in the Sermon on the Mount. The same can be asked about our own sanctimonious PM.

But any country with such a fine establishment as the Rock Bottom Brewery of Campbell, California has much to be thankful for. Six pints of a hoppy little number called Boulder Creek Pale Ale (6%) sends me to bed in a suitable state to sleep like a log till 7:59am, slap-bang onto American time the very first night.

Strange that so magnificent a brew co-exists with the watery products of Messrs Michelob, Budweiser, Coors and Miller. But who can understand Americans?

Not even Vonnegut, it seems, whose wonderful imagination conjures up a visiting Martian trying to understand American culture, and puzzling: "What can it possibly be about blow-jobs and golf?"