On my flight from LAX to London I was lucky enough to sit next to someone who wasn’t mad, incontinent or so insanely fat that they couldn’t operate their table thus requiring me to hold their in-flight meal. Instead I got Magdi, who to my delight was from South Africa. I like South Africans because despite having what is, in my opinion a very funny accent, they struggle to find anything amusing. Magdi, in usual deadpan tones told me many stories, including one about her trip to Amsterdam. After a “pretty crazy” night out, Magdi and friends got a cab home. Magdi recalled turning to her friend in the back seat and noticing “something odd” about said friend, for her head had swelled like a balloon. “I said to her, I said, ‘What the fuck. What the fuck is wrong with your fucking face. It is all swollen.” Her friend replied that nothing was wrong, and her head was normal. “That,” said Magdi, “Was when I realised. I was really fucking high.”
I spent a lot of time while I was in America thinking about England. I wondered whether it would have changed, whether my friends had changed? Would my parents have aged beyond recognition? Would Kerry Katona still have a drug habit? Of course, as I was greeted by my Dad in arrivals on a grey morning in June, I realised that while he was wearing a “Santa Cruz Dad” t-shirt, nothing had changed. Like Magdi, off her face in Amsterdam, I had looked at England from across the pond and decided it looked different, even odd from my Californian perspective. After six weeks however I can safely say that it is still the same place it has always been. There is sill no faith in government, even if two heads are better than one, wine can still be brought for £2.50, despite the “crackdown” on binge drinking and, whatever side of the Atlantic your on, England will always, forever, be shit at football.
