I’m writing this sitting outside the Tropicana hotel waiting for the airport bus. I got up at 5 to allow a margin for slacking but there was none so i have time to watch the adverts for the Eagles gig and Phil Collins’ farewell tour on the side of the MGM building… A pair of red boot-cut hipsters just strode over on 3 inch heels and parked next to me. The girl in them announced from behind mascara curtains that she’d just blown $400 in 10 minutes waiting for her friends to pick her up. I said something sympathetic.

“you’re from England right?”
“right! Can you tell?”
“where’s London?”
“?”
“where’s London? is that in england?”

i can’t complain really. If someone told me they were from Bucharest i would have to guess where they were from. But you like to think that England has a more significant place in the mind of the American than somewhere like finland (ba-dum).

I gave her a hot tip not to call a scotchman* English, and the conversation stumbled on a while, fell over, twitched a little and finally lay still.

* i KNOW