Halloween is big business here in the ’states. Much bigger than anything I’m used to.
I think we can be guaranteed to have some kids come knocking on the front door tonight asking “Trick or treat?”, to which my reply is going to be “Ooh, thanks for offering, I’ll have a treat please” [...]

One random photo:
From the cinema [movie] theatre the other night.
As Leigh pointed out: “You use the left one if you have three items of trash, and the right hand one if you only have two”.
 
 
 
 
 
 
A not so random photo:
After the conversation about roads and specifically crosswalks during the walk, whilst out on my bike on [...]

To wrap up … I think it’s only fair to talk about a few things that I do like about the roads here.
They have different coloured lines to tell you if the road you are driving down is one-way or two-way.
Ok, so Charleston doesn’t actually have that many one-way roads compared to England, but when [...]

It’s half an hour later down at city hall, and the same doofus’s that planned the tightest slip roads in existence are still talking:
“So … traffic lights - how shall we do them then?”
“Well … we could erect them by the side of the road, on poles as we do with all our other road [...]

Let’s play a game of human snakes and ladders. Except let’s just call it ‘ladders’ - and let’s go to South Carolina where all the crossings are basically painted ladders on the road.
Actually … we should actually clear up what they’re called first. ‘Crossings‘ ? ‘Pedestrian Crossings‘ ? ‘Cross Walks‘ ? [...]

Junctions:
This drives me mad. Literally. (Geddit? Drives me mad. Oh so funny)
In the local neighbourhood where I live, there are lots of simple crossroad junctions, and it’s the sheer inconsistency in how each one is different that winds me up.
The biggest difference is getting used to the fact that the marker line down the [...]

A five part series this week - one a day, every day this week because it’s about time that I got something off my chest : The state of American roads.
More specifically is my failure to get my head around things that I think are totally dumb, which I gather here that everyone just takes [...]

Number of times I have now seen the Pet Shop Boys live : Ten - (July 1989 at Wembley, September 1991 at Wembley (two nights in a row), April 1997 at the Savoy Theatre, March 1999 at the Brighton conference centre, March 1999 (same tour two nights later) at Wembley, February 2002 at the Astoria, [...]

… is newsagents. No really, it does.
Whilst out walking the dogs yesterday morning I realised that if you want a newspaper round here, you can only really buy it from a vending style machine that you see on the sides of the roads next to the blue mailboxes.
The concept of having a pokey [...]

This is another one of those things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Ever since my second week here when I christened Leighs car ‘The Tankmobile’ (because it handles like one, accelerates like one, and consumes as much petrol [gas] as one) I’ve been meaning to blog it by analysing all the [...]

“Welcome to Amtrak USA. This train will be calling at: Kingtree, Florence, Fayetteville, Rocky Mount, Petersburg, Richmond, Alexandria, Washington DC, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, Newark and New York Penn Station.”
Oh yes - Welcome to Amtrak. For a tolerance-testing thirteen hours. That’s the period of time that I am putting myself through the [...]

“Can you help a friend of mind with a proper backup routine for his PC do you think?” asked a neighbour of mine a few weeks ago.
“Sure” I say, and so he puts me touch with the guy, a local businessman downtown who runs a recycling products company.
I go down and see him and advise [...]