Just a Wee Blether…

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About living in Arizona’s ‘Little Scotland’

Out here in Arizona we can drive on Apache Boulevard…and Chaparral Road. This is Wild West country after all. And there are plenty other streets in the vicinity that evoke the history of this part of the world. They include Comanche Drive, Stetson Road, Jackrabbit Road, Cactus Road and Gunsight Road.

My home city is only 176 miles from the Mexican border so there is also a massive Hispanic culture, again reflected in the names of the roads – Santa Cruz Drive, Diablo Way, Guadalupe Road, Ocotillo Road and the Agua Fria Freeway.

When we moved here last year we stayed with family in East Barbarita Avenue. It was just the sort of typical south-west address I had envisioned myself having as an Arizona resident. In fact, I was drinking Dos Equis beer and calling the neighbours ‘amigo’ when we decided to find our own place.

There were so many cool addresses that we were spoiled for choice, names that sounded straight from a spaghetti western. Tonto Street perhaps, or Pueblo Avenue.

Eventually we found the perfect place, a three-bedroom town house in a quiet area. So we packed all our belongings and flitted for the second time in a matter of months, to an address on – North McQueen Road.

McQueen? I might as well have been moving to Paisley Road West. I went to school in Ayrshire with a family of boys called McQueen. I used to watch Kilbirnie’s finest footballing son Gordon McQueen not just playing for Scotland but as a raw centre half with Largs Thistle.

So much for all my dreams of welcoming visitors to my little slice of the desert. You can’t really wear a cowboy hat and ride a horse in McQueen Road. This was about as American as deep fried haggis and chips.

It was all a bit disappointing to be honest. Apparently the road was named after a family called McQueen who once owned a large ranch in these parts. I am willing to bet that the wonders of ancestry.com would reveal descendants that were Scottish or Irish, or both.

But the McQueens were just the tip of the iceberg. A quick drive round the neighbourhood revealed many more examples of Scotland’s influence on this part of the world.

Apart from Burt Lancaster’s character in Local Hero, the most famous Knox in history was John Knox, the Scottish clergyman. Knox Street is a few hundred yards as is Highland Drive which speaks for itself. Hamilton Road is not far and there is even a nod to Sir Walter Scott with Ivanhoe Street.

We could claim Hartford Street as having been named after Asa Hartford, a one-time footballing colleague of Gordon McQueen. There is Inverness Drive, McLintock Drive, McDonald Road, McDowell Road and Jackson Street. I would like to think McKellips Road was named after someone whose family name was originally McKillop and who came from the Highlands.

Dunbar Drive, McNair Street, Loughlin Drive, McArthur Drive – the list goes on.

The one major shock I had was discovering that a five-minute walk from my pleasant town house took me to Thatcher Boulevard. I’m 5,000 miles away and I still can’t escape the woman.

So here I am, almost a year after my dream move to the States, stuck in North McQueen Road in what seems like Little Scotland, Arizona. One day I’ll graduate to Palomino Drive or Calle Magdalena. There is even a Sesame Street.

But there is one street name here that, to my mind, is head and shoulders above the rest, and proves that a sense of humour is still alive. It is in Central Phoenix and was named after a planner called Jimmy Wong. The street’s name – Wong Way.

 

 

 

Just a Wee Blether…

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About the football nomads of America

I want you to try to imagine how this scenario would play out in the world of Scottish football.

The town of Fort William decides it wants a Premier League team. So using some private cash and a hefty contribution from the taxpayer, a brand new stadium is built. Then the Highland town comes to a multi-million pound relocation deal with Glasgow Rangers.

The Scottish Premier League gives its blessing and Fort William Rangers FC is born. The fans who have supported the Glasgow club for more than a century are suddenly left without a team. Ibrox Park lies empty and is eventually taken over by housing developers.

On the other side of the city a similar drama is unfolding. Glasgow Celtic have been lured away from their home in the east end to Stonehaven. They become known as Stonehaven Celtic – the franchise name is retained but the location is different.

To fill the void in the Glasgow football market, the SPL is able to persuade Dundee United across to the west coast to become Glasgow United. Lots more money changes hands. And again a massive new stadium development is built to accommodate them.

Down south can you imagine Manchester United relocating to Bath; Tottenham Hotspur to Scarborough; or Newcastle United to Canterbury? Of course not. None of these moves could ever conceivably happen for the simple reason that the clubs, in the vast majority of cases, are historically attached to a specific town or city.

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Not in the United States. In the past week the American Football supporters of St Louis, who have for the past 20 years spent small fortunes following the St Louis Rams, have been left without a team after the Rams relocated to Los Angeles. To confuse matters, the Rams were, until 1995, based in LA so in a sense they are going home. Tell that to the NFL lovers in St Louis.

The San Diego Chargers might follow the Rams to LA and the Oakland Raiders are reportedly in talks to move to San Antonio, Texas. There is also talk of an NFL franchise moving to London, with the Jacksonville Jaguars the most likely contenders. London Bulldogs has been suggested as a name.

If these moves take place, massive amounts of money will change hands. The NFL, an organisation that is stinking rich and as dodgy as hell from top to bottom, will rake in millions of dollars. The businessmen behind the clubs will profit, so will the sponsors. The people who lose out are the fans. Every time a new arena is built, a special “stadium tax” is levied so the taxpayers can help foot the bill.

The most incredible relocation story involved the Baltimore Colts. The team was established in 1953, but by 1983 the owners were growing fed up a lack of investment by the city and were effectively holding it to ransom by letting it be known they were considering a move elsewhere.

The city of Baltimore responded by threatening to take over the team using eminent domain. Then on March 29, 1984, every stitch that belonged to the colts – team jerseys, mascot outfits, cheerleader uniforms – were driven out of Baltimore in a fleet of 15 moving trucks in the middle of the night. By daybreak the trucks were being given a police escort into Indianapolis, where the Colts have remained to this day.

Our local team here, the Arizona Cardinals, has only been here since 1987. From 1960 they were in St Louis and before that in Chicago. The team now known as the Tennessee Titans was previously the Houston Oilers.

Pity the poor fans over here – they are used and abused. No sooner are they used to one team than they up sticks and move somewhere else thanks to the lure of filthy lucre.

Let’s hope Queen of the South doesn’t move to Wick – or Heart of Midlothian to Oban. It could get really confusing.

 

Just a Wee Blether…

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About time to end this haggis insult

Fair fa’ your honest sonsie face

Great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race

Aboon’ them a’ ye tak yer place

Painch, tripe or thairm:

Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace’

As lang’s my airm.

It is a toast beloved of Scots the world over. Not only does it celebrate our National Bard Robert Burns, it also extols the culinary and nutritious virtues of the dish he so handsomely eulogised.

In pubs and clubs throughout Scotland the words of the famous poem are spoken on or around the poet’s birthday. And in every corner of the globe where expat Scots and people of Scottish descent gather, they stand to usher in that most appetising Caledonian cuisine item – haggis.

We Scots are mighty proud of haggis, we love its heartiness and the fact that a foodstuff favoured by the working classes has been exalted to the level of our national dish. And the fact it is eaten and enjoyed throughout the world only adds to that sense of satisfaction.

So every year, when we celebrate the Bard at Burns Suppers, a kilted Scot plunges a knife into the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race” to reveal the ‘gushing entrails” – as Burns so colorfully put it.

Except, that is, in America. The United States is a shocking blot on the haggis-lover’s landscape. The good old US of A delivered the culinary slap in the face to our Scottish heritage and identity in 1971 when it banned “real” haggis from these shores.

One of the key ingredients, sheep’s lung – which makes up between 10% and 15% of the recipe – found its way on to an American food import blacklist. It has never been removed and haggis aficionados have had to endure a poor substitute ever since. It even features on an American website called Most Disgusting Delicacies, which also includes tuna eyeball and tarantula.

For true Scots, haggis without the flavoursome lungs amounts to heresy. Imagine drinking a glass of water without whisky, it just wouldn’t be the same. What about Thanksgiving Day without turkey? There would be a national outcry.

Haggis is composed of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep minced with oatmeal, suet and spices, soaked in stock and boiled in a sheep’s stomach. At a traditional Burns Supper, a kilted bagpiper pipes it into the room, carried on a silver platter, cut up in front of the assembled company, then flavoured with some good Scotch malt whisky.

I have eaten it every year since I was a teenager. No doubt I am biased but I find it delicious. Served, as it should be, with neeps (turnips) and champit tatties (mashed potatoes), it is as filling and heart-warming a delicacy as you will find anywhere.

No-one has ever died from eating a haggis – not a single person. Many have felt like death warmed up after the amount of whisky they consumed at the Burns Supper but that’s another story.

The haggis ban angers and offends purists in Scotland. Year after year they have called for it to be relaxed but without success. Even the upsurge of Scottish societies all over the US and the emergence of Tartan Day have failed to force the authorities to relent.

Lung-free haggis just does not cut it. And this in a country that happily sells aspartame – a sugar substitute linked to a host of health problems – scrapple, bleached chicken, and GMO corn fed beef.

As Robert Burns said:

Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware

That jaups in luggies.

But, if you wish her gratefu’ prayer

Gie her a Haggis.

Just a Wee Blether…

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About Health Care or Wealth Care?

Celebrity gossip is not something that greatly interests me – but one story that made massive headlines over here was the fate of Lamar Odom, a former basketball player and the husband of Khloe Kardashian.

Odom was found in a coma in a brothel called the Love Ranch about 80 miles from Las Vegas. He had taken an overdose of drugs and was rushed to hospital and transferred to an exclusive medical centre in Los Angeles. A recent report suggested his medical bill was a jaw-dropping $17million and rising. It was reportedly being paid by the Kardashian family.

Of course he is a very wealthy celebrity and being charged accordingly. But the cost of health care in America is a major day-to-day problem for all “ordinary” people.

Last year the son of a friend of a friend of a friend who lives in northern Arizona jumped into a shallow lake and suffered a bad spinal injury. His family has been forced to start a Just Giving online page to raise money for the cost of his medical care.

Yet another friend of a friend was bitten by a rattlesnake in New Mexico. He was told the cost of his treatment would be $30,000 and that his insurance company was not guaranteeing to cover it. So he went to Mexico and bought an affordable antidote across the counter – a fairly common tactic for people who live near the border.

There is no universal health care system in the United States. In fact, to call the system one of “health care” is stretching it. I recently met a chap from Dundee who said it was “not health care but wealth care” – and he is right.

Imagine if, in the UK, your parents or other relatives retired, then had to sell their house to pay for their health care. It would never happen; the National Health Service is there to look after them. In 2012, a total of 43% of senior citizens in the US were forced to sell or mortgage their primary residence to pay for health needs.

Someone I know recently had to make an appointment with Urgent Care, a walk-in medical provider. She is uninsured so the appointment cost $125. She was passing discoloured urine and feeling off-colour and so blood and urine tests were taken.

A week later she asked if they had the results of the urine tests. The people at the centre told her that, as she a “cash pay customer” rather than a client with insurance, there was no box on the form to alert the administrator to send the sample for further analysis. So the urine sample has never been sent to this day.

Americans pay massive amounts of money to a confusing myriad of so-called health schemes for medical insurance. Yet incidents such as those I have described happen all the time and are symptomatic of a colossal failure on the part of a wealthy nation. It produces scores of great entrepreneurs and leads the way in research and technology but cannot look after its own people.

A report in 2009 showed that between 45,000 and 48,000 people die in the US every year as a direct result of lack of health insurance. The Affordable Care Act – dubbed Obamacare – has since been introduced by President Obama to try to increase access to health care for people who cannot afford it.

To most people that sounds like an excellent scheme yet Obama’s opponents have resisted it tooth and nail – something that speaks volumes about the pitiful state of American politics.

A health professional recently told me that the US health service is “broken” – which assumes it was ever working in the first place. As an incomer it strikes me as a shameful situation, a complete and utter scandal, the biggest disgrace in American society. The people of America are penalised for being ill.

If a country is judged on how it looks after its people, then America, one of the largest and richest nations on earth, is an embarrassing and spectacular failure. Everything is profit-driven, the pursuit of money is the bottom line, greed is a national pastime.

What is even more amazing is that most people never question the situation. They seem perfectly happy to throw thousands of their hard-earned dollars into the coffers of super-rich insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

When I tell them about the NHS, most think it is a wonderful idea and wish it could happen here. Although one person said he hated the sound of it as it was too “socialistic”.

So for those of you back in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK – next time you feel like criticizing the NHS, just be very grateful it exists.

Just a Wee Blether…

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About ‘silly season’ news days

In the world of newspapers and media, the Christmas and New Year period is what we call the “silly season”. All the regular story sources have dried up, the courts, local councils, and sensible politicians – if that’s not a contradiction in terms – are on holiday.

Finding stories to fill the festive papers requires a lot of forward planning. Big breaking stories such as the devastation caused by Storm Frank in Scotland this week, relieve the pressure. But reporters have always had to dream up weird and wonderful “space-fillers”.

The review of the year – or the retrospect as we called it – was a major task. Two dedicated reporters could spin it out to at least three days. But some other festive features that have appeared over the years have been, shall we say, a bit desperate.

It’s good to know it happens everywhere. One of the Arizona papers this week had a double-page spread on the top 10 new coffee shops that had opened in Phoenix in the last 12 months. That was followed by “favourite nature trails” – another two-page spread.

These stories used to be called “set and holds” – they were set and then held – but are now put into an electronic file known as the “Christmas Box”. They might be desperate and the products of fertile imaginations but readers often love them. They comment on them as much, if not more, than the important events of the day.

A few years ago I wrote a two-page feature on Clyde-built vessels that were still in operation in various parts of the world. One was on the Mississippi River, another on Lake Titicaca, two were ferries in Guyana, and another was plying her trade on Lake Malawi in Africa.

It got at least a dozen responses, one from a gentleman who said he had travelled on three of them as well as another old Clyde ferry that was still operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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The same happened when I exposed Glasgow’s “untimely” clocks. I used to get on and off the subway at Cowcaddens station. There was a clock on a public building that had never worked in all the time I was there and it infuriated me.

So I found five or six other examples of public clocks in the city that didn’t work. Again the response was amazing. If I was infuriated, then you should have read how “Indignant, Cowcaddens” felt about the situation. The Running Man clock at Buchanan bus station (pictured) really got their goat.

During the 1980s I took part in a newsroom contest with some colleagues to see who could get a story from the most obscure source. I got one from the secretary of Dunbeath and Berriedale Community Council in the north of Scotland – and it was published.

But my favourite response came after I wrote a story about the historical influx of Highlanders to the Partick area of Glasgow. I interviewed a barmaid in one of the traditional Highland pubs who told me that part of town was known as the “Tcheuchy Triangle”.

For the uninitiated, a “tcheuchter” is a name used for a rural dweller, usually from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I had never thought of it as being in any way offensive.

The following day my editor received a letter. There was no sender’s name on it. It simply read, “Dear editor. I resent being called a tcheuchter by your monkey Iain Lundy”.

As the editor astutely observed, “It must be someone who knows you, Iain.”

I hope you all have a very happy 2016 – and continue reading my Wee Blether!

Just a Wee Blether…

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About Christmas in the desert Ho Ho Ho

Christmas in the Arizona desert was predictably sunny. There was hardly a cloud in the blue sky and, while it wasn’t quite t-shirt and shorts weather, the temperature was somewhere in the high 50s.

Nobody was ‘walking in a winter wonderland’ or ‘dashing through the snow’. The Christmas music was blaring on the radio but it seemed a bit surreal in the Valley of the Sun.

The morning began with one of these ‘it could only happen in America’ encounters. We were leaving the house at around 7am to head to a family breakfast get-together only to discover the front left tyre on the car was flat.

I’m not into changing tyres when there are people out there who know what they are doing, so help was summoned. Five minutes later I received a voice mail message on my mobile from our Christmas knight in shining armour.

It went like this, “Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas, this is Mike at Jack Rabbit Roadside Assistance. Be with you in five to ten minutes. Once Again Ho Ho Ho.”

Now there’s customer service for you. Mike duly arrived, complete with white beard and Santa hat, gave me a huge hug when he discovered I was from Scotland, pumped up the tyre and had us follow him to a repair shop that was open 24/7, 365 days.

It turned out he had been in bed, he had to leave his family behind to help us out on Christmas morning – but he could not have been more unfailingly cheerful. It’s not difficult to imagine the mood being a little different elsewhere.

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Americans go all out for Christmas – you can tell just by looking at their houses. Every street in every neighbourhood is illuminated by spectacular light displays. Homes and front gardens everywhere are awash with lights, shepherds, mangers, angels on the rooftop, you name it.

In Scotland, I remember there being half a dozen houses per city that were lit up so dramatically, several of them for charity. And in the papers we used to report on vandals damaging the lights, stealing the charity money, and the bah humbug brigade complaining that the lights were too bright and an “intrusion”. No-one complains here.

This week I spent half an hour at the Mormon Temple in Mesa. It is surrounded by 20 acres of land and it seemed that every square foot was lit up with Christmas lights. There was a massive life-size nativity scene, choirs, everything screamed ‘have an over the top Christmas”. But that’s America for you, things are bigger, and why not?

I didn’t miss the inevitable Scottish rain but there were aspects of Christmas in Scotland I did yearn for. Silly things like Black Friday in Glasgow – when there are so many people out for their boozy office parties that getting home means a two-hour wait at the taxi rank in the freezing cold. One year I remember (vaguely) walking for seven miles in the snow before a taxi came along.

I missed catching the subway into the city centre on a Sunday morning with my “shop route” planned for all the presents I had in mind; the shop assistants wearing red antlers; the German market on Princes Street in Edinburgh; the ever-present possibility that it will be a “White Christmas”.

And of course I missed my family, I’ve had 50-something happy Christmas Days with them. Christmas in America is great but, yes, I felt nostalgic for Scotland at this time of year. And, believe me, that feeling will multiply at New Year.

Just a Wee Blether…

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About the perils of overeating in the US

It is tempting to think all Americans fall into two categories – the uber-skinny Hollywood type and the clinically obese burger-chomping brigade.

Of course that’s way too simplistic, there are people here of all shapes and sizes. But this is the land where fast food is king and there is an undeniably massive problem with over-eating. ‘Let’s do breakfast’ is often cue for three or four enormous pancakes smothered in fresh cream and maple syrup.

Having lived here for nine moths I’m beginning to have sympathy with people who find themselves overweight – because it’s happening to me. Since arriving in March I’ve put on more than a stone (14 pounds to my American friends), I feel out of shape and bloated, and clothes are not fitting me.

The first problem is my lack of self-control and willpower. The food – and the sweets – are so tempting here. I’m a sucker for all sorts of American candy like tootsie rolls and in particular a confection known as salt water taffy. I could eat the stuff till it’s coming out of my ears.

4 Mar sweets

When I left Scotland, good burger shops such as Five Guys were springing up all over Glasgow. Multiply that by 100 for Phoenix. The burgers here are delicious, so are the french fries (chips are what we call crisps in Scotland), and the portions are enormous.

The other difficulty is that, with the exception of most of the fast-food joints, the food on offer is of a very high quality – irresistible to be honest. Mexican cuisine is the speciality round here but there are good restaurants everywhere. After all, Americans take their food seriously.

How many times have you heard the morning after the night before discussion? Something along the lines of ‘I had six pints, five wines, then I can’t remember the rest of the night’. It happens every day of every week in workplaces up and down the country.

The culture here is totally different. Americans don’t talk about the drink they’ve had, but they enter into great detailed conversations about how the food is prepared. Men of all ages will describe how thinly they sliced the beef in their Philly cheese steak, or at what temperature they cooked the ribs on the barbeque.

It may seem strange that, having come from the country where we offer deep-fried Mars Bars and Snickers in fish and chip shops, I should put on so much weight in a land where the food is healthier.

So what am I going to do about this? For a start I’ve been encouraged by reading about some of my Facebook friends who have adopted sensible eating plans that have made a big difference to their clothes sizes. Step forward Simon Houston, Jesse Caufield, Helen McArdle and anyone else I’ve missed.

It doesn’t have to be some sort of major diet, just common sense eating with exercise thrown in. The tempting restaurants all have salad options, and eating at home will have to mean an end to the cookies, popcorn, and other delights that seem to appear from nowhere.

I have an exercise bike so it will be a case of ‘on my bike’ and watch the pounds fall off – and all this is going to start in the New Year, so the inevitable Christmas splurge will happen between now and then.

So wish me luck. It will be a temptation-filled exercise and I’m going to have to conquer my natural inability to stop myself when confronted with mouth-watering, fattening goodies. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Just a Wee Blether…

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About never stopping “at the lights”

Everybody in Scotland warned me about the same thing before I left for the US. “Be careful, they drive on the wrong side of the road over there,” people said.

In the knowledge that owning a car in America is not a matter of choice, it’s a necessity, I was told over and over again to make sure I didn’t carry on driving on the left, like we do in Scotland.

The truth is it took less than half an hour to get the hang of what side to drive on. The roads here are busy – they are also pleasantly wide and “roomy”. Yes, everyone drives on the right so it would be pretty dumb of me to drive straight into the oncoming traffic.

Another slightly odd rule of the road is that you can turn right even when faced with a red light if it is safe to do so. Again, that doesn’t take too long to get used to.

But there are other driving quirks over here that it took a little longer to catch on to. They left me perplexed the first few times I encountered them and, even now, I still have to keep my wits about me. To my mind they make certain aspects of driving in the US inherently more dangerous.

First of all, bear in mind that unlike Scotland the road network in the Phoenix metro area is one huge grid system. All the roads travel either north-south or east-west. It means there are hundreds of major junctions (or intersections as they are always called in the US).

Now remember in the UK being told that, when the traffic lights are showing red, to “stop at the lights”. Well if you stopped “at the lights” over here you would run the risk of being in a serious accident. For the simple reason that, as you approach an intersection there is only one set of lights facing you – and it is at the “other side” of the junction.

So if I stopped directly in front of the lights my car would be sitting in the middle of the junction in the path of a line of traffic. During the day it’s easy enough but in the first few weeks of driving here at night, it was more than a little confusing.

The second, and perhaps more dangerous intersection manoeuvre involves pedestrians. In Scotland, if the pedestrian crossing lights come on, all cars have to stop, simple as that.

Not here. If, for example, I was travelling north and wanted to turn east (or right) at an intersection I could make the turn when the green light is signaling (or at a red light if it’s safe). However, at the same time as I am being allowed to turn east, the light is signalling that pedestrians can cross north to south.

In other words, I could turn right at a green light and plough straight into a crowd of pedestrians. Obviously the pedestrian always has the right of way and the onus is entirely on the driver. But it doesn’t change the fact that motorists and pedestrians have permission to cross the same stretch of road at exactly the same time. It’s quite frankly daft and highly dangerous and I wonder how many people have been killed and injured as a result.

One final curiosity – one that gives the lie to the phrase United States. Do not expect the road signs and signals here to be the same throughout the country. They are different state by state, city by city and town by town.

I remember driving in the town of Gilbert – where you turn left at an intersection when the green arrow shows. Then I crossed a road into the city of Mesa where some junction light sequences include a flashing yellow arrow indicating that you can turn left but only if it is safe. So you can pass your test in one city and discover that the signals are different in the city next door.

Confusing eh? Driving on the wrong side of the road is the least of my worries.

Just a Wee Blether…

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About My ‘Coming Out’ Confession

I remember the day in 1985 when I decided it was time to come out of the closet. For more than a year I had been secretly indulging in a pattern of behavior most people didn’t understand. I couldn’t hide it any more, I had to bite the bullet, to be candid with my friends and family.

No, it’s not what you’re thinking, it wasn’t the traditional closet “outing”. Nor was it anything criminal. I hadn’t become a Barry Manilow or Carpenters fan. But it was a public activity so there was always the possibility I would be seen. I had to ‘fess up.

So how would it go? One or two knew already. But I steeled myself and broke the news gently. It was worse than many people realised. Guys, I walk around the Scottish countryside with binoculars round my neck. It’s true, I’m a birdwatcher.

If I had grown two heads it would have been easier. There was much mickey-taking. And a lot of fairly dumb questions. But I continued to insist this was something I thoroughly enjoyed and eventually there developed a degree of disbelieving acceptance.

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Fast forward 30 years and the climate has changed enormously. Most of the same people who sniggered at me can now name the birds in their garden. They can distinguish between the chaffinches, blue tits, siskins and robins that show up.

Bed and Breakfast establishments the world over advertise their premises as ‘perfect for birdwatchers’ or ‘a birder’s paradise’. Our feathered friends have not only become respectable; they are also big business.

The reason I got interested in the first place was straightforward. I liked escaping the city and taking countryside walks. I would see birds and wanted to identify the species. So I bought a field guide and took it from there.

On my first ever proper birdwatching day out I went to the River Don estuary in Aberdeen. I remember feeling a thrill when I was able to identify a ringed plover. Nothing has changed, all these years later I still get a kick out of seeing a ‘new’ species.

I miss watching birds in Scotland, it was relaxing and peaceful, an escape from the stresses of everyday life. I had favourite spots, notably the Ythan Estuary in Aberdeenshire and the Baron’s Haugh reserve near Motherwell.

People sometimes ask what is the attraction of an activity that probably seems odd to an outsider. I don’t know the answer. Perhaps we all have some sort of an inbuilt collector’s instinct – I have ‘spotted’ more than 300 species over the years.

Having moved to America, it is like starting all over again. With the exception of a few species such as starling, mallard and house sparrow, the birds in the US are all different. Just like the UK there is a massive interest, hundreds of ‘birders’ come to Arizona for spring and autumn migrations, and the economy benefits.

At nature reserves here, birds such as the one pictured, a black necked stilt, are common. In Scotland they are a once-in-a-lifetime rarity.

Many of you might still think I’m a weirdo but nowadays I don’t care so much. I’m perhaps a little smug that my secret hobby has now achieved a degree of acceptance.

Just a Wee Blether…

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About why I love Turkey Day

Turkey Day has come and gone – and I loved every second of it. It is, for me, the most enjoyable, most relaxing and, dare I say, most civilised holiday in the American calendar.

This year was the first time I was able to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, traditionally held on the fourth Thursday in November, as an American resident. It was an excellent occasion spent in the company of family, friends and neighbours.

Thanksgiving Day reveals everything good about the USA. Outsiders, myself included, are often quick to latch on to the negative aspects of American life. But once a year the country rolls out the welcome mat and shows its good side, the kindness and warm-hearted nature of its people.

In the UK there is no equivalent festival, nothing that compares. The general rule over here is that no-one should spend Thanksgiving Day alone. On Thursday the gathering at which I was present included an elderly across-the-road neighbour, friends who had travelled from San Diego, and a single friend of relatives. It was the same story in thousands of homes across the nation.

The centerpiece of any Thanksgiving Day celebration is a turkey. In our case a 15 pounder – small by comparison – was enough to feed 16 people. There was also baked ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, roasted brussels sprouts, butternut squash, green beans and dinner rolls.

That lot was followed by traditional homemade pumpkin pie, as well as apple pie and pumpkin bread pudding served with Cointreau custard sauce. It was quite a feed. And everyone present made a culinary contribution.

It’s tempting to say that oversized meals like that are symptomatic of “greedy” America. But Thanksgiving is essentially a harvest festival, dating back to the days of the Pilgrims and the Puritans.

In November 1623, William Bradford, the Governor of the Pilgrim Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, proclaimed, “All ye Pilgrims with your wives and little ones, do gather at the Meeting House, on the hill… there to listen to the pastor, and render Thanksgiving to the Almighty God for all His blessings.”

So food has been at the heart of Thanksgiving right from the start. But you may have noticed something missing, a crucial omission that makes the festival stand out as my favourite American holiday.

Nobody brings gifts or presents; it is never expected. You are quite simply welcomed into people’s houses without question. That is what makes Thanksgiving special, distinct from the crass commercialism that now surrounds Christmas when everyone is under pressure to get the best present.

Of course there is a commercial aspect. The Macy’s Day Parade every Thanksgiving morning is named after a New York department store. But Americans, just for this one day, take pride in keeping it to the minimum.

And they make a great job of it. In my experience, Thanksgiving Day is a happy, family-oriented occasion with the emphasis on simple togetherness and camaraderie.

It’s a bit of a shame that it is followed by possibly the worst day in the calendar – Black Friday – when people are trampled in a headlong rush down department store aisles to get their hands on that cut-price Xbox. But stay away from the shopping malls and you don’t notice the mayhem.

Christmas Day is next on the agenda, and of course I will enjoy that as always. But roll on next year’s Thanksgiving and bring on the turkey again.