Going to Carolina (various observations)

Before our recent trip I hadn't spent much time in North Carolina before. Not unless you count two weeks running workshops in a faceless office on a faceless business park.

So, now I know it a little tiny 8-days-longer better, I thought I'd summarise my observations of North Carolina. None of them amount to a post in themselves but in the name of documenting my transatlantic adventures, I think together they add up to something worth posting. (Don't tell me if you disagree).

5 Things I Just Learned About North Carolina:

1. When you order a tea in North Carolina, they think you want a sweet iced tea. When you order tea in an English accent in North Carolina, they'll look at you like you're crazy and say 'hot tea?!?'. Hot is pronounced 'haht', by the way.

2. There are many porches, and rocking chairs. People clearly like to spend their time rocking gently on porches. Who can blame them?

A government building in Duck, NC

3. They know just exactly how to make fried chicken and biscuits out there. And how to eat the sides (with a spork).

Bojangles, home of an excellent fried chicken biscuit

4. There is plenty of history in North Carolina. And you know something's old because it says so on the sign. Or should that be, 'signe'?

5. The sky really is as blue as the songs  (Allman Brothers, James Taylor) suggests.

Large cars and long journeys

As I have mentioned a number of times, everything is bigger in America. Including the steak we grilled last week. And the average beach house.

This is what passes for a 'cottage' in the Outer Banks, NC

And, of course, the cars. The cars have to be bigger because the road trips are so much bigger too.

We drove for about three and a half hours from the airport near Raleigh, to the Outer Banks, and back again. I though that was a fairly long drive. How small the British think! At the wedding we went to in Duck we met one couple who did the same Raleigh-Duck drive, and back, in a day. Another guy we talked to had just driven up from Miami, 17 hours away.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit my sister in Cambridgeshire, probably a three and a half hour drive. I think of it as very far and consequently it's not a trip I expect to make very often from Saltburn.

An American would think nothing of popping down to Cambs for Sunday lunch. Is it because America is such a big country? Or is it because the cars are so big? Or are the cars so big because the country is so big? And is that why the roads are all so very long?

Answers on a postcards please. Or just drive up and tell me in person.

The generous portions of the American South

TLOML, Lady P and I are enjoying a week on a North Carolina beach, catching up with family and friends and introducing Lady P to the many benefits of the American lifestyle.

Like being brought iced water when you sit down in a restaurant without having to ask twice. And massive top loading washing machines, and gigantic fridges and dishwashers. And many other features I'm sure I've posted about before.

Perhaps most important of all, certainly for TLOML, is the food here. We are in the land of shrimp & grits, fried chicken, pecan pie and other heart stopping delights. And we bought some steak to cook on the grill at the beachhouse.

These are they. The hardback book next to them is for scale.

Thick, aren't they? When we get home we'll have some similar cuts waiting for us at the butcher in Saltburn. But they had to be ordered three weeks in advance so he could hang the piece of beef for us ready to cut to TLOML's specification. Over here that's just a regular old steak, on offer at the Food Lion.

Sometimes, I suppose, the best things come in rather larger packages.

Trading Hours

We love Saltburn. It's a lovely place to live. One of the things we love about it is the quality and diversity of the local shops. It's a little short on good restaurants, but there are plenty of nice places to get a coffee, there's a decent deli, a great bakery serving locally baked bread, and an excellent butcher. Our corner shop does a great range of locally sourced produce, too.

So far, so good.

And yet...

And yet, we fall foul of the English disease - as TLOML puts it - of a lack of financial ambition. These local traders would rather have a shorter working day than make more money. So the butcher knocks off sometime around 3pm, or whenever he's done for the day. On Saturdays the independent green grocer closes at 5pm and the gift shop at 4.30pm. Our corner shop shuts at 6pm and isn't open at all on Sundays. Half the shops selling clothes, jewellry and bits and bobs are closed every Monday. And the chippy near us closes at 9pm.

Our favourite chi-chi coffee shop is closed on XXXs.

According to TLOML in the US these quirky hours would just never exist, for everyone who runs a store wants to be open for as long as there might be people who want to buy from them.

I'm not sure lack of shopkeeper greed is the whole reason these places are open for such short hours. I think it's actually lack of demand. After all, up here most people eat their dinner by 7pm - what kind of lunatic would want fish and chips after 9pm? And who on earth goes gift shopping, or wants for exotic vegetables, on a Sunday? Only a foolish Londoner, used to being able to spend money 24/7, I suppose.

No, I think its the lack of consumerism which means this town's many lovely shops just aren't terribly available. The good people of this town are spending their time surfing, walking their dogs or sleeping - while idiots like TLOML are saying things like 'let's pop out and buy some bok choi to have in that stir fry' or 'it was S's birthday yesterday, I'm going to go and find her a present'. I wonder if, after a few months of living here, we'll be better organised and less eager to shop at all hours. Or if we'll just become massive internet shoppers instead. In the interest of keeping Saltburn's local traders healthy, I hope its the former.

Apropos of nothing, on streets and their names

Our address in Malibu was '20700 Pacific Coast Highway'. That's right, twenty thousand and seven hundred. You'd be bummed if you were coming to visit and you hit Pacific Coast Highway at, say, number 37, wouldn't you? It's not uncommon for a US street address to begin with such a long number. A scan through my address book reveals a 4010 Rodalite Drive, a 3517 Woodcliff Road and a 5463 Paradise Drive.

These big numbers are partly driven by the fact that the number leaps another 10, or 100 (depending on the city's system) with every block. But it's also because in the US a single road will run for many miles under a single name. Everything really is bigger in America, I suppose. Pacific Coast Highway is a great example, running as it does the length of California, for over 650 miles. Strange to think that we were living, technically, on the same street as someone 8 hours drive north in Mendocino County.

The streets of Saltburn are rather shorter. It's almost as if the Victorian planners had too many ideas for this little town. In addition to the jewel streets - a set of streets running down to the clifftop, called Emerald, Diamond, Ruby, and so on - there are a number of grand-but-small terraces and short 'parades' of houses.
So Victoria Terrace turns into Albion Terrace after just a couple of bends in the road. Glenside would be a decent length but for the fact that a block of it is called Balmoral Terrace, and Windsor Road is interrupted by a single block of Warrior Terrace.

As a result I can't imagine there's a house number higher than, say, 150, anywhere in this town.

This kind of name changing along a street is not uncommon in the UK. After all London's Oxford Street is only so-called for a bit more than a mile, before becoming Bayswater to the West and High Holborn to the East.

At this point I'd like to make a pithy, insightful comment about the significance of such a difference between us Brits and our American cousins. But I'm afraid I've drawn a blank.

I think we just file this one under 'Quirky Transatlantic Differences - About Which No Conclusions May Be Drawn'. Or, to coin the irritatingly popular phrase, "Just sayin'".