Anyone clicking on my title should get to one of Alastair's Letter from America. That's assuming, of course, that I've done it right. It's easier on 'Live Journal', Mr Blogger.com.
Yes, I did it wrong. I've just checked. It should be:
Now that gets you somewhere near , but it's still not right. Try this:
Bingo! Now all I have to do is learn how to paste URLs etc, because it's a real pain copying them out.
I'm very fond of Alastair Cooke. Maybe his talks are not so good when you read them, without hearing his voice, but read them I do, frequently. I love his style, discursive, knowledgeable, literate, anecdotal. He usually has two main themes, which he eventually gets round to linking up, after a circuitous journey involving many diversions and stops to admire some historical monument or to chat about golf and jazz.
I'm an Americanophile myself. I love their films, their music, their constitution, their variety, their humour, their generosity, their optimism. All of which means I'm often disappointed, even hurt, by their antics. The French, the Germans, the Australians, the whole of Africa - what else do you expect? But the Americans are the best of British, the ones with courage, enterprise and a desire for freedom and self-expression, for whom this country was too much of a straitjacket, who left it and invented their own country.
They can be so naive. They're like a huge, cuddly bear which just wants to be loved and can't understand why so many people are frightened of it, or why things tend to break in its great clumsy claws. Look at Iraq. They can't understand why those idiots aren't grateful that they've been given the great gift of democracy. God forbid we should think they're a bunch of childishly fanatical savages who can only function under dictatorship.
Their heart is definitely in the right place. I just think they've forgotten sometimes where they left their brain.
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