“So this is it, I’m going to die.” In my 35 years on this planet, that isn’t a thought which has crossed my mind very often. Thus, while perhaps not something I’d like to do every day, I suppose it was refreshing to find myself contemplating the prospect of my imminent demise. On the whole, I’d rather do so tucked up in bed, than sat just behind a Joe Don Baker lookalike, piloting a neo-microlight aircraft above the Grand Canyon, with a fuel gauge which appeared to have hit zero several chasms ago.

Can’t say my entire life flashed before me, but the bits which had caused me to be in my current predicament, certainly did. We were accompanying friend Andy, who was visiting us as part of his first trip to the States. With limited time, we’d opted to take him to Las Vegas and then fly out to see the Grand Canyon, so booked a day tour there which included a flight there and back as well as a coach once we’d got there.

The first sense of unease was climbing aboard the courtesy bus to North Las Vegas Airport. We were the only non-Japanese speaking participants, and I feared Godzilla was going to swoop down and use the bus as a toothpick. This feeling of alienation increased at the tour terminal with a mainly Japanese staff and announcements given first in Japanese, then (somewhat grudgingly) in English. My neck hairs really began to do the lambada when the few Westerners were syphoned off to our own plane: I wondered if the Japanese annoucement went something like, “Honoured travellers from our homeland, please wait in the lounge, while we dispose of the Yanqui Mothra-flickers – at last, revenge for Hiroshima! Banzai!” Or perhaps it was an elaborate plot conceived by my Japanese psycho-ex girlfriend, now sniggering quietly from behind the smoked glass?

“Who wants to sit beside me?” were virtually the first words out of our pilot’s mouth – Chris’s hand shot up, a decision she was later to regret, and we climbed aboard the ten-seat Piper plane. There’d be no duty-free catalog here, nor stewardesses, and the safety demonstration was perfunctory, though opening the emergency doors seemed to require eight different operations simultaneously, and thus might have been tricky for non-cephalopods. I made a mental note never to fly on any craft without drop-down oxygen masks again, providing I survived this ordeal. But where had I seen the pilot before?

Take-off was smooth enough – it was the moment we left the ground that the interesting bit started. I’m used to planes going up and down, but being in one which falls sideways was a whole new dimension (literally). Air-conditioning was limited to a nozzle, carefully positioned so that the breeze went 0.5 inches in front of your nose, and Andy (more used to the heat of Lancashire than Arizona), was soon pouring cold water over himself. Chris, in the co-pilot’s seat, was unable to move a muscle, for fear of nudging the duplicate controls and sending the plane plummeting. And I was unable to appreciate the wonderful scenery outside (and quite a bit down) because my eyes were fixed on the fuel gauge, which had gone from full to 3/4 empty in about twenty minutes. Willing it to stop, and trying to understand my recognition of our pilot, was better than browsing any in-flight movie.

As the gusts buffeted us around like a cat playing with its prey, and the fuel needle began to wrap itself around ‘E’, I prepared for a crash landing, and looked down to see if there were any flat, unforested areas that even remotely resembled a runway. Hello! This is the Grand Canyon: we don’t do flat and unforested! And then I remembered where I’d seen the pilot. Four years ago, on my first trip to the place, I’d taken a bus tour. I am prepared to swear blind that the man who drove the bus on that occasion, was now the one perched at the controls of our flying coffin. At the risk of repeating myself: “So this is it, I’m going to die.”

Then, just as I was about to bring to the pilot’s attention, the little matter of our imminent fuel shortage, he flicked a switch, and I learned something that will always be engraved on my brain, in letters of stone. Light aircraft have two fuel tanks. The needle swung back to ‘F’, and I immediately revoked all those frantic promises to God that I’d been making, particularly the one about masturbation.

At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious, we landed safely, if a little more laterally than I’d have liked (re-enacting an old joke about the airport announcement: “the plane now arriving at gates 5, 6, 7 and 8…is coming in sideways”). But after that traumatic journey, the Grand Canyon seemed a little larger, deeper and more life-affirming than ever before. Particularly, for some reason, watching the Japanese tourists cavorting precariously on its edge…

There’s currently an invalid limping around the house with a leg in a cast, feeling sorry for herself. But in a major surprise, it’s not Emily – who seems to sprain, break and tweak things with the same regularity I went through glasses at her age – but Cleo, the psycho bitch from hell. “Bitch” used advisedly here, since she’s a dog, rather than a mad Japanese person with a fondness for gouging eyes out of videotapes.

When she started limping, at first we refused to take her to the vet – the last time we went there, it cost us the best part of a thousand dollars, and all we have to remember Max by, is his collar hanging up on the wall. Finally, Chris’s ex-husband took her, which is only fair since it was his dog to start with, and only ended up here after…well, let’s just say the words “canal”, “bricks” and “sack” underlay his comments to the children. Nice going – no wonder the dog was traumatised. [Yeah, I think she’s a useless waste of space too – but she’s our useless waste of space.]

Cleo came back with a cast on her leg, and since then, I can honestly say that, for the first time, the mere sight of her brings a smile to my face, rather than a scowl and shout of “Getoutofthatgarbagecan!”. [I think she probably believes her name to be Stopit] The house is mostly tile and wood floors, and they do not mix well with bandages – the net result was like watching Bambi on ice, complete with much the same look of utter consternation, or perhaps a drunken octopus, attempting to do the lambada. I mean, we are talking limbs everywhere. At one point, we toyed with the idea of putting a mattress on the wall outside our room, where the corridor bends, since it had gone from tricky chicane to death-trap status.

However, Cleo has now adjusted relatively well, and scurries along on three legs, the fourth wavin around at whatever odd angle is appropriate – Robert has renamed her “Tripod”. However, the standing-up and sitting-down part still gives her trouble, and so, when anyone comes to the door, she now just barks from a horizontal position, without bothering to get up. This is precisely what Max used to do, because he was well into his second century of dog years – we’re now wondering if Cleo has been possessed by his spirit, perhaps brought home in the aforementioned collar. Watch out for the Stephen King TVM soon.

We even signed her cast, just like a human’s with pithy comments such as, “This is what happens when you chase parked cars.” We do remain mystified as to what precisely caused the injury, and chipped a bone inside her foot. We live in hope that perhaps the garbage can she was raiding, bit back, and she’ll now be dissuaded from going in there without us needing to buy mousetraps [As an aside, we were in the hardware store, and technology has clearly been building a better mousetrap, complete with artificial cheese. Was less impressed with the sticky pads, like fly-paper for rodents – I guess they just starve to death instead, which is nice.]

There’s about another three weeks of careful surveillance in prospect, largely to make sure she doesn’t go for one of her swims (less perhaps for her benefit than ours; given the walking thing, the sight of her swimming might just induce a hysterical fit of some kind in spectators). Three weeks of blissful peace, without having to fend her away every time anyone is at the door. Three weeks of unraided garbage. Come that glorious day, I may well be calling Tonya Harding, to see if she fancy doing some work for me…

In my 35 years, I have only been through the car-buying experience once, and that was a relatively painless process, involving the brother of a guy at work. Now that I’ve got my Arizona driving licence, I begin to twitch gently in the general direction of possibly doubling that tally.

It has to be said, that obtaining the licence was not nearly as taxing as I feared, and never mind piece of cake, it was an entire gateau compared to the British one. If it took 15 minutes, I’d be surprised, and seemed to involve little more than once around the block, hitting no more than two (2) pedestrians. Maneoveres were limited to one spot of reversing, into a gap large enough to land a space shuttle. Parallel parking? You never need to do it in Arizona, so it wasn’t included. Going by this, nor do you need to turn right. The disturbing thing is that some people probably still required more than one attempt to pass. And I am now sharing the road with them…

I cheerfully confess to being both ignorant about and apathetic of motor-vehicles in general. Chris and I have reversed the usual roles here: she can spot a 67 Shelby GT Cobra with her eyes closed, while I identify it as “the red one”. The only two things I am certain of about any new car I buy, are that it will have a CD player, and air-conditioning. The latter is actually more important than anything else – never mind revving the engine, let’s hear how the A/C sounds.

More consideration has been given to what personalised number plate I’m going to have. Arizona permits you to choose seven letters, though the Morality Police in the States appear to impose restrictions on what you can have [the First Amendment doesn’t seem to apply here]. RAPNJAP, for instance, was pulled as offensive to Japanese-Americans, even though the car belonged to Robin Arnett Petty and Judy Ann Petty, and even IRISH was rejected in Vermont. Better be careful; last thing I want is to be deported for possession of an offensive number plate.

With TRSHCTY already gone to Chris, I find myself contemplating alternatives in idle moments: TCEDITR is one possibility, or maybe FILMFAN? ILUVCRS? The choices are endless, but trying to come up with seven letters to be the perfect expression of my character, heritage, and interests, as well as ideally saying “Don’t fuck with me” (would they hand over UZIS4ME?), is harder than it seems.

This part of the endeavour is rather more fun than the prospect of going to a car dealer, which by all accounts is like going for a dip in a shark tank while wearing trunks made of raw liver. We did think about getting one of those “seized by police” vehicles, because it’d be really cool to drive around in something bullet-riddled. Mind you, given the percentage of gun-owners around here, all you’d have to do is cut up the wrong person and Bob’s your uncle.

Maybe I should just get a new bicycle instead. Though that’d be a whole different set of problems – such as what to call it. We just got Robert a new bike, and he has named it “Stacey”. As yet, we haven’t dared ask why…

This particular episode began when we came home from seeing Tomb Raider, only to discover that the dogs has restaged their own version, entitled Larder Raider. Though going by the layer of white powder to be found in most rooms of the house, it could have been a remake of Scarface, albeit with flour. That was it – we’d had enough of these damn beasts. Henceforth, they could sleep outside. Er, no, they couldn’t, for Scottsdale local ordinances prohibit barking dogs. We knew that, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Cody and Cleo knew it too, as at 1am, they started up a cacophony of barking. We could either risk a visit from Officer Plod, and get no sleep anyway, or let them back in.

We caved, but the next morning saw me on Ebay, looking for a shock collar. I reasoned that to get them to sleep outside, they first needed to be trained to stop barking. And, let’s face it, while guard dogs are well and good, this trio’s inability to distinguish between a gang of heavily-armed bandits and the pool lady made them more a liability than anything. $39.99 and a few days later, the instrument by which this would be achieved turned up:

“Its light electrical stimulation delivers the instant message that barking is off limits in the kennel, backyard, crate, or wherever else it is bothersome. The KB-50 has seven adjustable levels of stimulation, allowing you to be able to tailor the level of correction stimulation to meet your dog’s temperament. This Anti-Bark Training collar is safe to use around other dogs(even in kennel situations), because the stimulus can only be activated by the dog wearing the collar. The collars receiver’s vibration probe is adjusted for sensitivity, and there is a three-second “relaxation break” between corrections.

I like the words “correction stimulation”. It looked pretty much like a normal collar, except with a small cube on the front, from which terminals extended on the inside. The collar was to be placed on the offending animal’s neck, the level of “correction” set from 1 to 7 (I was hoping it would go up to eleven, but was disappointed) and nature – or at least, the bit of nature discovered by Ben Franklin – left to take its course. I noted with some amusement that the instructions specifically warned against putting the collar on anything but a dog. Dammit. With a little tinkering, I was sure it would work just fine on a small child.

Scientific tests (or, at least, Robert sneaking out the back to ring the doorbell) revealed that Cody was the first one to bark when visitors arrived. Congratulations, Cody: you’ve just won a nice new collar. Typically, having connected her up, nobody came to our door that day; we did toy with the idea of sending Robert out again, just to check it was working, but that seemed somewhat unsporting. There was initially some problem in getting the collar tight enough; we were erring on the loose side, since we didn’t really want asphyxia to be part of the “correction”. Just to be safe, we jacked it up to level 3…

Then someone finally rang the doorbell and Cody launched into her usual “welcome”. Or at least tried to: the resultant sound can probably be approximated as follows:
              WOO^yip!
Then silence. I was impressed. The speed with which it had the desired effect was certainly amazing, but we hurried to check on Cody, just to make sure she wasn’t lying on her back, legs in the air, convulsing gently. She was still moving, but in a way which suggested “Did anyone get the number of that truck?”, eyes full of hurt and confusion. Before you could think, “Bet she won’t be barking for a while”, Chris had leapt forward and removed the collar from Cody’s neck. “She’s learned her lesson,” she said firmly. Nothing could change her mind, not even my argument that if Cody had learned her lesson, then she surely had nothing to worry about?

You know how this story ends. In less than a week, the lesson had worn off, and Cody was back to full volume, thanks to my beloved Chris the softie and her fierce aversion to electrical “correction”. They say, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” – but I guess sometimes, we’re probably happier settling for a bacon sandwich.

[This editorial is dedicated to Max, Chris’s longtime (albeit somewhat grouchy) companion, who went to doggie heaven on July 5th]

Last weekend saw myself, Chris, Emily and Robert at a wedding. This was not a really quick fruition of our plans to marry Emily off to some rich friends – Chris had known the groom’s parents for a long while through the jewellery trade. It was quite some time since my last appearance at a marital event, and was only my third since graduating in 1987. The previous one saw a former flatmate at university get hitched, up in Aberdeen and was a fully fledged Scottish ceremony, with kilts a-flying and much Eightsome Reeling being done.

This one could hardly have been more different, being not only in Pomona, California, but was for an Indian couple, with the son getting hitched to a woman who’d come over from India. We presume this was an arranged marriage, but were too polite to ask – this may seem like an anachronism as we head into the third millennium, but it can’t be argued that the divorce rate in India is a good bit lower than that for America. We weren’t quite sure what to expect: would we feel like the last remnants of the Raj? And would there be chicken tikka masala on the menu?

Such thoughts occupied our mind as we flew into a Los Angeles so heavily smog-bound you couldn’t even see the Hollywood sign, and made our way to the hotel – a little too close to South Central for my liking! Perhaps this explains why we had to ask for a telephone to be put in, ended up swapping a bulb from the refrigerator so we could have some light in the room, and – worst of all – there was no remote control for the television. “This is barbaric!”, shrieked Robert, deep in shock at the prospect of having to actually get up to change the channel.

We hit the freeways, admiring the beautiful complexity of the junctions, where lanes flew overhead like con-trails, without visible support, and applauding the relaxed nature of California drivers and their willingness to let uncertain tourists like ourselves cut them up without retaliation. On arrival at the reception venue, it was an unnerving experience; we arrived shortly before the doors opened, and were virtually the only white people in the car-park – you could sense them wondering if we were in the wrong place.

Strangers in a strange land, we were glad to sit down inside, where we were joined by other light-skins, just in time to stop us from circling the wagons. For sheer scale, this was jaw-dropping. We only went to the third day of festivities, and there were 650 people at that alone. The previous day, elsewhere in the state, the more religious/spiritual events had taken place (we were advised to skip this, and took heed), and even these paled into insignificance with the ceremony in India, where the attendance would have shamed many Scottish First Division football teams, at two thousand. No wonder there were three wedding cakes; if there’d been just one, it would have posed difficulties to local air-traffic.

We began to relax, realising that we were not being stared at and, in many ways, this was no different from a Western event. As well as the traditional cake, we had the best man making fun of things and acting as MC, the dresses worn by the bride and her maids of honour (or the Indian equivalent) were as stunning as any veil and gown, and there was a live band pumping out their versions of popular songs. Except, of course, these were popular Indian songs – except for one glorious moment, when I recognised the tune as Cliff Richard’s Congratulations, staple of all the weddings I went to as a kid, and shocked the hell out of Chris by singing along to the bhangra beat.

The differences were, however, striking. Firstly: this being a Hindu occasion, there was no alcohol. This was perhaps a shame, as given a couple of beers, I might have been up for the Indian dancing; as it was, powered by Diet Coke, it was all I could do to prevent myself from my usual caffeine-crazed trick of impersonating a dolphin. Equally, the menu was completely vegetarian, but even to this religious carnivore, not so bad, with enough spices to hide almost completely the taste of the actual vegetables.

Also had to be impressed with the entertainment, the highlight of which was a musical revue, in which the bride’s and groom’s friends acted out their lives before the wedding, by miming to sections from Indian pop tunes [cue obvious jokes about ‘Ndian-Sync]. This ended with the best man on his knees, surrounded by children clamouring for attention, with his wife out shopping with all her friends. Seeing this really brought home that there wasn’t any difference. Sure, the trappings may have changed, the scale might be different, and I might be bouncing off the ceiling after one two many caffeinated soda, but marriage is really marriage, no matter where you are.