I'm Definitely An American, Because I Grew

Suddenly, In The Space Of A Moment, I Realized What It Was That I Loved About Britain - Which Is To Say, All Of It. Every Last Bit Of It, Good And Bad - Old Churches, Country Lanes, People Saying 'mustn't Grumble,' And 'i'm Terribly Sorry But,' People Apologizing To Me When I Conk Them With A Careless Elbow, Milk In Bottles, Beans On Toast, Haymaking In June, Seaside Piers, Ordnance Survey Maps, Tea And Crumpets, Summer Showers And Foggy Winter Evenings - Every Bit Of It.

I Tell The Kids That, Even In A Childhood Marked By Despair And Deprivation, I Knew That No Matter What Happened, I Still Had My Family, Or At Least The Remnants Of A Family Ripped Apart By Divorce And Then Glued Back Together In Various Odd Arrangements Through A Series Of Ill- Advised Remarriages. It Was Good To Know I Had A Solid Foundation.

For A Long Time, I'd Been Vaguely Fascinated By The Idea That Charles Lindbergh Flew The Atlantic And Babe Ruth Hit 60 Home Runs In The Same Summer.

South Dakota... Is Like The World's First Drive-through Sensory Deprivation Chamber.

My Favourite Fellow Of The Royal Society Is The Reverend Thomas Bayes, An Obscure 18th-century Kent Clergyman And A Brilliant Mathematician Who Devised A Complex Equation Known As The Bayes Theorem, Which Can Be Used To Work Out Probability Distributions. It Had No Practical Application In His Lifetime, But Today, Thanks To Computers, Is Routinely Used In The Modelling Of Climate Change, Astrophysics And Stock-market Analysis.