Two Athabascan Natives from Minto, in the interior of Alaska, were driving along the Manley Road when they came upon a couple of bull moose.  Now moose are not in season, and anyway, it is illegal to shoot from the road, but the Mintoites killed the moose anyway.

They had guns with them, but they didn’t have knives, so they couldn’t butcher the animals.  Leaving their kill by the side of the road, they took a little detour to the General Store in Manley (where half the fun is getting there) for some refreshment before returning to Minto for knives.

Now the store, which used to be owned by one of the Survivalists (my mother’s husband), isn’t supposed to sell alcohol to people from Minto, because Minto is dry.  Only the current owner claims he doesn’t know who’s from Minto and who’s not, and, what with not much passing traffic now gas costs $6 a gallon up there, a sale is a sale.  He sold the Mintoites whatever they wanted.

While the moose shooters were getting smashed and looking for their knives, some of the Manley Natives called the Fish and Game troopers to report the illegal shooting.  Fish and Game told the Manleyites that they were too busy to deal with it, so it was okay for them to go ahead and salvage what meat they could.

Unlike the Mintoites, the Manleyites had knives.  They hauled the moose back home, right around the corner from my folks, and began working on the carcasses.

After some time, the shooters came back with knives and reinforcements from Minto and demanded their kill.  They claimed they needed it for a Potlatch Dinner (not to be confused with a Potluck Supper), which apparently trumps Fish and Game laws.  There was a stand off, each group claiming the moose for their own, and for a while it looked bad.

Luckily there was an Elder from Minto present who said to the Manley people, You have done a lot of work.  You keep what you have already cut up, and we will take the uncut meat.

Thus it was settled, though there are still a lot of angry people, some of them well fed.

Two of my four children, oldest and youngest, are coming tonight.  Back in England, when they came home I really did do something akin to preparing a feast worthy of any number of prodigals.  And if I didn’t exactly kill a calf, I practically bought a cow, since the girls are inclined to drink at least six pints of milk a day. (That’s British pints – 20 ounces each.)

Here, I reckon there is nearly a whole calf in the freezer anyway, and I didn’t shop.  I’ve got a handful of excuses: the car is out of petrol, with just enough to make it off the island and to the station if I don’t get lost, and I am bound to get lost.  But the real reason is I can’t remember what my children eat.

In the days when one or the other of them needed new shoes every few months (which I recently worked out went on for about 25 years, at at least 30 quid a throw) I would take them to a very posh, old fashioned, scoldy, shoe shop.  It was the only one in Oxford where I could buy their shoes, because they had freakishly thin feet (I don’t know, maybe it was from being half American).  The shoe fitter would say, What size is your child wearing now?  And I would look sort of dumb and peer hopelessly inside their shoes at the rubbed out place where the size used to be printed and confess I didn’t know.  Then she would glare at me as if to say, What kind of Bad Mother doesn’t know what size shoes her children wear?  (That would be me.)

What I do know is they won’t eat the same food.  Two of my children eat little or no meat and two of them eat mainly meat (although one apparently has a programme for giving up meat and I’m damned if I know where he is on the timetable).  At least one won’t eat pasta but likes rice, and one eats mainly pasta, but never, ever rice.  I think some of them sometimes eat potatoes, but frankly I haven’t a clue which ones.  And now Silverbridge (oldest, natch) has a lovely new wife who, as far as I can make out, eats absolutely nothing.  The Lawyer Sis is coming too, but she’s easy because she mostly eats mayonnaise.

The Baby is flying in from England, and I haven’t seen her since mid April (what kind of Bad Mother abandons a child who is barely sixteen and buggers of to an island thousands of miles away just because she takes her midlife crises really seriously?  That would be me.)  Silverbridge and his wife, who have just moved from Las Vegas to Seattle, will pick her up at the airport and bring her here. 

And then what kind of Bad Mother would so indulge and spoil her children that she will cook up separate meals for each, exactly to order, and wait on them hand and foot? 

That will be me.

A long time ago, when I was a better person, an Economist declared, in his charming British way, that he liked me because, for an American, I was remarkably uninterested in Consumer Gerbils.

Now, as a chat up line, that could probably win a prize. Also it was true, I wasn’t very interested in what the Economist was talking about, which after some moments of confusion turned out to be stuff like cars, televisions and washing machines (oh, I see, consumer durables). 

Reader, I married him.  I would like to say, for the record, that there were many advantages to being married to the Economist for nearly two decades.  He’d never mow the grass (on account of the opportunity costs) but he did teach me that it was okay to want stuff, that in fact under many circumstances I was doing good by wanting stuff. 

Nevertheless, on the whole, my wants are modest.  I like pretty things, but mostly I own trinkets, and I buy my clothes at outlet stores, final reduction sales or Costco.  I like housey things, but my life has been unsettled and nomadic for a couple of years so I no longer ever buy pretty cushions or crockery or candles, let alone consumer gerbils.

But the fact is, I like toys, and, for a long time my two favourite sorts have been bicycle stuff and telephones.  I guess they suit my peripatetic world.

A couple of Christmases ago, my gainfully employed elder son bought me a bicycle GPS thingy that tells me how far I have gone and what my heart rate was, and my speed and my average speed and how to find my way home, and I love it.  I never go on the bike without it.  This spring, when I quit my job my colleagues very generously gave me an Amazon gift certificate and instead of spending it on books (which I think they rather thought I would) I have spent almost half of it on a super light weight quick release seat post rack for my bike, a travel bag to fit the rack and a snazzy German made basket (good for groceries or poodle) – all extravagant stuff I never would have bought for myself.  I was so happy with my purchases that for a whole month I had the bike in the living room so I could admire these new accessories, stroke them as I walked by, strip away the velcro and pull the bag on and off, climb on the bike, balance the poodle and practice releasing the quick release lever.  The dog was very forbearing.

As for my other favourite: in England I had a phone, not a lovely sleek iPhone, but a great clunky thing. It didn’t fit very well in my handbag, but it did pick up email.  I tried to love it because it was a toy, and because of the email and because it was the very first (and only) thing I ever bought on ebay.  

I’m not normally a flakey sort of person (despite all evidence to the contrary) but I managed to lose the case (on my birthday) and afterwards carried the phone in a sock.

A couple of weeks later, I was racing (on my bike) in my lunch hour to the post office.  My daughter working for the VSO (British Peace Corps) in Uganda had sent an urgent SOS for knickers.  It seems that in Kampala there are no underwear shops, and, though she could buy anything else (including cell phones) on the street, she just couldn’t bring herself to buy underpants and bras.  Must be something about the way I raised her.

So I was sending emergency Marks and Spencer supplies, only I was late, and had the parcel on the bike rack and the phone in the sock and, well, I guess the phone fell on the ground (cause it was big and clunky and didn’t really fit in my bag).  As I was posting the parcel (where the guy in the post office shook his head and said this will never, ever, get there, but if you want to pay extra then they have to sign for it before they steal it), my friend, whom I was due to meet for lunch, was phoning to say she was going to be a little late.

Only I no longer had a phone.  It was lying in a sock next to my bicycle where it had fallen from my bag. 

Under normal circumstances I probably would have recovered my phone, in the sock, when I went back to the bike.  Not many people would want to pick up a sock lying by the side of the road.

But when the sock begins to play The Star Spangled Banner it is quite another matter.

I want an iPhone.  I really, really want an iPhone and if I get an iPhone I promise I will look after it and never, ever put it in a sock. 

And I don’t sleep in tents, were the words of my ex when I suggested, many years ago, that we take the kids camping.  So, though I camped some when I was a child, and a lot when I was a young woman, I didn’t at all while I was married.  After my ex and I separated I bought a couple of tents and for a few years took my youngest, with half a dozen or so other little girls, to a campground about five miles from home where we made makeshift somemores out of chocolate digestive biscuits and raspberry flavoured (because that’s all I could find) marshmallows. 

My daughter lost interest when she was about 11 and I hadn’t been in a tent since then when I got a call late morning on Saturday from the hippies on the Extremely Small Island.  There would be transport for me if I was waiting by the “marina” at noon.  I rummaged about until I found my mother’s tent, bedroll and sleeping bag, and threw together a few clothes.  I also grabbed a random, and largely inappropriate, stash of food.

The marina is really just a narrow rocky beach with a boat ramp, right before the spot where an ugly seawall inadequately protects a partially washed away road.  As I stood by the roadside with all my stuff – which the Americans elevated to “gear” and which I finally remembered the Brits would have called “kit” – a pick up cruised by, stopped, and reversed back to me.  Dancing Man leaned out of the window and chatted me up while I scanned the horizon for my ship coming in.

Meanwhile several teenagers and a couple of engaging eleven year olds, who I realised were to be my fellow travellers, arrived with their gear.  We all watched as finally the boat pulled in and tied off on the mooring 50 yards or so offshore.

It took a couple of journeys rowing back and forth to the sail boat before we were all loaded and headed for the Extremely Small Island under power of a put put motor, since we were too many to sail. 

Twenty minutes later we rowed ashore to find an impressive camp already set on the beach, with a large, communal kitchen tent draped over the picnic table next to the fire pit.  Strung along the beach was a row of other tents, and finding a vacant spot I pitched mine.

My orientation consisted of the question, Did you bring wine? (yes) and a guided tour to the pit toilets.  

The children (all boys) wandered off and the grownups drank and ate guacamole (good call my bringing that).  After awhile the four womenfolk set off in search of the kids.  Just one of us was mother to any of them, but we all understood her anxiety.  At high tide only part of the shore is accessible, and we quickly covered it.  Back at camp the mother became really worried.  Two years earlier, apparently, the kids, clinging to cliffs as the tide came in, had to be rescued by boat.  None of the rest of us thought they would do it twice, but the mother was insistent and a search boat went out. 

Not long afterwards, a group of very wet children, rescued for the second time, shivered by the fire and slowly burnt the rubber of their drying shoes.  The teenagers sullenly blamed it on the overweight eleven year old who had been found clinging to a particularly precarious spot on the cliff side.  If it hadn’t been for him, they said, they would have made it.  There were minor skirmishes between the teenagers and the drunker grownups.  I had never met most of the men and noted that they, and the children, had curious first names: Kent, Solomon, Titus, Keenan, Egerton. 

After awhile I worked out that a communal kitchen didn’t mean there would be any communal dinner or anyone taking charge of the fire, except to keep it topped with driftwood.  I monitored smouldering shoes, drank wine and ate tortilla chips.  I felt alone, but this time I didn’t feel strange and I didn’t feel sorry for myself. 

The tide continued to rise and one by one we drifted off to our tents, except for a young man who stretched out on the picnic bench and tried to sleep until dozens of field mice, waiting for quiet, ran all over him.

The next morning the party began to break up.  Guys remembered they had to be somewhere that day and teenagers had work to go to.  By late afternoon it was only the mother, her eleven year old son, a friend of his, and I who were left.  As he departed, her husband promised to come back to fetch us the next day. 

The kids paddled about in a canoe, and the mother and I walked and panicked when, briefly, we lost my little dog.  We watched eagles watching us from the top of tall pines and hoped they didn’t fancy poodle for dinner.

The four of us (and the dog, phew) ate together beside the fire and the kids made somemores of the genuine variety.  We competed for the perfect toasted marshmallow while the fire slowly burned low.  As the tide came in a tug boat with lighted mast pulled an enormous tanker through the strait.  One of the kids said, sticking his marshmallow into the embers, It’s so nice to be here, with no one getting drunk.

I woke before dawn to the sound of another tug.  We breakfasted on what food was still left, rationed our water a little, and lolled in the sunshine.  I had forgotten the two things I love most about camping – the sheer grubbiness of it and the sitting around doing nothing, getting just enough too much sun to make you sleepy.  Along with my standards of cleanliness, my literary tastes plummet.  I happily read a really lousy thriller – it might be the first thriller I have read since a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada in the seventies when The Onion Field (a good thriller, as I recall) gripped me.

We broke camp sadly, watching our pick up boat slowly drawing closer.  The kids rowed back and forth with the gear, and as they returned for a final trip were swamped by the wake of yet another tanker.  We baled the canoe with plastic food tubs leftover from camping feasts, climbed in with the wet children, and paddled one last time to the boat that sailed us to the world of running water, real beds and email.

I want to go back!

Despite trying all day and into the evening on the Fourth to get one of the hippies, drunks or Democrats to come back and fetch me so I could join them on the Extremely Small Island, I failed.  There was nothing for it but to go to the other party.  The invitation said 6:30 and by then it was half past seven.

I cut flowers from the garden and made a sweet bunch of poppies, snap dragons, toad flax, delphiniums and peonies (everything is late this year), threw together my salad contribution and grabbed a bottle of wine.

The party was at a beach house with a panoramic view across the water – so wide that the hostess (who just about knew who I was after I told her my name) told me that this time of year they could see the sunrise on the right edge of the horizon and the sunset on the left.  Alas, she seemed unimpressed with my posy wrapped at the stem in wet paper towels and cling film.  I guess hers was more an exotic hothouse plants from the florist sort of world.

I added my bottle to the shared table (where, unpromisingly, it was one of two) and poured myself a large glass. (I was right in predicting it would be the only glass I would get.) Passing a table laden with salads, chips (crisps), and rows of red white and blue cupcakes topped with mini American flags, I tentatively wandered over to the tail end of the barbeque.

As he deposited a hotdog on my paper plate the cook said, pointedly, “So glad you could come,” and I realised at once that he must be the host and that he was quite sure I had crashed his party.

I ate my hot dog and chatted a little to the few people I knew or recognised, including Dancing Man whom I had spotted from an internet dating site (where I occasionally lurk but never have the nerve to post a profile myself).  I didn’t let on that I knew he was Dancing Man.

Most people had eaten and, for something to do, I helped clean up. Then, beginning to feel sorry for myself, I sat alone and watched the sun set.  Across the water firework displays were getting going, and from the next door house, hidden by a bank of trees, there was an occasional bang.  The several dozens of guests at this party pulled up their chairs to the water’s edge and waited.

After a very, very long time two young men rowed out to a barge loaded with fireworks and lit a fuse.  Loudspeakers began to play The Star Spangled Banner and the first rockets went up.

There’s nothing like being abroad for thirty years to bring out patriotism.  It has been at least a couple of decades since I was in the US on the Fourth of July and the anthem with the rockets thrilled me.  But I am afraid my enjoyment of the show ended there.  The music became increasingly loud and the lyrics increasingly aggressive and unpleasant until there was one that seemed to be saying we would put a bullet in your butt courtesy of the red, white and blue.

On the way home I caught the tail end of a much better display on the other side of the island.  I went to bed feeling sullied and fell asleep to the sounds of distant bangs as my fellow Americans celebrated on into the night.

In England I used to annoy my neighbours by hanging an American flag out the window, but for the first time in forever I am actually in the US.

I’d forgotten what a deal patriotism is here.  Presidential candidates are fighting over who is the more patriotic, the radio is playing Sousa marches and flags are flying from lawns all over the place.  In England on the Queen’s birthday we get a verse of God Save the Queen just before the 8 o’clock news and there are a few discreet Union Jacks on government buildings and pretentious hotels looking to attract foreigners.  It isn’t a public holiday, nor are the other two possibilities, St George’s Day (for England at least) or Guy Fawkes Day.

I haven’t yet got definite plans for my day of patriotism.  The crowd I usually hang out with, the drunks, hippies and Democrats have all decamped to another island only accessible by boat.  I stayed home, partly because of the cat, but mainly because I thought I could rent out my bed-no-breakfast that I am doing for some extra cash over the summer.  (I didn’t.)

Meanwhile the well-behaved, grown up, hip replacement gang have invited me to a sober potluck on the beach.  I don’t know any of them, really, but it was kind of them to ask.

Either way there I shall be sure to do my patriotic duty to eat barbequed hot dogs and to ooh and ahh at fireworks.

Yesterday was the Fire Department open house and an island event not to be missed.  Besides the fire fighters, the Disaster Preparedness Committee were out in force.

There were free hotdogs, crisps, pop, juice and cake.  For the kids there were free tee shirts, fire hats, colouring books and those throwing discs with a hole in the middle that are kind of like frisbees (what are they called?)  There were free bicycle helmets on display with the motto: “Need a helmet, grab a fireman.” 

Now I have been to a lot of village fetes in my day (you Yanks have seen these on Morse or Midsommer Murders) and I have paid good money to guess the colour of the towel and the name of the teddy bear and the weight of the pig, but I have never, ever been given anything free, so I took what I thought I could get away with.  I really wanted a tee shirt, and judging by the size of some of the kids, there were plenty that would fit me, but I didn’t dare ask. 

And I can tell you, this island is prepared for disasters, including volcanos, featured on the publicity for this event although we are a really, really long way from the nearest dodgy mountain.  There was a whole trailer full of stuff – blankets, cots (Brits nb: not baby cots, camp beds), portable kitchen, pots, pans, propane, first aid kit, cleansing stuff and a whole lot more, not to mention the defibrillator and the oxygen tanks on the fire engines.

There was also a lot of really scary literature, and I started to feel guilty that I didn’t have a Family Plan in Case of Emergency and had never assembled a kit placed by the door containing food and water (a gallon per person per day for three days), radio, torch, battery, hygiene stuff (like toilet paper but no guidance as to how many rolls per person per day), sturdy shoes, coats, jackets, hats, mittens, blankets, whistle, kitchen accessories, pots and pans, tools, maps, hearing aid batteries, nappies, dummies and a white flag. 

Nor have I conducted twice yearly family drills, but if I had I would know for sure by now that I can’t carry that kit.  Meanwhile, I probably would have been sued several times when visitors fell over the kit on the way into my house.

Never mind.  I got a great picture of me and Smokey.

My housesitter opens the post and emails me about anything I need to know. In one of his occasional updates he mentioned that Her Majesty’s Revenue Collectors were “a bit unhappy” about the National Insurance I owed them, and would I like him to forward the letter?

Since I don’t owe them any money I wasn’t too worried. A few weeks later I guess he thought I really ought to see the letter so he scanned it and sent it to me.

My British email provider decided it was junk. Well, of course.  It was bound to be fake; Her Majesty’s Revenue Collectors would never use such intemperate language. The letter was headed “Warning of legal proceedings”.

When I finally retrieved it during an occasional trawl of the junk folder more than a month had passed since the date of the letter. I did think my housesitter might have given me clearer warning, but it was my own fault — I ought to know by now that “a bit unhappy” is strong stuff.

I telephoned the number they offered, in friendly British way, in case I knew any reason why they shouldn’t begin legal proceedings, or if I needed “help or advice”. It’s one of the things I like about the Brits. They never really expect you to be competent about your tax affairs.

A man with a beautiful Edinburgh accent answered the phone. After a few moments discussion he said, “Ah, now there’s where you went wrong Miss – “ and then he pronounced my name so beautifully that I wanted to work out how to change the spelling so it could always sound like that. Meanwhile he twiddled with his computer a bit and said it was all fixed. So it seems I will not be helping the police with their inquiries or detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

I wasn’t expecting the Scottish accent, though. The tax office is on Tyneside, near where my ex husband’s family comes from and where I expected to hear a version of Geordie, the local accent.  This accent is still distinctive, although many of the dialect words are vanishing, except among the elderly. When their father’s uncle talks my kids just smile and nod. I’ve heard them tell Americans emphatically, “There is no way you could understand our Uncle Bob.”

For Yanks who don’t know Geordie, here’s a recording from the British Library archive. This man is a generation or two younger than Uncle Bob and speaks much more slowly and clearly, but I bet even so you have to concentrate.

Yesterday the All England Club at Wimbledon was taking a hard line, but by this morning the policy of hiring marksmen to shoot pigeons above the courts was abandoned.

Wimbledon started today without me.  I wasn’t sure it could do that. 

My mother says her tele doesn’t get sports channels (so I won’t break my no TV since 17 April record).  The BBC has a player that allows you to watch it through your computer but only if you are in the UK, and it seems to know I am not – which makes it a lot smarter than Google or Match.com, because no matter how hard I try I can’t convince either of them that I have moved 8000 miles.

At home, Wimbledon fortnight was the only time of the year when I managed to seize control of the television: kids always cave in when they know you are implacable.  At work I would cheer for afternoon rain (because then I might get a chance to see some of the biggest match), then race home, mix a gin and tonic and paint my toes in between points.  No one was getting dinner until doubles came on.

The children just about fitted in with this deprivation.  Anyway, it’s more or less obligatory for Brits to be passionate about Wimbledon – the BBC devotes 50% of its afternoon and evening air time for the whole two weeks to cover it.  My youngest took her patriotic duty seriously, although, as ever, she had her limits.  When she was three and a bit she informed me as she watched a particularly energetic match that when she grew up and played tennis she was never, ever going to play with – I cannot now remember whom, but my sons will – Pat Rafferty?  She said, “I’m going to refuse to play with him, mummy, because he smells.  I can smell the smell of him right through the tele.” 

I’m not, on the whole, very interested in sport, though I did get a bit worked up about cricket a couple of years ago when we won the Ashes, and, according to some, cricket is also an important test of patriotism.  About a decade earlier, when I found myself rooting for the home team against the Yank in a Davis Cup tie, I realised with surprise that I had become at least a little bit Brit.

I never watched tennis at all before I went to the UK.  But, from my first summer, I was fascinated by the Englishness of Wimbledon.  Players in regulation white competing on manicured green courts in between hours of rain delays which the commentators filled in with chit chat about strawberries and cream and who was in the Royal Box, and, whenever there was any tennis played, charming understatement from genteel commentators with perfect, now very old fashioned, RP.  I never went to Wimbledon, but it was great fun watching it in the graduate common room at college on the summer afternoons and evenings of the Long Vac.

But I really fell in love with tennis when my first baby was only a few weeks old and England was having a heat wave.  For days the baby was dressed only in a tiny nappy (cloth!), and, not wearing a lot more myself, I lolled skin to skin with him in the “master” bedroom – so small you couldn’t walk all the way around the bed – in my little British house.  On the black and white tele, with a dial you had to tune like a radio, fuzzy athletes darted around the grey court – in real life it was toasted brown.  My son and I dozed off to the thwap, thwap of the ball back and forth, back and forth, he waking to suckle just a little when the applause was particularly loud, and me to smile as I heard again, “Oh, well played!”