… we’ll start with a video. I’ve not done this before so if it doesn’t work then don’t worry – I’ll sort it out.
While Hannah snaked pretty heavily down the track, you have to remember –
1) Hannah is just 16
2) this is her first year
3) we were having a torrential downpour
4) the track was rubbish
5) she got off the starting line (which was more than a couple of competitors did)
6) she got farther down the field than many people who have been pulling since before she was born.
7) her performance won her some folding stuff, which is always the most importand yardstick by which to mesure everything of course.
As for the town of Clinton itself, it’s a stereotype of the typical American one-horse town in the rural backwoods. Tattoos spelt wrongly, beer everywhere, hamburgers and hotdogs with fries and extra relish, and while the Liver Birds on the Liver Building in Liverpool used to flap their wings when a virgin walked past, here they would flap their wings when someone walked past who was not obese.
Even the fairground rides, such as they were, had, in prominent display, “in the interests of safety, large persons may be refused a ride”. How this lot became the Master Race these days I really have no idea.
The Americans use the word “thick” a lot to describe people. In USA slang, that means “fat” of course but in British slang to call someone “thick” means to call them “stupid” or “ignorant”. So here in the USA it quite possibly means the ame.
So apart from preparing the tractor, watching the racing and then repairing the broken fuel line, that was it. We went to bed.
It may not seem as if we did a lot today but I can’t think of 5 minutes where there was nothing at all going on.
