I LIKE the way small shops have a dish of one-cent coins, known as pennies, beside the cash register. If you're a cent or two short because you don't have the change, the shopkeeper will take what's needed from the dish and make up the shortfall. And when you have a coin or two, you drop them in the dish to help the next person.

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I LIKE the way people gather in cafes for breakfast. They could be family groups or old boys in dungarees and baseball caps, shooting the breeze. The point is that they're getting together, even if they have nothing to talk about that they didn't talk about yesterday and the day before. We had coffee the other day to the sound of old chaps comparing their lawnmowers and their grass-cutting technique. Why were they talking about that? I don't suppose they knew either; they just wanted to chat.

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I AM amused at the variety of even the simplest things. It is, for instance, impossible to ask for eggs on toast with a mug of coffee. The waitress won't set off for the kitchen until she has determined which of an improbable number of ways you want your egg fried, whether the bread should be wheat, rye or some other sort, and sometimes what milk you want for your coffee. If you're not hungry when you come into the cafe, you'll beg for food once you've gone through the ordering ritual.

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I SWEAR that some places have more churches than people. They're rivals for a congregation, I assume, but they pay for a single board at the town's entrance. In an order they decide between them, they list their names. Half the churches in America have "first" in their title. So one board could list the First Baptist, the First Lutheran and the First Church of Christ, plus churches with names that could mean anything at all and tell you nothing.

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THERE's the same enthusiasm for clubs. It's been said that three Britons stranded on a desert island would immediately form a club. But Americans aren't far behind. There's a competition between a town's clubs and a town's churches to see which can attract the visitor first. So any one place will tell you not only that it has branches of Rotary, Round Table, Elks and Freemasons but when and where they meet.

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I THINK drinking is still a sin here. First, you can't even get a drink if you're under 21. And second, bars go out of their way to be unwelcoming. You can never see inside. If there is a street window, it will be tiny and obliterated by a neon Budweiser sign. The place may be agreeable within but it will do its best to discourage you from going in to see.

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THERE IS a law here, it seems, that no train may get within 100 metres of the most minor road without sounding its horn loud and long. And since trains often pass through towns rather than around them, and since there are many more trains here than you imagine, it can make for a noisy place. The funny thing is that rail crossings in towns are well signposted and have flashing lights and bells and a barrier. Trains here are huge and travel impressively slowly. You really can't miss a train. Yet they hoot, while the far more numerous cars, which have no rails to stop their veering off in any direction, are often forbidden from sounding their horns at all.

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I ADORE the way drivers are so courteous. They will drive halfway into Canada to be sure you have room. Truck drivers move into the far lane, even when they don't need to, to reduce the aerial wash they create. And they'll switch on their hazard lights to warn the driver behind to do the same. People make mistakes, naturally - I'm sure I do, too - and one pick-up driver made sure we each got a blast of oily black exhaust as he passed, but one idiot in a kind nation won't change my mind that America is a pleasant place to be.

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