Getting sexier by the hour

May 5, 2006

A time-filled trench lies beside the road on the battlefield at Fredericksburg. It was the first time, I think, that troops dug in permanently. It laid the pattern for the 1914-18

I read once of a man with a harmless obsession. It was that everywhere he went, he left a line of chalk. A lot of the lines ended up going to the chalk shop, because he got through a lot of chalk in that way and had to buy more. But other lines went off all over town, as far as he cared to walk.

Everybody knew who was doing it. They had only to walk along the lines and see at whose door they started. I suppose the police warned the culprit but then dismissed him as eccentric. And people irritated to find a line across their houses found it difficult to sue when any fool knew the first rain would wash it away. In the end the town settled down and waited for him to stop, which eventually he did.

Well, we all have obsessions. Even I, sane as any man can be, have an obsession. I never go into a McDonald's. I also don't dance. But, while it's comforting not to make a fool of myself to music, the need for coffee is sometimes overwhelming. Which is why, on a Virginian morning in Ashland, I walked into the gates of hypocrisy.

How the opposing sides lined up. In Europe, we know little about the American civil war. We know who won but nothing of what went on. It was educational to find so many signs of war beside the road in Virginia

And there I asked for a coffee.

"Senior coffee, sir?"

I didn't know what to say. You can't order anything to eat in America without being given a list of options as long as a stopping-train timetable. So I went for the direct question. I find ignorance too frequent to be embarrassing.

"What's that?"

"Well, sir," Smiley Woman said, "we're pleased to offer half-price caaahfee to all our guests over 55."

Oh, NO!

I covered my face in mock frustration and shame and knew I'd been rumbled.

"Sir," the woman said, worried I was some crazy case off the streets or perhaps just having a fit, "we're simply trying to save you folks some money."

I explained my shame. I told her I had been 35 for a long time now and that whatever she saw to the contrary, she was to ignore. I'd be happy to spend the extra 55 cents and rescue my pride.

Maybe because she wasn't that young herself, she could see my point.

'Well, sir,' she tried again, 'I understand the situation and I have the answer.'

She turned round with the coffee in one hand and returned with it in the other.

'Sir,' she announced, 'this is what we here at McDonald's call a Hot Chick coffee and I'm proud to offer it to you for the same price.'

No man minds being called a Hot Chick, especially with 50 per cent off. So I accepted.

The commotion attracted four Regular Old Boys at a round table. One, like an older version of Bill Clinton but with a short silver beard, said "Where you comin' from, my friend?" And when I told him where I was comin' from, he turned to his friends and said "Ah told you so"without going into what he'd told them.

We chatted and he waved one by one at the others.

"That there's Jim an' he was in the Korean war, so he's gotta be in his late seventies now. And this here is Bahb, an' Bahb used to be a Mountie, dincha Bahb?"

Bob wearily pointed out it wasn't so. He wasn't Canadian, he didn't have a broad-brimmed hat and he'd never ridden a haaahce. What he had once done was drive a police car.

Pappy Clinton said that he himself was 65, making him the youngest of the group, but that he still worked in retirement and treated MacDonald's as his office. "Folks know I get in here and that's how I git my work."

And what was that work?

'I'm a stunt-rider. That there's my truck out back.'

I looked amazed at him and then out the window to where I hoped to see a scarlet pickup sign-written in glowing flames and flying motorcycles. At 65 it seemed astonishing.

Unfortunately, my European ears hadn't got used to American accents, people sounding like broken banjos. What he'd actually said was that he was a stump-grinder. But I'd never heard of a stump-grinder. And so this bizarre conversation started in which I was impressed by my friend's daring and he was astonished that a job which caused so little comment at home could produce such adulation from a foreigner.

Only later did I realize that a stump-grinder removes what's left when you've felled a tree. To this day he'll be sipping his half-price coffee and saying 'Darned if I din't make a hell of an impression on that crazy bahcycle guy, din't I?'

When someone has an accent for you, of course, it means you must have an accent to him. That afternoon I stopped to buy a picnic lunch at one of those garage supermarkets that it is all Virginia has to offer as a village shop.

The woman behind the counter had a bright, lively personality and a face that, although tired, matched it perfectly. After asking where I was coming from, she said: "Hun, you just keep on talking like that. I could listen to that accent all day. That's just so sexy!"

In five hours, I had progressed from weary pensioner to Lycra superstud.

Right across America, Adventure Cycling have put up these signs to keep cyclists on the right route. Well done, Adventure Cycling!

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