For five days we are in Melton Mowbray while one child takes part in an archaeological field school. Having yesterday exhausted the fleshpots of Melton Mowbray, the younger child and I set off for a local amusement park. I am always trying and failing to find a decent roller coaster for the two of us to ride; I have failed again, though this is the first time we didn’t ride a roller coaster because it was kind of racist. The roller coaster was in a part of the park called Action USA and was called the Buffalo Stampede. There was some sort of bare-chested figure that rode in the cars, and the second car terminated in stylized feathered headdress, and we decided we’d had enough.
I was in Hastings when Roe v. Wade was overturned; I am in Melton Mowbray for the Supreme Court’s latest catastrophe. At least a heartbroken American can go to Action USA to contemplate things.
It was an odd amusement park, largely deserted. No theme as far as we could discern—some dinosaur stuff, some dragons. A large USA-themed area; an “Asian” themed log flume. A sparsely populated barn with this sign.
The UK election is on Thursday. When I am in England around the 4th of July I like to raise a glass to my wonderful mother-in-law, who one summer quietly asked my ball-&-chain if she needed to fix a turkey so I could properly celebrate the holiday.
O America, what are we going to do?
If you'd held a gun to my head, I'd have said that Melton Mowbray was an actor (Alan's elder brother, to be sure, who played a lot of butlers) or a kind of cheese.
Lovely essay (as always), Elizabeth, thank you!
Thanks as ever for the shot-in-the-arm of your writing. I also have British in-laws, who have taken to Thanksgiving with gusto. Not so much the 4th of July.
America already kicked one king out. I guess we’ll do it again if we have to.