We Are Not Amused
Around and about Melton Mowbray, 7/2/2024
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.